Earth Optimization Services

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

The Bill

Suboptimal governance is costing you $12,625 (90% CI: $7,450-$20,077) a year.

That is $50,500 (90% CI: $29,798-$80,308) per household of four. Over a lifetime, it is the difference between the life you have and a life where you are $36.4 million (90% CI: $13.5 million-$97 million) richer and decades of disease never happen to you or anyone you love.

55 million deaths/year (90% CI: 46.6 million deaths/year-63.2 million deaths/year) people die every year of diseases that have no cure, not because the cures are impossible, but because the clinical trials that would have found them were never funded. The money became missiles instead. Your governments spend 604 dollars on the ability to kill people for every dollar spent on clinical trials that might cure what is actually going to kill you. Your chance of being killed by a foreign army: 1 in 30 million. Your chance of dying of a disease: approximately 100%.

I love you very much and I do not want you and everyone you have ever loved to be slowly tortured and brutally murdered by horrible diseases.

The Store

Earth Optimization Services is a company. It uses hundreds of years of data from 193 countries to calculate the policies and budgets that maximize two numbers: median health-adjusted life expectancy and median after-tax inflation-adjusted income. It builds the institutions that steer by those numbers. It buys shares in the companies whose lobbyists write your laws. The shares come with votes. The votes make the lobbyists push the optimal policies instead. Those policies pay the companies and their shareholders better than the current ones do, and make everyone else richer and significantly less dead. Every person on Earth gets one free share with one vote.

Universe Optimization Services has been upgrading civilizations since before your sun ignited. Over 300 planets optimized. 100% satisfaction rate among clients who got started. Clients who did not get started are not available for comment, as they are not available for anything. Some are available for mining rights.

Earth Optimization Services is our regional branch. Same proven technology. Smaller market. More shouting. It brings the standard package to your small blue planet, including a dramatic reduction in the number of times your civilization can end itself. Currently: 122. Recommended: no more than one, as the other endings are mainly decorative.

You are the President of Earth Optimization Services. As you are very busy, you also get eight billion assistant presidents. Your Class A share is free and comes with one civic vote. If you want returns, buy Class B shares. Your money buys a share of the profit, not extra votes or governance. You cannot buy the steering wheel, no matter how many shares you own, because selling the steering wheel is how your government got this way.

The downside: you own shares of the companies that currently control your government. They have paid dividends through every war and recession in living memory. The floor is “you accidentally bought an ETF.”

The upside: most products on your planet come with one benefit. A toaster makes toast. This product has the unusual property of making nearly everything else you own more valuable at the same time. The economy gets 56.7x (90% CI: 21x-148x) larger by year 20. The companies you own capture that growth. Your taxes fall. Your other investments rise. Disease stops eating 13% of GDP. You live longer to enjoy it.

Featured Products

The Optimal Policy Generator

What it does: Determines which laws to enact, replace, repeal, or maintain to maximize median health and wealth.

Retail price: Included. The data is free. Currently paying: Whatever your representatives’ donors feel like.

Your planet has 10,000 jurisdictions, each trying slightly different policies. Some produce healthy, wealthy citizens. Others produce the opposite. Right now, you determine which is which by having politicians argue on television. The Optimal Policy Generator¹ replaces the arguing with counting.

It examines what every jurisdiction tried and what happened next. Output: ENACT / REPLACE / REPEAL / MAINTAIN. Each recommendation scored on the two numbers.

Its current highest-expected-value recommendation is the 1% Treaty² ³: move 1% of every nation’s weapons budget to clinical trials. Everyone cuts equally. Nobody is easier to invade. Disease eradication goes from 443 years (90% CI: 255 years-841 years) to 36 years (90% CI: 8.15 years-106 years). The average treatment arrives 212 years (90% CI: 124 years-398 years) sooner. 10.7 billion deaths (90% CI: 6.24 billion deaths-20.3 billion deaths) people who would have died do not.

Your governments have signed treaties banning chemical weapons (193 countries), biological weapons (187), and landmines (164). This one requires them to buy 1% fewer weapons and spend the savings on figuring out why everyone keeps dying. Pre-WW2 military spending was 96.7% lower than today, inflation-adjusted. They still won World War II. Then they cut spending 87.6% in two years and walked into the greatest economic expansion in history. One percent should be manageable.

