# The Loving Takeover

Author

Affiliation

Mike P. Sinn

International Campaign to End War and Disease

Abstract

The companies that lobby your government into spending 604 dollars on missiles for every one dollar on finding out which medicines work are publicly traded. Their shares are for sale to anyone. For roughly \$110 per human, you buy all of them. Then the Optimitron calculates the budget that maximizes median healthy lifespan and median after-tax income, the new board hands that budget to the \$198 million/year lobbying operation, and the lobbyists go sell Congress on the math. Expected value per \$110 contributed: 4,800x to 27,000x. Nobody loses. Existing shareholders get a better strategy. Employees keep their jobs. The board members live longer because the diseases that were going to kill them get funded instead of ignored.

I went shopping on your stock exchanges.

The companies that lobby your government to spend money on missiles instead of medicine? They sell tiny pieces of themselves to anyone. Each piece comes with a vote. Collect enough votes and you pick who sits on the board of directors. The board tells the [\$198 million (95% CI: \$190 million-\$210 million)](../../knowledge/appendix/parameters-and-calculations.llms.md#sec-defense_lobbying_annual)/year lobbying operation what to say. The lobbyists currently say “more missiles.” This is adjustable.

The current allocation, for context: diseases kill [225](../../knowledge/appendix/parameters-and-calculations.llms.md#sec-disease_vs_war_deaths_ratio) of you for every one that war kills. Your governments respond by spending [604](../../knowledge/appendix/parameters-and-calculations.llms.md#sec-military_to_government_clinical_trials_spending_ratio) dollars on the capacity to kill people for every one dollar on finding out which medicines work. The species owns [122](../../knowledge/appendix/parameters-and-calculations.llms.md#sec-nuclear_winter_overkill_factor) apocalypses’ worth of warheads and one civilization to use them on. Nobody calculated any of this. It is just where the lobbying pointed.

**COST TO BUY THE WHOLE THING:** ~[\$873 billion](../../knowledge/appendix/parameters-and-calculations.llms.md#sec-defense_takeover_cost_total), or **~[\$109 (90% CI: \$107-\$111)](../../knowledge/appendix/parameters-and-calculations.llms.md#sec-defense_takeover_cost_per_human) per human.**^([1](../references.llms.md#ref-1-percent-treaty-paper-2025)) ^([2](../references.llms.md#ref-1-pct-treaty-impact-paper-2025))

**WHAT YOU GET:** the lobbying apparatus that has driven your military budget expansion for eighty years, repointed at an [optimal budget](https://manual.warondisease.org/knowledge/appendix/optimal-budget-generator-spec.html) calculated to maximize median healthy lifespan and median income. The spare apocalypses are just the first line item it deletes.

**EXPECTED VALUE PER HUMAN:** ~[\$518,879 (90% CI: \$221,703-\$860,930)](../../knowledge/appendix/parameters-and-calculations.llms.md#sec-treaty_trajectory_lifetime_income_gain_per_capita) in lifetime income, ~[\$2.93 million (90% CI: \$1.29 million-\$4.91 million)](../../knowledge/appendix/parameters-and-calculations.llms.md#sec-treaty_personal_upside_income_plus_health) counting the healthy years ([4.8kx (90% CI: 2.0kx-7.9kx)](../../knowledge/appendix/parameters-and-calculations.llms.md#sec-defense_takeover_roi_income_only)-[26.9kx (90% CI: 11.8kx-45.1kx)](../../knowledge/appendix/parameters-and-calculations.llms.md#sec-defense_takeover_roi_income_plus_health) the contribution; [full model](https://manual.warondisease.org/knowledge/economics/1-pct-treaty-impact.html)).

The cheap version is the [lawsuit](../../knowledge/appendix/lawsuit.llms.md): buy one share, send the board a [love letter](../../knowledge/appendix/love-letter.llms.md), and the law requires them to read it. This is the expensive version: buy enough shares to replace the board entirely, and give the best lobbyists money can buy new talking points. The talking points are better because the math is better. A budget optimized for not dying outperforms the current one on every metric your Congress already claims to care about.

## Why “Loving,” Not “Hostile”

A hostile takeover is hostile because someone loses. The acquirer wins; the acquired gets dismantled, fired, or absorbed against their will.

