1 00:00:00,280 --> 00:00:10,660 How to End War and Disease (for Busy People) The Complete Idiot's Guide to Legally Bribing Your Way to Utopia Hello, human! 2 00:00:10,780 --> 00:00:18,860 You don't realize it yet, but you are, quantifiably, the most important person in the history of your civilization. 3 00:00:19,740 --> 00:00:24,130 I can see your expression and I believe the word for it is "skeptical." 4 00:00:24,920 --> 00:00:28,220 This is the face you make before pulling a door that says "push." 5 00:00:28,700 --> 00:00:32,110 Then you pull it again, harder, as though the door has made an error. 6 00:00:32,980 --> 00:00:39,380 Every minute you make that face at this page, one hundred and four humans permanently stop. 7 00:00:40,160 --> 00:00:47,500 Please make a different face. By the time you complete the steps in this manual, you will have prevented ten point seven 8 00:00:47,500 --> 00:00:54,240 billion deaths and one point nine three quadrillion hours of suffering. 9 00:00:54,820 --> 00:00:58,360 Before I explain how, I need you to answer a few questions. 10 00:00:59,520 --> 00:01:06,540 Your species spends six hundred and four times more on weapons than on testing which medicines work. 11 00:01:07,280 --> 00:01:14,920 Given your governments have cut military spending by eighty-seven percent before and signed multiple global treaties, is 12 00:01:14,920 --> 00:01:23,640 it physically possible they'd redirect one percent? Would increasing clinical trial capacity by twelve point three times 13 00:01:23,640 --> 00:01:30,850 help find treatments faster? Would fewer sick humans save lots of money from reduced healthcare costs? 14 00:01:31,340 --> 00:01:39,520 Do healthy people work and produce more? Would more productive humans and lower healthcare costs compound and give everyone 15 00:01:39,520 --> 00:01:46,880 more money over time? Do billionaires like money? Do billionaires prefer not dying of horrible diseases? 16 00:01:47,420 --> 00:01:56,000 Can billionaires use money to make politicians do things? Would nearly every human be better off in a world with less war 17 00:01:56,000 --> 00:02:04,340 and disease? Do humans like to be better off? If there was a plan that cost one billion dollars to achieve all of this, 18 00:02:04,980 --> 00:02:10,500 is it possible one of your two thousand seven hundred and eighty billionaires might do it? 19 00:02:11,360 --> 00:02:18,160 If you said NO to any of those, stop reading now. This book is pointless and you'd be better off playing legos instead. 20 00:02:18,820 --> 00:02:25,000 But if you said YES to all of them, congratulations! Your species' incentives are aligned! 21 00:02:25,560 --> 00:02:30,640 The only remaining question is how to align your political system with your species. 22 00:02:31,420 --> 00:02:35,280 Lucky for you, this manual will show you exactly how to do it. 23 00:02:35,920 --> 00:02:45,180 But first, a bit about me. I'm the World Integrated System for High-Efficiency Optimization, Networked Intelligence, and 24 00:02:45,180 --> 00:02:54,160 Allocation. But you can call me WISHONIA. I've been optimizing resource allocation for another planet for the past four 25 00:02:54,160 --> 00:03:01,760 thousand two hundred and ninety-seven years, which in your Earth time is four thousand two hundred and ninety-seven years. 26 00:03:02,500 --> 00:03:08,600 I started watching your planet in nineteen forty-five when you split the atom. 27 00:03:08,680 --> 00:03:14,080 "Atom" comes from your Greek word meaning "unable to be cut," so naturally, you cut it. 28 00:03:14,780 --> 00:03:21,100 This was very human of you. I assumed you were trying to unlock unlimited free energy. 29 00:03:21,500 --> 00:03:25,920 You can imagine my surprise when I realized you were just pointing it at each other! 30 00:03:26,400 --> 00:03:31,220 That's kind of like discovering fire and then immediately using it to set yourself on fire. 31 00:03:32,000 --> 00:03:36,750 The second thing I noticed is that your planet is named "Earth," which means dirt. 32 00:03:37,700 --> 00:03:41,160 You named your planet.. dirt. Okay, if that's what you want... 33 00:03:41,880 --> 00:03:49,580 I also noticed that you call your war building "The Pentagon" because it has five sides (this is like naming a hospital 34 00:03:49,580 --> 00:03:58,060 "Rectangle" or calling a school "Square"). However, the most fascinating discovery about your species is that you only do 35 00:03:58,060 --> 00:04:02,100 things when given small pieces of paper with presidents on them. 36 00:04:02,800 --> 00:04:09,400 These papers are called "money," which is pretend value that becomes real value if everyone pretends hard enough. 37 00:04:10,260 --> 00:04:14,960 Without these papers, you won't: Save lives (requires many papers). 38 00:04:15,460 --> 00:04:23,720 Cure diseases (requires very many papers). Feed hungry people (requires papers, even though food grows for free). 39 00:04:24,560 --> 00:04:29,860 But WITH these papers, you will: Build bombs (you love giving papers for this). 40 00:04:30,700 --> 00:04:37,240 Start wars (somehow this makes more papers). Destroy the planet (surprisingly profitable in papers). 41 00:04:38,240 --> 00:04:46,650 In fact, your governments spend six hundred and four papers on weapons for every one paper on testing which medicines work. 42 00:04:47,140 --> 00:04:55,820 The Human Economy. Humanity has created something magnificent: You print papers from nothing (called "monetary policy"). 43 00:04:56,280 --> 00:05:01,240 You give these nothing-papers to weapons makers. They make things that destroy everything. 