Focusing on nuclear peace

Back in April 2014 just after Russia had annexed Crimea, the London-based think-tank , Chatham House, published a report on the dangers of unintended nuclear conflict: 'The probability of inadvertent nuclear use is not zero and is higher than had been widely considered,' it stated. 'The risk associated with nuclear weapons is high' and 'under-appreciated.'

You don't need to know much about, say, the origins of the First World War to be scared by the possibility that Russia and NATO might be sleepwalking towards a nuclear catastrophe. We could spend a lot of energy trying to allocate blame, but doing so is far less important than striving to reduce the likelihood of such a conflict. There are bodies that are working toward that end, either as their main activity or indirectly, with peace being a hoped-for result of such aims as poverty reduction, climate change mitigation or mass vaccination.

I think, though, that we need to be more focused: a nuclear conflict is one of the worst scenarios imaginable, dwarfing our other serious social and environmental problems. I cannot suggest a way out of any impending nuclear conflict, but what I do propose is that we offer incentives for people to find ways of avoiding such a disaster. Rather than leave everything to the politicians, ideologues, military men and the war-gamers, we could encourage people to back Nuclear Peace Bonds that would be redeemed only when there has been a sustained period of nuclear peace. Backers would contribute to the funds for redemption of the bonds, which would occur only when nuclear peace, defined as, say, the absence of a nuclear detonation that kills more than 100 people, has been sustained for three decades. Backers could comprise any combination of governments, international organisations, non-governmental organisations and philanthropists, and their funds could be swelled by contributions from the rest of us.

The maintenance of nuclear peace is an ideal for targeting via the Social Policy Bond concept:

•     it has an unambiguous, verifiable metric,
•     existing policy doesn't seem to be working,
•     nobody now knows the best ways of achieving the goal,
•     the goal is long term, and
  
•     the goal is likely to require a multiplicity of diverse, adaptive approaches.   

Of course, the bond approach can run in parallel with existing efforts. It's likely to channel resources into those bodies whose activities are most promising. It would also encourage new approaches, the precise nature of which we cannot and need not know in advance.

World targets in megadeaths: the superforecasters give their opinion

The current issue of the Economist reports on a survey of 89 'superforecasters', defined as 'general-purpose prognosticators with a record of making accurate predictions on all sorts of topics, from election results to the outbreak of wars.' They were asked to estimate the likelihood that an unspecified event, such as an AI-caused extinction or a nuclear war, would kill 10% or more of the world's population (or around 800 million people) before the year 2100. The superforecasters gave that event a probability of 9%. 

Nine percent is worryingly high, but quite plausible. We could speculate on the type of event most likely to bring about such a catastrophe, but it's more important to see if we can find a way of forestalling it. 

I think the answer might be to use the Social Policy Bond concept to prevent any sort of catastrophe from happening for a sustained period. The issuers of such Disaster Prevention Bonds need have no knowledge of the relative likelihoods of known or unforseeable catastrophic events. Neither would they have to pre-judge, with our current limited scientific knowledge, the most efficient ways of ensuring our survival. Instead, the bond mechanism could target the sustained avoidance of any - unspecified - catastrophe. It would do so in a way that encourages the exploration and investigation of all threats, known and new, impartially. Policymakers would not (and, anyway, could not) try to calculate how dangerous each threat is. That would be left to bondholders, who would have powerful incentives to do so continuously, which is necessary because the most likely type of catastrophe will change over time. Investors in the bonds would be rewarded only if they can successfully adapt to rapidly changing events and our ever-expanding knowledge.

This is a stark contrast to the current approach; the one that has led to highly intelligent men and women giving our survival such a gloomy prognosis. The people who are currently working in favour of humanity do so in ways that, while worthy of great respect, are doing so within a system that is heavily weighted to favour the short-term goals of large organisations, including governments, that have little incentive or capacity to care about the long-term future of the whole of humanity. It's very regrettable, and Disaster Prevention Bonds, issued with sufficient backing, could change all that. With sufficient backing from governments, corporations, non-governmental organisations and philanthropists, they could encourage more people and more resources into activities that would help reduce the likelihood of catastrophe. 

How best to allocate healthcare funds

It's striking how unrelated is healthcare funding to need. Medical experts have little capacity or incentive to see beyond their own institution or speciality. Governments respond to pressure from interest groups and industry, and allocate funds accordingly. Slipping through the cracks are unglamorous diseases, such as some mental illnesses. Even within a class of diseases, such as cancer, funding discrepancies are stark. I think government here is failing in its purpose. It should target for improvement the broad health of all its citizens rather than merely respond to lobbyists, however dedicated, sincere and hard working. It should, as far as possible, be impartial as to the causes of ill health, and direct resources to where they can return the biggest health benefit per dollar spent. Applying the Social Policy Bond principle to health could do this. At the national level, governments could gradually divert an increasing proportion of its healthcare spending to create and expand a fund to redeem Tradeable Health Outcome Bonds  (For a shorter treatment see here.) 

At the global level - I'll be realistic - such an approach is even less likely to be followed so, having read Peter Singer's The Life You Can Save: acting now to end world poverty, I can recommend the approach he takes when it comes to choosing which charities to support, which are those that, in his assessment, generate the highest increase in well-being per dollar spent. As he points out, 'The best charities can be hundreds or even thousands of times more impactful than others.' See here for more.