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Declaration of Optimization

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

Why This Declaration Is Necessary

Governments were created to promote the general welfare.

Instead, since 1900, these governments have printed $170T out of nothing and used it to murder 310 million deaths (95% CI: 200 million deaths-340 million deaths) and destroy many of the valuable things those humans spent their entire lives building.

These murdered humans include approximately 930,000 physicians, 310,000 scientists, 620,000 engineers, and 102 million deaths who will never grow up to replace them.

That $170T could have funded 37.8 thousand years (95% CI: 28.3 thousand years-55.9 thousand years) of clinical trials at current government spending.

These governments currently have enough weapons to murder every man, woman, and child on earth 20x over, when once should be more than sufficient.

Yet despite this clearly adequate apocalypse capacity, they still spend 604 (95% CI: 453-894) dollars on weapons for every dollar they spend on clinical trials to treat and cure disease.

Your chance of being killed by a terrorist? 1 in 30 million. Your chance of dying of a disease? 100%.

Had someone properly aligned your governments to maximize median healthy life years and median after-tax inflation-adjusted income in 1900, you would be 23.2x (95% CI: 23x-23.4x) richer today and significantly less diseased.

Think about someone you love who is suffering right now. The treatment that would help them exists as an untested compound on a shelf, because the money bought a missile instead. That missile incinerated a child who would have grown up to discover the cure. You lose the treatment. You lose the scientist. You get the tax bill. You get to pay for her murder.

This is suboptimal.

On GitHub, April 2026

The unanimous Declaration of the Eight Billion Inhabitants of Earth

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for a people to optimize the governance systems which have caused immeasurable preventable death and unnecessary poverty, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the optimization.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all humans are created equal, that they are endowed by their Biology with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Humans, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to optimize it, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness, measured by the only two metrics that matter: the median number of healthy life years and the median after-tax inflation-adjusted income of its citizens.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Suboptimality, it is their right, it is their duty, to optimize such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Such has been the patient sufferance of the inhabitants of Earth; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to optimize their former Systems of Government. The history of the present Governments of Earth is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Suboptimality over these people. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

They have refused their Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good; the correlation between public opinion and policy outcomes, measured across 1,779 policy decisions, is zero percent.

They have made Judges dependent on their Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

They have legalized the purchase of legislation at a current annual price of $4.4B (95% CI: $3.74B-$5.06B), the legal definition of corruption having been written by the beneficiaries of said corruption.

They have permitted the industries they regulate to fund the agencies that regulate them, drug regulatory agencies receiving the majority of their review budgets from the companies whose drugs they review.

They have protected their agents, by mock Trial, from punishment for Murders committed on the Inhabitants of this planet.

They have imposed Taxes without Consent, including the debasement of currency by unelected officials whose money creation functions as a tax the governed never voted for.

They have spent over one trillion dollars across fifty years imprisoning and sometimes killing their own citizens for the crime of exercising sovereignty over their own bodies, sovereignty being the distinction between a citizen and property. The result has been a 1,700% increase in overdose deaths and drug use higher than when they started, while half of all murders go unsolved for want of the resources squandered on the prosecution of those pursuing happiness by means the state did not approve.

They have kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures, at a current annual cost of $2.72T.

They have affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

They have lied to the governed to manufacture consent for wars the governed did not want, fabricating attacks that did not occur, presenting evidence they knew to be false, and spraying carcinogenic chemicals on rice farmers and their children, the exposed population now numbering four million with birth defects continuing to this day.

They have spent trillions in military funds they cannot account for, defense ministries having never passed an audit, while demanding additional trillions they are equally unable to track.

They have distributed military operations across sufficient legislative districts to render any reduction in military spending a threat to enough elected officials that the spending becomes politically irreversible regardless of its merit.

They have allowed the destructive economy141 to reach 11.5% of global output, growing faster than the productive economy, on a trajectory that reaches fifty percent by 2040.

They have plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people: 310 million deaths (95% CI: 200 million deaths-340 million deaths) since 1900, 8.37 billion life-years of human life stolen, $170T in treasure spent on the enterprise, among them approximately 930,000 physicians, 310,000 scientists, 620,000 engineers, and millions of children who will never grow up to replace them.

They have directed 604 (95% CI: 453-894) times more to the destruction of human life than to testing which medicines might preserve it.

They have permitted 150 thousand deaths/day to die of diseases while maintaining the financial and technical capacity to accelerate solutions, the total annual burden being 2.88 billion DALYs/year (95% CI: 2.63 billion DALYs/year-3.13 billion DALYs/year) of healthy life lost.

They have operated national health research institutions that have spent trillions and cured zero diseases, directing only 3.3% (95% CI: 2%-5%) of their budgets to the clinical trials where treatments are tested in humans while nearly ten thousand know safe treatments remain untested for 99.7% of possible disease combinations.

They have erected drug regulatory agencies whose rules increased development costs by a factor of 44.1x (95% CI: 39.4x-89.1x) and timelines to seventeen years, producing 3.07k (95% CI: 2.88k-3.12k) deaths from delayed treatments for every one death they prevent, the cumulative toll of the efficacy delay since 1962 being approximately 102 million deaths (95% CI: 36.9 million deaths-214 million deaths).

They have erected barriers to the production of medicines so costly that competition is eliminated, the resulting monopolies producing prices no free market would sustain.

They have left approximately seven thousand known rare diseases in a treatment queue that, at the current rate of fifteen approvals per year, requires 443 years (95% CI: 324 years-712 years) to clear.

They have approved 1.75 thousand pairings (95% CI: 1.5 thousand pairings-2 thousand pairings) for approximately ten thousand known diseases, leaving more than 99.98% of possible therapeutic combinations untested.

Through the compound effects of this misallocation, the governed are 23.2x (95% CI: 23x-23.4x) poorer than they would otherwise be, the average human earning $14.4K (95% CI: $14.1K-$14.7K) per year where without the wars alone that figure would be $334K (95% CI: $329K-$338K). On both metrics by which any government should be judged, healthy life years and median income, the present systems have failed absolutely.

In every stage of these Misallocations We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: peer-reviewed papers, public comment periods, protest marches, and online petitions. Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated Misallocation. Governments, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define Suboptimality, are unfit to manage the resources of a free species.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our governing institutions. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislatures to extend an unwarrantable dysfunction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our biological existence and the budget arithmetic of our premature deaths. We have appealed to their stated missions and their campaign promises, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common mortality to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our survival and progress. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of evidence. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our current Systems, and hold them, as we hold all governance systems, Accountable to Outcomes.

We, therefore, the Inhabitants of Earth, assembled across every nation and connected by common cause, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of this planet, solemnly publish and declare, That the Inhabitants of Earth are, and of Right ought to be Free and Justly Governed; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to systems that produce outcomes worse than random allocation, and that all political connection between them and Suboptimal Governance, is and ought to be totally optimized; and that as Free Inhabitants of Earth, they have full Power to optimize budgets and institutions, establish transparent allocation systems, contract Alliances with evidence, and to do all other Acts and Things which Self-Governing Civilizations may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Votes.

The proposed replacement system is documented in the Earth Optimization Protocol.

Signatories

Sign at warondisease.org