This one has a structural defect: nobody loses.

Existing shareholders get a company with a better strategy (biotechnology margins are [3.72x](../../knowledge/appendix/parameters-and-calculations.llms.md#sec-pharma_vs_defense_net_margin_ratio) higher than bomb margins). Employees keep their jobs and gain new ones in medical technology. Directors gain approximately [12 years (95% CI: 8 years-18 years)](../../knowledge/appendix/parameters-and-calculations.llms.md#sec-avg_life_extension_per_beneficiary) of additional healthy life, because the diseases that were going to kill them get funded instead of ignored. The acquirers are [8 billion](../../knowledge/appendix/parameters-and-calculations.llms.md#sec-global_population_2024) humans who would rather not die and have [\$109 (90% CI: \$107-\$111)](../../knowledge/appendix/parameters-and-calculations.llms.md#sec-defense_takeover_cost_per_human) each.

On Wishonia, making everyone richer and less dead is just called “a transaction.” On Earth it apparently requires a special adjective.

## Why Buying the Shares Is the Selfish Move

A military contractor’s share price reflects its current business model: sell weapons, lobby for more weapons spending, repeat. If the campaign succeeds, three things happen that make those shares worth more.

First, the economy grows. When a civilization stops spending [\$2.72 trillion](../../knowledge/appendix/parameters-and-calculations.llms.md#sec-global_military_spending_annual_2024) a year preparing to kill itself, [GDP at year 15](https://manual.warondisease.org/knowledge/economics/gdp-trajectories.html) is roughly [1.43x (90% CI: 1.22x-1.56x)](../../knowledge/appendix/parameters-and-calculations.llms.md#sec-treaty_trajectory_gdp_vs_current_trajectory_multiplier_year_15) the current path. Even if the military budget stays at the same fraction of GDP, the absolute budget grows in proportion. The contractor captures more revenue without gaining a single point of market share. Not because it did anything clever. Because the civilization it operates in stopped slowly poisoning itself.

Second, the pivot opens. Your bomb engineers can also build medical devices, drug discovery platforms, and [decentralized FDA](../../knowledge/solution/dfda.llms.md)^([3](../references.llms.md#ref-dfda-spec-paper-2025),[4](../references.llms.md#ref-dfda-impact-paper-2025)) infrastructure. They produce more value per engineer-year doing it than building the [122](../../knowledge/appendix/parameters-and-calculations.llms.md#sec-nuclear_winter_overkill_factor)th apocalypse. This should not have required a spreadsheet to figure out.

Third, governance is priced into every asset you own. Move a company from the United States to Somalia and its shareholders get poorer. Same products. Same employees. The only thing that changed is the quality of the government it operates under. Your species already prices this; it is why the shares are not listed in Mogadishu. The United States is merely less bad, and the [gap between the government you have and the one the data could generate](https://manual.warondisease.org/knowledge/economics/gdp-trajectories.html) is the largest unpriced upside on every share you own. The takeover is how you buy the upgrade.

If the campaign succeeds, the shares go up through all three channels. If it fails, you still own a military contractor, which is approximately what you owned before. The worst case is a slightly lower return than your index fund. The best case is you own the company that cured the thing that was going to kill you.

    THE FLYWHEEL: THREE LOOPS, ONE MACHINE

       HUMANITY BUYS MILITARY CONTRACTOR SHARES
       (~$109 (90% CI: $107-$111) per human buys all of them)
            |
            v
       CREDIBILITY RISES
            |        \
            |         more shareholders read the analysis
            |         [LOOP A: the board pressure improves]
            v
       BOARD CONTROL ACCUMULATES
            |
            v
       OPTIMITRON CALCULATES OPTIMAL BUDGET
       → BOARD HANDS IT TO THE LOBBYISTS
       ($198 million (95% CI: $190 million-$210 million)/year, new instructions)
            |
            v
       TREATY PASSES  ($27.2 billion/year, forever)
            |        \
            |         bondholders collect
            |         $2.72 billion/year, and the
            |         investor lobby pushes for 2%, then 5%
            |         [LOOP B: the lobbying gets stronger]
            v
       CLINICAL TRIALS FUNDED
       ($21.8 billion/year, 80% of every treaty dollar)
            |
            v
       DISEASES START FALLING
            |
            v
       ECONOMY GROWS
       (1.43x (90% CI: 1.22x-1.56x) the current path at year 15)
            |
            \--> the big military contractors have a better long-term market
                 [LOOP C: the shareholder case improves]