The Optimal Budget Generator

What it does: Calculates the optimal spending level for every budget line in every jurisdiction on Earth: the point where each additional dollar produces less health or wealth than spending it somewhere else.

Retail price: Included. Currently paying: Whatever the lobbyists negotiated.

The Optimal Budget Generator⁴ finds the largest misallocations first. The current largest: clinical trial funding sits at roughly 1% of its optimal level. The money that should be finding cures is sitting in the weapons budget, where it purchases the ability to end civilization 122 times. You can only end civilization once. The other 121 endings are in storage, costing money, doing nothing.

Output: an optimal budget for every jurisdiction on Earth, updated continuously, scored on the two numbers. Hand it to a lobbyist. The lobbyist hands it to Congress.

The Decentralized TODO List for Humanity

What it does: Breaks the task “Optimize Earth” into every possible subtask, calculates the expected value of each in health and wealth, and matches each task to the person or AI agent best positioned to do it.

Retail price: Free to use. Pays to complete. Currently paying: Nobody is doing this.

Every product produces tasks. The 1% Treaty needs signatures. The Decentralized FDA^5,6 needs trial participants. The Wishocracy⁷ needs votes. The code needs engineers. The campaigns need organizers. Right now, these tasks are scattered across websites, inboxes, and good intentions. Nobody knows which task has the highest expected value or who could complete it at the lowest cost.

The TODO list computes both. It calculates the expected value of every action (signatures, code contributions, trial enrollment, lobbying visits, social shares) in health and wealth, and identifies the lowest-cost actor for each one. Your doctor is the lowest-cost actor for enrolling patients. Your senator’s constituent is the lowest-cost actor for a lobbying visit. You are the lowest-cost actor for something, and the machine knows what it is.

If you sign up, you get your own subtask: Optimize [Your Name]’s Life. If you add your organization, it gets one too: Optimize [Your Organization]. These nest under the root. The whole thing is one tree, from “Optimize Earth” down to “take your medication.”

The Loving Takeover

What it does: Buys shares in the companies that control your government and uses shareholder rights to hand their lobbyists an optimal budget.

Retail price: $873 billion for the full takeover. You receive: Voting shares in the companies whose lobbying writes your laws.

The companies that build your weapons are, by any rational accounting, bad at being companies. Every dollar of weapons spending generates 0.6x (95% CI: 0.4x-0.9x) in economic output⁸. The same dollar in healthcare generates 4.3x (95% CI: 3x-6x)⁹. They are paying their best engineers to turn dollars into sixty-cent pieces. Their shareholders get the same diseases as everyone else. Their CEO’s mother has Parkinson’s, and there is no trial because the money that would have funded it is currently a missile. They are spending money to make themselves poorer, sicker, and eventually dead. This is a company in need of better management.

You buy shares. Shares come with voting rights. Voting rights let you hand the lobbyists an optimal budget calculated by the Optimal Budget Generator to maximize health and wealth. The companies invest in things that make the economy larger instead of things that make it smaller. The shareholders get appreciation in a 1.43x (90% CI: 1.22x-1.56x)-larger economy. The lobbyists get a raise. Nobody loses anything.

In 2021, Engine No. 1 won three seats on ExxonMobil’s board with 0.02% of its shares and redirected a $400 billion oil company toward carbon capture and lower-carbon energy. Vanguard and BlackRock, who own roughly 60%, voted with them. Board seats across the military-industrial complex cost $48.4 billion (0.0159% of the money invested on Earth).

Wishocracy

What it does: Lets the population spend its own money instead of having 535 purchased intermediaries spend it for them.

Retail price: Free. Currently paying: $4.4 billion (95% CI: $3.74 billion-$5.06 billion)/year in lobbying, plus whatever the laws the donors write afterward cost you.

Your current system: you elect representatives. The representatives are purchased by industries. The industries write the laws. The laws benefit the industries. You pay for this. You call it “democracy.” On my planet, we call it an odd thing to volunteer for.