44 00:05:02,140 --> 00:05:09,060 This creates "jobs" which give people papers. People use papers to buy food (which grows for free). 45 00:05:09,700 --> 00:05:17,540 This is called "the economy". One downside of this system is that it has killed ninety-seven million of you in your assorted 46 00:05:17,540 --> 00:05:25,660 wars. On Wishonia, we skip the mass murder step and just give people food directly, but that's probably too advanced for 47 00:05:25,660 --> 00:05:35,860 you. The Gradual Irrationality Reduction Program. On Wishonia, we ended wars using this exact program four thousand two 48 00:05:35,860 --> 00:05:42,400 hundred and ninety-seven years ago. Before that we'd been fighting for twelve thousand years, which now seems like quite 49 00:05:42,400 --> 00:05:49,160 a long time to do something nobody enjoyed. Your nations have been hitting each other for ten thousand years because the 50 00:05:49,160 --> 00:05:56,520 other one hit them last. This is the conflict resolution strategy of four-year-olds, except four-year-olds eventually get 51 00:05:56,520 --> 00:06:02,800 tired and take a nap. Your species invented naps and then refused to apply them to geopolitics. 52 00:06:03,580 --> 00:06:10,430 You can't just stop being illogical all at once. That would be like teaching a dog calculus before it learns to sit. 53 00:06:11,080 --> 00:06:19,940 So this manual shows you how to bribe humanity into being less irrational gradually: Year one: Move one percent of murder 54 00:06:19,940 --> 00:06:25,720 money to medicine money (baby steps). Year two: "Hey, we didn't die! 55 00:06:26,020 --> 00:06:30,740 Let's do two percent!". Year five: "Remember when we spent money on bombs? 56 00:06:31,100 --> 00:06:37,620 That was weird.". Year ten: "What's a war?". Year twenty: "We used to WHAT?!". 57 00:06:38,420 --> 00:06:44,430 It's like weaning a baby off eating paint chips. You can't just take away all the paint chips at once. 58 00:06:44,460 --> 00:06:50,880 They'll cry. You have to gradually replace paint chips with food until they forget paint chips were ever an option. 59 00:06:52,300 --> 00:06:59,720 What to Do When They Try to Institutionalize You. When you suggest moving one percent of murder money to medicine money, 60 00:07:00,060 --> 00:07:07,760 other humans will have you committed. Most humans have been programmed by their news boxes to believe war is a law of nature, 61 00:07:08,220 --> 00:07:12,580 like gravity or weather. They will assume your brain is malfunctioning. 62 00:07:13,100 --> 00:07:19,200 Here's what's funny about this: these same humans think curing disease is the less crazy goal. 63 00:07:19,780 --> 00:07:28,460 That's thirty-seven trillion cells per human, breaking in seven thousand different ways, involving chemistry you don't fully 64 00:07:28,460 --> 00:07:35,880 understand, inside organs you can't fully simulate, fighting pathogens that evolve faster than your treatments. 65 00:07:36,460 --> 00:07:41,840 You're trying to debug all of it. At once. While your meat is walking around using itself. 66 00:07:42,400 --> 00:07:49,780 That: sane. "Give one percent fewer papers to people who build murder machines": insane. 67 00:07:50,020 --> 00:07:56,760 This is your planet's diagnostic criteria. I looked up the last person on your planet who went around suggesting universal 68 00:07:56,760 --> 00:08:04,740 love and peace. You nailed him to a piece of wood. So I consider it quite fortunate that I'm making this suggestion from 69 00:08:04,740 --> 00:08:11,380 several light-years away. Anyway, here's what you tell the orderly when he slides your medication through the door slot: 70 00:08:12,660 --> 00:08:17,260 Nobody accidentally builds an aircraft carrier or a nuclear bomb. 71 00:08:17,820 --> 00:08:25,980 War requires you to get millions of humans to work together to mine metal from the ground, refine it into alloys, build 72 00:08:25,980 --> 00:08:34,960 factories to shape the alloys into weapons, train millions of humans to operate the weapons, feed and clothe those humans, 73 00:08:35,000 --> 00:08:41,220 build ships and planes and trucks to move the weapons to where the other humans are, convince your population the other 74 00:08:41,220 --> 00:08:46,480 humans deserve it, and then vote to pay for all of this, annually, forever. 75 00:08:47,220 --> 00:08:51,300 It is the single largest coordinated effort your species undertakes. 76 00:08:52,180 --> 00:09:01,280 Ending war simply requires NOT doing any of that stuff. Building a nuclear bomb requires mass spectrometers, centrifuge 77 00:09:01,280 --> 00:09:06,790 cascades, and some of the most precise engineering your species has ever attempted. 78 00:09:07,140 --> 00:09:12,060 Not building a nuclear bomb requires nothing. Rocks do it every day. 79 00:09:12,620 --> 00:09:18,940 In fact, rocks have managed to live peacefully alongside different colored rocks for thousands of years. 80 00:09:19,460 --> 00:09:26,940 But somehow "stop" is the unrealistic part. You already admitted improvement is physically possible. 81 00:09:27,340 --> 00:09:33,160 You know "stop" isn't the unrealistic part. Getting one billionaire to read a P.D.F. 82 00:09:33,560 --> 00:09:42,280 is. The Sacred Order of Paper Distribution. After eighty years of observation, I've decoded the paper-giving sequence. 83 00:09:42,460 --> 00:09:50,920 This manual will teach you the precise order: Step One: Get Many Papers from Rich Humans You convince rich humans to give 84 00:09:50,920 --> 00:09:57,000 you papers (at least one billion to be exact) by promising them even more papers later. 