tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-96951472024-03-18T03:03:07.420+00:00Social Policy Bonds blogRonnie HoreshUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger1389125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9695147.post-83991994686919128702024-03-11T17:30:00.005+00:002024-03-11T17:30:48.113+00:00Black Out nights, climate and war: the need for verifiable goals<p>Stephen Bush writes about 'Black Out' nights in the US and UK, which are intended to encourage more black people to attend theatre performances by inviting an 'all-Black-identifying audience'. Mr Bush's opinion about this form of segregation is similar to mine (negative), but he is also ...</p><blockquote><p>...struck by an equally important and more widespread problem: that no one involved either has any idea if the scheme works or any plan for measuring it. <span style="font-size: x-small;"><i><a href="https://www.ft.com/content/86ad5b83-b60c-4036-aa9a-39671241d7f2" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Even worthwhile causes need a metric for success</a> </i>(paywall), Stephen Bush, 'Financial Times', 11 March</span><br /></p></blockquote><p>He concludes:</p><blockquote><p>All of us who criticise Black Out nights because we don't like the principle at stake are also guilty of failing to ask the first question we should pose to anyone doing anything, no matter how worthwhile. And that is: how, exactly, will we be able to tell if you've succeeded or failed?</p></blockquote><p>It's a common failing, and one that is most grievous when it's made by policymakers. My <a href="https://socialgoals.blogspot.com/2024/02/the-question-nobody-asks-are-cows.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">previous post</a> refers to an <a href="https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/5533" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">article</a> written 22 years ago by Stephen van Evera, and I don't think things have improved since then. It's one of the reasons that I have posed <a href="http://socialgoals.com/climate-change.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Climate Stability Bonds</a> as an alternative to the current focus on reducing greenhouse gas emissions as the sole solution the climate change problem. We can target emissions fairly accurately, but we cannot reliably link any changes in emissions to changes in the things that matter to us. We need to specify exactly what are those concerns, and set up reliable measures of progress towards addressing them, before imposing heavy regulatory and financial costs on society. That's one reason, I believe, that despite heroic efforts (alongside those costs), nothing in the way of greenhouse gas emission has been achieved. <br /></p><div style="margin-left: 160px; text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmDKJgqm37AM3QESDEflRdDe9Rd6whoneIP5y9NhAdLeFWW7JEWFaChgtBuHCFW5PPit1qhUnu8RJmLRLZ9aLfxJxEC6uMttyHsnJmrp4ZnR0KUnJ24k-zoCCapvha3AoGHZepPjejftTBHAjWeIi17hX3ngH8L4rCbcnpFfl0ic4113bbHrp9lw/s768/atmospheric-co2-768x576.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="576" data-original-width="768" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmDKJgqm37AM3QESDEflRdDe9Rd6whoneIP5y9NhAdLeFWW7JEWFaChgtBuHCFW5PPit1qhUnu8RJmLRLZ9aLfxJxEC6uMttyHsnJmrp4ZnR0KUnJ24k-zoCCapvha3AoGHZepPjejftTBHAjWeIi17hX3ngH8L4rCbcnpFfl0ic4113bbHrp9lw/s320/atmospheric-co2-768x576.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">'Climate activism became a big public cause about halfway along this graph. Notice any effect?' From</span> <span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://www.ecosophia.net/riding-the-climate-toboggan/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"><i>Riding the Climate Toboggan</i></a>, John Michael Greer, 6 September 2023<br /></span></span></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><p>It seems that charities and activists are following the government's lead: declaring grandiose, lofty-sounding goals that just happen to be so vague as to resist effective monitoring. Speaking out against initiatives that may well be futile and certainly cannot be shown to be successful, such as Black Out nights or, indeed, agreements to cut greenhouse gas emissions is, in today's politically polarised scene, risky. Potentially even more disastrous for humanity than the climate change circus is the failure to set and reward verifiable goals for eliminating deadly conflicts: wars and civil wars and their consequences. There are well-meaning, hard-working people working for bodies ostensibly aimed at reducing conflict levels, but nobody is in a position to judge how effective are any of their myriad approaches. <br /></p><p>A <a href="http://socialgoals.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Social Policy Bond</a> regime would not allow policymakers to get away with specifying goals that can't be measured. So, for example, we need to identify what exactly we want climate change policy to achieve. Our goals in that area could be defined in terms of a range of physical, ecological, social and financial indicators, all of which would have to fall within an approved range for a sustained period before the policy would be deemed successful, and holders of Climate Stability Bonds rewarded. That period could be decades long. All of this would be a sharp contrast to today's approach, which has as its sole goal a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, which even if it were to be achieved, does not speak to the concerns of ordinary people, which is one reason why it has gained no real traction. Similarly, with conflict. Targeting broad, <i>verifiable</i>, meaningful, long-term outcomes, such as sustained period of a more benign climate or <a href="http://socialgoals.com/world-peace.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">world peace</a> would not only be more effective than any current efforts to solve global problems; it would enjoy more public support and hence more buy-in; essential if we are to successfully meet the huge challenges humanity faces, of which climate change and war are two of the most urgent. <br /></p><div class="blogger-post-footer">--
Policy as if outcomes mattered
SocialGoals.com</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9695147.post-21184153301514861622024-02-24T16:03:00.000+00:002024-02-24T16:03:19.225+00:00Pournelle's Law<p>The <i>Economist </i>quotes Sir Keir Starmer:</p><blockquote><p>Policy churn is the 'single most important reason' for the [UK's] economic malaise. <span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://www.economist.com/britain/2024/02/21/sir-keir-starmer-bureaucrat-first-politician-second" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Sir Keir Starmer: bureaucrat first, politician second</a>, the 'Economist', 24 February</span><br /></p></blockquote><p>There is some truth there, but what explains policy churn? <a href="https://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/iron.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy</a> tells us that: </p><p style="text-align: left;"></p><blockquote style="margin-left: 80px;">[I]n any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people:<br /></blockquote><blockquote style="margin-left: 120px; text-align: left;"><p>First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scientists and advisors in the former Soviet Union collective farming administration.</p></blockquote><blockquote style="margin-left: 120px; text-align: left;">Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of education, many teachers union officials, much of the NASA headquarters staff, etc.</blockquote><p></p><p></p><blockquote style="margin-left: 80px;"><div style="text-align: left;">The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization.</div></blockquote>I've written (<a href="self" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">here</a>, for example) about the swerving of organisations away from their ideals and ultimately becoming self-perpetuation. I think it applies to every type of organisation, public- and private-sector. In my understanding, policy churn follows from this: it's a result of politicians wishing to retain control over their bureaucracies. Whereas, under a <a href="http://socialgoals.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Social Policy Bond</a> regime, the incentives to achieve society's targeted goals would cascade downwards, under our current political systems the incentives of our publicly-funded bodies are to maintain their income in an environment that, thanks to policy churn, is constantly changing. The result is the short-term thinking and learned helplessness of our bureaucracies. A bond regime would encourage the creation of <a href="http://socialgoals.com/new-type-of-organisation.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">a new type of organisation</a>: one whose structure and every activity would be entirely subordinate to society's targeted goals. <br /><div class="blogger-post-footer">--
Policy as if outcomes mattered
SocialGoals.com</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9695147.post-54908568595717662922024-02-16T11:14:00.000+00:002024-02-16T11:14:16.153+00:00In no-strings philanthropy I trustThe <i>Economist </i>writes:<p></p><blockquote><p></p><blockquote><p>[T]he great expansion of higher education has coincided with a
productivity slowdown. Whereas in the 1950s and 1960s workers’ output
per hour across the rich world rose by 4% a year, in the decade before
the covid-19 pandemic 1% a year was the norm. Even with the wave of
innovation in artificial intelligence, productivity
growth remains weak—less than 1% a year, on a rough estimate—which is
bad news for economic growth. A new <a href="https://www.nber.org/papers/w31899" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">paper</a> by Ashish Arora, Sharon
Belenzon, Larisa C. Cioaca, Lia Sheer and Hansen Zhang, five economists,
suggests that universities’ blistering growth and the rich world’s
stagnant productivity could be two sides of the same coin. ...<br /></p><p>Businesses had more responsibility for achieving scientific breakthroughs: in America during the 1950s they spent four times as much on research as universities. ...[W]hen it came to delivering productivity gains the old, big-business model of science worked better than the new, university-led one. ... Free from the demands of corporate overlords, [university] research focuses more on satisfying geeks' curiosity or boosting citation counts than it does on finding breakthrough that will change the world or make money. <span style="font-size: x-small;"><i><a href="https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2024/02/05/universities-are-failing-to-boost-economic-growth" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Universities are failing to boost economic growth</a></i>, the 'Economist', 5 February</span><br /></p></blockquote></blockquote><p>To me, this speaks to the value of incentives. Research of the type done by universities is similar to the way that our social and environmental goals are pursued: they are done by large organisations whose employees are not rewarded in ways that correlate with their success. Those who work for government or government-dependent bodies are, consciously or not, disinclined to rock the boat. The funding of these bodies is hardly, if at all, linked to their success in coming up with problem-solving initiatives. Sadly, most of our important social and environmental goals fall under the remit of such government-dependent bodies. These include the elimination of poverty and crime, the reduction of environmental depredations and, on a global level, the solution to such trans-national problems such as over-fishing and war. Research is just one of the activities that government has brought into its purview, with the disappointing results that Arora <i>et al</i> relate. </p><p>How is it that government constantly expands its remit? There is the sense that some things are too important to be left to the private sector, and that only government can be impartial as to the allocation of funding. This sense pervades such critical debates as to whether the UK's National Health Service should be partly or completely privatised. That debate rarely considers health outcomes or, indeed, any outcomes at all: instead, ideology and vested interests set the debate's terms. Some concerns are genuine: markets have been abused and undermined such that they, in many cases, are rightly discredited in the eyes of the public. </p><p><a href="http://socialgoals.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Social Policy Bonds</a> could combine the best elements of both the public and private sectors. Under a bond regime, government could articulate society's wishes and raise the revenue for their fulfilment; these are things that democratic governments can do well. But where they perform badly is in actually achieving society's goals, largely because of the incentive structures they put in place: the structures that reward activity regardless of outcome. The effect of a Social Policy Bond regime, however, would be to contract out society's goals to those best placed to the achieve them. In economic theory and on all the evidence, that is what competitive markets do best. An obstacle in the way of implementing the Social Policy Bond concept is the unwillingness of government and its funded bodies to relinquish their control over activities ostensibly directed at the public good. Rather than wait for government to do that, perhaps the best hope for a <a href="https://www.economist.com/leaders/2024/01/10/no-strings-giving-is-transforming-philanthropy" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">no-strings philanthropist</a> to get the ball rolling....</p><div class="blogger-post-footer">--