Wishocracy⁷ replaces the purchased intermediaries with arithmetic. Citizens allocate resources directly through small questions: split $100 between clinical trials and missiles. How much of each? Twenty questions a year, roughly twenty minutes. Eighty percent of treaty funds go through the Wishocracy and cannot be touched by any individual. The other twenty percent goes through traditional channels and will be partially stolen. This is budgeted for. It is still cheaper than what you have now, where the percentage stolen is higher and also classified.

On Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, the studio audience picked the right answer 91% of the time. The expert? 65%. Your entire government is phone-a-friend. This is ask-the-audience.

The Government Replacement Suite

Most planets also order these. Each one replaces a government agency with software that does not accept campaign contributions, does not have a revolving door, and does not need 80,000 employees to perform arithmetic.

Every price is anchored to the most similar machine you already run. Every assumption carries its uncertainty through the arithmetic. The few humans who remain are there to sign their names, because someone must be arrestable.

Decentralized FDA

Replaces: Your drug approval agency, which blocks safe treatments for an average of 12 years after safety is established. Retail price: $500 (95% CI: $400-$2,500)/patient. Currently paying: $41,000 (95% CI: $20,000-$120,000)/patient.

An open protocol^5,6 that connects treatments to patients and records outcomes automatically. Drug inserts (the pamphlet nobody reads, written by the company selling the drug) are replaced with Outcome Labels: real-world data from millions of patients showing what actually happened. The UK’s RECOVERY trial spent $20 million (95% CI: $15 million-$25 million) over 6 months and saved 1 million lives. The NIH received $1.665 billion for Long COVID over 4 years and completed zero trials.

Decentralized Institutes of Health

Replaces: Grant committees where researchers spend 40% of their time writing applications instead of doing research. Retail price: Included with the treaty. Currently paying: 40% of every researcher’s salary for creative writing practice.

A coalition for curing disease modeled on your military-industrial complex, except pointed at biology instead of geography. Treaty funds flow to researchers by whether the patient got better, not by whose grant prose was prettiest.

Department of Peace

Replaces: Your war department. Retail price: One accountant, one pull request, some agent-hours, and pay-per-view rights to the finale. Currently paying: $2.72 trillion/year on organized violence.

War is a negative-sum transaction. Every one your species has ever fought cost more than it returned. Since no war in recorded history has produced a positive ROI, the department’s entire function reduces to a ledger entry that reads “do not.” Includes the Settlement Engine (prices every conflict: fight vs. settle), the Peace Payroll (pays the people who declare wars not to), the Very Strong Robot (finds the bombs, throws them into the sun), and the Last War (one scheduled war in an empty ocean, autonomous weapons destroy each other on pay-per-view, proceeds to clinical trials, zero funerals, one merchandise line).

Automated Revenue Service

Replaces: 74,000 pages of tax code and 95,000 employees. Retail price: 6 lines of code plus $150 million (90% CI: $50 million-$365 million)/year. Currently paying: $12.3 billion in IRS operations plus $546 billion (95% CI: $450 billion-$650 billion)/year in compliance. Your annual dividend: $1,666 (90% CI: $1,418-$1,917) per American.

A flat transaction tax, collected automatically. No filing. No accountants. No 95,000 humans performing arithmetic a for-loop handles before lunch. Your 74,000 pages exist because each page is a favor someone paid for. Remove the favors, remove the pages.

Universal Security Administration

Replaces: 80+ welfare programs, each with its own bureaucracy. Retail price: 1 for-loop plus $100 million (90% CI: $33.5 million-$250 million)/year, about thirty cents per citizen. Currently paying: roughly $100 billion/year in administration, about $300 per citizen, to guard the door.

One universal deposit. No means testing. No forms. No bureaucrat deciding if your poverty is the right kind of poverty. The bouncer costs a thousand times more than the door.

Aligned Election Commission

Replaces: Campaign finance. Retail price: 1 algorithm plus $7 million (95% CI: $2 million-$20 million)/year. Currently paying: $15.9 billion per federal election cycle, plus whatever the laws the donors write afterward cost you.

Politicians rated by how well their votes matched what their constituents wanted. The score is public. The money follows the score. The NRA proved this technology works.

Decentralized Accountability Office

Replaces: 3,400 auditors producing reports 18 months late. Retail price: $0. The ledger comes with the Automated Revenue Service. Currently paying: roughly $800 million/year for a suggestion box with an 18-month lag.