The reader who wants only to make money has the same correct action as the reader who wants only to cure diseases. Both buy the shares. Usually greed and altruism point in opposite directions, and greed wins. Here they point in the same direction. This is the first time in your species’ history that selfishness and not dying have pointed at the same button.

## Why This Works

The military-industrial complex is not a government. It is not a sovereign power. It is not a force of nature. It is a collection of publicly traded corporations whose shares are for sale to anyone with a brokerage account.

Stated as a chain:

The diseases that will kill you and your family stay in the trial queue because the trials are not funded. The trials are not funded because the federal budget pays for missiles instead of cures. The federal budget pays for missiles because the military lobby tells Congress to. The lobby tells Congress to because the military contractors authorize and pay for it. The contractors authorize it because their boards vote to. The boards vote to because their shareholders elect them.

The shareholders elect them because nobody has yet mentioned that they could elect a different board for [\$109 (90% CI: \$107-\$111)](../../knowledge/appendix/parameters-and-calculations.llms.md#sec-defense_takeover_cost_per_human) a head.

Every link in this chain is a human institution doing what humans told it to do. None of it is physics. None of it is inevitable. [It has been changed before.](../../knowledge/proof/bomb-budget-cut.llms.md) The last link is the cheapest one to change, and it changes all the others.

## The Math

### Major Western military contractors (approximate market caps, June 2026)

| Contractor               | Ticker | Approx market cap | 50%+1 control cost |
|--------------------------|--------|------------------:|-------------------:|
| RTX (Raytheon)           | RTX    |           ~\$248B |            ~\$124B |
| Boeing                   | BA     |           ~\$175B |             ~\$87B |
| Lockheed Martin          | LMT    |           ~\$127B |             ~\$63B |
| General Dynamics         | GD     |            ~\$97B |             ~\$49B |
| Northrop Grumman         | NOC    |            ~\$79B |             ~\$39B |
| L3Harris                 | LHX    |            ~\$58B |             ~\$29B |
| Leidos                   | LDOS   |            ~\$15B |              ~\$8B |
| Huntington Ingalls       | HII    |            ~\$12B |              ~\$6B |
| CACI International       | CACI   |            ~\$12B |              ~\$6B |
| Booz Allen Hamilton      | BAH    |             ~\$9B |              ~\$5B |
| SAIC                     | SAIC   |             ~\$5B |            ~\$2.5B |
| **US primes subtotal**   |        |       **~\$836B** |        **~\$419B** |
| BAE Systems (UK)         | BA.L   |            ~\$76B |             ~\$38B |
| Thales (France)          | HO.PA  |            ~\$57B |             ~\$28B |
| **Allied primes**        |        |       **~\$132B** |         **~\$66B** |
| **Total Western primes** |        |       **~\$968B** |        **~\$485B** |

These numbers are approximate. Check them against current filings before buying anything, because I got them by observing your planet from several light-years away.

### Per-person cost (with 1.8x (95% CI: 1.5x-3x) acquisition premium)

| Cost distributed across | Per-person cost (realistic) |
|----|---:|
| Global humans ([8 billion](../../knowledge/appendix/parameters-and-calculations.llms.md#sec-global_population_2024)) | **~[\$109 (90% CI: \$107-\$111)](../../knowledge/appendix/parameters-and-calculations.llms.md#sec-defense_takeover_cost_per_human)** |
| Global adults (~5.5 billion) | ~\$160 |
| Global middle class+ (~3.5 billion) | ~\$250 |
| US adults (260 million) | ~\$3,400 |
| US households (130 million) | ~\$6,700 |
| US households earning \>\$100k (~50 million) | ~\$17,500 |

The entire Western military lobbying apparatus, the most effective political-influence operation your planet has produced in eighty years, can be brought under common shareholder control for less than the price of a coffee per week per human for a single year. Your governments spend three times that every year on the arsenal itself.

