Humanity’s Budget

Abstract

A Practical Guide: Get 500 Years of Clinical Research in 20, Avoid the Apocalypse, and Make Humanity Filthy Rich by Giving Papers

Keywords

war-on-disease, 1-percent-treaty, medical-research, public-health, peace-dividend, decentralized-trials, dfda, dih, victory-bonds, health-economics, cost-benefit-analysis, clinical-trials, drug-development, regulatory-reform, military-spending, peace-economics, decentralized-governance, wishocracy, blockchain-governance, impact-investing

If you think of Earth as a household with a budget, here’s what our species decided to spend money on:

Making people die: A lot. Preventing people from dying: Almost nothing.

When you include all the hidden costs (externalities, in economist-speak), war and disease don’t just consume “a lot” of our budget. They consume MORE than our entire planet makes in a year.

That’s not a typo. We’re spending 113% of global GDP on dying and killing.

Imagine if your family earned $100,000 and spent $113,000 on poison and weapons. You’d call that insane. When humanity does it, we call it “normal.”

On The Fundamental Trade-Off (Missiles vs. Medicine)

Before we get into the depressing details, here’s the core choice humanity made:

Humans spend vastly more on tools for killing than on tools for healing.

This wasn’t an accident. This was a choice. A stupid choice, but still a choice.

On What Our Species Actually Prioritizes

Here’s humanity’s annual budget when you include all the real costs:

The Part That Shouldn’t Be Possible

War and disease cost us more than the entire planet’s economic output.

We’re literally spending more than we make on dying. We’re in debt to death itself.

If you ran a business like this, you’d go bankrupt. When humanity does it, we call it “civilization.”

On The Most Absurd Disparity in Human History

The disease burden: $109 trillion annually

What humans spend trying to cure disease: Look at this chart and try not to laugh or cry.

Cost of Disease vs Curing Diseases

The problem costs $109 trillion. Humans spend $67.5B trying to solve it.

That’s like your house being on fire and deciding to address it with a water pistol. Technically you’re trying, but you’re not really trying.

On Why This Is Insane

The Math

War and disease: $129T annually (that’s 113% of global GDP)

Medical research to fix disease: $67.5B

Translation

For every dollar humans spend trying to cure disease, humans spend $1,763 dealing with the consequences of not curing it.

This is the largest market failure in human history. It’s so large it breaks the concept of “market failure.” Markets aren’t supposed to be THIS stupid.

Humanity’s spending priorities are fundamentally broken. Humans spend more on the problems than on the solutions.

A 1% treaty fixes this by redirecting 1% of the “creating problems” budget to the “solving problems” budget.

This shouldn’t be controversial. It should be obvious.