A Mickey Mouse micro-objective from Mexico

Why we need to target broad indicators that either actually are, or are inextricably linked to, the goals we actually want to achieve: 

A 2014 law compelling parties to nominate equal numbers of men and women for elections has led to a phenomenon known as Juanitas—women who participate as candidates, only to resign after their election to give way to men. The Mexico tragedy, Shephard Barbash, 'City Journal', Spring 2019

I don't myself think that diversity is necessarily a helpful goal but, if people genuinely value it, they need to be explicit about what their diversity goal actually is. This emphatically applies to a Social Policy Bond regime, where there would be direct financial rewards to people who successfully manipulate or game targeted indicators. But it also applies to our current policymaking systems in which where the relationship between a policy and the beneficiaries of its perverse effects can be more readily obfuscated. 

To be useful then, indicators and targets should be inextricably correlated with well-being – and it is the well-being of natural persons that we should be targeting, not that of corporations or institutions, which have entirely different goals; nor that of abstract entities like 'the economy'. With national governments being the size they are, and with global social and environmental depredations bound to assume greater importance, poorly thought out global policies could be a lot more serious than Mexico's Juanita phenomenon. Some years ago, George Monbiot wrote about the rush to subsidise biofuel production:

It used to be a matter of good intentions gone awry. Now it is plain fraud. … The reason governments are so enthusiastic about biofuels is that they don't upset drivers. They appear to reduce the amount of carbon from our cars, without requiring new taxes. It's an illusion sustained by the fact that only the emissions produced at home count towards our national total. The forest clearance in Malaysia doesn't increase our official impact by a gram. If we want to save the planet, we need a five-year freeze on biofuels, George Monbiot, ‘The Guardian’, 27 March 2007

I was inclined to think insanity rather than dishonesty but Mr Monbiot may well be right. The implications for the planet are the same either way. Unfortunately, big government is far more concerned with adhering to its own agenda than it is about actually achieving worthwhile outcomes. And what is this agenda? What animates all this perverse policymaking, the targeting of meaningless micro-objectives, of means rather than ends, and the persistent, destructive subsidies to vested interests? Confusion, certainly, but there is also what I consider to be the ultimate goal of government, or indeed that of any big organisation, private- or public-sector, once they are old enough for their founding principles to be forgotten: self-perpetuation. Policymakers and their paymasters can get away with ineffective or - let's be frank - corrupt policies (see for instance, this more recent Monbiot piece) because ordinary people haven't the time, energy, resources or legal expertise to master the arcane and protracted policymaking process.

A Social Policy Bond regime would change that. Policymaking would focus on meaningful outcomes, rather than the supposed means of achieving them. We can all understand outcomes, so we can all take an interest, if we want to, in which ones should be given priority. A policymaking process centred on outcomes would, in my view, be far more enlightening and generate far more - essential - buy-in, than the current political circus, which is failing the non-millionaires amongst use quite spectacularly.