New Institutions to Fix Faulty Idea Machines
We aren't always good at turning ideas into clear outcomes. Below are 9 ideas for new policy institutions that could help to deliver on the progress agenda.
These views represent only my own, and are not the views of my employer
I am quite the idealist. And yet many of the people that I look up to in my career are the opposite. This may be the story of wisdom, of going through the mill and coming out with a more realistic view of what is possible and what isn’t.
Despite my adulation of these folk, I don’t want to believe them. I don’t want to be spat out of the public policy bureaucracy as chief cynic, as the Cheems Mindset King. Too senior to not view things through the ‘complex and nuanced’ lens, and too experienced to believe things can be done differently.
But perhaps my career role models are not wrong to think this way. They have seen institutions fail to function, refuse to renew, and slump into malaise as a result.
What is clear though, is that we cannot translate ideas into outcomes sufficiently well. That is, we have faulty ‘idea machines’. As detailed by Nadia Asporouhova in her brilliant essay on idea machines:
An Idea Machine is a self-sustaining organism that contains all the parts needed to turn ideas into outcomes:
It starts with a distinct ideology, which becomes a memetic engine that drives the formation of a community
The community’s members start generating ideas amongst themselves
Eventually, they form an agenda, which articulates how the ideology will be brought into the world. (Communities need agendas to become idea machines; otherwise, they’re just a group of likeminded people, without a directed purpose.)
The agenda is capitalized by one or several major funders, whose presence ensures that the community’s ideas can move from theory to practice – both in terms of financing, as well as lending operational skills to the effort. (Without funding, an idea machine is just that: an inert system that needs fuel to turn the crank and get it moving.)
So, in a world where we want to end our economic and scientific stagnation, what are the policy institutions that we can build to get our idea machines working properly? Note that I am not discussing new scientific organisations/institutions here (for this, check out Michael Nielsen and Kanjun Qiu’s latest wonderful metascience essay).
The UK progress/abundance agenda community has many of the key components of the idea machine. It has an ideology (Collision, Thompson et al), a community (e.g. Progress Forum), and a range of ideas (e.g. Stripe Press).
However, they currently lack:
A clear, prioritised agenda.
A series of operating initiatives - such as policy and legislation.
Operators - who are focused on developing the agenda and operating initiatives.
Funders and supporting organisations
As a result, the scientific and economic abundance community does not have all the key parts required to generate the outcomes that it wants.
Below are a few ideas that I am throwing out which could be developed further to plug this gap. Some are more original than others, but all feel like they could play a fairly cost-effective role in helping to institutionalise the end of the UK’s stagnation.
There is always the risk of adding too much to stuff, rather than taking away the bad stuff. So consider this my counter to the below ideas. New, shiny stuff can be attractive, and so people are often drawn to new units, strategies and institutions. I may be falling into this trap (God - aren’t I epistemically modest!!).
Developing the next generation of operators - programmes to support and train:
(1.) Public intellectuals that write and do media appearances. The pundit class plays an enormous role in our democracy, yet is often devoid of truly original ideas. People that can think, write and speak become star players in policy discourse.
With so much debate around science and economics appearing technocratic, skilled communicators that can translate these aims into everyday outcomes for people would be a gamechanger. A good example to take inspiration for this here is the New Economy Organisers Network (NEON), which provides support, including media training, to activists and writers often fighting for a social justice agenda. For example, Grace Blakeley is one of the many alumni of this programme.
Roots of Progress is about to begin a programme of this mould, which is great, but I think that a nationally-focused organisation would help to tackle key problem areas in a more bespoke manner. Crucially, this programme should provide significant support to those from underrepresented backgrounds (the progress studies crowd in the UK, for example, appears to be a watering hole for largely nerdy white lads).
(2.) Policy entrepreneurs. These are the people that can spot/generate good policy ideas and creatively find ways of developing those ideas within government. A good policy entrepreneur can find key influencers, demonstrate an alignment with those influencers’ key issues and the issues the policy entrepreneur cares about, and present a clear case for how a new policy solution can address such issues.