### How much you actually need

[\$873 billion](../../knowledge/appendix/parameters-and-calculations.llms.md#sec-defense_takeover_cost_total) is the price of certainty, not the price of victory. It is what it costs to own 50.1% and need nobody’s agreement. Board control usually arrives much earlier:

| Tier | Stake | What it gets you |
|----|----|----|
| One share (~\$200) | A letter the board is obliged to read | The [lawsuit campaign](../../knowledge/appendix/lawsuit.llms.md) |
| A fraction of a percent, plus a campaign | Board seats, if the financial case persuades the index funds | Engine No. 1 won three ExxonMobil seats with 0.02% of the shares |
| 1-5% across the primes | Agenda-setting positions at every annual meeting | The [activist tier](../../knowledge/economics/earth-optimization-fund.llms.md) |
| 50.1% | Nobody has to agree with you | [\$873 billion](../../knowledge/appendix/parameters-and-calculations.llms.md#sec-defense_takeover_cost_total) |

Institutional investors hold 70-85% of every big military contractor, and the biggest bloc is three index-fund managers (Vanguard, BlackRock, State Street) with roughly 20-30% among them, per the companies’ own proxy statements. Their job is to vote for whatever makes the shares worth more. The pitch to them is the pitch to everyone: the optimal budget makes the companies more valuable. Each tier is insurance against the cheaper tier failing. You climb only as far as the persuasion fails.

The missile companies are just the first purchase. The [same trick works](../../knowledge/economics/earth-optimization-fund.llms.md) on every industry that pays lobbyists to make its own shareholders sicker and poorer in exchange for a good quarter.

## What You Do Once You Own the Companies

You replace the boards. The new boards plug the [Optimitron](../../knowledge/solution/optimocracy.llms.md) into each company’s lobbying budget. The Optimitron is an [optimal policy generator](https://manual.warondisease.org/knowledge/appendix/optimal-policy-generator-spec.html)^([5](../references.llms.md#ref-opg-paper-2025)) that calculates the federal budget maximizing median healthy lifespan and median income. The [optimal budget generator](https://manual.warondisease.org/knowledge/appendix/optimal-budget-generator-spec.html)^([6](../references.llms.md#ref-obg-paper-2025)) produces the specific line items. The board hands those line items to the lobbyists and says: [sell this](../../knowledge/solution/aligning-incentives.llms.md).

Cutting the arsenal from [122](../../knowledge/appendix/parameters-and-calculations.llms.md#sec-nuclear_winter_overkill_factor) apocalypses toward the number of civilizations available to end (one) is not the goal. It is the first output of a machine whose goal is a budget derived from [193 countries and centuries of data](https://manual.warondisease.org/knowledge/appendix/optimal-policy-generator-spec.html) on what makes the median human healthier and richer, instead of from whoever bought the most senators.

On Wishonia, we use an Optimitron to make every budget decision. It does not have feelings, which is why it is better at governing than your senators. Your senators have feelings, mostly about reelection, which is why they spend your money on missiles instead of medicine.

Military contractors currently spend [\$198 million (95% CI: \$190 million-\$210 million)](../../knowledge/appendix/parameters-and-calculations.llms.md#sec-defense_lobbying_annual) per year lobbying Congress to expand military appropriations. This operation has driven US military spending from its post-war low to [\$886 billion](../../knowledge/appendix/parameters-and-calculations.llms.md#sec-us_military_spending_2024_annual) a year and buried every serious reallocation proposal since the 1960s buildup. It is, by any measure, the most successful sustained influence campaign in human history. It just happens to be pointed at the wrong thing.

After the takeover, the same [\$198 million (95% CI: \$190 million-\$210 million)](../../knowledge/appendix/parameters-and-calculations.llms.md#sec-defense_lobbying_annual) lobbies for the optimal budget instead. The lobbyists do not need new skills. They need [new talking points](../../knowledge/strategy/legislation-package.llms.md), and the talking points are better because the math is better. A budget optimized for median healthy lifespan and median income outperforms the current one on GDP growth, job creation, national security, and deficit reduction. The lobbyists are selling an upgrade, not a sacrifice. They sit in the same chairs and call the same senators. The only thing that changed is that the sentence they say will not result in the lobbyist dying of a preventable disease in twenty years.

