Long termism without dictatorship

Some things are easier in dictatorships. Large projects such as highways, dams, and transport networks can be built swiftly, often with minimal public consultation or opposition. The same with strict law enforcement, mandatory vaccines, lockdowns, or sweeping economic or educational reforms. But the relative ease with which dictatorships carry out such policies comes at significant cost to individual rights or societal well-being. In democracies, vested interests are too often (in my view) successful in opposing any reforms that could generate net benefits to society. The can gets kicked down the road. The result? Spiralling government debt and inefficient public services. 

Social Policy Bonds offer a means by which measures that will benefit society only in the long term could be enacted. They're more palatable than dictatorships, because they would create a coalition that could oppose or creatively encourage vested interests to fall in with society's needs. A bond regime would aim for long term goals, such as much-reduced crime rates, improved health, or full employment. These goals would have to be sustained for decades before redemption funds would be paid out but, because the bonds would be tradable, bondholders would not have to hold them until they were redeemed. They could do what they can to advance the goal, then sell their bonds and realize a capital gain. 

A long term view is qualitatively different than the more usual, short-term approach of democracies. We can see this clearly at the global level too. For example, peace in the short term can signify nothing more than a temporary lull in overt hostilities, giving opposing sides time to accumulate more weaponry and continue to intensify hatred of each other. A temporary cessation of conflict could just be the precursor to an explosion of hostilities later on. But, a decades-long absence of conflict, as would be targeted by World Peace Bonds, could be qualitatively different. The bonds could help bring about a warm peace - difficult to quantify and define, but achievable simply because, with a long time horizon, bondholders would invest in, and benefit from generational changes in education, media influence, and the possibilities of forgiveness. Bondholders, in working towards a decades-long peace, could create a warm peace. Not always - Egypt and Israel have had a long period of peace marred by some degree of antipathy but even so, simply because of the length of that peace, war is less likely to occur: both sides' interest in pursuing that particular conflict, and the capacity to do so, have atrophied over time. 

The goals of any Social Policy Bond regime, whether they be national or global, would be agreed by society as a whole. I think it would be beneficial to focus society's aspirations on the outcomes we wish for in the long term. Doing so would attenuate the polarisation that we see in today's politics, which is more concerned with personalities, soundbites and the workings and structures of policymaking rather than its goals.