Peace on Earth; worth paying for

Applying the Social Policy Bond concept to conflict reduction means, in effect, paying people not to kill each other. It doesn't sound very edifying, but I'll make the case for it anyway.

Of course, it is less than ideal that people don't freely choose to live in peace; and frequently invade and kill in pursuit of their goals or those of their leaders. Throughout the centuries, we haven't found ways of ending war. Conflict has so many causes and it's widely believed that war is an inevitable, intractable aspect of humanity. Given the human and resource cost of war and preparing for war, I think it reasonable to allocate funds to eliminating it for a sustained period. A Conflict Reduction Bond regime would aim to do this and, importantly, if it were to fail, no government funds would be lost. 

A misconception of those who disdain the Social Policy Bond principle is that they think paying for results means huge cash prizes for the already wealthy. It's true that, under a bond regime investors in the bonds would benefit if the targeted social goal are achieved quickly but, in the long run, what's more likely is that more people would be attracted to working to achieve achieve the targeted goal. The most efficient of these should see some higher financial rewards but, more importantly, they will have more resources with which to work. It's my impression that, if there were bodies with a proven record of bringing about peace in a wide range of circumstances, they'd enjoy very high levels of funding.

Underlying all this reasoning, though, are two points:

• Incentives matter. Weapons manufacturers, ideologues, military bodies all respond rationally to the incentives on offer. Not all these are financial incentives, but there are sufficient monetary rewards to those who manufacture and use weapons to make sustained periods of world peace unlikely. A Conflict Reduction Bond regime would offset such rewards, to a degree dependent on their backing.
  
• While it would be lovely if people's humanity alone were sufficient to ensure peace on earth and goodwill to all, the Conflict Reduction Bond option of making explicit, taxpayer-funded payments in exchange for world peace would be preferable to the situation we have today.

The benefits of relinquishing power

The problem with philanthropy is that philanthropists and their employees are reluctant to relinquish control over how their goals shall be achieved and who shall be seen to be achieving them. (Politicians are similar in that respect, but we have higher expectations of wealthy individuals with noble intentions spending their own money.) Sadly, this wish not only to be a benefactor to humanity, but to be seen to be such a benefactor means that our biggest, most urgent challenges are being neglected. Philanthropists - and politicians - want to be identified with successful initiatives. It's a natural human tendency, but it's holding us back. Society is too complex for most of our serious social and environmental problems to be to be traced to a discrete set of causes. Insecticide-drenched bed nets might be the best way of dealing with malaria somewhere at some time - but not everywhere, and not always. We need a policy environment that encourages initiatives that are capable of adapting to differing and changing circumstances, and that have a long term focus on achieving outcomes.

Which is where the Social Policy Bond idea can play a role. Under a bond regime the role of philanthropists - or government - would be limited to supplying and raising funds to be used to redeem the bonds, and defining the outcome that they wish to achieve. They would not stipulate how that outcome is to be achieved, nor who will achieve it. By relinquishing those powers, groups of philanthropists or governments could greatly expand the range of goals they could target to include such global goals as sustained periods of world peace or climate stability - goals that have no single, identifiable cause, and that will necessarily take many years to achieve. It would be unfortunate if, solely because of people's wish to be publicly identified with successful initiatives, our most urgent problems depend for their solution on a small number of dedicated people with pitifully inadequate resources.