Adysforemenon-cracy

The title of this post I intend to mean: rule by the insecure. ChatGPT says that the Greek term for 'rule by the insecure' is 'τυραννία των αδυσφορημένων' (tyrannia ton adysforemenon), which is probably more correct, but less snappy. (If you know the correct term, please let me know.)

Isaac Chotiner writes about the President of Turkey:

[T]he Gezi protests, which were really about an environmental issue initially, were meant to overthrow him. He sees everything in that vein. How Erdoğan Set the Stage for Turkey’s Disastrous Earthquake Response, newyorker.com, 14 February

The Economist writes about the ruler of India:

After the prime minister’s many victories against his domestic critics, going after foreign ones is the logical next step. After silencing critics at home, Narendra Modi goes after foreign media, the Economist, 18 February

It's unfortunate that the politicians, having attained power, are so desperate to avoid losing it. It's also inevitable: one cannot now ascend the political ladder unless you really, really want to do so. The desire for power trumps all other qualifications, including competence and the wish to improve the well-being of one's citizens (see Anything except outcomes). Maybe it was different when there was a born-to-rule class, but the relevant message now is that our political systems are increasingly dysfunctional, as shown by the widening gap between our rulers and the people they are supposed to represent.

Social Policy Bonds would do something to cut out the middleperson: under a bond regime, politicians wouldn't have the power to allocate funds between competing bodies; their role would be limited to that of articulating society's goals and raising the funds necessary for their achievement. Funding would be decided by bondholders, whose sole criterion would be the efficiency with which society's scarce resources could be deployed to fulfil its wishes. Cutting out the middleperson might not be so necessary if our leaders were honourable, competent and caring. Unfortunately, more and more, and whether or not we live in a democracy, our leaders are not selected for those qualities. They possess one quality above all others: a thirst for power - and they are pathologically insecure about losing it. This doesn't make for effective governance.

Where's the vision?

I've long stressed the most obvious feature of Social Policy Bonds: their efficiency, which would be measured as the increase in social (or environmental) well-being per pound spent. Under a bond regime, bondholders would have incentives to achieve our social goals as efficiently as they can. Also, I've talked about the stability of the goals that a Social Policy Bond regime could target: there's more consensus about such goals than there is about the means of achieving them, the most efficient of which would anyway change over time. And I've mentioned the transparency of a bond regime, which would target explicit, verifiable goals. All these attributes are beneficial. They allow us to take a long-term approach to dealing with complex social problems that require a wide array of diverse, adaptive approaches to their solution. 

It's also important that the goals we can target with a bond regime are comprehensible and meaningful to ordinary citizens. Taking health, for example, most of us have little idea about the relative merits of certain interventions, and recent events have seen a growing distrust of corporations and governments who, we'd like to believe, are acting with good intentions. My (long) essay on applying the bond principle to a country's health discusses the possible use of Quality Adjusted Life Years as one way of measuring the physical well-being of the population that could be targeted. Such  measures have their technical difficulties but they would be broadly understood by citizens with an interest in health outcomes. This is a benefit in its own right, but also a stimulus to greater public engagement with health policy and, therefore, greater buy-in. 

Sadly, but not unexpectedly, the essay languishes on my website, and current policymaking in the UK at least, continues to be an incoherent and incomprehensible (to outsiders) mix of arguments about funding and structures, and short-term kludges. Where is the vision? The strategy? The buy-in?