Relying on metrics

In our complex, populous societies we're not going to escape the use of metrics as indicators of social well-being. Social Policy Bonds aim to target broad goals that are meaningful to ordinary people. They therefore need metrics that are carefully devised, robust, verifiable and, preferably, easy and cheap to monitor. A Social Policy Bond regime, ideally, would use reliable metrics in a considered, coherent manner. There are dangers in taking metrics as ends in themselves, in using them incoherently, and in ways that conflict with people's well-being. Unfortunately, that's the direction in which we're moving. Having read The tyranny of metrics by Jerry Muller, I've written about the limitations of metrics. 

 Our societies aren't going to return to the times when policy is made for groups of 150 (see Dunbar's number). It follows that metrics will be the means to determining how well society is doing. This has its risks, but it would seem preferable to letting ideology, emotion, personality or revenge psychology determine the direction in which societies move. 

 

One of the risks arises from Campbell's Law: 

The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor. Campbell's Law

Some examples of the application of this Law are given here. Another recent example is described in a study of the Trump administration's efforts to present COVID-19 statistics that would discourage restricting economic activities and encourage reopening the economy. The problem is that there is no real alternative to quantitative indicators when trying to measure and improve society's well-being. The alternatives are using no measures at all, or using those that have no bearing on well-being or may even be in conflict with it. The latter approach is the most common on western democracies. Currently our governments rely on a motley array of narrow, short-term, Mickey Mouse micro-targets, including the over-arching, de facto target of Gross Domestic Product, with its many flaws, some of great consequence. 

A Social Policy Bond regime, by contrast, would target broad meaningful outcomes with indicators inextricably linked to what we wish to see. At the national level, we'd target improvements in society's mental and physical health; at the global level we could target indicators of adverse natural or man-made disasters. One urgent, and easy-to-monitor goal would be nuclear peace. Most other goals would be less easy to quantify reliably, but we do need to ask what are the essential elements of social and environmental well-being and how can we best target them reliably. Our current political systems allow our rulers to duck these questions and distract us all with spurious arguments about ideology, personality, image and sound bites.