Investing in world peace

As a species, we know the solutions to a very limited number of social and environmental problems. If the motivation and resources are there, we can be quite effective at solving visible and localised problems, such as a polluted lake, or high levels of crime or unemployment in a small area. But with any degree of complexity and complexity we're out of luck. We simply don't know the best ways of reducing crime, eliminating poverty, dealing with climate change or ending large-scale conflict. These are problems that are:

• long term,
  
• broad,
  
• likely to need a mix of diverse, adaptive approaches to their achievement, and
  
• resistant to any current or envisaged efforts by policymakers to their achievement.
  

Such problems are exactly those that Social Policy Bonds are poised to solve. Take a goal such as sustained world peace, which many of us see as impossibly idealistic. Our efforts, for the most part made by hard-working and well-meaning people, are distinctly unsuccessful. It's a problem suited to the Social Policy Bond idea. The bonds would, by rewarding the sustained achievement of world peace, motivate existing bodies to do more. This is where criticism of the bonds usually begins and ends, as if I am suggesting that employees of such organisations as the United Nations are motivated purely by money, and need more of it to do their jobs effectively. There's a hint of disdain for such mercenary motives here, familiar to those of us brought up in a society pervaded by class conflict and snobbery. To which I have two answers:

• The bonds would not just see that existing organisations pay their people more; they would also give these bodies more resources to work with, provided that investors in the bonds regard them as efficient; and
• The bonds would represent a commitment to a stable, long-term goal. With incentives to achieve that goal, not only would efficient, existing bodies benefit, but new organisations could be created whose every action would be devoted to achieving peace quickly and efficiently.

So a sufficiently funded World Peace Bond regime would generate more resources for all bodies, existing or new, so long as they are efficient. The effect would be to encourage research into diverse approaches; to finance trials of the most promising ones (and, importantly, to terminate those that are failing), and to enable the refinement and implementation of only those approaches that are most effective.