World Peace Bonds - a guide for philanthropists

 This article was commissioned by Billionaire. I am uncertain as to whether it's been published

Incentives for peace: World Peace Bonds

World Peace Bonds are a way in which the market’s incentives and efficiencies can be channelled to those people who are most successful at reducing conflict. Philanthropists could get the ball rolling by contributing to a fund that would be used to redeem non-interest-bearing bonds only when world peace had been achieved and sustained for, say, thirty years. The aim is to encourage diverse and adaptive approaches to reducing or eliminating wars and civil wars. The bonds would reward the achievement of the peace goal, regardless of who achieves it or how they do so. The redemption fund could be swelled by philanthropists’ undertaking to match donations from others, including NGOs and the public.

The bonds would be issued on the open market. They’d fetch a fraction of their redemption value, because the peace goal is necessarily remote. But the bonds would be tradeable; their value would rise and fall as the market sees achievement of peace as more or less likely. Investors in the bonds wouldn’t have to wait for the bonds to be redeemed before benefiting from holding them: they’d do what they could to achieve peace, see their bonds rise in value, and then sell their bonds to those best placed to take the next steps. The bonds would always be in the hands of those who think they can do best to advance the peace goal quickly and at least cost. They’d form a tacit coalition, of variable composition, with the sole aim of maximising the reduction of conflict per unit outlay.

A long-term perspective, sadly missing from many of today’s peace-building activities, is essential. A lasting peace is more likely to be a just peace; the ceasefires and truces of today do little more than allow bad actors to inflame resentment and re-arm. Investors, knowing that sustained peace will be rewarded, would research, experiment and refine their peace-building initiatives, would concentrate on the most promising of these, and – something that doesn’t always happen today – would terminate those that achieve little.

The long-term outlook would encourage a wider range of peace-building initiatives than those that even well-meaning politicians undertake today. Investors in World Peace Bonds could lobby or work with governments to, say, change and enforce laws that make wars at home or overseas a less likely prospect. They could finance sports matches between potential protagonists, promote anti-war programmes on TV, or set up exchange schemes for students and schoolchildren. They could try to cajole the financial supporters of conflict into redirecting their funds along more edifying lines. They could offer poor countries different forms of aid, including education and scientific aid, and measures aimed at enlightening populations. They could co-opt, bribe, coerce or otherwise undermine those who foment conflict. They could facilitate liaisons between people of all ages of different ethnic or religious groups. The crucial point is that bondholders have more freedom and incentive to explore and carry out such diverse initiatives than governments or other international bodies, and more incentive to focus only on those that most promising.

Of course, there are many hard-working employees of existing public- and private-sector organisations who are already trying to achieve peace. But they typically have little funding or are not paid by results. Investors in World Peace Bonds would reward the most efficient of these bodies, allowing them not just to raise the salaries of their existing employees, but also to attract more expertise and more resources.

Powerful people in governments, religious institutions or militant organisations might resent the targeting of such objectives by external agencies in this way. They might not be swayed by bondholders’ efforts to influence them – but many of their followers will be. As well, under a World Peace Bond regime they would have to openly declare their opposition to peace itself. It is precisely this focus on the outcome of peace -- rather than activities or institutions -- that would help mobilise and strengthen the coalition working to achieve it.

Humankind’s ingenuity is boundless but too much of it, reacting rationally to the incentives currently on offer, is channelled into such socially dubious activities as advertising dogfood or – God help us! – technical analysis. Actually, it’s worse than that: the incentives now are for those few who have acquired power – including psychopaths, kleptocrats and fanatics - to do whatever they can to retain and extend it, and if that means they must inflame conflict then they will do that. The result is the world we see today: a world wherein sixty major armed conflicts rage; killing, maiming, starving and making millions homeless. And all the while there looms the possibility of nuclear catastrophe.

In such a world, the wishes of the billions of people who don’t want to live in a world of conflict are too diffuse to prevail, and we cannot rely on politicians anywhere to change that. World Peace Bonds would bypass politicians and, by appealing to investors’ self-interest, could bring about the humankind’s most yearned for, but most elusive goal: the permanent elimination of armed conflict.

For more on applications of the concept, please see http://SocialGoals.com.

© Ronnie Horesh April 2026