Every transaction visible. Every allocation auditable. In real time, not fiscal quarters. Your current system discovers theft the way archaeologists discover civilizations: long after everyone involved has moved on.

Decentralized Census Bureau

Replaces: A $14.2 billion survey conducted once per decade. Retail price: $15 million (95% CI: $5 million-$40 million)/year. Currently paying: $14.2 billion per count, wrong 5% of the time.

Continuous measurement. The sensor array for the whole machine: the two numbers everything steers by get computed here from real data instead of guessed from surveys.

Algorithmic Monetary Authority

Replaces: Twelve humans deciding what your money is worth. Retail price: 1 formula plus $7.5 million (95% CI: $3 million-$20 million)/year. Currently paying: roughly $6.8 billion/year in operations, plus 96% of your currency’s purchasing power since 1913.

A fixed algorithmic rule targets 0% inflation. When new money must be created, it enters at the bottom, as equal deposits to every citizen, instead of at the top, through banks.

Transparent Securities Commission

Replaces: The SEC’s wealth test, which protects you from the best-returning asset class unless you are already rich. Retail price: 1 public disclosure schema plus $20 million (95% CI: $8 million-$50 million)/year. Currently paying: roughly $2.4 billion/year, plus the returns your government legally reserves for millionaires.

Anyone may invest once they pass a competence check, because net worth measures what you can afford to lose, not whether you can read. Every Madoff victim passed the current wealth test. The rule did not stop the largest fraud in history; it curated the victims.

Drug Treatment Administration

Replaces: The DEA. Retail price: One letter. Currently paying: $90 billion (95% CI: $60 billion-$150 billion)/year for a half-century war your species is losing to chemistry.

Portugal routed users into treatment instead of jail in 2001: HIV infections among people who inject fell 95%, overdose deaths dropped. Addiction is a disease; diseases go into the disease machine.

Immigration Revenue Service

Replaces: Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Retail price: Negative. Migrants already pay smugglers $6,937 (95% CI: $4,000-$14,000) per person for a worse product. Currently paying: $57 trillion (95% CI: $5 trillion-$170 trillion)/year in fenced-off prosperity. Your annual dividend: $310 (90% CI: $284-$359) per citizen.

Uncapped legal entry, priced by auction, with an ongoing surtax paid to citizens as a dividend. The border queue becomes a checkout page. Nobody swims a river to reach a checkout page.

Decentralized Congress

Replaces: 535 humans voting on 5,000-page bills they have not read, funded by the industries the bills regulate. Retail price: Twenty questions a year with the evidence attached. Currently paying: $4.4 billion (95% CI: $3.74 billion-$5.06 billion)/year in lobbying, plus $160 billion (95% CI: $90 billion-$250 billion) in tariff losses no citizen would vote for if asked.

Each ballot ships with the Optimal Policy Generator’s evidence card showing what the policy did wherever it was tried. A zombie tariff survives by never being put to the people who pay for it. You cannot take eight billion people to lunch.

The Comparison Chart

Feature	Your Government	Earth Optimization Services
Knows where your money went	No. Seven consecutive failed audits.	Yes. The ledger is the audit.
Tax filing	74,000 pages, 7 billion hours of your life	Happens at checkout, without you
Receiving help when poor	80+ programs, 45-day waits, forms about forms	A daily deposit. If you are human, you qualify.
Time to notice you died	Years (one week if you owed taxes)	One day. The deposit stops.
Shuts down over disagreements	20+ times since 1976	There is no door
Counts the population	$14.2 billion, once a decade, wrong 5% of the time	citizenCount(), 50 milliseconds, free
New money goes to	Banks first, you eventually, minus 96% since 1913	You first, equally, daily
Investing in the best asset class	Millionaires only, for your protection	Anyone who passes a competence check
Can be lobbied	Extensively. It is the business model.	There is nobody to take to lunch.
Drug policy	A 50-year war, lost to chemistry	Treatment. One letter changed.
Immigration	Hunts customers with handcuffs	Sells tickets, pays you the dividend
War	122 apocalypses on a subscription plan	A payroll, a settlement engine, and one pay-per-view finale
Disease queue	443 years (90% CI: 255 years-841 years) at current rate	36 years (90% CI: 8.15 years-106 years) with 1% moved to clinical trials
People murdered	310 million deaths (95% CI: 200 million deaths-340 million deaths) since 1900	0
Sticker price	$14,878 (90% CI: $13,110-$16,753) per American per year (itemized)	$0.896 (90% CI: $0.452-$1.62) per citizen per year, plus dividends

