Objection: "Nice idea, but it likely won't happen.". Response: It already did. The Oxford RECOVERY trial tested seven treatments in six months, saved one million lives at five hundred dollars per patient. The F.D.A.'s version costs forty-one thousand dollars per patient for the same information. The trial used existing hospital systems. Hospitals, it turns out, already contain sick people. This was apparently news. Follow-up: "But globally?". Response: The internet scaled globally. So did smartphones. So did TikTok, which is considerably less useful. This just scales what already worked. We Need the Military Budget Objection: "We can't reduce military spending. That would make us vulnerable.". Response: The treaty takes one percent. You keep ninety-nine percent. If you can't defend yourself with ninety-nine percent of history's largest military budget, the problem isn't money. The Pentagon literally cannot account for two point five trillion dollars in spending. You're asking them to redirect money they already lost in the couch cushions. Every nation reduces by one percent, so relative military balance stays proportional. Everyone turns the volume down together. Nobody gets quieter relative to anyone else. The greatest threats today aren't tanks rolling over borders. They're microscopic things rolling through airports. C.O.V.I.D. nineteen killed more Americans than World War One, World War Two, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan combined. It did this without triggering a single defense system. Your nine hundred ninety-nine billion dollar military budget watched it happen, fully armed and completely useless. Broke, sick countries start wars. Healthy countries start businesses. Curing disease is preventative defense with better R.O.I. than any missile system ever built. Follow-up: "But what if enemies don't reduce?". Response: That's what a treaty is. Everyone signs at once. Those who don't simply miss Incentive Alignment Bond benefits. Their politicians lose campaign funding and post-office opportunities. Participating nations' politicians get rewarded instead. Self-interest does the heavy lifting. It always does. Big Pharma Will Block This Objection: "Pharmaceutical companies will kill this. They profit from disease.". Response: Pharma makes MORE money under this model. Watch their opposition evaporate. Current system: Pharma pays two point six zero billion dollars per drug. Ninety percent fail. Only blockbusters profit. The business model is "spend billions gambling, hope one pill pays for the nine that didn't work.". New system: The treaty fund pays pharma to run trials. Trials become revenue, not cost. More drugs become profitable, even the weird ones. Predictable income instead of pharmaceutical roulette. Pharma would lobby FOR this harder than they've ever lobbied for anything. You'd be giving drug companies more money to do what they already do. They'd trample each other getting to the signing ceremony. What About National Sovereignty? Objection: "This forces countries to spend money a certain way. That violates sovereignty." Response: No force involved. Countries sign by choice. Don't want to? Don't. Miss out on the benefits. Citizens demand it? Sign. This is how democracy is supposed to work. I understand you may be unfamiliar with the concept. Follow-up: "What if our government doesn't want to?". Response: Vote them out. This is also how democracy works. (I'm told you've done this before.). "The F.D.A. Exists for a Reason" Objection: "We need F.D.A. approval to ensure safety. You're being reckless." Response: The F.D.A. is a lifeguard who won't throw the life preserver until it passes a twelve-year safety review. By which point you have drowned, decomposed, and become a coral reef. F.D.A. delays from nineteen sixty-two to the present have caused four to ten million American deaths from drug lag. F.D.A. prevented disasters include maybe thalidomide, which caused one thousand deaths. The net result is that F.D.A. policies may have contributed to four thousand to ten thousand deaths for every life saved. Under the decentralized framework for drug assessment, patients see real data on risks and benefits. Then they decide. The radical concept of adults making informed choices about their own bodies. "What If Countries Cheat?" Objection: "Countries will promise to reduce military spending but won't." Response: The system doesn't rely on trust. (Good, because you have none.) It relies on incentives. Politicians who comply receive Incentive Alignment Bond benefits, including campaign funding and post-office career opportunities. Politicians who don't comply get nothing. Contributions are public on blockchain, so compliance is verifiable. Smart contracts route benefits automatically to compliant participants. Traditional treaties rely on trust and shame. This one makes compliance the career-maximizing choice. Politicians comply because it's profitable, not because they grew a conscience. (They didn't.). "You Can't Cure Aging" Objection: "Aging is natural and inevitable. You can't fight nature." Response: Dying from infected teeth was "natural" until dentistry. Dying in childbirth was "natural" until medicine. Dying of smallpox was "natural" until vaccines. "Natural" just means "nobody's fixed it yet." Dying of old age is "natural" in the same way dying of anything is natural. You're just used to this one. You already replace everything that breaks: Hearts are replaced (you're basically a car at this point). Kidneys are replaced (or we hook you to a machine thrice weekly). Blood is replaced (vampire economics, but medical). Bones are replaced (titanium is better anyway). Joints are replaced (your grandma is fifteen percent metal). Aging is damage accumulation with known repair pathways: Telomeres shorten: lengthen them (telomerase activation). Cells senesce: clear them (senolytic drugs). Proteins misfold: refold them (molecular chaperones). Mitochondria fail: replace them (mitochondrial transfer). DNA breaks: repair it (CRISPR, base editing). You