Nothing to report

There's very little happening with the Social Policy Bonds idea. At least, I'm not aware of any progress. In many ways we seem to be going backwards. With climate change, for instance, there appears to be less focus on defining the outcomes we want to achieve, and more on such surrogate indicators as numbers of electric vehicles on the road or generating capacity of wind and solar installations. Other environmental problems receive even less attention. Nuclear and non-nuclear weapons continue to proliferate. Our politicians are judged less by their achievements or competence and more according to soundbites, personality and tribal identity. Outcomes - verifiable meaningful outcomes - are rarely cited now as goals of policy. Politicians hang on to power for its own sake, or because they can't find better jobs, or because it gives them immunity from prosecution for corruption or war crimes. A capable, aspiring, idealistic man or woman would hardly choose to go into politics, where the entirety of your private life and those of your family are scrutinised by those looking to sell a story. There are more suitable positions in the private sector, NGOs or religious bodies. 

So there's little to be optimistic about. The Social Policy Bond concept seems to be out of sync with today's realities. For the last thirty years I've been told that the idea is ahead of its time, but now I think it's behind its time, in that long-term goals are a yet lower priority than immediate concerns. The idea receives little attention now, and though such attention is welcome, it is invariably fleeting and unlikely to gain traction. 

I still think the bonds they could play a role where we are confronting big, urgent crises, such as war and nuclear war and the many global and regional environmental depredations. When it comes to war, right now almost all the financial incentives favour those who wish to foment conflict or who would benefit (at least in the short run) from it. We need countervailing incentives; incentives that would divert talented people from activities with little or negative social benefit, into improving the prospects for peace. It is disappointing that much of our undoubted human ingenuity is devoted to trading esoteric financial instruments, computer coding, advertising dog food etc, all of which would have their place if the probability of social and environmental catastrophes could be significantly lowered. I will carry on with publishing this blog, in the hope that, even if the ideas here and on my SocialGoals.com site are not taken  up immediately, they will be around for others to develop, refine and implement when I cease publishing.

Tantrums, bribes and world peace

Nobody seems to have high expectations for this year, beyond any personal hopes and dreams. War, fear of new pandemics, environmental tipping points, nuclear proliferation: the possibilities are frightening. Yet the ingenuity of our species knows no bounds. Each day brings news of discoveries in every field of the sciences, medicine, technology including IT... All driven by our curiosity, intellect, skills and hours of dedication and hard work. 

And - oh yes - by ample funding. Perhaps it's funding and the way it's allocated that explain the contrast between our boundless successes and the very real possibility that we are heading for at least one of a baleful array of potential calamities. We are collectively very happy to support research into activities that have identifiable winners, such as pharmaceutical companies, weapons manufacturers and also, to be fair, universities and research institutes. We are less happy to adopt the Social Policy Bond approach by targeting outcomes, such as world peace, however desirable they are, where humanity - the biggest beneficiary - cannot monetise its wishes. Such goals as world peace, if we believe them attainable at all are, we think, best worked towards by bodies that might have founded with idealistic goals and hard-working, well-meaning employees, but have (often) been ossified by routine and cynicism, such that their over-arching goal is now self perpetuation. Those bodies that have escaped that fate are pitifully under-resourced and make only localised impacts.

We pay teachers, don't we? They receive salaries, as do doctors, nurses, and people who care for others. But we are squeamish about paying people for things that we think should be pursued solely for idealistic reasons. Example: paying people not to kill each other is a long way short of ideal, but I believe that, if it's the only or the best way of avoiding deadly conflict, then we should encourage it. It is one possible approach that investors in World Peace Bonds could follow; an approach that we eschew, not because it's been tried and failed, but because (I surmise) it's too crude, or too defeatist (as in 'are we really so degenerate that we have to bribe adults not to have murderous tantrums?'), or perhaps because it's never been tried before. Tried, tested and failed will always beat new, might-not-work and disruptive. In large institutions of any sort, things must never be done for the first time.

World Peace Bonds would allow for the possibility that such unsubtle measures as bribing or otherwise undermining those who foment conflict are the most efficient way of bringing about peace. They would encourage research and experimentation of all potentially viable measures, and refinement and implementation of only the most promising ones. The goal is always to achieve peace as efficiently and speedily as possible and the way the bonds work would ensure that all activities, always, would be aimed at that goal. To this end, approaches would be necessarily diverse (what works in one part of the world won't work in another) and adaptive (what works in some conditions won't work in others). Such flexibility is beyond the imagination of any current organisation, be it private- or public-sector.

There are other advantages to this application of the Social Policy Bond principle: the bonds would take a long-term view, paying out only when the goal (world peace, in our example) had been achieved and sustained for a period of, say, three decades. They would divert funds away from socially neutral or negative activities as investors, with an eye only on their financial returns, would see the light. This does not mean that only self-interested investors would be rewarded: the gains from holding the bonds while working to achieve society's goals would cascade downwards, so that the number of, and rewards to all those working for bondholders would benefit, just as civil servants, teachers or workers generally, benefit from the success of their employers.