Policy as if outcomes mattered
SocialGoals.com</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9695147.post-32284727302120583772024-02-03T15:15:00.004+00:002024-02-03T15:15:49.255+00:00The question nobody asks: are the cows actually better off?<blockquote><p>The effort highlights a glaring cow-related contradiction in the BJP's [Bharatiya Janata Party's] Hindu nationalist ideology. The party says it wants to protect cows, which are associated with divine beneficence and venerated by Hindus. Yet its pro-cow policies, including bans on cow slaughter, appear to be detrimental to cattle welfare. They are thought to be causing an increase in stray cows, typically male calves and aged milkers which, having little commercial value, are let loose by their owners. Abandoned, they feed on plastic bags and other rubbish, cause car crashes and raid farmers’ crops. <span style="font-size: x-small;"><i><a href="https://www.economist.com/asia/2024/01/28/the-hindu-rights-pro-cow-policies-are-terrible-for-indias-cows" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">The Hindu right’s pro-cow policies are terrible for India’s cows</a>, </i>the 'Economist', 3 February</span><br /></p></blockquote><p>It shouldn't surprise us. The stated aim of a policy in today's policymaking environment need have no relationship to its result. The two may, as here, even be conflict. Collectively, we rarely hold the people who make a policy responsible for its outcome. In the private sector it's different: there are the disciplines of the market and competition, and reliable, visible, constantly readable indicators of the success or failure of an enterprise. But in the public sector: </p><blockquote><p style="text-align: left;"> [G]overnment bureaucracies non-self-evaluate. At a minimum, agencies
with evaluative responsibilities are not invited to evaluate - they are
kept out of the loop, their opinions unsought. At a maximum, government
agencies actively suppress their own internal evaluative units and are
discouraged from evaluating the beliefs and policies of other agencies. <span style="font-size: x-small;"><i><a href="https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/5533" target="_blank">Why States Believe Foolish Ideas: Non-Self-Evaluation By States And Societies</a></i> (pdf), Stephen Van Evera, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Political Science Department and Security Studies Program, 2002</span></p></blockquote><p>So politicians can get away with selling their policies according to what they say they will achieve. In the absence of data we choose politicians who have lofty-sounding goals, or who look good on camera. We vote for people, or personalities, or out of tribal loyalty to political parties. </p><p>A Social Policy Bond regime would be different. We'd vote for social and environmental outcomes, rather than the people or policies who say they'll achieve them. Politicians would retain their roles of articulators of society's wishes and revenue raisers, but their role of allocating finance and determining the structure of bodies charged with achieving society's goals would be diminished. Those decisions would be taken by bondholders, who would make them according to the sole criterion of efficiency in achieving the targeted goal at minimum cost. Bondholders would face the discipline of the market: if they are inefficient, their bonds would be bought up by more efficient operators. A transition to such a regime should be made gradually, partly for pragmatic reasons, but partly also to give existing bodies a chance to evaluate and improve their performance. (I discuss such a transition in my <a href="http://socialgoals.com/the-book.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">book</a>.) There would be a gradual focus away from politicians and their antics, and more on the elements that make up society's well-being. So rather than be swayed by such rhetoric as how a particular policy would be good for cows in India, say, we'd look instead at whether things are actually improving for cows. Such a way judging is perfectly acceptable in the private sector; extending it to goals currently the remit of the public sector, could greatly benefit society. <br /></p><div class="blogger-post-footer">--
Policy as if outcomes mattered
SocialGoals.com</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9695147.post-77002157436267743842024-01-22T17:34:00.001+00:002024-01-22T17:34:30.516+00:00Nothing to report<p>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. </p><p>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. </p><p>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 <a href="http://SocialGoals.com">SocialGoals.com</a> site are not taken up immediately, they will be around for others to develop, refine and implement when I cease publishing.<br /></p><p><br /></p><div class="blogger-post-footer">--
Policy as if outcomes mattered
SocialGoals.com</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9695147.post-28263705125018093472024-01-06T21:38:00.001+00:002024-01-06T21:38:23.345+00:00Tantrums, bribes and world peace<p>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. </p><p>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 <a href="http://socialgoals.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Social Policy Bond</a> 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. <br /></p><p>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. <br /></p><p><a href="http://socialgoals.com/world-peace.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">World Peace Bonds</a> 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. <br /></p><p>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. <br /></p><div class="blogger-post-footer">--
Policy as if outcomes mattered
SocialGoals.com</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9695147.post-79613143495669624192023-12-18T19:53:00.000+00:002023-12-18T19:53:11.728+00:00Nobody wants nuclear war. So why is it increasingly likely?<p>Some recent reporting:lurk <br /></p><blockquote><blockquote><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">South Korea is again considering developing and manufacturing its own nuclear weapons. The cause is the growing instability of North Korea and South Korean fears that the United States won’t fulfill its pledge to attack North Korea with nuclear weapons if the North attacks South Korea with nukes. <a href="http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htchem/articles/20231217.aspx" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"><i>source</i></a></span></p></blockquote></blockquote><p></p><blockquote><blockquote><span 12="" 2022="" 2023="" 512="" 9576="" a="" about="" an="" estimated="" for="" global="" href="https://www.sipri.org/media/press-release/2023/states-invest-nuclear-arsenals-geopolitical-relations-deteriorate-new-sipri-yearbook-out-now" in="" inventory="" january="" military="" more="" of="" potential="" rel="nofollow" stockpiles="" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;" target="_blank" than="" the="" total="" use="" warheads="" were="">Of the total global inventory of an estimated 12 512 warheads in January 2023, about 9576 were in military stockpiles for potential use—86 more than in January 2022. <i><a href="https://www.sipri.org/media/press-release/2023/states-invest-nuclear-arsenals-geopolitical-relations-deteriorate-new-sipri-yearbook-out-now" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">source</a></i></span></blockquote></blockquote><p></p><p></p><blockquote><blockquote><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">China, India, North Korea, Pakistan and the United Kingdom, as well as
possibly Russia, are all thought to be increasing their stockpiles. <i><a href="https://fas.org/initiative/status-world-nuclear-forces/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">source</a></i></span></blockquote></blockquote><p>There are two things that we can be almost certain about:</p><ol style="text-align: left;"><li>Very few people want to see a nuclear conflict, and</li><li> the chances of a nuclear conflict are rising.</li></ol><p>Why the disconnect between what most people want, and what we are very likely to get? In the nuclear policy arena, there is the self-entrenching idea of deterrence. 'If they were ever used they'd be failing in their purpose,' went the caption to a picture of UK nuclear-armed submarines lurking deep in the sea, in an advertisement for naval recruitment. Other countries have them, so we need them too. The logic is persuasive; the cost of not following it incalculably great - possibly. The problem is that very few of us have sufficient incentive to question this logic and to think of alternatives. There are organisations of all sorts, staffed by well-intentioned, hard-working people who do what they can, with their scanty resources, to minimise conflict. But they are institutionally bound to think and act along conventional lines. </p><p>What I propose is that we offer incentives for people to think of alternative approaches, all of which would have as their aim to reduce the likelihood of nuclear conflict as efficiently as possible. I have no idea how to halt the drift towards nuclear conflict, but I can suggest that we put in place a system that encourages and rewards people for researching, refining and implementing the most promising of such alternative approaches. </p><p>Nuclear Peace Bonds would be an ideal application of the <a href="http://socialgoals.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Social Policy Bond</a> concept, which is a way of rewarding verifiable outcomes that we are currently failing to achieve. In this instance, the targeted outcome could be nuclear peace sustained for thirty years. 'Nuclear peace' could be defined as something like 'the number of people killed within 24 hours by the detonation of a nuclear device is less than 500'. The bonds would reward those who achieve such a sustained period of nuclear peace, whoever they are and however they do so: only the outcome would be stipulated. For a short piece on how Nuclear Peace Bonds would work, please click <a href="http://socialgoals.com/nuclear-peace.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">here</a>. For essays about applying the bonds to conflict in general, click <a href="http://socialgoals.com/conflict-reduction.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">here</a>. <br /></p><p>As well as pursuing activities the exact nature of which we cannot anticipate, investors in Nuclear Peace Bonds could do things that cannot be done by existing organisations, constrained as they are by precedent, and their perceived need to maintain their existence and so satisfy the bodies that fund them. So, for example, in today's world, nobody would have any incentive to bribe people close to decision makers in politics or the military to advocate nuclear disarmament. Likewise, an existing body is unlikely to try to get religious extremists to tone down their rhetoric, even if it believed that were the most efficient way of reducing the probability of nuclear conflict. The risk and consequences of exposure and backlash are too great for current institutions to bear. Holders of Nuclear Peace Bonds, however, would not be deterred from whatever actions they think most effective: funds to redeem their bonds could be held in escrow. Once nuclear peace had been achieved and sustained, their reward would be guaranteed. <br /></p><div class="blogger-post-footer">--
Policy as if outcomes mattered
