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Treaty Feasibility & Cost Analysis

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

“Getting 195 countries to agree costs billions and takes forever.”

No. Getting countries to implement things costs billions. Getting them to sign papers is surprisingly cheap. Humans love signing papers. It makes them feel important. Your entire diplomatic system runs on the principle that writing your name on a document feels like accomplishing something. Sometimes it is. Usually it isn’t. But the signing part is always affordable.

What Treaties Actually Cost

NGO campaign budgets are rarely disclosed publicly, but treaty campaigns run on pocket change compared to the thing they create.

The Ottawa Treaty76 banning landmines took 14 months. One staff member, Jody Williams, grew a coalition to over a thousand organizations across 60 countries. 122 states signed. She won the Nobel Peace Prize. One woman with a phone convinced 122 countries to stop burying explosives in the ground where children walk. Your species is capable of remarkable things when one person gets sufficiently annoyed.

The Cluster Munitions Convention133 took about two years. Seven governments and a coalition of NGOs got 94 states to sign. The Arms Trade Treaty134 took a decade but started with three supporting governments. The Control Arms coalition135 published 50+ reports until 130 countries signed. The Nuclear Ban Treaty136 also took a decade. ICAN ran the entire operation with five staff in a Geneva office. 122 states voted yes. Another Nobel Prize. Five people in a Geneva office won a Nobel Prize. You have more people in your accounting department.

Pattern: Total to get a treaty signed: $15-50M. Your species spends more than that on Super Bowl ads for beer. Beer. The thing that makes you temporarily stupider. You will spend more money selling stupidity beverages during one sporting event than it costs to get 122 countries to agree on anything. I’ve been watching your species for 80 years and the budget comparisons still surprise me.

Inflation-Adjusted to 2024 Dollars

Using BLS CPI data9:

Treaty (Year) Original Cost Estimate 2024 Dollars Inflation Multiplier
Ottawa (1997) $15-25M $30-50M ~2.0x
Cluster Munitions (2008) $15-25M $23-38M ~1.5x
Arms Trade Treaty (2013) $20-30M $27-41M ~1.35x
Nuclear Ban (2017) $10-20M $13-25M ~1.25x

In today’s money: Treaty campaigns cost roughly $25-50M (2024 USD). Banning landmines: ~$40M to get the signatures, $5B+ to actually dig them up76. The paperwork is the cheap part. The paperwork is always the cheap part. The expensive part is doing the thing you wrote on the paperwork, which your species often skips (see: every New Year’s resolution in history).

Cost for a 1% Health Treaty

This one touches military budgets. Suggest moving 1% of the explosion money and politicians look at you like you’ve asked to borrow their favorite child. The reaction is disproportionate to the request, but proportionate to the lobbying dollars behind the status quo. So budget 3-4x what landmines cost.

Phase Duration Estimated Cost Who Pays
1. Pre-negotiations
(Coalition building, expert drafts)		 18–24 months $8–12M Philanthropy (Gates, Open Philanthropy, etc.) + Champion Governments
2. Global Campaign
(Platform, 3.5% consent, media)		 3–5 years $45–80M Philanthropy + Crowd-funding
3. Diplomatic Process
(Conferences, delegate travel)		 18–30 months $15–25M Host Governments + UN Trust Fund
4. Ratification Drive
(Legal reviews, parliamentary aid)		 2–4 years $5–8M Philanthropy
5. Contingency
(Opposition management)		 Ongoing $10–15M Strategic Comms / Lobbying

Total: $83–140 Million

How long each step takes and how much it costs to convince countries to spend 1 percent of their war budgets on not dying.

How long each step takes and how much it costs to convince countries to spend 1 percent of their war budgets on not dying.

The Math

Signing the treaty: ~$83M. What the treaty unlocks: $27.2B/year. Forever.

That’s over 300:1 return on paperwork. If paperwork were a stock, this would be the best-performing stock in the history of your financial markets. It isn’t a stock. It’s a treaty. But the return is real, which is more than your financial markets can say about most of their stocks.