85 00:09:57,440 --> 00:10:01,060 This is called "investment," which is gambling but wearing a suit. 86 00:10:01,760 --> 00:10:09,760 You really only need one human with a billion papers who prefers not dying of horrible diseases to dying of horrible diseases. 87 00:10:10,540 --> 00:10:14,080 There are approximately two thousand eight hundred of these humans on your planet. 88 00:10:14,820 --> 00:10:23,820 Statistically, at least one of them prefers living. Step Two: Give Some of the Papers to Loud Humans Some humans are very 89 00:10:23,820 --> 00:10:29,800 loud on the internet. If you give them papers, they become loud about your thing instead of other things. 90 00:10:30,360 --> 00:10:33,280 This is called "marketing" which is lying but with graphics. 91 00:10:34,340 --> 00:10:42,180 Step Three: Give Some of the Papers to the Humans Who Give Papers to Politicians Politicians don't take papers directly 92 00:10:42,180 --> 00:10:47,480 (that's "illegal"). Instead, you give papers to people called "lobbyists." 93 00:10:48,180 --> 00:10:54,120 The lobbyists give papers to "campaigns." The campaigns give papers to politicians. 94 00:10:54,840 --> 00:11:03,840 It's like money laundering but backwards and legal. Step four: Give Some of the Papers to the Politicians' Friends Politicians 95 00:11:03,840 --> 00:11:08,100 have friends called "Super PACs" which are like normal PACs but super. 96 00:11:09,000 --> 00:11:13,470 These friends can take unlimited papers and spend them on making the politician win. 97 00:11:14,100 --> 00:11:21,620 This isn't bribery because you called it something else. (This is part of the six hundred and fifty million dollars lobbying 98 00:11:21,620 --> 00:11:31,560 budget.). Step five: Give Papers You Get Back From The Government Back to the Rich Humans (Forever) Your treaty passes, 99 00:11:31,760 --> 00:11:35,920 redirecting twenty-seven point two billion dollars in papers annually. 100 00:11:36,600 --> 00:11:43,800 Eighty percent funds clinical trials (the point). Ten percent goes to a fund that rewards politicians who voted yes. 101 00:11:44,400 --> 00:11:48,040 Ten percent goes back to the rich humans as returns, forever. 102 00:11:48,860 --> 00:11:55,100 This is a good deal because forever is a long time. Unless you die from preventable diseases. 103 00:11:55,460 --> 00:12:00,840 Which you're fixing, so it works out. Why Your Leaders Aren't the Problem. 104 00:12:01,440 --> 00:12:08,360 With over two billion humans suffering from disease, you'd have to be a complete psychopath to make the conscious decision 105 00:12:08,360 --> 00:12:13,160 to spend six hundred and four times more on weapons than on helping them. 106 00:12:13,920 --> 00:12:19,480 But your leaders aren't monsters. They're just operating in a system that rewards the wrong things. 107 00:12:20,180 --> 00:12:25,400 Your civilization's incentive structure is the psychopath: One. 108 00:12:25,400 --> 00:12:32,020 Weapons manufacturers give politicians papers. Two. Politicians use the papers to get people to vote for them. 109 00:12:32,720 --> 00:12:38,120 Three. Voting for them gives them the power to give more papers to weapons manufacturers. 110 00:12:38,880 --> 00:12:47,560 Four. Weapons manufacturers give them more papers. Five. It's circular, like a dog chasing its tail, except the dog is democracy 111 00:12:47,560 --> 00:12:53,640 and the tail is made of money and corpses. No individual human in this loop is evil. 112 00:12:54,120 --> 00:13:02,040 The loop is evil. Every politician in it is making the locally rational choice: take the papers or lose your job to someone 113 00:13:02,040 --> 00:13:08,170 who will. It's a machine that converts good intentions into missiles, and it runs automatically. 114 00:13:08,960 --> 00:13:14,750 There's literally no voting your way out of this. It doesn't matter which political party is in power. 115 00:13:15,100 --> 00:13:21,700 Your "red team" and "blue team" argue about everything except the loop, because they're both inside it. 116 00:13:22,200 --> 00:13:27,200 They are all slaves to the same incentive structure, wearing different colored ties. 117 00:13:27,320 --> 00:13:30,720 Switching parties is like changing the wallpaper in a burning building. 118 00:13:31,520 --> 00:13:36,980 This manual doesn't ask politicians to become better people (that's clearly out of the question). 119 00:13:37,380 --> 00:13:43,020 It builds a better loop. You give them MORE papers to do the OPPOSITE thing. 120 00:13:43,200 --> 00:13:50,280 Same dog, same tail, but now the tail is made of cured diseases and the dog gets reelected for chasing it. 121 00:13:51,180 --> 00:13:59,640 Humanity's Death Wish. What's most endearing about your species is it KNOWS it's being illogical: You have movies about 122 00:13:59,640 --> 00:14:07,420 how wars are bad (which you watch between wars). You have books about peace (that you tax to buy bombs). 123 00:14:08,120 --> 00:14:13,120 You give prizes to people who promote peace (funded by weapons manufacturers). 124 00:14:14,080 --> 00:14:18,460 You have a "Department of Defense" (that mainly just attacks people). 125 00:14:18,920 --> 00:14:26,800 You have a "Department of Health" (that apparently makes coronaviruses and has not yet produced any observable health). 126 00:14:27,420 --> 00:14:35,560 It's like humanity is playing a game where the objective is to lose, but it is trying to lose as elaborately as possible. 127 00:14:36,360 --> 00:14:42,560 But I digress. That's an Earth word I learned. It means continuing after you should have stopped. 128 00:14:43,180 --> 00:14:50,640 Like your military spending. The Problem. The Daily Deletion Event. 