SocialGoals.com</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9695147.post-76063794908074957542023-12-17T11:19:00.006+00:002023-12-17T11:19:34.926+00:00Make saving the planet profitable<p></p><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><span style="font-family: arial;">"Making oil is more profitable than saving the planet ..."</span></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><p></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;">...says the <a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/12/11/1217802769/oil-prices-exxon-mobil-green-energy-solar-wind-cop28-climate-talks" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">headline</a></span><span style="font-family: arial;">, </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">accurately. There are many other activities that are more profitable than saving the planet: fomenting conflict, manufacturing, office work, mining...etc. We try to curb some of their most obvious environmentally destructive by-products with taxes and regulation, but we also support activities that destroy the environment - to the tune of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/feb/17/world-spends-18tn-a-year-on-subsidies-that-harm-environment-study-finds-aoe" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">$1.8 trillion</a>, annually. <br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;">I don't know whether making oil will destroy the planet: there are many negative externalities that accompany oil production and consumption, but there are also many positive externalities. Thus, Alex Epstein writes: <br /></span></p><p></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: inherit;">There are many other positive externalities of fossil fuels that are almost never discussed—including ... clear benefits [arising from] warmer temperatures in many places where cold-related deaths far, far exceed heat-related deaths. To not consider these is pure benefit denial, regardless of whether you use a word like “externalities.” <span style="font-size: x-small;"><i><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Fossil-Future-Florishing-Requires-Natural/dp/0593420411/ref=sr_1_1?crid=397WIQYYUXL04&keywords=fossil+future+alex+epstein&qid=1702760912&sprefix=fossil+future+ep%2Caps%2C206&sr=8-1" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Fossil Future</a></i>, Alex Epstein, 2022</span><br /></span></blockquote><p>Whether the benefits of oil production and consumption outweigh all its costs to society, to the environment and to the long-term future of the planet can never be calculated in a meaningful way. With such urgent, hugely important and complex issues, I suggest that we set in place a range of acceptable outcomes and reward people for achieving them. These outcomes could be expressed, to take those relevant to oil, in terms of atmospheric composition and human, animal and plant well-being. That means that we should target reductions in polluting gases (not only greenhouse gases) while maintaining acceptable levels of human welfare and indicators of environmental well-being. <br /></p><p>Doing that would recognise that there are trade-offs; that rapidly reducing oil production and consumption could drastically reduce the quality of life for millions of people. That is one reason why there's been no discernible progress in actually cutting greenhouse gas emissions:</p><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmDKJgqm37AM3QESDEflRdDe9Rd6whoneIP5y9NhAdLeFWW7JEWFaChgtBuHCFW5PPit1qhUnu8RJmLRLZ9aLfxJxEC6uMttyHsnJmrp4ZnR0KUnJ24k-zoCCapvha3AoGHZepPjejftTBHAjWeIi17hX3ngH8L4rCbcnpFfl0ic4113bbHrp9lw/s768/atmospheric-co2-768x576.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="576" data-original-width="768" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmDKJgqm37AM3QESDEflRdDe9Rd6whoneIP5y9NhAdLeFWW7JEWFaChgtBuHCFW5PPit1qhUnu8RJmLRLZ9aLfxJxEC6uMttyHsnJmrp4ZnR0KUnJ24k-zoCCapvha3AoGHZepPjejftTBHAjWeIi17hX3ngH8L4rCbcnpFfl0ic4113bbHrp9lw/s320/atmospheric-co2-768x576.jpg" width="320" /></a></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><p></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"></span></p><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">'Climate activism became a big public cause about halfway along this graph. Notice any effect?' From</span> <span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://www.ecosophia.net/riding-the-climate-toboggan/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"><i>Riding the Climate Toboggan</i></a>, John Michael Greer, 6 September</span></span></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><p></p><p>Targeting atmospheric composition and, simultaneously, indicators of planetary well-being would, I think, be less unpopular and more attainable than the current efforts supposedly aimed at reducing climate change. My suggestion is that we achieve our aims by issuing bonds that would be redeemed only when all our targets have been achieved and sustained for some decades. This we could do by applying the Social Policy Bond concept to our targets. We do need, though, some <a href="https://socialgoals.blogspot.com/2015/10/climate-change-fundamental-question.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">clarity</a> about what we are trying to achieve: do we want to target the Earth's climate, or the impacts of adverse climatic events or - to take the current focus - the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere? At this late stage it's probably best to aim for more immediately verifiable goals, so I suggest that it might be preferable to target atmospheric composition rather than the <a href="http://socialgoals.com/climate-change.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">stability of the climate</a>, which has been the focus of my previous work. If such an application of the Social Policy Bond concept were ever implemented then we'd go some way to making saving the planet more profitable than activities that have, as a by-product, accelerating its destruction.<br /></p><p>To be frank, I don't think anything like this will happen. Our political systems are incapable of solving global problems, even if our leaders had the will to do so. The Social Policy Bond concept has, to my knowledge, never been tried, and there are few incentives and commensurately few resources that are channelled into saving the planet. It's sad.<br /></p><p></p><div class="blogger-post-footer">--
Policy as if outcomes mattered
SocialGoals.com</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9695147.post-24400982396249653632023-11-29T17:38:00.000+00:002023-11-29T17:38:03.072+00:00Health and efficiency <p></p><p>(No, not <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%26E_naturist" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">H&E</a>!) <br /></p><p>Dr Malcolm Kendrick, in the third part of his inquiry into the UK's National Health Service (NHS) <i><a href="https://drmalcolmkendrick.org/2023/11/27/what-is-wrong-with-the-nhs-part-3/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">What is wrong with the NHS?</a></i>, summarises the problem: </p><blockquote><p>[I]n the last four to five years, productivity has fallen by around twenty per cent. ...[W]hat we have is twenty per cent
more staff, working just as hard, probably harder. Yet, they are
creating no additional clinical outcomes. Where does this leave us? ...There is only one possible conclusion. Which is the following.
At least twenty per-cent of the work that clinical staff are doing is
non-productive.</p></blockquote><p>A large part of the problem appears to be the lamentable proliferation of regulatory oversight and overseers in the NHS. He quotes from a <a href="We found that hospitals that had more managers or spent more on management were not rated as having higher quality management in the staff survey, nor did they have better performance. The implication being the overall hospital performance is dictated by clinical actions and behaviour, while hospital management is focused on administrative tasks ensuring regulatory constraints are met. The number of managers in each hospital was largely determined by the administrative tasks that needed to be fulfilled, with the scope of management circumscribed to these well-defined tasks.’ 2" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">report</a> (pdf) by the Institute of Government:</p><blockquote><p>We found that hospitals that had more managers or spent more on management <strong>were not rated as having higher quality management</strong> in the staff survey,<strong> nor did they have better performance</strong>.
The implication being the overall hospital performance is dictated by
clinical actions and behaviour, while hospital management is focused on
administrative tasks ensuring regulatory constraints are met. <strong>The number of managers in each hospital was largely determined by the administrative tasks that needed to be fulfilled</strong>, with the scope of management circumscribed to these well-defined tasks. <span style="font-size: x-small;">(Dr Kendrick's emphasis)</span> <br /></p></blockquote><p>Dr Kendrick illustrates this point by showing a picture of Dr Gordon Caldwell lying beside the paperwork necessary to admit one patient to the Accident & Emergency department of an NHS hospital. <br /></p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixRrSL9MpJjJWlpYIB7qZ5_0yzp0sTVbIRaGF-usFWw5-NIZTYz49I8Kbb0ueqpHMOT12HjlQ9ebZotXxXooE0p7IDyjUf7Du7xPAlnj6-6HalTOBl-ebXb9HEE2BjQcbp3MXfLZx_F7YTzbBKy4LO8yCwrhMlceHIvGYo8s8sF9fw0h4W3TB11w/s1132/drgcw.webp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1132" data-original-width="850" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixRrSL9MpJjJWlpYIB7qZ5_0yzp0sTVbIRaGF-usFWw5-NIZTYz49I8Kbb0ueqpHMOT12HjlQ9ebZotXxXooE0p7IDyjUf7Du7xPAlnj6-6HalTOBl-ebXb9HEE2BjQcbp3MXfLZx_F7YTzbBKy4LO8yCwrhMlceHIvGYo8s8sF9fw0h4W3TB11w/s320/drgcw.webp" width="240" /></a></div><br /><p></p><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote>'These are the forms that now have to be completed to admit <em>one</em> patient in Accident and Emergency.'</blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><p></p><p></p><blockquote></blockquote><p><i><a href="https://drmalcolmkendrick.org/2023/11/27/what-is-wrong-with-the-nhs-part-3/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a> </i></p><p>It's not uncommon, in my view, for large institutions, be they public or private, to lose sight of their original goals. After enough time these organisations' existence is taken as a given, and they cease to be judged solely on how good they are at achieving their stated objectives. In the case of NHS hospitals, the original goals would have been expressed in terms of clinical outcomes but, because of regulatory pressures from outside, those outcomes have ceased to be the over-arching measure of success. </p><p>This is where a Social Policy Bond regime could help. It would set down our long-term social and enviornmental goals and inject market incentives into their achievement. At every stage of progress toward achievement of our goals, investors in the bonds would have efficiency as their over-riding criterion. The bonds would always be owned by those who can maximise the speed and cost-effectiveness of the targeted goals. </p><p>A bond regime targeting the health of a country's population would express its goals in terms that are stable, and long term. A health bond would target a range of indicators that could include such goals as improvements in longevity, reductions in infant mortality, and improvements in Quality Adjusted Life Years. (It should exclude such indicators as five-year cancer survival rates, which can <a href="https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/screening/research/what-screening-statistics-mean" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">mislead</a>.) Broad measures such as those a bond regime target would be readily comprehensible to the public, and so would attract more <a href="http://socialgoals.com/buy-in.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">buy-in</a>. Links to my work on applying the <a href="http://socialgoals.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Social Policy Bond</a> concept to health can be found <a href="http://socialgoals.com/health.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">here</a>. <br /></p><div class="blogger-post-footer">--
Policy as if outcomes mattered
SocialGoals.com</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9695147.post-19270339398077405812023-11-24T17:44:00.002+00:002023-11-24T17:44:42.986+00:00Investing in world peace<div> As a species, we know the solutions to a very limited number of social and environmental problems. If the motivation and resources are there, we can be quite effective at solving visible and localised problems, such as a polluted lake, or high levels of crime or unemployment in a small area. But with any degree of complexity and complexity we're out of luck. We simply don't know the best ways of reducing crime, eliminating poverty, dealing with climate change or ending large-scale conflict. These are problems that are:<br /></div><div></div><ul><li>long term,<br /></li><li>broad,<br /></li><li>likely to need a mix of diverse, adaptive approaches to their achievement, and<br /></li><li>resistant to any current or envisaged efforts by policymakers to their achievement. <br /></li></ul><p>Such problems are exactly those that Social Policy Bonds are poised to solve. Take a goal such as sustained world peace, which many of us see as impossibly idealistic. Our efforts, for the most part made by hard-working and well-meaning people, are distinctly unsuccessful. It's a problem suited to the Social Policy Bond idea. The bonds would, by rewarding the sustained achievement of world peace, motivate existing bodies to do more. This is where criticism of the bonds usually begins and ends, as if I am suggesting that employees of such organisations as the United Nations are motivated purely by money, and need more of it to do their jobs effectively. There's a hint of disdain for such mercenary motives here, familiar to those of us brought up in a society pervaded by class conflict and snobbery. To which I have two answers:</p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>The bonds would not just see that existing organisations pay their people more; they would also give these bodies more resources to work with, provided that investors in the bonds regard them as efficient; and</li><li>The bonds would represent a commitment to a stable, long-term goal. With incentives to achieve that goal, not only would efficient, existing bodies benefit, but new organisations could be created whose every action would be devoted to achieving peace quickly and efficiently. </li></ul><p>So a sufficiently funded <a href="http://socialgoals.com/world-peace.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">World Peace Bond</a> regime would generate more resources for all bodies, existing or new, so long as they are efficient. The effect would be to encourage research into diverse approaches; to finance trials of the most promising ones (and, importantly, to terminate those that are failing), and to enable the refinement and implementation of only those approaches that are most effective. </p><div class="blogger-post-footer">--