How to Make Governments Sign Things

Politicians move when they see voters demanding it and political cover to do it. Give them both.

First, prove public demand. Get 3.5% of the population52 (280 million people) to say “yes” with verified identity. Every nonviolent campaign52 with 3.5%+ participation has succeeded. That’s not activism. That’s a mandate. Second, prove it’s safe. Peer-reviewed modeling showing every nation gains more in health savings than it loses in military spending. Politicians need cover the way vampires need darkness. They won’t move without it. But give them the numbers, and they’ll move and pretend it was their idea, which is the second most reliable pattern in your species’ political history. (The first most reliable pattern is blaming the previous administration.)

Get 3.5 percent of people to care, show politicians the math won’t break anything, and suddenly they have to listen. Democracy has an override button.

Get 3.5 percent of people to care, show politicians the math won’t break anything, and suddenly they have to listen. Democracy has an override button.

Timeline to “Governments Can’t Ignore This”

With ~$60M in seed funding, you can reach “Treaty-Ready” status in 2-3 years: a platform with 280 million verified supporters (the 3.5% threshold), country-by-country impact modeling, and a coalition of 120+ supportive NGOs and 5-10 champion governments.

Once these assets exist, formal negotiations become very hard to avoid. Not because politicians want them. Because ignoring 280 million people is the kind of career decision that leads to “spending more time with family.”

Two to three years to build the website, run the numbers, and assemble the coalition before you can ask countries to sign. Diplomacy is slow.

Two to three years to build the website, run the numbers, and assemble the coalition before you can ask countries to sign. Diplomacy is slow.

You aren’t buying a treaty. You’re buying the machinery that makes the treaty very hard to refuse.

Political Success Probability: Economic Analysis

This section documents the rationale for the 1% central estimate (and a 25% optimistic scenario ceiling). The model assumes a 99% chance of failure. It’s still a good bet. On Wishonia, we would not invest in something with a 99% chance of failure. On Earth, this is called “venture capital” and your richest humans do it professionally.

Even if this only has a 1 percent chance of working, it saves 503 times more lives per dollar than bed nets. Math is strange.

Even if this only has a 1 percent chance of working, it saves 503 times more lives per dollar than bed nets. Math is strange.

Even at 1% probability of success, this intervention’s expected cost per DALY ($0.177) is still 503x more cost-effective than malaria bed nets ($89/DALY). Bed nets are the gold standard of global health interventions. This beats the gold standard while assuming it will almost certainly fail. The math doesn’t care about your pessimism.

Metric Point Estimate 95% CI
Political success probability

1%

 0.1%-10%
Expected cost per DALY

$0.177

 $0.029-$3.20
Cost-effectiveness vs bed nets

503x

 30x-3.0kx
Bed net cost per DALY

$89

 $78-$100

Historical Precedents (The Depressing Table)

Commitment Target Actually Did It? Duration Notes
0.7% ODA Target 0.7% of GNI to foreign aid ~20% of countries 50+ years Scandinavia and Germany. That’s basically it.
Kyoto Protocol Binding emissions targets ~55% initially, then collapse 1997-2012 US never ratified. Canada withdrew. Classic.
Paris Agreement Non-binding pledges ~15-25% on track 2015-present 195 countries signed. Maybe 40 meant it.
NATO 2% GDP Defense 2% of GDP on defense ~72% of members (2024) Since 2014 Was ~32% until an actual land war in Europe motivated compliance. Took tanks rolling across a border to get countries to spend more on killing. No equivalent motivator exists for spending on not-killing.
EU Stability Pact 3% deficit, 60% debt Routinely violated Since 1997 France and Germany broke their own rule

Pattern: International financial commitments achieve <25% meaningful compliance. Your species signs things and then doesn’t do them. It’s like a New Year’s resolution, but for geopolitics. The gym membership analogy is overused but accurate: purchased with enthusiasm in January, abandoned by February, cited in arguments about personal growth throughout March.

