1. Social Altruism Motivated by Profit

Usually what is good for society is not necessarily of direct benefit to any one company and so there is no given company which would invest in ensuing that this particular good occur. However there are some cases where this is not the case: e.g. insurance companies attempt to prevent dangerous behavior by their clients since they will have to pay the medical expenses or death benefits. This is an example of what I call here 'social altruism motivated by profit'. Similar mechanisms can be designed to prevent various forms of damage to the economy.

Capitalistic Social Engineering: Helping Big Business make lots of money by pre-emptive rehabilitation of the potentially non-productive. Some people are a drain on the economy (some spend time in jail which is very expensive for the government, some don't work and instead collect government payments and don't earn enough to pay tax), some produce gain (they open businesses which employ people, they earn salaries which are taxed). Some of those who are not productive might wish to be productive - it's possible that if someone could make a success-linked profit on such a transformation, they will be motivated to intervene effectively; one needs to formulate a system where a private corporation can play this role.

Just as insurance companies stimulate people to improve their health situation, fire safety etc, private industry should be encouraged to make money by helping potentially problematic people to achieve their productive potential. Challenge: how to create a system whereby they make money by causing young people in high-crime neighborhoods to choose education and productive lives.
 
The potential for profit: Policing is expensive (and benefits even more so!). The criminal justice system - judges, DA’s etc - is expensive. On the other hand workers contribute to the economy by being productive and also pay taxes, so there is a huge gain to the economy if a young person goes into a profession rather than crime. There is no single company, industry or sector that gets enough of this as a profit to motivate it to ensure that this happens, but the economy as a whole certainly benefits: one needs to compute this expense and the loss of potential earnings to the economy carefully and then work out a way to make some of this available to private enterprise, to make it profitable for them to prevent people from going into crime etc.

Model: One must compute the eventual value to the economy of productive employment and gainful socially productive life, tax revenue etc, vs the cost of welfare payments, the justice system and incarceration costs, damage through crime etc: a private insurance corporation can then receive from the government the differential between the expected governmental savings and losses in return for proven successful intervention and conversion. For example, they can be assigned a geographical area or community where the average is of great economic loss, a known amount averaged over the years, and then br given a 10-year contract to change the situation and reap the reward.

Perhaps a futures-investment by insurance companies and investment banks, buying futures on a certain number of residents of certain communities, they get government money for each number below the expected criminal rate in a population, or of teenage pregnancy, or welfare etc – a percentage of the differential between the economy’s earning and expected spending on that population. They buy stock in companies which hire experts to work with municipalities, residents etc to put in place programs that will work, will achieve results. (Learn from programs with vouchers, privatized education, privately-run jails, new workfare programs etc.)

next naive proposal: Making Peace as Good for the Economy as War Is