Policy as if outcomes mattered
SocialGoals.com</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9695147.post-16932860365364584162023-11-11T16:31:00.005+00:002023-11-11T16:32:17.202+00:00Peace: the long view<p>Financial incentives aren't going to prevent terror groups from killing civilians of a different persuasion. They're too far gone for that. But that fact doesn't undermine the workings of <a href="http://socialgoals.com/middle-east-peace.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Middle East Peace Bonds</a> or <a href="http://socialgoals.com/world-peace.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">World Peace Bonds</a>. <br /></p><p>It's true that we are unlikely to be able to deflect a terrorist who's been brought up from birth to hate members of a different religion, sect or ideology, from murderous intent with some cash payment. It is, however, possible, though still unlikely, to prevent him or her acting on that intent. But it's far more likely that if bonds had been issued targeting sustained peace in the Middle East (say), that such a person would not exist. A long-term peace strategy, of the sort currently pursued by well-intentioned but under-resourced groups could not only try to staunch the conditioning of schoolchildren and set up alternatives to the hate-filled media that is often a <a href="https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/hate-speech-social-media-global-comparisons" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">precursor</a> to war, but <i>would have the incentives and resources to do so effectively</i>.<br /></p><p>Most likely, such an approach would need to be taken in parallel with others, including strong defences, controls on weaponry, more inter-faith dialogue and other trust-building exercises. The reasons for applying the Social Policy Bond concept which, at its heart, is about using financial incentives are that:</p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Once bonds have been issued there would be no uncertainty about policy changes, so investors in the bonds would be sure that, if successful, they would be rewarded; </li><li>Given the long-term vision, a wide range of possible approaches could be researched and tried and, if promising, implemented and refined. The bonds would reward only the most successful approaches and, in contrast to current policy, ensure that failing approaches are terminated. </li></ul><p>So, yes, people are right to be sceptical that fanatical ideologues can be dissuaded from killing people by a some pecuniary reward. But once a system of incentives is in place, all types of people could work towards countering hateful ideologies, promoting the benefits of tolerance, and creating the conditions for peace. The relevant question here is less 'could it work?', that 'is it more likely to work than the current array of (in my view) failing approaches?'<br /></p><div class="blogger-post-footer">--
Policy as if outcomes mattered
SocialGoals.com</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9695147.post-27290586571760035722023-11-03T11:03:00.003+00:002023-11-03T15:51:08.428+00:00Peace in the Middle East <p>Decades of negotiations and initiatives have failed. We might well be on
the brink of a nuclear calamity, and the entire region is a seething
cauldron of every sort of hatred: ethnic, confessional, sectarian and
gender. I have no solution to the anxieties and potential catastrophes facing Israel, nor to the wider problems facing the citizens of all the Middle Eastern countries. What I offer instead is a way of encouraging people to find effective and efficient solutions. At this time, my vision of peace must sound like an impossible dream, but we can look at, for instance, the current relationship between Scotland and England; the long-running <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_battles_between_England_and_Scotland" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">vicious battles</a> between the two countries have ended and the border is one of the more peaceful in the world. There are other examples. <br /><br />Most ordinary people in the region, given time to reflect and the freedom to express their opinions would like nothing more than to see an end to the violence in the region. But there are enough powerful people inside and outside the region with a vested interest in keeping conflict going. They include men of religion, ideologues, politicians and bureaucrats. There are also, of course, the weapons merchants and their corrupt beneficiaries in government. Well-meaning idealists on all sides do what they can, but their efforts are overwhelmed and relentlessly undermined by the powerful people and institutions that want them to fail.</p><p><b><span style="font-family: arial;">Peace above all</span></b></p><p>We also need to focus exclusively on our goal of peace, which will mean
putting aside feelings of fairness and justice, except insofar as they
help our cause.</p><p>And we need ways of promoting peace that can modify or circumvent
people's uncooperative or obstructive behaviour; ways that can co-opt or
subsidise those people in positions of authority and power who want to
help, and at the same time bypass, distract, or otherwise undermine
those opposed to our goal.<br /><br />Ideally too, we would deploy market
forces. Markets are the most efficient means yet discovered of
allocating society's scarce resources, but many believe that market
forces inevitably conflict with social goals: accentuating extremes of
wealth and poverty, for example, or accelerating the degradation of the
environment. So it is important to remind ourselves that market forces
can serve public, as well as private, goals.</p><p>We need to give people and organisations of all kinds the incentives to create and sustain peace, rather than conflict. We also need a verifiable definition of peace, which will consist of a combination of conditions that have to be satisfied and sustained. These could include:</p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>a much-reduced number of people killed in conflict</li><li>a much-reduced level of terrorist events, or military incursions</li><li>minimal forcible expulsions of people </li><li>no use of nuclear weapons</li></ul><p>As well, given the strong causal <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2704015/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">relationship</a> between mass media incitements to violence and actual violence we could add to our definition of peace:</p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li style="text-align: left;">a drastic reduction in mass media incitements to violence; and</li><li style="text-align: left;">school texts to be approved by all sides of the conflict. </li></ul><p>I would aim to issue Middle East Peace Bonds, which would reward investors only when all the conditions for peace have been satisfied and sustained for two or three decades. <br /></p><p></p><h4 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Middle East Peace Bonds</span></h4><p>My suggestion is that philanthropists ideally with governments and other interested organisations and individuals, collectively raise a large amount of money, put it into an escrow account, and use these funds to redeem at some future time a new financial instrument: Middle East Peace Bonds. These would be sold by auction for whatever they would fetch. They would be redeemed for, say, £100 000 each only when all the conditions for peace, as defined by the issuers, had been satisfied and sustained.<br /><br />Importantly, the issuers of the bonds would make no assumptions as to how to bring about greater peace. No one solution, nor even an array of solutions will work all the time. We need diverse approaches that are adaptive, and therefore unlike anything our current institutions can envisage. The bonds instead will stimulate diverse, adaptive solutions.<br /><br />Nor do we need to know who would hold the bonds or carry out peace-creating projects. Those decisions would be made by would-be investors in the market for the bonds. Unlike normal bonds, Middle East Peace Bonds would not bear interest and their redemption date would be uncertain. Bondholders would gain most by ensuring that peace is achieved quickly. As the prospects for peace brighten, the value of the bonds will rise.</p><p><b><span style="font-family: arial;">Trading the bonds</span></b><br />Middle East Peace Bonds, once floated, must be readily tradable at any time until redemption. Many bond purchasers would want or need to sell their bonds before redemption, which might be a long time in the future. With tradability, these holders would be able to realise any capital appreciation experienced by their holdings of Middle East Peace Bonds whenever they choose to do so.<br /><br />The bonds will be worth more to those who believe they can do most to help reduce the violence, who will then own most of the bonds. Large bondholders might decide to subcontract out peace-building projects to many different agents, while they themselves held the bonds from issue to redemption. The important point is that the bond mechanism will ensure that the people who allocate funds have incentives to do so efficiently and to reward successful outcomes, rather than merely pay people for undertaking activities.<br /><br />Too large a number of small bondholders could probably do little to help achieve peace by themselves. If there were many small holders, it is likely that the value of their bonds would fall until there were aggregation of holdings by people or institutions large enough to initiate effective peace-building projects. As with shares in newly privatised companies the world over, Middle East Peace Bonds would mainly end up in the hands of large holders, be they individuals or institutions. Between them, these large holders would probably account for the majority of the bonds. Even these bodies might not be big enough, on their own, to achieve much without the co-operation of other bondholders. They might also resist initiating projects until they were assured that other holders would not be free riders. So there would be a powerful incentive for all bondholders to co-operate with each other to help bring about peace in the Middle East. They would share information, trade bonds with each other and collaborate on conflict-quelling projects. They would also set up payment systems to ensure that people, bondholders or not, were mobilised to help build peace. Large bondholders, in co-operation with each other, would be able to set up such systems cost-effectively.<br /><br />Regardless of who actually owns the bonds, aggregation of holdings, and the co-operation of large bondholders, would ensure that those who invest in the bonds are rewarded in ways that maximise their effectiveness in bringing about peace.<br /><br />So, in contrast to today’s short-term, tried, tested and failed approaches, a Middle East Peace Bond regime would stimulate research into finding the most cost-effective ways of achieving peace. Indeed, bondholders would be in a better position than governments to undertake a range of peace-building initiatives, having more freedom to try innovative approaches. They might, for example, finance sports matches between opposing sides, promote anti-war programmes on TV, set up exchange schemes for students of the opposing sides. They might try to influence the financial supporters of conflict outside the region to redirect their funding into more positive ways. They could offer the Palestinians and the citizens of neighbouring Arab countries different forms of aid, including education and scientific aid, and measures aimed at providing a secular education for all Arab citizens.<br /><br />By appealing to people's self-interest, Middle East Peace Bonds would be more effective than conventional efforts aimed at reducing violence. In channelling market forces into the achievement of this objective the bonds could bypass or even co-opt the corrupt or malicious people in government and elsewhere who currently benefit from conflict.<br /><br />Middle East Peace Bonds would focus on an identifiable peace outcomes and channel market efficiencies into diverse, adaptive ways of achieving it. They might sound implausible and radical but - let’s be frank - the way things are currently going, with no end of well-meaning inter-faith dialogue and not-always-well-meaning interventions by UN bodies, governments outside the region and NGOs, isleading all of us into the abyss.</p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">For another version of this essay, see <a href="http://socialgoals.com/middle-east-peace.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">here</a>. For applying the <a href="http://socialgoals.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Social Policy Bond</a> principle to conflict reduction more generally, see here. </span><br /></p><div class="blogger-post-footer">--