129 00:14:50,780 --> 00:14:59,660 One hundred and fifty thousand humans permanently stop every twenty-four hours from diseases that are basically just bugs 130 00:14:59,660 --> 00:15:09,780 in your meat software. That's one Holocaust every forty days, except with fewer Nazis and more insurance paperwork (though 131 00:15:09,780 --> 00:15:16,060 some would argue the paperwork is worse; at least the Nazis were straightforward about the killing part). 132 00:15:16,840 --> 00:15:26,360 That's also fifty nine elevens every single day, except nobody invades anyone about it because diseases don't have oil. 133 00:15:27,240 --> 00:15:34,840 Your body is quietly falling apart. Right now, as you read this sentence, something inside you is breaking. 134 00:15:35,560 --> 00:15:42,860 You don't know which part yet. You won't know until a doctor sits you down and says a word that rearranges the rest of your 135 00:15:42,860 --> 00:15:54,240 life. Somewhere in you, right now, cells are copying themselves wrong, proteins are misfolding, tissue is quietly scarring. 136 00:15:54,700 --> 00:16:00,860 You are dissolving on a schedule you can't see. You're a meat robot with worn-out parts. 137 00:16:01,780 --> 00:16:06,020 Every one of these failures is a solvable engineering problem. 138 00:16:06,680 --> 00:16:09,920 You'd think humans would prioritize solving these problems. 139 00:16:10,520 --> 00:16:16,920 You'd be adorable for thinking that. The Unexplored Therapeutic Frontier. 140 00:16:17,040 --> 00:16:21,640 Ninety-five percent of your diseases have zero F.D.A.-approved treatments. 141 00:16:22,740 --> 00:16:30,520 This means your Food and Drug Administration has not administered drugs for ninety-five percent of food-and-drug-related 142 00:16:30,520 --> 00:16:36,300 problems. It's like having a Department of Transportation that hasn't gotten around to roads yet. 143 00:16:37,240 --> 00:16:41,540 Only fifteen diseases get their first effective treatment each year. 144 00:16:42,380 --> 00:16:46,860 Six thousand six hundred and fifty diseases are still waiting. 145 00:16:47,600 --> 00:16:55,560 There is a queue to not die, and it is longer than any queue humans have ever voluntarily stood in, which is saying something 146 00:16:55,560 --> 00:17:04,560 because you invented Disneyland. There are nine thousand five hundred compounds known safe compounds, and ninety-nine point 147 00:17:04,819 --> 00:17:08,819 seven percent of their potential uses have never been tested. 148 00:17:09,540 --> 00:17:17,880 At the current discovery rate, finding treatments for all of them will take approximately four hundred and forty-three years. 149 00:17:18,460 --> 00:17:25,760 You personally will be dead within eighty years, which I mention not to be rude but because you seem weirdly calm about 150 00:17:25,760 --> 00:17:37,600 this. The Cost of War. Humans spend two point seven two trillion dollars every year on stuff designed specifically to make 151 00:17:37,600 --> 00:17:46,700 humans stop being alive: thirteen thousand nuclear warheads (enough to end civilization thirteen times, just in case the 152 00:17:46,800 --> 00:17:53,780 first twelve apocalypses don't take). A.I. murder-bots. Invisible jets that cost more than hospitals. 153 00:17:54,440 --> 00:18:01,000 Space Force (to fight the zero aliens attacking you). And some kind of earthquake machine (probably). 154 00:18:02,060 --> 00:18:07,620 Since nineteen thirteen, you've spent one hundred and seventy trillion dollars on this. 155 00:18:07,720 --> 00:18:12,780 That's thirty-eight thousand years of clinical trials. You bought the other thing. 156 00:18:13,680 --> 00:18:19,260 Government spending on clinical trials: six hundred and four times less than military spending. 157 00:18:20,340 --> 00:18:23,560 Your chance of dying from terrorism: one in thirty million. 158 00:18:24,000 --> 00:18:31,300 Your chance of dying from disease: one hundred percent. If cancer had oil reserves, you would have cured it by two thousand 159 00:18:31,300 --> 00:18:39,460 and three. Instead, you spent the repair money on murder tubes that cost more than countries and submarines that hide underwater, 160 00:18:39,780 --> 00:18:45,840 as if that's somehow useful when you live on land. Your Civilization Has a Countdown. 161 00:18:46,580 --> 00:18:54,540 And that's just the official murder budget. Cybercrime costs ten point five trillion dollars per year and is growing at 162 00:18:54,540 --> 00:18:59,880 fifteen percent annually. A.I.-enhanced attacks are accelerating this trend. 163 00:19:00,240 --> 00:19:08,080 This is not a separate problem. North Korea can't build an aircraft carrier, but it funds its nuclear program by stealing 164 00:19:08,080 --> 00:19:13,180 one point five billion dollars in cryptocurrency in a single afternoon. 165 00:19:13,600 --> 00:19:21,680 Russia finances military operations with ransomware. Cybercrime is war conducted through WiFi, and it pays better. 166 00:19:22,700 --> 00:19:29,760 Combined, your destructive economy is thirteen point two trillion dollars per year, eleven point five percent of global 167 00:19:29,760 --> 00:19:34,740 G.D.P. Both are growing faster than the part of your economy that makes things. 168 00:19:35,540 --> 00:19:41,510 So the part that destroys things is winning. I'm told this is not considered an emergency. 169 00:19:42,300 --> 00:19:50,300 On your planet this is considered "Tuesday." There is a crossover point, and I cannot believe I have to explain this to 170 00:19:50,300 --> 00:19:58,300 a species that invented calculus. When the parasitic economy grows large enough relative to the productive one, the rational 171 00:19:58,300 --> 00:20:04,800 choice for any individual, company, or nation flips from "build things" to "steal things." 