Ah, now that I’ve started looking further—an assessment of those Social Impact Bonds, here. They note ““Using a single outcome to define success may miss a range of other benefits that might result from the program—benefits that also have real value but will go unmeasured” (Berlin, 2016)” which is in-line with what I’d said elsewhere on the idea: whatever we don’t measure, tends to bite us in the butt. (That includes which groups we listen to!)
The report also mentions: “By design, nearly all of the early SIBs were premised on government-budget savings. Indeed, in those deals, payments to investors depended on those savings.” This would be a huge hinderance, with the only evaluated benefits being ‘costs to gov’t avoided’. Only by including as much of the real externality as feasibly measurable could we hope to incentivize the right solutions.
So, though SIBs are essentially the same mechanism I mention, they do seem to be falling short for reasons I’d expected and planned around. A singular legislative document, setting taxes to match whatever the percent benefits happen to be, with a devoted branch of the executive determining externalities with transparent metrics, statistical safeguards. Investors might also feel that “this is like a government bond”, if we give them a stronger institutional commitment. One-off policy goals find their funding pulled regularly, in contrast, which would spoil the potential of the investment. I’d guess I’m SIB-adjacent?
Thank you VERY much for bringing this to my attention!
And, I would say this is almost-exactly what I had in mind! (The “investor” I referred to is merely the role; any normal person could throw a dollar in the pot, becoming an investor; and any community could propose benefit-plans.) If those “government priorities & funding” were enshrined as a mandate to regularly-updated public concerns, funded with a singular tax-rate that is raised or lowered to match the total quantity of benefits, then I couldn’t tell the difference between our plans.
I see vast change becoming possible, when you can earn a competitive return from public good, funneled through taxation for efficiency and fairness’ sake. It’d bring a few orders of magnitude more resources to bear on our troubles. (And, if we manage to internalize most externalities, then pricing is a decent representation of real cost, which would provide systemic gains to efficiency.)
Your post/idea reminds me of “Social Impact Bonds”: https://www.goldmansachs.com/insights/pages/social-impact-bonds.html
Seems sorta similar except instead of private investors it’s an open market for regular people to make a profit from their good policy investments.
Ah, now that I’ve started looking further—an assessment of those Social Impact Bonds, here. They note ““Using a single outcome to define success may miss a range of other benefits that might result from the program—benefits that also have real value but will go unmeasured” (Berlin, 2016)” which is in-line with what I’d said elsewhere on the idea: whatever we don’t measure, tends to bite us in the butt. (That includes which groups we listen to!)
The report also mentions: “By design, nearly all of the early SIBs were premised on government-budget savings. Indeed, in those deals, payments to investors depended on those savings.” This would be a huge hinderance, with the only evaluated benefits being ‘costs to gov’t avoided’. Only by including as much of the real externality as feasibly measurable could we hope to incentivize the right solutions.
So, though SIBs are essentially the same mechanism I mention, they do seem to be falling short for reasons I’d expected and planned around. A singular legislative document, setting taxes to match whatever the percent benefits happen to be, with a devoted branch of the executive determining externalities with transparent metrics, statistical safeguards. Investors might also feel that “this is like a government bond”, if we give them a stronger institutional commitment. One-off policy goals find their funding pulled regularly, in contrast, which would spoil the potential of the investment. I’d guess I’m SIB-adjacent?
Thank you VERY much for bringing this to my attention!
And, I would say this is almost-exactly what I had in mind! (The “investor” I referred to is merely the role; any normal person could throw a dollar in the pot, becoming an investor; and any community could propose benefit-plans.) If those “government priorities & funding” were enshrined as a mandate to regularly-updated public concerns, funded with a singular tax-rate that is raised or lowered to match the total quantity of benefits, then I couldn’t tell the difference between our plans.
I see vast change becoming possible, when you can earn a competitive return from public good, funneled through taxation for efficiency and fairness’ sake. It’d bring a few orders of magnitude more resources to bear on our troubles. (And, if we manage to internalize most externalities, then pricing is a decent representation of real cost, which would provide systemic gains to efficiency.)