Policy as if outcomes mattered
SocialGoals.com</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9695147.post-90881687156821310872023-10-20T18:40:00.001+01:002023-10-20T18:40:05.663+01:00Bureaucracy triumphs over health outcomes <p>Dr Malcolm Kendrick <a href="https://drmalcolmkendrick.org/2023/10/20/what-is-wrong-with-the-nhs-part-two/?unapproved=271343&moderation-hash=a35af0590fa48311511b80f7c9f5eeb2#comment-271343" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">describes</a> the Quality and Outcomes Framework (QOF) of the UK's National Health Service. It's the usual array of poorly-thought out, meaningless micro-targets that doctors are paid to achieve, but that have nothing to do with health. As Dr Kendrick points out, such (perhaps) well-intentioned, but futile bureaucratic processes impose a formidable opportunity cost on the NHS, to the detriment of doctors and patients. My suggested solution is to apply the <a href="http://socialgoals.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Social Policy Bond</a> principle to health; a short description of this application of the bonds is given <a href="http://socialgoals.com/health.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">here</a>; a much longer version <a href="http://www.socialgoals.com/tradeable-health-outcome-bonds.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">here</a>.</p><p>We see the same proliferation of Mickey Mouse micro-targets in other policy realms, notably education, and in diversity guidelines or regulations. They spring from the same presumably benign impulse, but they suffer from a similar lack of vision and strategy. They assume that processes that might have served society well in the past will continue to do so into the indefinite future. They do not allow for diverse, adaptive approaches. Yet it takes courage to criticise them, as Dr Kendrick is doing. My experience is that many people grumble about such top-down initiatives but are understandably reluctant to say anything openly. Though Social Policy Bonds aim to inject the market's incentives and efficiences into the solution of our social problems, perhaps their more important contribution - if they ever take off - will be to focus policymakers' attention on outcomes that are meaningful to the people they are supposed to represent. <br /></p><div class="blogger-post-footer">--
Policy as if outcomes mattered
SocialGoals.com</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9695147.post-3268407511450274102023-10-13T22:39:00.001+01:002023-10-13T22:39:33.685+01:00Greenhouse gas emissions: we're not actually doing anything to reduce them<p>Here, as <a href="https://www.economist.com/international/2023/10/11/the-global-backlash-against-climate-policies-has-begun" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">reported</a> in the current <i>Economist</i>, are some grounds for optimism about curbing global emissions:</p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>'China understands the need to decarbonise and is investing massively in solar and wind.'</li><li>'The second-biggest emitter, America, has taken a green turn under Mr Biden.'</li><li>'Brazil has sacked a rainforest-slashing president;'</li><li>'Australia has ditched a coal-coddling prime minister.'</li><li>'Nearly a quarter of emissions are now subject to carbon pricing.' <br /></li><li>'In
polls of 12 rich countries...the share of respondents who said [climate
change] was a "major threat" rose in every country except South Korea,
where it was already high.'</li></ul><p>I'm in the <a href="https://socialgoals.blogspot.com/2007/06/forecasts-by-scientists-versus.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">happy intellectual</a> position of not having to advocate for or against greenhouse gas emissions, because I think the priority is to decide on those climate-related outcomes we want to see, then rewarding people for achieving them, however they do so. But since emissions are the bandwagon onto which everyone has climbed, what's happening to them is an indicator of how serious we are about the climate. It sounds good so far doesn't it? All those positive trends. But we shall get a better picture if I just repost (I first <a href="https://socialgoals.blogspot.com/2023/09/climate-policy-has-failed.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">posted</a> these on 7 September) this graph and caption from John Michael Greer's <a href="https://www.ecosophia.net/riding-the-climate-toboggan/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">blog</a>: </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXFc1j0E2lrnm1oxs3l4fZPxeAnZPWrP8jzju7PdJnZVvsioFYhX5l8ggFat8L9eNYagLS9SOwuDz7e75tlobrcyast5lejyxFJogsXgK2_m_0ER27ol-cATQ2VBs7RpyLqp9ysJ_4CVZb3BuFAwdYoo8g8blW2h81eWJzRLOSg2nDy0JSWCP0ZA/s768/atmospheric-co2-768x576.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="576" data-original-width="768" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXFc1j0E2lrnm1oxs3l4fZPxeAnZPWrP8jzju7PdJnZVvsioFYhX5l8ggFat8L9eNYagLS9SOwuDz7e75tlobrcyast5lejyxFJogsXgK2_m_0ER27ol-cATQ2VBs7RpyLqp9ysJ_4CVZb3BuFAwdYoo8g8blW2h81eWJzRLOSg2nDy0JSWCP0ZA/s320/atmospheric-co2-768x576.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><span style="font-family: arial;"></span><div style="margin-left: 80px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><blockquote style="text-align: left;">'Climate activism became a big public cause about halfway along this graph. Notice any effect?'</blockquote></span></div><span style="font-family: arial;"></span>It's the outcomes that are important and it's clear that, despite the singular focus on greenhouse gases, we're not actually achieving any reductions in the rate at which they're emitted. It's a familiar story: we target surrogate indicators; things that current science tells us will influence a target variable, rtaher than the variable itself. In this instance, greenhouse gas emissions, rather than climate change (or the <a href="https://socialgoals.blogspot.com/2015/10/climate-change-fundamental-question.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">negative impacts of climate change</a>), and we're not even succeeding at that. <br /><p>Here's a better idea: let's not assume the questions about the causes of climate change have been definitively answered. Let's also decide on what combination of goals we wish to achieve. And then reward the sustained achievement of these goals. I have written innumerable papers and blog posts about applying the Social Policy Bond principle to climate change. Links to papers can be found <a href="http://socialgoals.com/climate-change.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">here</a>, and this blog can be searched for relevant posts. <br /></p><div class="blogger-post-footer">--
Policy as if outcomes mattered
SocialGoals.com</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9695147.post-72411922885083434272023-10-08T17:31:00.004+01:002023-10-09T18:48:19.585+01:00Paying people not to kill each other: why not?<p>Some of the people I speak to disdain applications of the Social Policy Bond idea because it's transactional. 'They shouldn't be doing it for the money: people should not have to be paid to reduce their pollution, or to look after their own bodies, or not to commit burglaries.' Or, indeed, to refrain from killing each other. So neither <a href="http://socialgoals.com/middle-east-peace.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Middle East Peace Bonds</a> nor <a href="http://socialgoals.com/world-peace.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">World Peace Bonds</a>, nor any variant has ever been issued; nor, let's be frank, is likely to be issued in the foreseeable future. I will admit that paying people to achieve peace sounds, at first, a long way short of ideal. We should be at peace because we respect and even love each other, even people of a different tribe, race, religion and all the rest. That would be lovely, but it's plainly not working.</p><p>So, for those who are squeamish about aiming for a noble ideal (peace) using sordid means (money), here are my reasons: </p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Paying people who achieve peace is similar to paying nurses and teachers who also work, at least partly, for idealistic reasons. Money pays their bills and allows them to raise families. It is not all about enriching already wealthy plutocrats or corporations but even if, under a bond regime, that were to occur, it would have been a result of channeling people's self-interest into socially beneficial outcomes. </li><li>There are plenty of people who benefit financially from fomenting conflict. A World Peace Bond regime would help to offset the incentives on offer to those people. </li><li>A bond regime aiming for a decades-long sustained period of peace would set in place incentives for people to explore, research, investigate and refine many different ways of achieving peace. Many bodies already work to this end but...</li><li>...a bond regime would give them more resources to work with. This includes people: rewarding peace would allow these bodies to attract more, and better-qualified, people to work for them. We need to divert talented, hard-working people away from less socially beneficial activities (trading currencies, say) or socially destructive (creating ever more sophisticated weapons of mass destruction), and towards such worthwhile goals as the ending of war which, I believe, in spite of all the evidence, <i>is </i>achievable - provided we have it as a long-term goal, and reward it in accordance with its value. </li></ul><p>As I say, the current methods of trying to end war aren't working. Perhaps it's because the rewards and incentives are dwarfed by those reaped by those who depend on conflict for their living. A bond regime may be our best hope of bringing about the sustained period of world peace that all of humanity craves and deserves. Or maybe somebody out there has a better idea?<br /></p><div class="blogger-post-footer">--
Policy as if outcomes mattered
SocialGoals.com</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9695147.post-75699661287207508822023-09-24T17:37:00.001+01:002023-09-24T17:37:38.403+01:00Perverse incentives and health<p> The <i>Economist </i>writes about organ transplants in the US: </p><blockquote><p>[I]f the recipient dies soon after the transplant, hospitals suffer—a key measure used to evaluate them is the survival rate of recipients a year after transplant. According to Robert Cannon, a liver-transplant surgeon ..., hospitals succeed by being excessively cautious and keeping patients with worse prospects off waiting lists. <span style="font-size: x-small;"><i><a href="https://www.economist.com/united-states/2023/09/16/in-america-lots-of-usable-organs-go-unrecovered-or-get-binned" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">In America, lots of usable organs go unrecovered or get binned</a></i>, the Economist, 16 September</span></p></blockquote><p></p><p>It's just one example of a narrow, poorly thought-through goal that's in conflict with social well-being. In this instance, improving the financial status of hospitals worsens the health of patients. A more usual comment, though in a bizarre setting is:</p><blockquote><p>An anonymous nurse involved in the case suggested that the deceased