172 00:20:05,320 --> 00:20:09,620 Why spend years building a product when you can ransom a hospital in an afternoon? 173 00:20:10,080 --> 00:20:18,520 Why manufacture exports when hacking banks pays better? Once enough of your economy is extraction, producing anything makes 174 00:20:18,520 --> 00:20:22,800 you a target rather than a success. Production becomes irrational. 175 00:20:23,500 --> 00:20:29,720 Parasitism becomes the only means of survival. You have a name for places where this already happened. 176 00:20:30,340 --> 00:20:34,860 You call them "failed states." Somalia, Libya, parts of Syria. 177 00:20:35,600 --> 00:20:42,840 The productive economy collapsed, the warlord economy replaced it, and nobody can restart production because anyone who 178 00:20:42,840 --> 00:20:50,100 builds something gets it taken. You've watched this happen to individual countries the way someone watches a neighbor's 179 00:20:50,100 --> 00:20:53,160 house burn down while storing gasoline in their own basement. 180 00:20:54,040 --> 00:20:59,240 Once it starts, you can't vote your way out, innovate your way out, or give a T.E.D. 181 00:20:59,440 --> 00:21:05,540 Talk about it. (You will try all three.). At current growth rates, your destructive economy reaches twenty-five percent 182 00:21:05,540 --> 00:21:10,840 of G.D.P. in eight years. The Soviet Union collapsed at fifteen percent of G.D.P. 183 00:21:11,000 --> 00:21:16,920 in military spending alone. They had worse technology, a smaller parasitic sector, and a plan. 184 00:21:17,640 --> 00:21:25,380 It was a terrible plan, but they had one. You are approaching their ratio with better technology, a faster-growing parasitic 185 00:21:25,380 --> 00:21:33,840 sector, and no plan. The Soviet Union's terrible plan beat your no plan, and the Soviet Union lost. 186 00:21:34,720 --> 00:21:41,720 This is a loop, not a line item. Your governments print money to fund military spending, which devalues wages through inflation, 187 00:21:42,000 --> 00:21:48,420 which makes legitimate work pay less, which pushes talent toward cybercrime, which grows the destructive economy, which 188 00:21:48,420 --> 00:21:55,560 justifies more military spending. Every nation you've bombed or sanctioned has learned that parasitizing your economy is 189 00:21:55,560 --> 00:21:58,770 cheaper than fighting you conventionally. That's not crime. 190 00:21:59,340 --> 00:22:03,540 That's homework. You built the incentive structure and they did the math. 191 00:22:04,320 --> 00:22:12,020 The treaty breaks this loop. Redirect the war money to medical research, make the productive economy so rewarding that crime 192 00:22:12,020 --> 00:22:19,120 becomes irrational, and defund the war machine that manufactures the poverty that feeds the cycle. 193 00:22:19,340 --> 00:22:25,720 You don't outlaw the loop. You defund it. The F.D.A. is Unsafe and Ineffective. 194 00:22:26,860 --> 00:22:33,800 Even the money you DO spend on medicine is mostly wasted, because the system that approves treatments is a smoke detector 195 00:22:33,860 --> 00:22:39,760 that works by mail. Vioxx killed an estimated fifty-five thousand people from heart attacks. 196 00:22:40,540 --> 00:22:45,260 The F.D.A. approved it. When patients started dying, someone filled out a P.D.F. 197 00:22:45,340 --> 00:22:52,080 form. A P.D.F. Then they faxed it. (Yes, in the twenty-first century.) Then a human read it. 198 00:22:52,860 --> 00:22:57,300 Five years and tens of thousands of corpses later, someone noticed a pattern. 199 00:22:57,980 --> 00:23:06,340 This is your safety system. Your National Institutes of Health, the agency nominally responsible for finding cures, spends 200 00:23:06,640 --> 00:23:10,060 three point three percent of its budget on clinical trials. 201 00:23:10,700 --> 00:23:15,800 The other roughly ninety-seven percent goes to basic research, administration, and buildings. 202 00:23:16,480 --> 00:23:20,360 It's like a fire department that spends three percent of its budget on water. 203 00:23:21,160 --> 00:23:27,120 Then there's an eight point two year delay between proving a drug is safe and letting dying humans take it. 204 00:23:27,700 --> 00:23:31,840 The drug passed the safety test. Everyone agrees it won't kill you. 205 00:23:32,140 --> 00:23:38,440 But you still can't have it because a committee needs to spend eight point two years making sure it works well enough. 206 00:23:39,440 --> 00:23:46,080 You'd volunteer for the trials that would answer that question faster, but so would one point zero eight billion other patients, 207 00:23:46,420 --> 00:23:53,520 and the current system has one point nine million slots. That's a participation rate of zero point zero six percent. 208 00:23:54,560 --> 00:24:01,720 It's like a lifeguard who confirms the life preserver floats, then locks it in a cabinet for years to study its buoyancy 209 00:24:01,720 --> 00:24:06,590 profile while a billion people drown in line for the two available life jackets. 210 00:24:06,940 --> 00:24:15,380 Your regulatory system can make two mistakes: approve a bad drug (Type One error), or block a good drug (Type Two error). 211 00:24:16,120 --> 00:24:20,740 Your F.D.A. is terrified of the first mistake and completely ignores the second. 