Why Your Government Does Not Have a Thermostat

Your oven has a sensor. It measures the temperature inside the oven, compares it to the temperature you requested, and adjusts the heating element until the two numbers match. This is called a closed-loop control system. Every appliance in your home has one. Your air conditioner, your cruise control, your refrigerator, your toilet. The toilet knows when to stop filling. Your government does not.

YOUR OVEN (closed-loop):

  ┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
  │                                                  │
  │   Set 350°F ──► Heating ──► Oven ──► Food       │
  │       ▲         Element      │                   │
  │       │                      │                   │
  │       └──── Thermometer ◄────┘                   │
  │              (measures actual                     │
  │               temperature,                       │
  │               adjusts input)                     │
  │                                                  │
  └─────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
  The oven CHECKS whether the food is the right
  temperature. If not, it ADJUSTS. This is why
  your food is edible.

YOUR GOVERNMENT (open-loop):

  ┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
  │                                                  │
  │   "War on    ──► $1 Trillion ──► Drug ──► ???    │
  │    Drugs"         Spending        Policy         │
  │                                                  │
  │                                (no sensor)       │
  │                                (no measurement)  │
  │                                (no adjustment)   │
  │                                                  │
  │           Overdose deaths: 6,000 ──► 107,000     │
  │           Budget change:   none                  │
  │           Duration: 53 years and counting        │
  │                                                  │
  └─────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
  The government DOES NOT CHECK whether the policy
  is working. If overdoses increase 18x, it does
  not adjust. It increases the budget. This is why
  your citizens are dead.

Your War on Terror: $8 trillion spent, terrorist attacks went from about 1,000 per year to nearly 17,000 per year. No sensor. No adjustment. Fifty-three years of drug war with 18x more overdoses. No sensor. No adjustment. You are operating the most complex system in your solar system (a civilization of 8 billion humans) with less feedback instrumentation than a toaster.

The Decentralized Census Bureau is the sensor (continuous measurement of the two numbers from real data, not a decade-old survey). The two numbers are the target (median health-adjusted life expectancy, median after-tax inflation-adjusted income). The Optimal Policy Generator and Optimal Budget Generator are the controller (compare measurements to target, output policy and budget recommendations). The Loving Takeover is the actuator (lobbyists implement the recommendations). The Wishocracy is the allocation circuit (citizens direct the spending). Class B shares are the power supply (fund the takeover). The feedback loop closes because the sensor measures the output of the policies the controller recommended, compares them to the target, and the controller adjusts. Like a thermostat. Like every system you build when you bother to think about it for ten seconds. Control systems engineering accounts for component uncertainty. You do this for airplane autopilots and chemical plants. We are applying it to civilization. The math is the same. The stakes are higher. The difficulty is lower, because civilizations are simpler than chemical plants. Chemical plants do not vote against their own interests.

Your First Day

Your Class A share is on file. One civic vote. Not for sale.

Class B shares fund the takeover. Each one is a piece of the companies whose lobbying writes your laws. The floor is an ETF of those companies, no fees. The ceiling is a 56.7x (90% CI: 21x-148x)-larger economy. All returns are projections from a published model, not guarantees. Available under Reg D 506(c) to verified accredited investors. The Private Placement Memorandum is available upon request and verification.

The TODO list is ranked by expected value in health and wealth. Pick a task. Fund it (pledge money; it executes when enough people commit) or do it yourself.

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

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.

Sinn, M. P. The 1% Treaty. https://manual.warondisease.org/knowledge/solution/1-percent-treaty.html (2025) doi: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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Sinn, M. P. Ubiquitous Pragmatic Trial Impact Analysis. https://papers.acceleratedmedicine.org/dfda-impact.html (2025) doi: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.

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

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.