went to the moon with slide rules. You can probably fix cells with A.I. Your body is a machine. Machines can be repaired. Aging is harder engineering, not magic. You keep confusing the two because it makes you feel better about not trying. "I'm Just One Person". Objection: "My vote/investment/share won't matter. I'm too small." Response: This needs two hundred eighty million people. You tell ten. They each tell ten. Six degrees of sharing reaches millions. It's a pyramid scheme, except at the end everyone lives longer instead of losing their savings. Your contribution: vote (two minutes), buy bonds (ten minutes), share (fifteen minutes). Total: twenty-seven minutes. Potential return: fifty thousand extra hours of life if diseases get cured. That's the best trade you'll ever make, and you've made some terrible ones. "Reform the System Instead". Objection: "Why not just reform the F.D.A. and N.I.H.?" Response: People have been trying for fifty years. Here's the scorecard: More funding? Tried. They bought more paperwork. Different leadership? Tried. Same results, fancier titles. New regulations? Tried. Now takes twenty years instead of seventeen. Progress. Reform bills? Tried. Lobbyists killed them in committee. Efficiently. You keep trying to teach a fish to climb a tree. The fish isn't broken. It's a fish. The system is hard to fix because it IS working. Just not for you. Defense contractors spend one hundred twenty-seven million dollars yearly on lobbying and get nearly one trillion dollars in contracts. That's not a broken system. That's the most efficient system in American capitalism. They won't surrender it because you asked nicely. Don't reform the system. Build around it. "This Is Politically Impossible". Objection: "No government will agree to this. Pure fantasy." Response: Politicians follow money the way rivers follow gravity. The aim: make this the easiest, most profitable decision of their careers. The military-industrial complex spends one hundred twenty-seven million dollars yearly on lobbyists. You can't beat them with moral arguments. (They're immune.) Beat them at their own game. Raise one billion dollars through VICTORY Bonds. Allocate six hundred fifty million dollars for lobbying. That overwhelms the defense industry's one hundred twenty-seven million dollar spend. Go to the same K-Street firms defense contractors use. Outbid them for their top talent. Lobbyists work for the highest bidder. Become the highest bidder. Politicians suddenly hear more about curing cancer and less about threats from countries they can't find on maps. This isn't fantasy. It's capitalism. Once two hundred eighty million voters demand it and the money is behind it, refusal becomes career suicide. Politicians are very good at not committing career suicide. What If the Science Is Wrong? Objection: "What if we fund one hundred thousand trials and nothing gets cured?". Response: Worst case: you learn, with high certainty, one hundred thousand things that don't work. Edison found ten thousand ways not to make a lightbulb. You'd find one hundred thousand ways not to cure cancer. That's called science. You've been doing it for four hundred years. It's the only method you have that actually works. Maybe use it more. Still better than the current system: One hundred trials over seventeen years, learn nothing, many retire wealthy. N.I.H. funding safe research confirming water is wet. F.D.A. blocking trials because the paperwork had a typo on page eight hundred forty-seven. The decentralized framework runs forty-four point one times more trials for the same budget. Even if ninety percent fail, you get ten times more cures than today. Failure at scale is still more productive than success at a standstill. I Don't Have Time Objection: "I'm too busy.". Response: Vote (two minutes), buy bonds (ten minutes), share (fifteen minutes). Total: twenty-seven minutes. You spent longer than that choosing what to watch on Netflix last night. If diseases get cured, you save hundreds of hours in doctor visits and sick days, plus potentially tens of thousands of hours of extra life. That's a one hundred eleven thousand percent return on twenty-seven minutes. This Is Unrealistic Objection: "This will never happen. You're naive about human nature.". Response: Your species has an impressive track record of calling things unrealistic, then doing them, then pretending you always knew they were possible. Things that were "unrealistic": Human flight (impossible for millennia, then two bicycle mechanics). Moon landing (J.F.K. did it in nine years with computers weaker than your toaster). Democracy (kings ruled for five thousand years, then didn't). Ending slavery (entire economies depended on it). Women voting (half the population was excluded, the other half thought this was fine). The internet (who needs computers talking to each other?). What's actually unrealistic: Spending two point seven two trillion dollars on weapons while sitting on thirteen thousand nuclear warheads. That's enough for one hundred thirty extinction events. You only need one. Expecting different results from the same broken system. Thinking you'll survive the A.I. revolution without fixing incentives. Fifty-five million people die each year from treatable causes. That's the unrealistic thing. You just got used to it. War Is Human Nature Objection: "War is inevitable. Countries need militaries to survive.". Response: Several countries beg to differ. Switzerland: Over two hundred years avoiding major wars. Surrounded by both World Wars (literally in the middle, made chocolate). G.D.P. per capita: ninety-three thousand dollars (not killing people is profitable). Defense spending: zero point seven percent of G.D.P. Life expectancy: eighty-four years (five years longer than Americans who spend five times more on "defense"). Costa Rica: Abolished its army in nineteen forty-eight (said "nah, we're good"). Still sovereign seventy-five plus years later (nobody invaded the country with no oil). Redirected military budget to education and