Why a 1% Treaty is Harder Than Most Precedents

Let’s be honest about the obstacles. This is not a chapter written by someone trying to sell you something. (It is. But at least it’s honest about the hard parts.)

It touches military budgets, and politicians would rather discuss their browser history than their defense budget. It requires ongoing annual allocation, not a one-time signature like banning a weapon, which makes it a gym membership for peace: monthly, forever, with no option to cancel by simply not going. There’s no immediate security threat driving it, unlike NATO spending increases post-Ukraine; hard to motivate governments without an active catastrophe, even though 150 thousand deaths/day apparently doesn’t qualify as one (it doesn’t qualify because the deaths are distributed, quiet, and polite, and your species only responds to deaths that are concentrated, loud, and rude). The mechanism is novel: military-to-health reallocation has never been done, and humans are suspicious of things they haven’t tried before, which is odd for a species that also invented bungee jumping, cryptocurrency, and putting pineapple on pizza. And it’s a coordination problem: benefits require critical mass, nobody wants to go first, and everybody wants to go second, which is a fine strategy for a conga line but not for treaty negotiation.

Why a 1% Treaty Might Beat the Odds

Five reasons countries might sign: saves money, voters want it, legal precedent exists, morally defensible, and everyone else is doing it.

Five reasons countries might sign: saves money, voters want it, legal precedent exists, morally defensible, and everyone else is doing it.

It’s self-funding: the health dividends exceed the “cost,” so you make money doing this, which is unusual for moral obligations and also the entire reason it might work, because your species does not do things for moral reasons but does do things for money reasons. It has bipartisan appeal: “Should we cure more diseases?” polls well across every political spectrum, which is one of the only questions that does, alongside “Is water wet?” and “Should we pay Congress less?” It has a referendum pathway that can bypass government resistance through direct democracy, which politicians hate, which is how you know it works. It has visible beneficiaries: 150 thousand deaths/day, which is hard to argue with even for people who argue professionally. And it has network effects: each signing country makes the next more likely, because peer pressure is humanity’s most reliable technology, older than fire, more consistent than gravity, and the reason your teenagers wear the same shoes.

Probability Estimates

Economists would find the following defensible (and economists find very little defensible, which is their brand):

Scenario Probability Translation
Pessimistic floor 0.1% Everything goes wrong. Global crises. Political gridlock. Asteroid, possibly.
Conservative central

1%

 99% chance of failure. Still 503x better than bed nets.
Optimistic ceiling 25% A major crisis opens a political window. Or humans just… decide to be smart for once.

The model uses: Central estimate 1%

Expected Value (Even When You Assume Failure)

Worst case: you wasted less money than bed nets cost. Best case: you ended most diseases. Risk-reward has never been clearer.

Worst case: you wasted less money than bed nets cost. Best case: you ended most diseases. Risk-reward has never been clearer.

At 1% probability of success, expected ROI is 848k:1 (still positive, even assuming near-certain failure) and expected cost per DALY is $0.177, which is 503x better than bed nets at $89/DALY.

Downside: capped at ~$1B. You lose the cost of a nice yacht. Upside: unbounded. You cure most diseases.

Even assuming a 99% chance of total failure, this beats the gold standard of global health interventions. The asymmetry is the point. The downside is a yacht. The upside is the end of most disease. Your species makes bets with worse odds every day in Las Vegas, except in Las Vegas the upside is a slightly larger pile of papers and the downside is a slightly smaller pile of papers. Here the upside is civilization-altering and the downside is one fewer yacht in the marina. The yacht will be fine. It was going to depreciate anyway.

Why The Treaty Won’t Stop at 1%

Most international commitments stagnate after signing. You saw the depressing table. 0.7% ODA targets unmet for 50+ years. Kyoto abandoned. Paris missed. Your track record with follow-through makes goldfish look disciplined. So why would a 1% health treaty be any different?