Organized business interests get the policy they lobby for; average citizens get approximately nothing^([7](../references.llms.md#ref-gilens2014)). For military contractors, the exchange rate has been measured: \$1,813 in contracts for every dollar spent lobbying^([8](../references.llms.md#ref-lobbying-roi-calc)). Hand the lobby better math, and the senators who depend on military PAC money follow within one election cycle.

## Buying Politicians Versus Buying Their Owners

There is also the rent-versus-own question.

You can [buy the politicians directly](https://manual.warondisease.org/knowledge/appendix/cost-of-change-analysis.html): roughly [\$25.5 billion (90% CI: \$17.5 billion-\$36.3 billion)](../../knowledge/appendix/parameters-and-calculations.llms.md#sec-us_political_reform_investment_total) for the American set, [\$128 billion (90% CI: \$71.7 billion-\$206 billion)](../../knowledge/appendix/parameters-and-calculations.llms.md#sec-global_political_reform_investment) for the world’s. It works, but it is rent. The money is spent, the politicians need re-buying every election cycle, and the other side can outbid you at the next auction.

Shares are different. If the campaign works, you own the machine that buys the politicians, permanently. If it never works, you still own the shares and whatever they gained along the way. Buying politicians is an expense. Buying their owners is an asset. The more expensive path is the cheaper one.

I find it delightful that your species has separate words for “lobbying” and “bribery,” given that the only difference is which building the papers change hands in. But I am told this distinction is very important to your lawyers, so I will respect it the way one respects a child’s imaginary friend.

## Your Money, Your Choice

The entire plan: buy the military contractors, replace the boards, let the [optimal policy generator](https://manual.warondisease.org/knowledge/appendix/optimal-policy-generator-spec.html) and [optimal budget generator](https://manual.warondisease.org/knowledge/appendix/optimal-budget-generator-spec.html) calculate the optimal budget, hand it to the lobbyists, and let every human alive set priorities through the [Wishocracy](../../knowledge/solution/wishocracy.llms.md)^([9](../references.llms.md#ref-wishocracy-paper-2025)).

The optimized [\$198 million (95% CI: \$190 million-\$210 million)](../../knowledge/appendix/parameters-and-calculations.llms.md#sec-defense_lobbying_annual)/year does not go to a committee, a czar, or a panel of experts who will thoughtfully allocate it while charging 40% overhead. It goes to a [Wishocracy](../../knowledge/solution/wishocracy.llms.md)^([9](../references.llms.md#ref-wishocracy-paper-2025)): every person gets a proportional say in how the funds are spent, under real budget constraints, with tradeoffs visible. Want cancer trials? Vote for cancer trials. Pandemic preparedness? Vote for that. Think the whole thing is stupid and the money should stay in missiles? Vote for missiles. The system does not care what you pick. It cares that you pick.

### The Ledger

| Who | Now | After the takeover |
|----|----|----|
| Existing shareholders | Hold military contractor stock | Same stock, repriced upward by the buy-up |
| Employees of the primes | Build weapons on cost-plus | Same desks plus the medical pivot; headcount up |
| Directors and officers | The same disease risk as everyone | ~[12 years (95% CI: 8 years-18 years)](../../knowledge/appendix/parameters-and-calculations.llms.md#sec-avg_life_extension_per_beneficiary) of additional healthy life |
| Early buyers | Hold cash | Bought probability while it was cheap |
| Every other human | The disease queue | ~[\$518,879 (90% CI: \$221,703-\$860,930)](../../knowledge/appendix/parameters-and-calculations.llms.md#sec-treaty_trajectory_lifetime_income_gain_per_capita) in lifetime income, plus the healthy years to spend it |
| Pharma | Casino: 90% failure on its own money | Salary: trials become treaty-funded revenue |
| Insurers | Pay chronic-disease claims forever | Claims fall as cures land |
| Doctors | Paid to argue with insurers | Paid per [trial participant](../../knowledge/solution/dfda.llms.md) |
| Soldiers | Deployed to protect budget lines | Same paycheck (99% stays), fewer occasions to die for it |
| Politicians who vote yes | Military PAC money | More money: campaign support now, a better career after |
| Lobbyists | A [\$198 million (95% CI: \$190 million-\$210 million)](../../knowledge/appendix/parameters-and-calculations.llms.md#sec-defense_lobbying_annual)/year client | A richer client with better math |
| Anyone who refuses the raise | Paid to expand the budget | Outbid and replaced. Self-inflicted. |
| The diseases | [6,650](../../knowledge/appendix/parameters-and-calculations.llms.md#sec-diseases_without_effective_treatment) of them, operating freely | Eradication queue, fully funded |

