Manifesto

This isn’t really a manifesto – it’s more a poorly formed collection of potential ideas. Please help me improve it – comment below or Tweet me. 

Guiding principles include sentientism – the application of evidence and reason and the granting of moral consideration to all sentient beings.  Working to reduce suffering and maximise flourishing.  Using government to help generate value and share it fairly; make investments + manage areas where markets don’t work; manage transitions between situations over time; facilitate fair and transparent markets; help manage common assets; determine priorities using evidence of impact and probability.

Measure progress and success / failure in a richer way than GDP. Recognise value that isn’t about flows of money.

Trust building and social cohesion development as goods in themselves and as enablers for everything else.

Health and Care

  • Integrate social care and health across mental and physical help – empower GP as co-ordinator for each person? – saves by avoiding crises / duplication. Improves wellbeing.
  • Shift funding towards prevention + early intervention – saves costs of crises.  Improves wellbeing.
  • HealthTech – facilitate / fund research / scale  – enable more DIY

Education

  • Lifelong education – EdTech + traditional
  • No state funding for religious schools
  • Improve childcare to ease access to education
  • EdTech – facilitate / fund / scale
  • Remove right for religious schools to select by religion
  • Tuition fees? Scrap / reduce for subjects of strategic importance? (or should market decide)

Economy and Taxes

  • Use regulation to ensure markets work well: transparency, rule of law, competition
  • Increase wealth / income tax to increase NHS / care + education funding
  • Tighten tax avoidance / evasion – shift funding from benefit fraud to HMRC
  • Free, zero-fee bank accounts for every citizen held at the central bank (e.g. FedAccounts)
  • Tax for costs borne by tax payers – sugar / alcohol / cigarettes / drugs / environmental impact
  • Target balanced budget but take advantage of low interest rates to make infrastructure / education / health investments (infrastructure investment bank?)
  • Encourage / drive firms to build ethics into the way they operate – not just financial actors
  • Inheritance tax + gift tax – increase + invest in inter-generational social mobility / sovereign wealth fund / one off lump sum to young people / UBI?
  • Avoid syndicated / ring-fenced taxes – but improve transparency of tax spend
  • Balance levels of capital gains and income taxes?
  • Establish sovereign wealth fund – really ethical basis
  • Transparency + anti-corruption + anti-money-laundering drive re: business – clarity of ownership / land registry etc.
  • Tax assets based on self-assessed value at which you will sell – Glen Weyl https://twitter.com/glenweyl
  • Carbon pricing on meat and dairy
  • Carbon tax and public dividend
  • Transition to end animal farming – Grow Green reports
  • Transition all government pensions to sustainable investment portfolios 

Science and Innovation

  • Fund research prioritised objectively – systemic risks (cyber-threat / fraud), climate change, wellbeing, demographic / care / health challenges, open data
  • Drive for more transparency – academic publishing (publish all publicly funded research), data sharing, opentrials – government facilitating the data / research commons
  • Elephant in the brain rationale re health, education

Poverty, Work, Welfare + Pensions

  • Pilot Universal Basic Income (UBI) as extension of Universal Credit?
  • Pilot Universal Basic Services – Food, Transport, SmartPhone + Internet, Housing – to complement NHS + State Education (Jonathan Portes, Henrietta Moore report)
  • Pilot transition to 4 or 3 day week
  • Pilot Universal Jobs Guarantee scheme
  • Replace pensions triple lock with inflation / average wage locks
  • Donald Hirsch Loughborough poverty measure
  • Hilary Cottam radical help

Housing

  • New high quality council housing – build directly.  All zero carbon footprint.
  • Homelessness – accelerate implementation of Housing First
  • Accelerate transparency of ownership through land registry

Foreign Policy + Defense

  • Stronger human rights / free speech focus – engage constructively, but take firmer line on rewarding / partnering with dictators / rights abusers
  • Decommission Trident – re-direct funds to conventional forces + cyber-defense
  • Strong global cooperation through UN, NATO, EU, G20, G7, WTO, Commonwealth – drive for free trade, human rights, democracy + rule of law, climate change
  • Impose strict ethical constraints on arms deals 

International Development + Aid

  • Partner with GiveWell / EA to apply evidence based prioritisation – both humanitarian and existential risk (e.g. climate change, nuclear war, AI)
  • Scale up pilots with GiveDirectly (direct cash transfer) and evaluate as baseline for effectiveness
  • Increase % budget from 0.7 to 1%
  • Reduced forced migration (address problems at source)

Migration

  • More generous asylum numbers + regime
  • Invest in local communities that take in migrants – scale local services, invest in social cohesion initiatives, incentivise local communities to bring people in

Europe

  • Withdraw A50 (New referendum / Parliamentary decision)
  • Help drive reform agenda – written constitution, elected President?

UN

  • Push for reform, including prioritisation of causes using evidence of impact and risk

Crime + Policing + Prisons

  • Shift focus to community engagement + prevention
  • Rehabilitation investment and focus – cut re-offending rates, cut crime, cut costs of prison service / policing
  • Restorative justice

Drugs

  • Legalise + regulate.  Saves health / prison / policing costs.  Cuts crime. 

Transport

  • Invest to improve regional mobility / ability for people to live somewhere cost effective but work where there are jobs

Environment and Energy

  • Beat CoP targets and play leading role in international fora driving for next level of commitments
  • Drive renewables + reduce fossil fuel dependency (particularly on Russia) – promote cap + trade, re-evaluate taxing / incentives
  • Phase out fossil fuel subsidies
  • Feasibility on 4th gen nuclear (but cost vs. solar / wind… + batteries?)
  • www.communityenergyengland.org – enable community driven energy projects.  Matching / tax breaks?Right to roam (e.g. Sweden)
  • Land reform. Commons run by community?

Religion

  • Reinforce freedom of and from religion
  • Repeal blasphemy laws
  • Disestablish state churches + secularise the state
  • Charitable status / tax breaks only for charitable activity – not for purely religious aims
  • Remove religion as a charitable purpose
    https://www.secularism.org.uk/charities/charity-report.html
  • Ban state funded religious schools

Home + Family

  • No fault divorce
  • Civil partnership / marriage equality for all

Democracy

  • Proportional Representation for parliamentary and local elections
  • Reform House of Lords – replace with elected 2nd chamber
  • Citizen Assemblies
  • https://www.better-angels.org/ for the UK – helping people from different “tribes” have good conversations and find common ground
  • Abolish the monarchy
  • Written constitution?
  • Democracy Tech – transparency + engagement + representation + conversation
  • Keep private money from unduly influencing politics
  • Devolution – rational – local authorities / Scot+NI+Wales / City Mayors
  • Voting rights from 16