Break the bureaucracy and restore democracy with maths, economics and physics

Break the bureaucracy with maths, economics and physics and deliver products which solve problems for people (humans) enabled by innovative, creative entrepreneurial 21st century businesses which earn revenue for the UK exchequer.

In case anyone has not noticed, the UK is in a doom loop on economic growth, currently we pay £1 out of every £10 raised in tax (paid into by people and businesses) as debt interest [1], this is equivalent to taking 10% of your wealth (if you’re lucky to have any - you’d be in the minority these days) and lighting it on fire.

This is the problem we need to focus on solving, as well as deciding what kind of society we want to be.
Due to UK demographics, we are on a path for things to get a lot, lot worse, unless we change course rapidly with fundamental reforms.

We’ve outsourced management of the economy to a small group of people (OBR) with no democratic accountability. We’ve added process, because we (in some cases understandably) don’t trust our politicians to have the skills to run the economy.

But, the problems in society cannot be fixed by the government tinkering tax policy at the top. We need to stop looking to the government for the solution. The role of the government should not be to problem-solve and firefight, it should be to listen, and to ensure that we are creating the society that we want to be in a collaborative way, and have policies and regulation supporting and enabling that. This is not where we are today.

We need to stop the public discourse shouting at the walls about the system being broken, and listen to each other and collaborate and really solve problems. Everyone wants to help and is fundamentally good, I truly believe that. At the moment, we are not listening to each other or problem-solving. Let’s channel the frustration we all feel into actually fixing the problem, we have everything we need. Let’s go back to the fundamentals, maths, economics and physics.

Why is physics important? So we know the solution works in the real world.
Why is economics important? So we know the money flows make sense aligned with social good to achieve the policy we want to achieve and incentivise entrepreneurs and not increase inequality.
Why is maths important? I hope I don’t have to answer that.

Public sector organisations funded by taxpayers have a unique opportunity and responsibility to create meaningful, positive impact. While it might sometimes feel like process is the goal, it's important to remember that those processes exist to serve real people, and many could be streamlined or automated to free up time and resources.

It’s clear that many individuals in these organisations are working hard under challenging conditions, often without the tools or support they need. Their intentions are good, and their commitment is commendable. But to truly succeed, we need to empower these teams with fresh thinking, modern tools, and a culture of listening and learning.

For leaders, this means moving away from rigid hierarchies and instead trusting the intelligence, creativity, and lived experience of your staff. Enabling rather than controlling them will lead to better outcomes — for employees, for organisations, and for the public they serve.

Organisations — whether public or private — working under public contracts must recognise their wider impact. Every decision, inefficiency, or delay can ripple out to real people struggling to pay bills or find support. Rather than inadvertently contributing to hardship, imagine redirecting those resources toward empowering communities, alleviating stress, and unlocking human potential.

We are all part of a shared society, and the UK faces real challenges — including a growing sense of loneliness and disconnection. Some people are turning to AI for meaningful connections [7]. Instead of turning inward or relying on artificial substitutes, we can build more responsive, human-centred systems that offer both connection and care.

The tools exist. The people are ready. What’s needed is the will to lead differently.

As a millennial, bureaucracy is annoying and odd. I can deal with it, and work around it (god knows I’ve had to). But for Gen-Z and the upcoming generations, who have only ever known life with the internet, they have the power of the world in their pockets, we are ladening them with debt by sustaining bureaucracy, this is not fair or necessary. Organisations as they exist today are simply not credible to Gen-Z. They don’t look to organisations for answers (or indeed management), they look to organisations for leadership and enablement and strategy.

> Reference on UK bureaucracy in energy from BCG:
> https://lnkd.in/e467t3x5

What happens when people disconnect from systems? They try to work around the system, they stop following the law. They turn to crime to try to meet basic needs (getting food to feed their families). Are UK petty crime statistics increasing? Yes - we have decriminalised shoplifting up to the value of £200 [3].

How do we fix that problem? Is it by investing in police to smack down public responses (i.e. hide it and silence dissent)? I would argue not.

We put people in jail, and then use taxpayer money to support their families with welfare. Couldn’t we just have fixed the problem in the first place rather than putting people in prison and wasting more public money on welfare and paying for prison places and borrowing on capital budgets to build new prisons?

Has anyone seen the state of the UK’s water infrastructure? Water demand to cool data centers (to run AI) is set to be on the level of the water demand of the city of Liverpool [2], the infrastructure is creaking, cracking and breaking.

The public discourse is around (largely legal) sewage discharge into rivers and seas (bad, but not this is not the core problem to solve). The core problem is the demand increase and lack of infrastructure investment, the challenge is communicating to the public why their water bills need to increase to resolve this as water is a basic human right.

We’re making sticky plaster decisions to give the appearance of problem solving such as getting rid of the regulator Ofwat (who for the record has positive relationships with all the major stakeholders who need to be involved in delivering the change required).
Ofwat to be abolished — Guardian article

Now we get a big stick regulator? We need to be smarter.