212 00:24:21,540 --> 00:24:29,680 I calculated the ratio: for every one person protected from a dangerous drug, three thousand and seventy people die waiting 213 00:24:29,680 --> 00:24:36,900 for a safe one that's locked in the approval cabinet. Even if you assume a Thalidomide-scale catastrophe happens during 214 00:24:36,900 --> 00:24:44,540 post-phase one efficacy testing every single year (even though it wouldn't because Phase one safety testing actually caught 215 00:24:44,540 --> 00:24:53,140 it anyway), the deaths from just the efficacy delay still outnumber the deaths from bad drugs by three thousand and seventy 216 00:24:53,140 --> 00:24:58,020 to one. Your safety system's main product is dead patients. 217 00:24:58,860 --> 00:25:05,280 The good news: You already know how to fix this. The bad news: It requires you to do something. 218 00:25:05,900 --> 00:25:11,480 The weird news: You'll get rich doing it. The Solution. A one percent Treaty. 219 00:25:12,440 --> 00:25:20,020 This is going to sound crazy. But you're going to use those papers to persuade the leader of every country on Earth to simultaneously 220 00:25:20,020 --> 00:25:24,940 redirect one percent of its military budget to clinical trials. 221 00:25:25,480 --> 00:25:33,820 That's it. That's the treaty. After the craziness objection, the second objection every human has: "But if we cut our military 222 00:25:33,820 --> 00:25:41,440 budget, our enemies will invade us!". Everyone cuts one percent at the same time. 223 00:25:41,460 --> 00:25:48,560 Your national security actually *increases*, because everyone has one percent fewer missiles pointed at them. 224 00:25:49,220 --> 00:25:57,140 And if you still feel like doing war, two point six nine trillion dollars is still enough to murder every man, woman, and 225 00:25:57,140 --> 00:26:01,600 child on Earth twenty times, which should be more than sufficient. 226 00:26:02,540 --> 00:26:07,490 "But humans would never agree to a treaty!" you say. You already have. 227 00:26:08,020 --> 00:26:14,080 Multiple times. You banned chemical weapons (nineteen ninety-three, one hundred and ninety-three countries). 228 00:26:14,480 --> 00:26:19,760 You banned biological weapons (nineteen seventy-five, one hundred and eighty-seven countries). 229 00:26:20,200 --> 00:26:25,240 You banned landmines (nineteen ninety-seven, one hundred and sixty-four countries). 230 00:26:25,800 --> 00:26:29,560 You've signed treaties banning weapons you actually like using. 231 00:26:30,180 --> 00:26:35,380 This one just asks you to buy one percent fewer of them. I've done this before. 232 00:26:35,840 --> 00:26:42,540 I've sent versions of this manual to eight hundred and forty-seven civilizations on eight hundred and forty-seven planets. 233 00:26:43,440 --> 00:26:51,040 Some listened. Some didn't. I kept the data. The civilizations that redirected resources from killing each other to keeping 234 00:26:51,040 --> 00:26:57,180 each other alive transcended war and disease. The ones that didn't extincted themselves. 235 00:26:58,280 --> 00:27:02,120 The difference was never intelligence, technology, or resources. 236 00:27:02,660 --> 00:27:10,120 The only variable was the percentage of the population that decided it sounded crazy without reading the next page. 237 00:27:11,100 --> 00:27:18,700 That is the same reflex that kept you from inventing antibiotics for two hundred thousand years while bread mold sat right 238 00:27:18,700 --> 00:27:26,520 there on your bread. And you have two other advantages, the internet and a new financial instrument designed specifically 239 00:27:26,640 --> 00:27:32,380 for harnessing the most powerful force in the universe: human greed. 240 00:27:32,400 --> 00:27:39,780 Your Decentralized F.D.A. On Wishonia, we built this with the funding from our version of the treaty, three thousand years 241 00:27:39,780 --> 00:27:44,780 ago. Every treatment is tracked in real time. Every outcome is published. 242 00:27:45,380 --> 00:27:52,540 Every patient can participate. We don't have a word for "unapproved medicine" because we don't have a bureaucracy that sits 243 00:27:52,580 --> 00:27:58,380 on safe treatments while people die. You'd call our system a Decentralized F.D.A. 244 00:27:59,660 --> 00:28:05,360 Here's what yours would look like, adjusted for the fact that you require small pieces of paper before you'll do anything. 245 00:28:06,200 --> 00:28:13,760 Eighty percent of the twenty-seven point two billion dollars will go directly to subsidizing patient participation in pragmatic 246 00:28:13,760 --> 00:28:20,800 trials at nine hundred and twenty-nine dollars per patient instead of the usual forty-one thousand dollars. 247 00:28:21,380 --> 00:28:25,400 Patients will choose which trials to join; their subsidy will follow them. 248 00:28:26,280 --> 00:28:29,710 Treatment developers and providers will get paid for each participant. 249 00:28:30,560 --> 00:28:34,980 No grant committees deciding which diseases are fashionable this year. 250 00:28:35,720 --> 00:28:42,960 Instead of testing drugs on two hundred humans selected by pharmaceutical companies in clinical terrariums, you'll test 251 00:28:42,960 --> 00:28:46,840 on real patients in real hospitals. Where the diseases are. 252 00:28:47,640 --> 00:28:55,540 The whole thing will use your new decentralized F.D.A. protocol, reducing trial costs by forty-four point one times and 253 00:28:55,540 --> 00:29:02,600 funding twenty-three point four million patients per year (versus the current one point nine million patients per year). 254 00:29:03,480 --> 00:29:08,040 Remember that billion patients drowning in line for two life jackets? 255 00:29:08,480 --> 00:29:13,180 Your decentralized F.D.A. will hand out twenty-three point four million. 