Outcomes, not algorithms, should define policy goals

There are sound reasons for being disdainful of quantitative targets in policymaking - something that forms the very basis of Social Policy Bonds. But, perhaps unfortunately, in our highly aggregated, complex, societies, the alternative to targeting broad, explicit and, most important, meaningful goals is to target narrow, opaque goals that are devoid of meaning in that they do nothing to improve social well-being. The current Economist does a good job of illustrating the problems of consequences of using narrow, short-term, incoherent targets (what I have called Mickey Mouse micro-targets):

They produce perverse results when people focus excessively on them. They tempt managers to manipulate numbers. The obsession with measurement diverts people from useful activity to filling in forms. The [UK] department of health provided a fine example of the first when it penalised hospitals whose emergency departments took too long to treat patients after ambulances had dropped them off. Hospitals responded by keeping patients waiting in ambulances rather than in emergency departments. The [London] Metropolitan Police illustrated the second, after it linked pay and promotion to achieving a crime-reduction target. A police whistle-blower told a parliamentary committee that downgrading or underreporting crime had become “an ingrained part of police culture”. The universities to which A-level students are struggling to get admitted provide an example of the third. Tenure and promotion are awarded on the basis of the production of articles (which can be measured) rather than teaching (which can’t), so students suffer.  How the British government rules by algorithm, the 'Economist', 22 August 

The most important quality of a target is that it should be in itself, or be inextricably linked to, things that we actually want to achieve. In other words, they should not merely have (perhaps) been associated with social well-being in the past. They should be outcomes that are meaningful to ordinary people, because that's what matters most and that is what will encourage people's engagement with policymaking and hence our buy-in to policies that affect us. They need to be broad, so that achieving one target does not come at the expense of other social goals. The alternative? Well, it is what we have now: indicators defined not by society, but by vested interests within organizations who suspect that broad, meaningful targets - indicators of actual, meaningful outcomes - would threaten their way of doing things, their status, or indeed their existence.

Nuclear peace: dogs and cats would also win

Nuclear war is as likely as ever, says former defense secretary William Perry

America’s nuclear weapons are thousands of times more powerful than the bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki 75 years ago. They’re on hair-trigger alert: ready to be set off by a false alarm, computer malfunction, or by human error. President Trump has the sole authority to start a war that would end civilization as we know it. KCRW, 31 July

That's really all we need to know, though the whole interview is worth a read. Nuclear proliferation demands a multiplicity of approaches. It's probably at least as great a threat to our survival as climate change, but there's no single, over-arching way of dealing with it. Government is especially bad at dealing with issues like this, where solutions are unlikely to come from the limited repertoire of command and control bureaucracy. Unless Government identifies solutions that it can implement, it's discouraged and tends not to follow through. It lacks the imagination to conceive of non-bureaucratic solutions, and it's not keen on relinquishing control. The result is our current perilous position.


Government cannot solve the problem, but it could set in place a system of incentives that would encourage a solution - or rather, the necessarily diverse and adaptive array of partial solutions. Government could recognise that, while it doesn't have all the answers, it can at least mobilise the private sector to come up with solutions. Collectively, we have the brainpower and the desire: look at the ingenuity and resources that go into analysing the pet food market, for instance. Or, worse, perhaps, see where even more of our best intellectual resources end up: in the, arguably parasitic, financial services sector. To divert some of our talents away from almost-useless (or worse) activities into reducing the probability of a nuclear conflict would, you might think, be worthwhile. Government could do this by issuing something along the lines of Nuclear Peace Bonds. It would define a set of nuclear peace targets, and back the bonds with rewards to be paid after specified periods during which a nuclear exchange does not occur. Bondholders would be motivated to bring about nuclear peace by whatever means they see as being efficient. They would not be limited to the solutions or activities that only government can implement. With a decent monetary incentive they could bring in our undoubted, boundless ingenuity to remove what is probably one of the greatest threats to our survival. If we're misanthropes, with a gloomy view our own species, its worth keeping in mind that nuclear peace would benefit our dogs and cats too.