The system is corrupt

Two excerpts from recent readings:

In the Rostov region, in southern Russia, the owner of several stalls that sell local produce says she dreams of having her own fuel tanker. “They can all go to hell with their ideas and grand ambitions,” she says. “They” include Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump, Volodymyr Zelensky, Emmanuel Macron and local governors. “We used to live just fine. Now all you do is scramble from one problem to the next.” Russians are growing anxious and angry, 'Economist', 8 July 2026

The SNP [Scottish National Party] has been winning by default for years now. Everyone knows the party is exhausted and out of ideas, but people keep voting for it for want of anything better. And, like Labour when it ruled Scotland, it never tries anything new. Why bother? The day before [Peter] Murrell’s sentencing, the party’s eight remaining Westminster MPs backed a presentation bill aimed at devolving independence referendum powers to Holyrood. These bills are highly unlikely to be passed. A futile gesture. Business as usual. Stealing from the SNP, Dani Garavelli, 'London Review of Books', 9 July 2026

The real political divide, I think, is not so much between left and right, or government and opposition, but between politicians and ordinary people. There are probably convincing psychoanalytical explanations for why those who pursue and attain power lose sight of whatever ideals they might have had, but more important is what we can do to close the gap between those with power and the people they are supposed to represent. Part of the reason for this gap is that we live in systems under which politicians can avoid being accountable for outcomes that are meaningful to ordinary people. Instead they make vague, unverifiable promises, and their debates centre around funding arrangements, institutional structures, and legalisms. 

My thinking is that we need to re-orientate policy discussions and express policy goals in terms of long-term meaningful outcomes such as reduced crime rates, improvements in literacy, health and the environment. Ideally, too, we'd devise a way of channeling the market's incentives and efficiencies into the achievement of these outcomes, and my suggestion is that we transition to a Social Policy Bond regime. This could be done gradually, Take health, for example. In the UK, central government provides funding for regional health authorities (for spending on doctors, hospitals and prescriptions) according mainly to
population level, age and need. Government also supplies funds directly to medical research organizations and academic institutions. A transition to a Social Policy Bond-based, rather than institution- or activity- based, funding programme would see the direct funding government gradually decline, while expenditure allocated by bondholders to the outcomes that all these institutions are collectively trying to achieve — longer life spans and a better quality of life, say — would gradually rise. Bondholders would face continuous incentives to make sure their funds are allocated only to those institutions with the most promising approaches to improving people's health. Those institutions could be already existing or new, public- or private-sector. There is more on how this sort of gradual transition can be achieved in Chapter 4 of my book, and more about applying the Social Policy Bond principle to health in the links on this page.