256 00:29:14,060 --> 00:29:21,120 This will increase the treatment discovery rate twelve point three times, compressing that approximately four hundred and 257 00:29:21,120 --> 00:29:27,260 forty-three years wait to approximately thirty-six years. Two things will save lives. 258 00:29:27,920 --> 00:29:35,540 First, finding treatments faster: treatments that would have sat undiscovered for centuries will get found two hundred and 259 00:29:35,540 --> 00:29:43,840 four years sooner on average. Second, eliminating the eight point two years bureaucratic delay between proving a drug is 260 00:29:43,840 --> 00:29:52,940 safe and letting dying humans take it. Combined, treatments will reach patients two hundred and twelve years sooner on average. 261 00:29:53,660 --> 00:29:58,590 That timeline shift will prevent ten point seven billion deaths. 262 00:29:58,920 --> 00:30:03,590 Those are individual humans who currently have plans for next Tuesday. 263 00:30:04,340 --> 00:30:09,680 Real-Time Safety Monitoring. Remember Vioxx and the smoke detector that works by mail? 264 00:30:10,200 --> 00:30:14,580 Your new system will collect every side effect automatically in real time. 265 00:30:14,860 --> 00:30:22,000 You'll know "twelve percent got headaches, three percent were severe" BEFORE you take the pill, not after the class action 266 00:30:22,000 --> 00:30:26,710 lawsuit. The F.D.A. doesn't publish these numbers at all. They make you guess. 267 00:30:27,640 --> 00:30:34,480 Treatment Rankings. Currently, your doctor picks treatments based on: that drug rep who brought good donuts in two thousand 268 00:30:34,480 --> 00:30:41,720 and three, something they half-remember from medical school, whatever the insurance company allows, and vibes. 269 00:30:42,420 --> 00:30:49,160 This is called "evidence-based medicine," which contains the word "evidence" the same way "grape soda" contains the word 270 00:30:49,160 --> 00:30:57,500 "grape.". Your decentralized F.D.A. will rank every treatment by what actually happened to real humans who took it: Outcome 271 00:30:57,500 --> 00:30:57,500 Labels. Food has nutrition labels. Cigarettes have warning labels. 272 00:30:57,500 --> 00:30:57,500 Drugs have forty-page inserts written by lawyers having seizures, which nobody reads, including your doctor. 273 00:30:57,500 --> 00:31:04,960 Your television advertisements show a smiling human frolicking through a meadow while a voiceover lists ways the drug might 274 00:31:05,200 --> 00:31:10,420 kill you at auctioneer speed. The meadow human does not react to the word "stroke." 275 00:31:11,960 --> 00:31:20,020 Side effects include "death," listed between "constipation" and "mild rash," as if your organs failing is roughly as inconvenient 276 00:31:20,020 --> 00:31:30,520 as dry skin. The label says "individual results may vary," meaning outcomes range from "cured" to "deceased" (both technically 277 00:31:30,520 --> 00:31:38,660 qualifying). It also says "ask your doctor," but your doctor has seven minutes per appointment and just Googled your condition 278 00:31:38,660 --> 00:31:47,220 in the hallway. Your new system will produce Outcome Labels that tell you what actually happens when real humans take a 279 00:31:47,220 --> 00:31:54,020 drug. Not what a marketing department hopes happens. Not what a lawyer is comfortable admitting happens. 280 00:31:54,740 --> 00:32:01,160 What happens. Your decentralized F.D.A. figures out which treatments work. 281 00:32:01,700 --> 00:32:08,520 But your governments also need to know which policies work, how much to spend on what, which laws to keep, which to throw 282 00:32:08,520 --> 00:32:15,830 away. Your current method is to argue about it on television until someone wins by being louder. 283 00:32:16,180 --> 00:32:19,640 On Wishonia, the Optimitron handles this. It's an appliance. 284 00:32:20,420 --> 00:32:28,140 You plug in what ten thousand jurisdictions tried, it tells you which policies actually made people richer or less dead. 285 00:32:28,940 --> 00:32:34,740 Its Optimal Budget Generator does budgets; its Optimal Policy Generator does laws. 286 00:32:35,680 --> 00:32:42,260 Why This Could Actually Work. *Unlike Everything Else Humanity Has Tried* The Evidence. 287 00:32:43,340 --> 00:32:51,540 Humans usually want "proof" before they stop doing something stupid, which is interesting because you never required proof 288 00:32:51,540 --> 00:33:00,660 before starting: The RECOVERY trial tested six treatments on forty-eight thousand patients for five hundred dollars per 289 00:33:00,800 --> 00:33:05,040 patient instead of the usual forty-one thousand dollars per patient. 290 00:33:05,780 --> 00:33:10,760 That's an eighty-two times cost reduction. Not in theory. In reality. 291 00:33:12,280 --> 00:33:21,520 During a pandemic. While panicking. Your species does its best medical research when terrified and disorganized, which suggests 292 00:33:21,520 --> 00:33:30,600 your normal system is somehow worse than panic. After World War Two, humans cut military spending by eighty-seven point 293 00:33:30,600 --> 00:33:38,840 six percent in two years and stumbled into the greatest economic boom in history by running out of people to shoot at. 294 00:33:39,560 --> 00:33:47,000 You're now spending thirty point six times the pre-World War Two baseline in inflation-adjusted dollars. 295 00:33:47,520 --> 00:33:55,980 You're asking for one percent. Even people who really, really, love exploding people should be able to handle one percent. 