In a world filled with bureaucracy and a frantic political cycle, we have an undersupply of policy entrepreneurs. Tom Kalil is the big bossman when it comes to thinking about what a good policy entrepreneur looks like. But we need hundreds more Tom Kalil’s, which would result in thousands more good market/policy designs.
(3.) Progress aligned activist groups. Many people underrate the role that activism can play in catalysing change, or even see the practice as a barrier to change. This is always going to be the case if ‘your side’ are not the activists. London YIMBY is a good example of using campaigns coupled with serious policy thinking to fight the fight for high quality, affordable homes in the capital.
This model could potentially be replicated in other areas that prolong the great stagnation, such as building renewable energy infrastructure in your local area, reducing bureaucracy for scientific researchers, or even campaigns to raise awareness of unsung heroes in the scientific community.
Idea Production
(4.) Abundance Institutes network that partner with universities . University policy research groups that focus on reducing scarcity in a particular problem area (e.g. energy institute, healthcare institute, scientific ideas institute, social housing institute etc).
A good research group to partner with here would be somewhere like the Bennett Institute of Public Policy in Cambridge, which does fantastic work at the intersection of academia and policy under Diane Coyle and Michael Kenny. These institutes could do core research and teach modules on university programmes. A smaller version of this could be specific progress studies modules taught on pre-existing university courses.
Each of these institutes could be part of an Abundance Network, a national group of Abundance Institutes which collaborate to do things like guest lectures at each institute, complete interdisciplinary research together, and generally support network/movement building.
(5.) A UK Institute for Progress
A think tank to produce the policy ideas that policy entrepreneurs use in the wild. I have written about this before, but it seems clear that this is a glaring hole in the economic policy lexicon right now.
Understanding Public Opinion
(6.) Data for Prosperity. Polling organisation specifically focused on testing narratives around scientific and economic progress. We should understand which technologies people are more sceptical of, what are the best proxy arguments about economic growth that resonate with the public, and how this all translates into a policy agenda. Taking inspiration from David Shor’s BlueRose Research.
(7.) Partner with broadsheet media. Fund a UK newspaper to have a section exclusively focused on economic and scientific progress (ranging from how to fix our productivity problem to regulating generative AI). This newspaper section should be radical yet practical. A model to replicate here would be Vox’s Future Perfect, which does journalism specifically from the perspective of effective altruism.
Works in Progress is truly fantastic, and is somewhat occupying this space, but I still think we are missing a short form (e.g. 800-1200 word piece) alternative that will appeal to a more generalist readership. In my opinion, The Guardian would be best placed to manage this and would benefit from the funding support, but which rag couldn’t do with some good ideas and more money! There are plenty of smart young writers on Substack which you could commission to develop output for this on the cheap (this is not a come and get me plea!)
Community Building
(8.) Policy-specific directory crossed with Wikipedia. A much better Linkedin, designed for you to be able to filter and find lists of policy-makers and other relevant people in specific domain areas and regions. Individual’s profiles could also link to their social media and relevant papers/companies they have been involved in. Recommendation algorithms could suggest potential collaborators and advisors for projects that you are building.
Policy mogul is a version of this, but is a.) not very good, and b.) you have to pay for it, making it the tool of lobbyists and intelligence gatherers rather than those with large-scale social and democratic impact in mind.
Government Agencies
(9.) Funding agency dedicated to experimenting institutions. The internet age has arguably made the elite and public institutions hyper-sensitive to the idea of failure. Being seen to mess up is a bureaucrats worst nightmare, and the resulting outcome is we end up with sub-optimal government and sub-optimal public services. In some domains, you don’t need to succeed 90% of the time - you need to succeed a few times in a really big way.
There should be a dedicated government agency that could identify which department programmes could justifiably tolerate a higher failure rate, help to set incentives that promote high-reward experimentation, and hire external programme managers that have worked in high-risk, high-reward environments.
These are just a few germinating ideas that I think could make somewhat of a difference in the policy space. Hopefully, these help you think of your own too!
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