patient might not have needed the [heart] procedure in the first place. <span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://sciotovalleyguardian.com/2023/09/20/woman-propped-up-to-look-alive-for-family-after-already-being-declared-dead-at-adena-hospital-records-show/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"><i>Woman propped up to look alive for family after already being declared dead at Adena Hospital</i></a><i>, </i>Derek Myers, Scioto Valley Guardian, 20 September<i><br /></i></span></p></blockquote><p>There are other examples, some of which I write about in my <a href="http://www.socialgoals.com/tradeable-health-outcome-bonds.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">long piece</a> on using the Social Policy Bond concept to improve broad, societal health outcomes. (For a shorter treatment, see <a href="http://socialgoals.com/health.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">here</a>.) </p><p>In our complex societies, we rely on numerical data to give us an idea of where we, where we are going and where we want to be going. For private sector entities, narrow, short-term financial goals are good enough, but for a country, or the world, we need broad, long-term goals whose achievement is inextricably linked to the well-being of people and the environment. <a href="http://socialgoals.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Social Policy Bonds</a> were conceived as a way of injecting the market's incentives and efficiencies into the solution of social problems, but perhaps their greater contribution would be to encourage policymakers to think more carefully about society's over-arching, long-term goals. I believe there would be more consensus over such goals than there is over the alleged means of achieving them and, further, that targeting broad goals that are meaningful to ordinary people would close the gap between policymakers and the people they are supposed to represent. There would be other advantages to the bond concept, but those are the crucial ones. Meantime, it looks very much as though the sort of <a href="https://socialgoals.blogspot.com/2017/05/new-concepts-in-mickey-mouse-micro.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Mickey Mouse micro-objectives</a> that bedevil healthcare - and <a href="https://socialgoals.blogspot.com/2015/09/five-year-survival-rates-another-mickey.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">not only</a> in the US - are worse for society than the old-fashioned way of relying on people's integrity and willingness to do the right thing. <br /></p><a href="https://socialgoals.blogspot.com/2009/09/mickey-mouse-indicators.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/d/d4/Mickey_Mouse.png/220px-Mickey_Mouse.png" /></a><div class="blogger-post-footer">--
Policy as if outcomes mattered
SocialGoals.com</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9695147.post-62434790764717922232023-09-22T17:48:00.001+01:002023-09-22T17:48:35.255+01:00Social Policy Bonds: current state of play<p>I don't think any Social Policy Bonds have yet been issued, despite
their having been in the public arena for about <a href="https://www.thinknpc.org/blog/future-social-impact-bonds/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">35 years</a>. That said, more
national and local entities continue to issue Social Impact
Bonds, the non-tradable variant of Social Policy Bonds. This wikipedia <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_impact_bond" target="_blank">page</a>
summarises the history and current deployment of SIBs, currrently issued in about 25 countries. These include the UK, Australia, the US, and they are also being
considered in Brazil, Israel and New Zealand. Dan Corry of NPC (formerly <a href="http://www.thinknpc.org/" target="_blank">New Philanthropy Capital</a>) in London summarises the state of play in 2022 with SIBs in the UK <a href="http://www.thinknpc.org/blog/where-are-we-at-with-social-impact-bonds/" target="_blank">here</a>:</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><blockquote>There was a time when social impact bonds (SIBs) were all the rage, the shiny new policy wonk instrument. This instrument is a contract where payment is hard-wired into specified outcomes being achieved. Independent investors put up the working and risk capital and only get paid back if it all works, it was said these instruments would help us all deliver better services, would encourage innovation, guide government and philanthropists to a better way of commissioning, and would mean we only paid for the things we wanted. But then they sort of faded away from the front-line of interesting ideas: I’ve not seen a think tank or politician talk about them in a long time, even though some keep going in the background. ...<br /></blockquote><blockquote><p> So far, [SIBs] have yet to really taken off despite the pleas of their fans. Are they the future or the last dregs of the New Public Management
and the marketisation of everything? ... Only time will tell. <span style="font-size: x-small;"><i><a href="https://www.thinknpc.org/blog/future-social-impact-bonds/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">What is the future for Social Impact Bonds?</a></i>, Dan Corry, NPC, 5 October 2022</span><br /></p></blockquote>
I do have reservations about SIBs, which I have expressed <a href="http://socialgoals.com/why-the-bonds-must-be-tradeable.html" target="_blank">here</a>, <a href="http://socialgoals.com/why-i-don-t-like-social-impact-bonds.html" target="_blank">here</a>, and in several blog posts (search this blog site for <i>Social Impact Bonds</i>). They are necessarily narrow in scope and, in my view, will be
prone to manipulation and gaming, especially if they become so
commonplace that they escape public scrutiny. Because of their
limitations they are also, as I expected and as mentioned by Mr Corry, costly to
administer. I haven't
been consulted about, and have no involvement in, anything to do with SIBs. As regards Social Policy Bonds, there are occasional mentions in esoteric discussion of innovative finance (see <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4119552" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">here</a>, for example, or <a href="https://twitter.com/gideonro/status/1513975674905640962" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">this X thread</a>), but I have to be realistic and I don't think it's likely that any will be issued in the near future. This saddens me, as I do think they could do much to narrow the gap between policymakers and the people they are supposed to represent, and stimulate the diverse, adaptive approaches that humanity needs to solve its big, urgent social and environmental problems. It is, though possible that SIBs, because of their focus on meaningful outcomes will advance, rather than discredit, the
Social Policy Bond concept: either scenario is possible. <br /><p></p><div class="blogger-post-footer">--
Policy as if outcomes mattered
SocialGoals.com</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9695147.post-88931200490007813442023-09-07T17:13:00.004+01:002023-09-07T17:13:58.853+01:00Climate policy has failed<p style="text-align: left;"></p><p style="text-align: left;">John Michael Greer writes: <br /></p><blockquote><p>If the point of the last three decades of climate change activism was to slow the rate at which greenhouse gases enter the atmosphere, the results are in and the activists have failed. Nor is there any reason to think that doing more of the same will yield anything else... <span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://www.ecosophia.net/riding-the-climate-toboggan/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"><i>Riding the Climate Toboggan</i></a>, John Michael Greer, 6 September</span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmDKJgqm37AM3QESDEflRdDe9Rd6whoneIP5y9NhAdLeFWW7JEWFaChgtBuHCFW5PPit1qhUnu8RJmLRLZ9aLfxJxEC6uMttyHsnJmrp4ZnR0KUnJ24k-zoCCapvha3AoGHZepPjejftTBHAjWeIi17hX3ngH8L4rCbcnpFfl0ic4113bbHrp9lw/s768/atmospheric-co2-768x576.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="576" data-original-width="768" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmDKJgqm37AM3QESDEflRdDe9Rd6whoneIP5y9NhAdLeFWW7JEWFaChgtBuHCFW5PPit1qhUnu8RJmLRLZ9aLfxJxEC6uMttyHsnJmrp4ZnR0KUnJ24k-zoCCapvha3AoGHZepPjejftTBHAjWeIi17hX3ngH8L4rCbcnpFfl0ic4113bbHrp9lw/s320/atmospheric-co2-768x576.jpg" width="320" /></a></p></blockquote><div style="margin-left: 80px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">'Climate activism became a big public cause about halfway along this graph. Notice any effect?'</span></span></div><div style="margin-left: 80px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"> <br /></span></span></div><p>Some might argue that, without climate activism, the trend line would have become steeper in recent years, but it doesn't really matter. What does matter is that a great deal of policymakers' thinking and public resources have gone into trying to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, none of it has had the slightest discernible effect. This was foreseeable. <br /></p><p>I suggest that we clarify what it is we actually want to achieve. Do we want to change the climate, or should we instead aim to reduce the impact of adverse climatic events on human, animal and plant life? Most likely, we should target a wide array of approaches that would fit into either category. The next step is to issue Climate Stability Bonds, which would reward the achievement of our impact-reduction goals regardless of whether bondholders do so by trying to influence the climate or by more direct means, such as, for example, reinforcing levees, building new homes for people currently living in flood-prone areas etc. <br /></p><p>Climate Stability Bonds would have the long-term focus that current policymaking eschews; the issuers could stipulate that the bonds shall not be redeemed until all targeted indicators fall into an approved range for a sustained period, which could be three decades; bondholders would still profit by doing whatever they can to achieve the targeted goals, seeing the value of their holding rise, then selling their bonds to whoever is best placed to continue with achieving the goals. I have written many treatments of the Climate Stability Bond concept; all of which are freely available <a href="http://socialgoals.com/climate-change.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">here</a>, and there are also numerous posts on this blog (see <a href="https://socialgoals.blogspot.com/2015/10/climate-change-fundamental-question.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">here</a>, <a href="https://socialgoals.blogspot.com/2015/12/metrics-for-climate-change.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">here</a> and <a href="https://socialgoals.blogspot.com/2021/09/decentralized-impact-organizations-for.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">here</a>, for instance). </p><div class="blogger-post-footer">--
Policy as if outcomes mattered
SocialGoals.com</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9695147.post-8923370881137719612023-08-29T18:26:00.002+01:002023-08-29T18:26:56.669+01:00Resources for health<p>Today's <i>Financial Times</i> has a feature on antimicrobial resistance, pointing out that resistant pathogens are thought to have killed 1.26 million people in 2019, and that the problem is getting worse. </p><blockquote><p>Few venture capitalists or large drugmakers want to fund the costly clinical trials required by regulators.... As with climate change and future pandemics, no one is taking enough responsibility for the ever-present global threat of antimicrobial resistance.... <span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://www.ft.com/content/e9aeb9a3-a93c-439b-ab81-a7c71266d992" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"><i>Why it's so hard to stop the 'silent pandemic'</i></a>, Hannah Kuchler, 'Financial Times', 29 August</span><br /></p></blockquote><p></p><p>The article does talk about philanthropic investment aimed at launching two to four new antimicrobials in the next decade, but this is thought to be insufficient, and:</p><blockquote><p>attention is turning to changing how health systems buy antibiotics. This year, the UK has proposed expanding its novel subscription model, so drugmakers would receive up to £20 million a year for selling innovative antibiotics, no matter how many - or how few - are prescribed.</p></blockquote><p>...nor indeed how effective or ineffective they are - which is the problem: we shouldn't be targeting how many new antibiotics are marketed; that's, at best, a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrogate_endpoint" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">surrogate endpoint</a>. It's not a meaningful outcome to people who want to optimise their health nor, therefore, for policymakers who represent those people. What we need to be doing is targeting broad, meaningful indicators of national health and reward improvements in these indicators <i>however they are achieved</i>. Funding should be dictated by its expected benefits to people, rather than to drugmakers; and it should be directed to where it will achieve the maximum improvement in health per pound spent. Such improvement could be measured using such indicators as Quality Adjusted Life Years, longevity and an array of other measures. It may be that these investments in producing new antimicrobials are appropriate on that basis - or there may be other priorities that would generate a higher return. My concern is that there is little to suggest an analysis of expected benefits per pound spent has been carried out.</p><p>My suggestion, therefore, is that national governments issue <a href="http://www.socialgoals.com/tradeable-health-outcome-bonds.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Tradeable Health Outcome Bonds</a>, which would provide incentives to research, develop and refine all approaches to improving our health, including measures that are currently thought to be beyond the remit of health authorities, but that could have large positive health improvements. Such measure could include providing better public transport for low-income households, or subsidised apprenticeships. There are many other possibilities, but there are few incentives to consider their health impacts. The linked essay is long, at 9500 words. A shorter version is <a href="http://socialgoals.com/health.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">here</a>.</p><div class="blogger-post-footer">--