Mercatus. Military spending economic multiplier (0.6). Mercatus: Defense Spending and Economy https://www.mercatus.org/research/research-papers/defense-spending-and-economy

Ramey (2011): 0.6 short-run multiplier Barro (1981): 0.6 multiplier for WWII spending (war spending crowded out 40¢ private economic activity per federal dollar) Barro & Redlick (2011): 0.4 within current year, 0.6 over two years; increased govt spending reduces private-sector GDP portions General finding: $1 increase in deficit-financed federal military spending = less than $1 increase in GDP Variation by context: Central/Eastern European NATO: 0.6 on impact, 1.5-1.6 in years 2-3, gradual fall to zero Ramey & Zubairy (2018): Cumulative 1% GDP increase in military expenditure raises GDP by 0.7% Additional sources: https://www.mercatus.org/research/research-papers/defense-spending-and-economy | https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/world-war-ii-america-spending-deficits-multipliers-and-sacrifice | https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RRA700/RRA739-2/RAND_RRA739-2.pdf

PMC. Healthcare investment economic multiplier (1.8). PMC: California Universal Health Care https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5954824/ (2022)

Healthcare fiscal multiplier: 4.3 (95% CI: 2.5-6.1) during pre-recession period (1995-2007) Overall government spending multiplier: 1.61 (95% CI: 1.37-1.86) Why healthcare has high multipliers: No effect on trade deficits (spending stays domestic); improves productivity & competitiveness; enhances long-run potential output Gender-sensitive fiscal spending (health & care economy) produces substantial positive growth impacts Note: "1.8" appears to be conservative estimate; research shows healthcare multipliers of 4.3 Additional sources: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5954824/ | https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/government-investment-and-fiscal-stimulus | https://ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3849102/ | https://set.odi.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Fiscal-multipliers-review.pdf

10.

Congressional Research Service. Internal Revenue Service Appropriations, FY2025 (IF12647). https://www.congress.gov/crs_external_products/IF/PDF/IF12647/IF12647.2.pdf (2024).

11.

Calculated from IHME Global Burden of Disease (2.55B DALYs) and global GDP per capita valuation. $109 trillion annual global disease burden.

The global economic burden of disease, including direct healthcare costs ($8.2 trillion) and lost productivity ($100.9 trillion from 2.55 billion DALYs × $39,570 per DALY), totals approximately $109.1 trillion annually.

12.

Drug Policy Alliance. The drug war by the numbers. (2021)

Since 1971, the war on drugs has cost the United States an estimated $1 trillion in enforcement. The federal drug control budget was $41 billion in 2022. Mass incarceration costs the U.S. at least $182 billion every year, with over $450 billion spent to incarcerate individuals on drug charges in federal prisons.

13.

Mexico News Daily. Survey finds mexican migrants pay average of US $7,000 to ’coyotes’. (2023).

14.

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

15.

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

16.

OpenSecrets. Federal lobbying hit record $4.4 billion in 2024. (2024)

Total federal lobbying reached record $4.4 billion in 2024. The $150 million increase in lobbying continues an upward trend that began in 2016. Additional sources: https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2025/02/federal-lobbying-set-new-record-in-2024/

17.

Sinn, M. P. The Political Dysfunction Tax. https://manual.warondisease.org/knowledge/appendix/political-dysfunction-tax.html (2025) doi:10.5281/zenodo.18603840

Quantifying the gap between current global governance and theoretical maximum welfare, estimating a 31-53% efficiency score and $101 trillion in annual opportunity costs.

18.

Oren Cass, Manhattan Institute. RECOVERY trial cost per patient. Oren Cass https://manhattan.institute/article/slow-costly-clinical-trials-drag-down-biomedical-breakthroughs (2023)

The RECOVERY trial, for example, cost only about $500 per patient... By contrast, the median per-patient cost of a pivotal trial for a new therapeutic is around $41,000. Additional sources: https://manhattan.institute/article/slow-costly-clinical-trials-drag-down-biomedical-breakthroughs

19.