health. Life expectancy matches U.S. at a fraction of the cost. Zero invasions since (turns out nobody wants to conquer happy, educated people). The pattern is not subtle: countries choosing peace get richer. Countries choosing war get poorer. Countries drained by disease are unstable and start fights. Countries investing in their people become too prosperous and comfortable to bother picking them. Nuclear weapons made territorial conquest largely obsolete in nineteen forty-five. You're still budgeting like it's nineteen forty-four. All Wars on X Have Failed Objection: "War on Drugs, War on Poverty, War on Terror all failed. This will too." Response: Those were government wars using central planning. This uses markets. Spot the difference. Why government "wars" fail: They create bureaucracies that need the problem to exist. The War on Drugs needs drug crime. The War on Poverty needs poor people. The War on Terror needs enemies. Each one accidentally created a government department whose continued employment depends on the problem never being solved. It's impressive, really. The only war humanity won decisively was World War Two. And that was against other humans, which is admittedly your area of expertise. When you declare war on abstract concepts, the concepts win. Why the War on Disease is different: Uses markets, not ministries. Pays for outcomes, not process. No bureaucracy to preserve (smart contracts). Competition between solutions. Researchers paid for cures, not grants. You're not declaring war on disease. You're declaring peace with biology. Then letting markets optimize. Call it the Market for Health. It's less dramatic, but it might actually work. This Sounds Like Bribery Objection: "You're just bribing politicians. That's illegal and immoral." Response: Current "legal" lobbying is bribery with better stationery. It currently produces war, disease, and existential risk. This applies the same mechanics, transparently, to save lives instead. The status quo kills people. This kills fewer people. If you're confused about the ethics, count the bodies. It's Unenforceable Objection: "Government promises to pay are unenforceable fantasy." Response: Courts are slow. Money is fast. This doesn't rely on courts. Break your word, the system automatically funds your replacement. Politicians understand this incentive structure instinctively. It's the only language they're truly fluent in. You Can't Verify Two Hundred Eighty Million People Objection: "Impossible to verify two hundred eighty million people online without fraud." Response: You already verify hundreds of millions of people for banking, government services, insurance, and online gambling. You can verify people for the purpose of not dying. It's the same technology. The stakes are just higher and the forms are shorter. Government I.D.s use national e-I.D. systems (Estonia, India, E.U.). Biometrics like fingerprints and face scans ensure unique individuals. A.I. fraud detection uses algorithms to spot suspicious patterns. Math verification enables end-to-end verifiable voting with zero-knowledge proofs. This is a solved problem wearing an unsolved hat. Why Not Just Use Philanthropy? Objection: "If this matters, why not raise money from donors instead of complicated bonds?" Response: All philanthropy combined is a rounding error compared to government budgets. A massive campaign would cannibalize donations from health charities already doing critical work. You'd be stealing from cancer research to fund cancer research, which is impressively pointless even by your standards. The goal is tapping the multi-trillion dollar stream of wasted government spending, not reshuffling the charity tip jar. How Do You Prevent Waste? Objection: "How do you ensure money helps patients instead of funding bureaucracy?" Response: The decentralized framework for drug assessment, or D.F.D.A., model achieves eighty times lower cost per patient. Pragmatic trials cost five hundred dollars. Traditional trials cost forty-one thousand dollars. Same science. Eighty times less overhead. The N.I.H.'s RECOVER initiative spent one point six billion dollars over four years and completed zero trials. Zero. With that same budget, the decentralized model could have run thousands of trials for millions of patients. The N.I.H. managed to spend all that money learning nothing. That takes talent. Why Not Just Increase Health Funding? Objection: "Why cut military spending? Just allocate more money to health research." Response: Money isn't the only constraint. You can't print more physicists. (You've tried. It takes twenty-five years and a P.h.D. program.). Cutting one percent from military budgets doesn't just move dollars. It frees actual human brains from building weapons to curing Alzheimer's. Right now your smartest people are optimizing missile trajectories. Those same brains could optimize drug molecules. The brains don't care. They just go where the funding is. What About Defense Industry Jobs? Objection: "This will destroy millions of military industry jobs." Response: The U.S. contribution is less than zero point five percent of trillions of dollars the Pentagon can't account for. You're not destroying jobs. You're redirecting ghost money into real ones. Engineers building guidance systems can build medical imaging devices. Same skills, fewer explosions, more job satisfaction surveys where nobody ticks "my work kills people." This Violates Election Law Objection: "Foreign nationals funding U.S. elections is illegal, and your bonds sound like securities." Response: Hire good lawyers. Defense contractors figured this out decades ago. You can too. Separate legal entities in each country, zero coordination on political spending. Utility token structures with proper exemptions (Reg S, Reg A Plus). No shared systems, staff, or communication between political entities. If Lockheed Martin can legally funnel money to politicians across 50 countries, you can legally funnel money toward not dying. This is an addressable legal challenge, not an existential one.