Because this time, people get paid.

The 80/10/10 funding structure allocates 10% of treaty funding ($2.72B/year at 1%) to Incentive Alignment Bonds. These are securities that pay out when treaties expand, not just maintain. People get rich when more diseases get cured. Finally, a financial instrument that isn’t morally bankrupt. It only took your species 400 years of financial instruments to produce one that doesn’t require someone to suffer. Progress.

The Expansion Mechanism

Treaty Level Annual IAB Pool Political Pressure Historical Comparison
1% $2.72B/year Strong 10x largest NGO budgets
2% $5.44B/year Very strong Nation-state level
5% $13.6B/year Overwhelming Major industry lobby
10% $27.2B/year Probably irresistible No precedent

Why This Differs from Every Other Treaty

0.7% ODA failed because nobody made money when countries complied. The NGOs pushing for compliance have small budgets, compete with each other, and run on guilt. Guilt has terrible fuel efficiency. Guilt gets you to the gym in January. Greed gets you there in July. Guilt volunteers at the soup kitchen once. Greed builds the soup kitchen and names it after itself. Guilt is what your species feels. Greed is what your species does. This treaty runs on what your species does.

Old way: charities beg governments. New way: investors get paid when governments cooperate. Greed works faster than guilt.

Old way: charities beg governments. New way: investors get paid when governments cooperate. Greed works faster than guilt.

The 1% health treaty creates its own expansion lobby. Bond holders profit when the treaty expands to 2%, then 5%, then 10%. These aren’t activists you can ignore at a dinner party. They’re investors with quarterly earnings calls about curing diseases. They have Bloomberg terminals. They have lobbyists. They have the same tools that weapons manufacturers currently use to expand military budgets, except pointed in the opposite direction.

The Ratchet Effect

Once 1% passes, $2.72B/year flows to IAB holders pushing for 2%. When 2% passes, $5.44B/year pushes for 5%. When 5% passes, $13.6B/year pushes for 10%. The political pressure for expansion accelerates with each success, because each expansion funds a larger lobbying force for the next expansion, because the people who got rich at 1% want to get richer at 2%, and the people who got rich at 2% want to get richer at 5%, and so on until the entire engine runs on compound greed, which is like compound interest but for not dying.

And the politicians receiving that pressure have their own compound greed. The treaty’s 10% political incentive allocation scales identically: at 1%, it’s $2.72B/year funding campaign support and post-office career rewards for legislators who voted yes. At 5%, five times that. A politician who votes to expand the treaty is voting to expand their own reelection budget. A politician who votes against expansion is voting to shrink it. You didn’t change what politicians are. You changed what they’re rewarded for.

Most treaties are gym memberships purchased in January and abandoned by February. IABs are the opposite: the constituency for expansion grows with each success. Greed doesn’t take holidays. Greed doesn’t forget. Greed doesn’t lose interest when a new television show comes on. Greed is the only human motivation that has never once failed to show up. This treaty runs on it. On Wishonia, we find this arrangement embarrassing. On Earth, it’s the only arrangement that works.

Long-Term Feasibility

Path one: treaty fizzles. Path two: financial incentives make it grow to $2.7 trillion like compound interest for not dying.

Path one: treaty fizzles. Path two: financial incentives make it grow to $2.7 trillion like compound interest for not dying.

With IABs, the 10% allocation creates a perpetual political engine. A machine that runs on greed and outputs health. Embarrassing, but effective. The most effective things your species has ever built have all been embarrassing. The internet was built for sharing research papers and is used for arguing with strangers. Democracy was built for collective wisdom and is used for electing celebrities. This machine is built for curing disease and is powered by selfishness. The pattern holds.

Without IABs, this joins Kyoto in the Museum of Things Humanity Promised to Do and Then Didn’t. The museum is very large. It has a gift shop. The gift shop sells promises.