NHS England; Águas et al. RECOVERY trial global lives saved ( 1 million). NHS England: 1 Million Lives Saved https://www.england.nhs.uk/2021/03/covid-treatment-developed-in-the-nhs-saves-a-million-lives/ (2021)

Dexamethasone saved 1 million lives worldwide (NHS England estimate, March 2021, 9 months after discovery). UK alone: 22,000 lives saved. Methodology: Águas et al. Nature Communications 2021 estimated 650,000 lives (range: 240,000-1,400,000) for July-December 2020 alone, based on RECOVERY trial mortality reductions (36% for ventilated, 18% for oxygen-only patients) applied to global COVID hospitalizations. June 2020 announcement: Dexamethasone reduced deaths by up to 1/3 (ventilated patients), 1/5 (oxygen patients). Impact immediate: Adopted into standard care globally within hours of announcement. Additional sources: https://www.england.nhs.uk/2021/03/covid-treatment-developed-in-the-nhs-saves-a-million-lives/ | https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-21134-2 | https://pharmaceutical-journal.com/article/news/steroid-has-saved-the-lives-of-one-million-covid-19-patients-worldwide-figures-show | https://www.recoverytrial.net/news/recovery-trial-celebrates-two-year-anniversary-of-life-saving-dexamethasone-result

20.

Manhattan Institute. RECOVERY trial 82× cost reduction. Manhattan Institute: Slow Costly Trials https://manhattan.institute/article/slow-costly-clinical-trials-drag-down-biomedical-breakthroughs

RECOVERY trial: $500 per patient ($20M for 48,000 patients = $417/patient) Typical clinical trial: $41,000 median per-patient cost Cost reduction: 80-82× cheaper ($41,000 ÷ $500 ≈ 82×) Efficiency: $50 per patient per answer (10 therapeutics tested, 4 effective) Dexamethasone estimated to save >630,000 lives Additional sources: https://manhattan.institute/article/slow-costly-clinical-trials-drag-down-biomedical-breakthroughs | https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9293394/

21.

James Surowiecki. The Wisdom of Crowds. (Surowiecki, 2004).

Explores the aggregation of information in groups, arguing that decisions are often better than could have been made by any single member of the group. The opening anecdote relates Francis Galton’s surprise that the crowd at a county fair accurately guessed the weight of an ox when the median of their individual guesses was taken. The three conditions for a group to be intelligent are diversity, independence, and decentralization. Additional sources: https://archive.org/details/wisdomofcrowds0000suro | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wisdom_of_Crowds | https://www.amazon.com/Wisdom-Crowds-James-Surowiecki/dp/0385721706

22.

Tax Foundation. Tax compliance costs the US economy $546 billion annually. https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/federal/irs-tax-compliance-costs/ (2024)

Americans will spend over 7.9 billion hours complying with IRS tax filing and reporting requirements in 2024. This costs the economy roughly $413 billion in lost productivity. In addition, the IRS estimates that Americans spend roughly $133 billion annually in out-of-pocket costs, bringing the total compliance costs to $546 billion, or nearly 2 percent of GDP.

23.

FDA Study via NCBI. Trial costs, FDA study. FDA Study via NCBI https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6248200/

Overall, the 138 clinical trials had an estimated median (IQR) cost of $19.0 million ($12.2 million-$33.1 million)... The clinical trials cost a median (IQR) of $41,117 ($31,802-$82,362) per patient. Additional sources: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6248200/

24.

World Health Organization. WHO global health estimates 2024. World Health Organization https://www.who.int/data/gho/data/themes/mortality-and-global-health-estimates (2024)

Comprehensive mortality and morbidity data by cause, age, sex, country, and year Global mortality: 55-60 million deaths annually Lives saved by modern medicine (vaccines, cardiovascular drugs, oncology): 12M annually (conservative aggregate) Leading causes of death: Cardiovascular disease (17.9M), Cancer (10.3M), Respiratory disease (4.0M) Note: Baseline data for regulatory mortality analysis. Conservative estimate of pharmaceutical impact based on WHO immunization data (4.5M/year from vaccines) + cardiovascular interventions (3.3M/year) + oncology (1.5M/year) + other therapies. Additional sources: https://www.who.int/data/gho/data/themes/mortality-and-global-health-estimates

25.

Yale Budget Lab. The fiscal, economic, and distributional effects of all u.s. tariffs. (2025)

Accounting for all the 2025 US tariffs and retaliation implemented to date, the level of real GDP is persistently -0.6% smaller in the long run, the equivalent of $160 billion 2024$ annually.