We use clean, pharmaceutical grade water to flush our toilets, water our plants and clean our cars. Perhaps an alternative would be to be honest with the public about the problem (most people are reasonable in my experience) and make a start on fixing the problem. Educate and engage the public. The public are not stupid, we need to stop treating them like they are. This is what Brexit was about, people are tired of bureaucracy, and I’m with them.

Social care is another one.

I think the first principles logic can be applied in multiple areas of the economy:

Prisoner rehabilitation and prevent programme → these people need mentors and to see a different future.
Mental health → bureaucracy stifles innovation and puts people in boxes leads to mental health issues. We add more bureaucracy on top to try to deal with mental health. We need to look to neuroscience and recognise the true [7].
Courts → can we have a digital court system? Open source it? Digitalise the law? Are juries really necessary? Why do we do that in such a big stick way (“you must attend jury service”, really? must I? perhaps you could try to sell it to me on the value and why it helps?).
Housing policy → private rental costs and home ownership stats and trends.
Voting / listening → can we have ways to provide qualitative feedback on priorities which go directly to government in real time over and above ticking a box once every 5 years and trying to play chess about First Past The Post.

I know nothing about these domains nor do I intend to work on them but we need to take a problem-solving approach and enable and elevate the experts who do know about the problem end-to-end and align regulation around delivering these solutions and stop gate-keeping and process following. Tax policy comes at the end to fill in the gaps, and deliver projects of social good which otherwise may not yet be economic, not the beginning. Rachel Reeves has an impossible job.

Technology has changed the world, we need to embrace it, fully and responsibly. We should not be using technology to digitalise/replicate existing processes, we should be using technology to fundamentally solve problems, improve processes and reduce business costs.

Stop “cancelling” people because they have a different point of view to you, this is medieval “burn the witch” thinking. The UK is at risk of sleepwalking into becoming a sectarian society - as someone who grew up on the border with Northern Ireland, I know a thing or two about that.

We need to listen to diverse perspectives and come up with truly inclusive solutions. Inclusivity and diversity is fundamental, but it’s not something for one department in an organisation should be put in charge of (this leads to secret police and very odd power dynamics). Stop the one-size-fits-all (it doesn’t), and do the work to come up with solutions which give people choice and empowers people.

We’ve broken the “social contract” in society. We need to prioritise fixing the social contract, rather than continuing to break it more, so society can have confidence that politicians know what they’re doing. We need to enable politicians to do their jobs.

The UK does innovate - extensively - our universities (including Imperial) are delivering ground-breaking research in genetics, robotics and life sciences. We use public (taxpayer money) to pay to develop the solutions, and then actively roadblock ourselves from being able to deliver this innovation & thinking as profitable businesses and make money off them here in the UK via our regulation system, access controls and lack of developed capital markets.

We pay and do all the hard work, and then let US businesses make the money off it (soon will be to China).

China though it presents challenges, are primarily a competitor, and they’re winning [4] [5]. A bit to do on listening to people, but I’m sure they’ve got a 25 year plan for that too. I know who I am backing in this race, and I know who I want to be backing, but I am learning Chinese as a backup plan.

There is one domain I do know about that is energy. I’ve studied at top universities and worked in energy in the most innovative tech businesses for the last 13 years. When I was 16 I heard about climate change for the first time, and I was horrified we were not already working on this. I reduced my income by more than 80% to start a PhD at Imperial 4 years ago because I was so annoyed by how unfairly energy is paid for.

Today there is almost no resemblance between what you pay on your energy bill to the costs you impose on the system. Sure, we balance the books (most of the time: Energy profits levy [6]), but we put the whole energy transition at risk and promote inequality and unfairness, this is not acceptable.

What I’ve come up with in the PhD is a socio-techno-economic energy market design from the first principles of maths, economics and physics aligned to UK energy policy. It doesn’t solve the technical side, and then the economical side and then the social side. It solves all of the areas at once, in consideration of the other domains.

I came up with this myself (with help) with deep, deep thinking. I learned about different domains outside my area of expertise and I built something that I think will work if implemented (we need to build and test it). I believe it would enable the UK to meet its energy policy goals (sustainability, affordability and security of supply).

I’m an engineer, I’m not an economist or a behavioural scientist. I see the fact this happened (me having to learn about economics and behavioural science independently) as a failure of industry & academia.
Why was there not already a team working on this in a collaborative way with all disciplines represented?

If we can fix energy, why can’t we fix everything else?

I was horrified a few months ago to see Ed Davey on Sky News promoting CfDs (contracts for difference), and then Richard Tice from Reform UK threatening businesses on CfDs. Now we have a false party-political narrative on CfDs.

By all means, do the CfD thing for the moment, but it’s another sticky plaster (same as flexibility markets), it’s not the solution, but breaking things more immediately without having the proper solution ready to go is a dangerous message. I’m not suggesting we fix everything today, but we need to know where we are going.

Who in politics can link the CfD conversation back to what we are trying to do in energy: carbon reduction, energy security, having a fair way for energy costs to be recouped, and a fair way for the energy system to be paid for?

This is what I have done in my PhD and I’m building it now.