Where are the incentives to take the long-term view?

Where are the incentives to take a long-term view? I mean not only for policymakers, but for corporations, philanthropists, and the rest of us. Rewards are there for turning up to work, for attracting attention, for doing things; even sometimes for solving problems, though rarely for preventing them arising in the first place. But, increasingly, we are more concerned with short-term goals. There are several possible explanations. In the private sector, industry concentration means that managers, rather than family members, control corporations. But what about the public sector? 

[Government bureaucracies non-self-evaluate. At a minimum, agencies with evaluative responsibilities are not invited to evaluate - they are kept out of the loop, their opinions unsought. At a maximum, government agencies actively suppress their own internal evaluative units and are discouraged from evaluating the beliefs and policies of other agencies. Why States Believe Foolish Ideas, Steven van Evera, 2004

There are, then, few rewards for being successful, and fewer still penalties for failure. As well, government's role is changing. The current Economist writes about its growing role in bailing out corporations:

Politicians have long sought to provide safety nets or stimulus in bad times. But over the past 15 years, they have become far more willing to shore up vast swathes of the economy. When industries, companies or people get into trouble, fiscal help is never far away. Gains are privatised, but a growing share of losses or even potential losses are socialised. To appreciate this role for the state, discard much of the conventional wisdom, which says that in the “neoliberal” era governments have let free markets run riot. Instead, this is an era of “bail-outs for everyone”. The world enters a new era: Bail-outs for everyone!, Economist, 1 October

The long-term view is the inevitable loser.

Social Policy Bonds aim to inject the market's incentives into the achievement of our social goals. But perhaps their greater benefit is that they enable the targetting of goals that can be achieved only after decades, such as reduced crime rates, a cleaner environment or world peace. Nobody knows how to achieve these goals, and existing organisations have little incentive to investigate the wide range of diverse, adaptive approaches necessary to do so. But a Social Policy Bond regime would put in place incentives for people to take the long-term view: to research, investigate, experiment, refine and implement the most promising potential solutions to our social and environmental problems, even if, as is likely, total success will take decades.