The plan has exactly one structural adversary, and it is on the last row.

Instead of your government deciding what you need, you decide. Your government’s track record on this question is [604](../../knowledge/appendix/parameters-and-calculations.llms.md#sec-military_to_government_clinical_trials_spending_ratio) dollars on missiles for every one dollar on the trials that might cure what is actually going to kill you. Your track record on this question is that you would rather not die. The data favors your judgment.

Buy a share. Send the board a [love letter](../../knowledge/appendix/love-letter.llms.md) ([eight pre-filled versions, ready to mail](../../knowledge/appendix/pre-filled-demand-letters.llms.md)). Tell one person.

1\.

Sinn, M. P. *The 1% Treaty*. <https://manual.warondisease.org/knowledge/solution/1-percent-treaty.html> (2025) doi:[10.5281/zenodo.20076511](https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20076511)

*Your governments possess nuclear weapons sufficient to end civilization 122 times but have not cured Alzheimer’s once. This treaty asks them to be 1% more rational.*

2\.

Sinn, M. P. *The 1% Treaty: An Incentive-Compatible Approach to Ending War and Disease*. <https://manual.warondisease.org/knowledge/economics/1-pct-treaty-impact.html> (2025) doi:[10.5281/zenodo.18161560](https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18161560)

*6,650 diseases have zero FDA-approved treatments; at current trial capacity, exploring them takes  443 years. Redirecting 1% of military spending scales capacity 12.3x, cutting the timeline to  36 years and preventing 10.7 billion deaths. At \$0.02/DALY, 9.3kx more cost-effective than the best existing interventions. The result holds across every specified adoption pathway.*

3\.

Sinn, M. P. *The Continuous Evidence Generation Protocol: Two-Stage Validation (RWE → Pragmatic Trials)*. <https://papers.acceleratedmedicine.org/dfda-protocol.html> (2025) doi:[10.5281/zenodo.18203375](https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18203375)

*We present the Predictor Impact Score (PIS), a novel composite metric operationalizing Bradford Hill causality criteria for automated signal detection from aggregated N-of-1 observational studies. Combined with pragmatic trial confirmation (based on evidence from 108+ embedded trials), this two-stage framework would generate validated outcome labels at 44.1x lower cost than traditional Phase III trials. This enables continuous, population-scale pharmacovigilance and precision dosing recommendations.*

4\.

Sinn, M. P. *Ubiquitous Pragmatic Trial Impact Analysis*. <https://papers.acceleratedmedicine.org/dfda-impact.html> (2025) doi:[10.5281/zenodo.18243914](https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18243914)

*Only 15 diseases/year get their first treatment each year. With 6,650 diseases lacking effective treatments, the backlog would take 443 years to clear. Integrating pragmatic trials into standard healthcare increases trial capacity 12.3x, cutting that timeline from 443 years to 36 years. The average untreated disease gets a treatment 212 years earlier, saving 10.7 billion deaths at \$9.62 per year of healthy life saved.*

5\.

Sinn, M. P. *The Optimal Policy Generator: A Causal Inference Protocol for Maximizing Median Health and Wealth Through Public Policy*. <https://manual.warondisease.org/knowledge/appendix/optimal-policy-generator-spec.html> (2025) doi:[10.5281/zenodo.18603834](https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18603834)

*The Optimal Policy Generator (OPG) produces systematic public policy recommendations for jurisdictions at any level (country, state, city), generating prioritized enact/replace/repeal/maintain recommendations to maximize real after-tax median income growth and median healthy life years, based on quasi-experimental evidence from centuries of policy variation data.*

6\.