Policy as if outcomes mattered
SocialGoals.com</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9695147.post-58246142418348740272023-08-22T19:47:00.003+01:002023-08-23T10:30:25.217+01:00Targeting environmental outcomes: thirty wasted years<p>What sort of environmental policy are we seeking? What are our goals? What should be our goals? Such questions arise when we read that, for instance, operating carbon capture and storage would increase direct emissions of NOx [nitrous oxides] and particulate matter by nearly a half and a
third, respectively, because of additional fuel burned, and increase direct NH3 emissions significantly because of the assumed
degradation of the amine-based solvent. <span style="font-size: x-small;">From <a href="https://www.eea.europa.eu/publications/carbon-capture-and-storage/file" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"><i>Air pollution impacts from carbon capture and storage (CCS)</i></a> [pdf], EEA Technical report No 14/2011</span></p><p>...or when we reading about road vehicles, we realize that: <br /></p><blockquote><p>their tyres brakes and wear and tear on the road also produce dangerous pollutants, which get worse the heavier vehicles are. <span style="font-size: x-small;"><i><a href="https://www.economist.com/business/2023/08/10/how-green-is-your-electric-vehicle-really" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">How green is your electric vehicle, really?</a></i>, the Economist, 10 August</span><br /></p></blockquote><p>...and that electric vehicles are heavier than their internal combustion equivalents. Clearly, there are significant environmental trade-offs here: we can reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, but at the cost of increased emissions of other air pollutants. Currently, policy is made without much consideration of these trade-offs: an apparent emergency, such as climate change, dominates policymakers' thinking so much that the impacts of addressing it are neglected. So, for another example, the environmental costs of generating electricity using wind turbines (with non-biodegradable blades) or solar energy (with loses to biodiversity) are ignored. </p><p>It's quite possible that, in the long run, the policymakers have chosen correctly and that climate change is a real emergency that merits increased pollution of the atmosphere with nitrous oxides,, particulates from tyres, etc and the loss of biodiversity. There are very few instances where one human activity, whether it produces energy or anything else, does not have a negative environmental impact. So, mining and using the filthiest coal to generate electricity has, and still does, bring heat and light to poor people at low cost, while polluting the air and costing the lives of miners. Once the negative impacts become impossible to ignore, and society becomes wealthier, we make efforts to regulate or price the negative impacts.<br /></p><p>How is this policymaking approach working? I think the consensus would be:
not very well. As well as climate change with all its attendant dangers, we
are facing biodiversity loss, overfishing, water and air pollution,
and other depredations at all scales. But we can't expect policymakers to weigh up all the impacts of our activities and price or regulate them accordingly, and to do so on a continuous basis to ensure that policy keeps up with scientific advances (just one current possibility <a href="https://science.slashdot.org/story/23/08/22/2332256/bacteria-that-eat-methane-could-slow-global-heating-study-finds?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">here</a>) and the growth of our knowledge about scientific relationships. <br /></p><p>So I propose a different method. The current system reacts to problems when they become politically unavoidable, and then tries to identify and address their causes. My method would be instead to specify acceptable ranges of indicators of environmental health, including human, animal and plant health, and supply incentives for people to ensure that the targeted indicators remain within those ranges for a sustained period. In short, to target environmental goals and reward those who achieve them.<br /></p><p>My suggested way of doing this at the national level would be for the government to issue <a href="http://socialgoals.com/environment.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Environmental Policy Bonds</a>. These bonds would not bear interest, but would be redeemable once the specified environmental targets had been achieved and sustained. The bonds would be tradeable and, could have a very long-term focus, encouraging people to research, refine and undertake activities directed toward one or all of the targeted goals. In this, and in other ways, they would have several advantages over current policymaking:</p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>We'd be targeting outcomes, for which there is more consensus than for the means to achieve them. </li></ul><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>People can identify more readily with explicit environmental goals than with the means to achieve them, which means that there would be more engagement with the public when developing environmental policy, which in turns means more buy-in, which I consider to be essential. </li></ul><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>The target outcomes would be stable and have a very long-term focus: essential if we are to encourage new ways of achieving our environmental goals. <br /></li></ul><p>If national governments successfully implemented Environmental Policy Bonds, they could conceivably collectively issue bonds targeting global environmental objectives, encompassing, for example, the health of the seas and atmospheric pollution as well as climate change and biodiversity loss. I have to admit that that looks extremely unlikely, especially as the concept has been in the public arena now for more than <a href="https://socialgoals.com/environment.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">thirty years</a>, and only a non-tradeable variant (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_impact_bond" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Social Impact Bonds</a>) has so far been tried. As I explain <a href="https://www.socialgoals.com/why-the-bonds-must-be-tradeable.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">here</a> and <a href="https://www.socialgoals.com/why-i-don-t-like-social-impact-bonds.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">here</a> tradeability is absolutely necessary if we want to achieve broad, long-term goals. Perhaps, rather than wait for government to change the way it does things, we should try to engage with philanthropists. I've <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3381728" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">tried</a> and had no luck, but perhaps my readers will be more successful. <br /></p></div><div class="blogger-post-footer">--
Policy as if outcomes mattered
SocialGoals.com</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9695147.post-22617229103811993282023-08-05T18:16:00.001+01:002023-08-05T18:16:23.692+01:00Using reason to make policy<p style="text-align: left;">The <i>Economist </i>writes: </p><blockquote><p>...Americans need to recognise just how many of their compatriots’ lives are being squandered. Too often politicians have been slow to do so and, as a result, America has come to tolerate an obscene level of early deaths. Only after the shock and shame of yet another mass shooting, at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, last year, did Congress muster the will to pass modest new gun controls. A proper sense of alarm at other kinds of needless loss may help bring about measures to keep more Americans alive for longer. That way the country could start to curb the carnage. <span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://www.economist.com/leaders/2023/07/31/how-to-reduce-american-carnage" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"><i>How to reduce American carnage</i></a>, the Economist, 31 July</span><br /></p></blockquote><p>It's unfortunate that it takes dramatic events that have immediate visual impact before our current policymakers think about addressing many of our social problems. Ideally, we should aim for policies that minimise adverse impacts on <i>all </i>people's well-being, regardless of who they are, where they happen to live, or whether their plight is dramatic enough to make people watch news bulletins. <br /></p><p>One way of doing this would be for government to consult with citizens to discover their priorities for policymakers, specified in terms of broad goals, at times of relative calmness and over a sustained period. Examples of such goals could be: cut violent crime by 50 percent; raise literacy to 99.5%; improve life expectancy by three years. The exact formulation of these goals would be decided by experts and confirmed by government. </p><p>The next step would be to reward people for achieving these goals, whoever they are and however they do so, provided the act within the law - though as part of their goal-achieving activities they can lobby for changes in the law. </p><p>I would go further: my <a href="http://SocialGoals.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Social Policy Bond</a> concept would aim to inject the market's incentives and efficiencies into the achievement of our specified social and environmental goals. It's a simple idea but one that represents a complete change in the ways government currently runs things. Essentially, it would allow government to concentrate on articulating society's wishes and raising the revenue to achieve them: things that democratic governments are actually quite good at. But the bonds would, in effect, contract out the achievement of these goals to whoever thinks they are best placed to do so. These investors in the bonds would be prepared to pay more for them than they are worth to current holders, so that the bonds would always flow into the hands of those who can best advance progress towards the targeted goal. Because they would be <a href="https://www.socialgoals.com/why-the-bonds-must-be-tradeable.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">tradeable</a>, investors wouldn't have to hold them for long: they could buy them, advance progress toward the targeted goal, so seeing the value of the bonds rise, then sell them to those best placed to to take the next steps towards the goal's achievement, at which point the bonds would be redeemed. </p><p>In such a way, government would be doing what it's best at, while the market for the bonds would do what - in economic theory and on all the evidence - markets do best: allocate society'e scarce resources optimally. </p><div class="blogger-post-footer">--
Policy as if outcomes mattered
SocialGoals.com</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9695147.post-19777277833605388202023-08-03T19:26:00.003+01:002023-08-03T19:26:35.556+01:00Uncosted goals are platitudesJanan Ganesh writes:<br /><p></p><blockquote><span dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Let us dispose of
the idea that net zero is popular. Yes, in Ipsos surveys, voters
endorse various green policies by supermajorities. But when a financial
cost is attached to them, most are rejected. ...Last month, a YouGov
poll found that around 70 per cent of [UK] adults support net zero. If this
entailed “some additional costs for ordinary people”, however, that