Sinn, M. P. *The Optimal Budget Generator: A Causal Inference Protocol for Maximizing Median Health and Wealth Through Public Goods Funding*. <https://manual.warondisease.org/knowledge/appendix/optimal-budget-generator-spec.html> (2025) doi:[10.5281/zenodo.18356209](https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18356209)

*The Optimal Budget Generator (OBG) uses causal inference, diminishing returns modeling, and cost-effectiveness evidence to determine optimal public goods funding levels that maximize two welfare metrics: real after-tax median income growth and median healthy life years. For each spending category, OBG estimates an Optimal Spending Level (OSL) and produces a gap analysis showing where current government budgets are over- or underfunded relative to evidence-based benchmarks. The Budget Impact Score (BIS) measures confidence in each recommendation based on the quality of causal evidence.*

7\.

Gilens, M. & Page, B. I. [Testing theories of american politics: Elites, interest groups, and average citizens](https://doi.org/10.1017/S1537592714001595). *Perspectives on Politics* **12**, 564–581 (2014).

8\.

Responsible Statecraft. Lobbying ROI calculation (\$1,813 per \$1). *Responsible Statecraft* <https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2021/09/02/top-defense-firms-see-2t-return-on-1b-investment-in-afghan-war/> (2021).

9\.

Sinn, M. P. *Wishocracy: Solving the Democratic Principal-Agent Problem Through Pairwise Preference Aggregation*. <https://manual.warondisease.org/knowledge/appendix/wishocracy-paper.html> (2025) doi:[10.5281/zenodo.18205881](https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18205881)

*Representative democracy suffers from an inescapable principal-agent problem where elected officials’ incentives diverge from citizen welfare. Wishocracy introduces RAPPA (Randomized Aggregated Pairwise Preference Allocation), which aggregates citizen preferences through cognitively tractable pairwise comparisons and creates accountability via Citizen Alignment Scores that channel electoral resources toward politicians who actually represent what citizens want.*

10\.

SIPRI. Global military spending (\$2.72T, 2024). *SIPRI* <https://www.sipri.org/publications/2025/sipri-fact-sheets/trends-world-military-expenditure-2024> (2025).

11\.

UN. Global population reaches 8 billion. *UN: World Population 8 Billion Nov 15 2022* <https://www.un.org/en/desa/world-population-reach-8-billion-15-november-2022> (2022)

*Milestone: November 15, 2022 (UN World Population Prospects 2022) Day of Eight Billion" designated by UN Added 1 billion people in just 11 years (2011-2022) Growth rate: Slowest since 1950; fell under 1% in 2020 Future: 15 years to reach 9B (2037); projected peak 10.4B in 2080s Projections: 8.5B (2030), 9.7B (2050), 10.4B (2080-2100 plateau) Note: Milestone reached Nov 2022. Population growth slowing; will take longer to add next billion (15 years vs 11 years) Additional sources: https://www.un.org/en/desa/world-population-reach-8-billion-15-november-2022 \| https://www.un.org/en/dayof8billion \| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day_of_Eight_Billion*

.

12\.

OpenSecrets. Defense sector lobbying summary. *OpenSecrets* <https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/sectors/summary?id=D> (2025)

*Military sector federal lobbying totaled \$198,009,793 in 2025, up from \$159.5 million in 2024 and \$142.9 million in 2023. Additional sources: https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/sectors/summary?id=D*

.

13\.

Manuel, D. U.s. Defense spending history: 100 years of military budgets. *DaveManuel.com* <https://www.davemanuel.com/us-defense-spending-history-military-budget-data.php> (2025)

*US military spending in constant 2024 dollars: 1939 \$29B (pre-WW2 baseline), 1940 \$37B, 1944 \$1,383B, 1945 \$1,420B (peak), 1946 \$674B, 1947 \$176B, 1948 \$117B, 2024 \$886B. The post-WW2 demobilization cut spending 88% in two years (1945-1947). Current peacetime spending (\$886B) is 30x the pre-WW2 baseline and 62% of peak WW2 spending, in inflation-adjusted dollars.*