share falls to just over a quarter. </span><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i><span dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">The beginning of the end of Britain’s net zero consensus,</span></i><span dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"> </span><span dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Janan Ganesh, Financial Times, 2 August (archived <a href="https://vnexplorer.net/the-beginning-of-the-end-of-britains-net-zero-consensus-s4113808.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">here</a>)</span></span></blockquote><p></p><p>Government, unfortunately, rarely sets out transparent, explicit, verifiable goals. One such is the 2 percent annual inflation rate, targeted by the UK Government: currently the rate <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/live/business-65653791" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">exceeds</a> 8 percent. The same Government's <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uks-path-to-net-zero-set-out-in-landmark-strategy" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">goal</a> of 'net zero' by 2050 is even less credible. Perhaps, like most others, knows that nobody takes its goals seriously, and that nobody will be held accountable for its failure to achieve them.<br /></p><p><span dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">A Social Policy Bond regime would be different. Under a bond regime a government would spend more time setting explicit, clear and meaningful goals than trying to achieve them, or hiding or explaining away its failure to do so. Democratic governments could be effective at articulating society's wishes and raising the revenue to fulfil them. They are not so effective at actually achieving them. Still less do they correctly estimate or explain the inevitable trade-offs that their policies entail. They can get away with such irresponsible behaviour because society is complex, and people too preoccupied with more day-to-day matters. </span></p><p><span dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">As I explain in more detail in my <a href="http://socialgoals.com/the-book.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">book</a>, under a government-backed Social Policy Bond regime, costs of achievement of goals need not be accurately estimated. Government would put funds for the ultimate redemption of the bonds into an escrow account; the bonds would be redeemed only when the specified social or environmental goal had been achieved. If the funds are deemed by the market to be insufficient, then investors will show no interest in the bonds. If the funds are roughly equal to, or even much, much greater than, the market's view of how much achievement will cost, then investors would buy the bonds, bidding for them against each other, so that the net cost to the government of achieving the goal will be minimised. The market for the bonds would ensure that this would happen continuously, with investors having powerful incentives to assess the effects of new knowledge and events quickly. Tradeability, which I discuss <a href="https://www.socialgoals.com/why-the-bonds-must-be-tradeable.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">here</a> and <a href="https://www.socialgoals.com/why-i-don-t-like-social-impact-bonds.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">here</a>, greatly expands the range of goals that the bonds can achieve: government could target very long-term outcomes, such as universal literacy or greater life expectancy and then disengage from any attempt to achieve them, which would become the responsibility of investors in the bonds. </span></p><p><span dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Sadly, governments today, knowing that they are <a href="https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/5533" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">rarely</a> held accountable, are prone to preach such uncosted goals as 'net zero' that function as little more than self-satisfied advertising slogans. <br /></span></p><div class="blogger-post-footer">--
Policy as if outcomes mattered
SocialGoals.com</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9695147.post-16801320907175864742023-07-22T11:44:00.000+01:002023-07-22T11:44:09.722+01:00Focusing on nuclear peace<p>Back in April 2014 just after Russia had annexed Crimea, the London-based think-tank ,
Chatham House, published a <a href="https://www.chathamhouse.org/2014/04/too-close-comfort-cases-near-nuclear-use-and-options-policy" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">report</a> on the dangers of unintended nuclear conflict: 'The probability of inadvertent nuclear use is not zero and is higher than had been widely considered,' it stated. 'The risk associated with nuclear weapons is high' and 'under-appreciated.'</p><p>You don't need to know much about, say, the origins of the First World War to be scared by the possibility that Russia and NATO might be sleepwalking towards a nuclear catastrophe. We could spend a lot of energy trying to allocate blame, but doing so is far less important than striving to reduce the likelihood of such a conflict. There <i>are </i>bodies that are working toward that end, either as their main activity or indirectly, with peace being a hoped-for result of such aims as poverty reduction, climate change mitigation or mass vaccination.<br /></p><p style="text-align: left;">I think, though, that we need to be more focused: a nuclear conflict is one of the worst scenarios imaginable, dwarfing our other serious social and environmental problems. I cannot suggest a way out of any impending nuclear conflict, but what I do propose is that we offer incentives for people to find ways of avoiding such a disaster. Rather than leave everything to the politicians, ideologues, military men and the war-gamers, we could encourage people to back <a href="http://socialgoals.com/nuclear-peace.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Nuclear Peace Bonds</a> that would be redeemed only when there has been a sustained period of nuclear peace. Backers would contribute to the funds for redemption of the bonds, which would occur only when nuclear peace, defined as, say, the absence of a nuclear detonation that kills more than 100 people, has been sustained for three decades. Backers could comprise any combination of governments, international organisations, non-governmental organisations and philanthropists, and their funds could be swelled by contributions from the rest of us.<br /><br />The maintenance of nuclear peace is an ideal for targeting via the <a href="http://socialgoals.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Social Policy Bond</a> concept:<br /></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li> it has an unambiguous, verifiable metric,</li><li> existing policy doesn't seem to be working,</li><li> nobody now knows the best ways of achieving the goal,</li><li> the goal is long term, and<br /></li><li> the goal is likely to require a multiplicity of diverse, adaptive approaches. </li></ul><p>Of course, the bond approach can run in parallel with existing efforts. It's likely to channel resources into those bodies whose activities are most promising. It would also encourage new approaches, the precise nature of which we cannot and need not know in advance. </p><div class="blogger-post-footer">--
Policy as if outcomes mattered
SocialGoals.com</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9695147.post-9043689082947512012023-07-17T18:54:00.004+01:002023-07-17T19:24:26.935+01:00World targets in megadeaths: the superforecasters give their opinion<p class="calibre_161"><span style="font-size: small;">The current issue of the <i>Economist </i><a href="https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2023/07/10/what-are-the-chances-of-an-ai-apocalypse" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">reports</a> on a survey of <span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: justify; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">89 'superforecasters', defined as 'general-purpose
prognosticators with a record of making accurate predictions on all
sorts of topics, from election results to the outbreak of wars.' They were asked to estimate the likelihood that an unspecified event, such as an AI-caused extinction or a nuclear war, would kill 10% or more of the world's population (or around 800 million people) before the year 2100. </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: justify; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">The superforecasters gave that event a probability of 9%. </span></span></p><p class="calibre_161"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: small;">Nine percent is worryingly high, but quite plausible. We could speculate on the type of event most likely to bring about such a catastrophe, but it's more important to see if we can find a way of forestalling it. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: small;">I think the answer might be to use the Social Policy Bond concept to prevent any sort of catastrophe from happening for a sustained period. </span><span style="font-size: small;">The issuers of such <a href="http://socialgoals.com/disaster-prevention.html">Disaster Prevention Bonds</a> need have no knowledge of the relative likelihoods of known or <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">unforseeable</span> catastrophic events. Neither would they have to <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">pre</span>-judge,
with our current limited scientific knowledge, the most efficient ways
of ensuring our survival. Instead, the bond mechanism could target the
sustained avoidance of <span style="font-style: italic;">any </span>-
unspecified - catastrophe. It would do so in a way that encourages the
exploration and investigation of all threats, known and new, <span style="font-style: italic;">impartially</span>.
Policymakers would not (and, anyway, could not) try to calculate how
dangerous each threat is. That would be left to bondholders, who would
have powerful incentives to do so <span style="font-style: italic;">continuously</span>, which is necessary because the most likely type of catastrophe will change over time.
Investors in the bonds would be rewarded only if they can successfully adapt to
rapidly changing events and our ever-expanding knowledge.<br /><br />This
is a stark contrast to the current approach; the one that has led to
highly intelligent men and women giving our survival such a gloomy prognosis. The
people who are currently working in favour of humanity do so in ways
that, while worthy of great respect, are doing so within a system that
is heavily weighted to favour the short-term goals of large
organisations, including governments, that have little incentive or
capacity to care about the long-term future of the whole of humanity.
It's very regrettable, and Disaster Prevention Bonds, issued with
sufficient backing, could change all that. With sufficient backing from governments, corporations, non-governmental organisations and philanthropists, they could encourage more people and more resources into activities that would help reduce the likelihood of catastrophe. </span> <br /></p><div class="blogger-post-footer">--
Policy as if outcomes mattered
SocialGoals.com</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9695147.post-28249754455735929622023-07-15T17:27:00.002+01:002023-07-15T17:27:22.691+01:00How best to allocate healthcare funds<p>It's striking how unrelated is healthcare funding to need. Medical
experts have little capacity or incentive to see beyond their own
institution or speciality. Governments respond to pressure from interest groups and industry, and allocate funds
accordingly. Slipping through the cracks are unglamorous diseases,
such as some mental illnesses. Even within a class of diseases, such as
cancer, funding <a href="https://www.lse.ac.uk/News/Latest-news-from-LSE/2023/e-May-2023/Discrepancies-in-cancer-drug-funding-decisions-found-across-high-income-countries-despite-similar-assessment-criteria-New-study" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">discrepancies</a> are stark. I think government here is failing in its purpose. It
should target for improvement the broad health of all its citizens
rather than merely respond to lobbyists, however dedicated, sincere and
hard working. It should, as far as possible, be impartial as to the
causes of ill health, and direct resources to where they can return the
biggest health benefit per dollar spent. Applying the Social Policy Bond
principle to health could do this. At the national level, governments could gradually divert an increasing proportion of its healthcare spending to create and expand a fund to redeem <a href="http://www.socialgoals.com/tradeable-health-outcome-bonds.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Tradeable Health Outcome Bonds</a> (For a shorter treatment see <a href="http://socialgoals.com/health.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">here</a>.) </p><p></p><p>At the global level - I'll be realistic - such an approach is even less likely to be followed so, having read Peter Singer's <i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Life-you-Can-Save-Poverty/dp/0330479806" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">The Life You Can Save: acting now to end world poverty</a></i>, I can recommend the approach he takes when it comes to choosing which charities to support, which are those that, in his assessment, generate the highest increase in well-being per dollar spent. As he points out, 'The best charities can be hundreds or even thousands of times <em>more impactful</em> than others.' See <a href="https://www.thelifeyoucansave.org/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">here</a> for more. </p><div class="blogger-post-footer">--
Policy as if outcomes mattered
SocialGoals.com</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0