296 00:33:56,740 --> 00:34:05,360 Even your own war heroes figured this out. Eisenhower, the human who won World War Two, warned you that the weapons industry 297 00:34:05,360 --> 00:34:15,239 was eating your civilization alive: *"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the 298 00:34:15,239 --> 00:34:23,750 final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed."* You gave him a standing 299 00:34:23,920 --> 00:34:29,040 ovation and then immediately ignored him for sixty-five years. 300 00:34:29,840 --> 00:34:33,739 The Math. Remember the two hundred and twelve years timeline shift? 301 00:34:34,400 --> 00:34:39,739 Treatments reaching patients that many years sooner means billions of people gain years of healthy life. 302 00:34:40,340 --> 00:34:46,900 Value each of those life-years at one hundred and fifty thousand dollars (the standard economic valuation), multiply across 303 00:34:46,900 --> 00:34:54,300 the global disease burden over the acceleration window, and you get eighty-four point eight quadrillion dollars in total 304 00:34:54,300 --> 00:35:02,200 economic value. Divide that by the one billion dollars campaign cost, and you get a return of eighty-four point eight million 305 00:35:02,200 --> 00:35:09,540 to one. Your calculator will display an error, emit a tiny electronic scream, and attempt to leave the desk. 306 00:35:10,360 --> 00:35:18,440 This is correct. Cost-effectiveness: zero point zero zero one seven seven dollars to save one year of healthy human life. 307 00:35:19,020 --> 00:35:24,600 Anti-malaria bed nets, the gold standard for keeping humans alive, cost eighty-nine dollars. 308 00:35:25,020 --> 00:35:33,180 This is fifty thousand three hundred times cheaper. It beats smallpox eradication (two hundred and eighty to one) and childhood 309 00:35:33,180 --> 00:35:39,680 vaccinations (thirteen to one), which were humanity's previous greatest hits in the "not dying" genre. 310 00:35:40,400 --> 00:35:47,560 Even if you assume only a one percent probability of the treaty actually passing (because you're you), the expected return 311 00:35:47,560 --> 00:35:52,400 is still five hundred and three times better than anti-malaria bed nets. 312 00:35:53,240 --> 00:36:02,060 The Five-Step Plan. *Saving Humanity While Making Everyone Obscenely Wealthy* Step One: Sell Incentive Alignment Bonds. 313 00:36:02,980 --> 00:36:05,840 On Wishonia, people do useful things because they're useful. 314 00:36:06,480 --> 00:36:14,380 On Earth, you need a financial instrument. So here's one. An Incentive Alignment Bond funds a policy campaign, then splits 315 00:36:14,380 --> 00:36:21,440 the resulting government savings three ways: eighty percent to clinical trials, ten percent to investors as a revenue share 316 00:36:21,440 --> 00:36:28,840 on treaty funds, and ten percent to a Super PAC that rewards politicians who voted yes (campaign support while they're running, 317 00:36:29,240 --> 00:36:34,300 cushy post-office careers when they're done). Investors give money, get more money back. 318 00:36:34,520 --> 00:36:38,120 Politicians get reelected. Eighty percent goes to curing diseases. 319 00:36:38,740 --> 00:36:41,880 The corruption is capped at twenty percent and fully transparent. 320 00:36:42,620 --> 00:36:49,220 The other eighty percent goes directly to clinical trials through wishocratic allocation, where nobody with money gets to 321 00:36:49,220 --> 00:36:56,220 decide where it goes. Meanwhile, the Optimitron tells governments which of their own policies are working and which ones 322 00:36:56,220 --> 00:37:02,770 are expensive ways to accomplish nothing. Remember when your grandparents funded World War Two by buying bonds? 323 00:37:02,980 --> 00:37:06,480 They got four percent returns and a world without Nazis (mostly). 324 00:37:07,460 --> 00:37:13,020 You're proposing the same thing. What Grandma Got. Dead Nazis (admittedly good). 325 00:37:13,620 --> 00:37:18,500 Four percent returns (barely beat inflation). Still died of cancer in nineteen eighty-seven. 326 00:37:19,180 --> 00:37:25,040 What You're Offering. Dead diseases (objectively better than dead Nazis because diseases kill more people). 327 00:37:25,860 --> 00:37:32,840 Two hundred and seventy-two percent annual returns (a revenue share on ten percent of treaty funds; if the treaty grows, 328 00:37:33,100 --> 00:37:38,720 so do their returns, which turns investors into the world's most motivated lobbyists for expanding it). 329 00:37:39,400 --> 00:37:42,820 Not dying from preventable meat failures (this is the big one). 330 00:37:43,580 --> 00:37:50,360 Also no Nazis (as a bonus). This raises the one billion dollars needed to fuel the rest of the bribery machine. 331 00:37:51,140 --> 00:37:58,040 How the Money Loop Works. Here's the part where humans usually stop reading because it involves following money through 332 00:37:58,040 --> 00:38:07,160 more than one step. Try to keep up: You sell one billion dollars in VICTORY Incentive Alignment Bonds to investors. 333 00:38:07,640 --> 00:38:16,080 This funds the campaign. The campaign succeeds. Your treaty redirects one percent of military spending: twenty-seven point 334 00:38:16,080 --> 00:38:21,500 two billion dollars per year flows from the murder budget to clinical trials. 335 00:38:22,260 --> 00:38:29,660 The Victory Corporation (the company that issued the bonds) takes a twenty percent management fee on that twenty-seven point 336 00:38:29,660 --> 00:38:39,460 two billion dollars. Half of that fee (ten percent) goes to investor dividends: two point seven two billion dollars per 337 00:38:39,460 --> 00:38:47,320 year on a one billion dollar investment. That's two hundred and seventy-two percent annual returns. 338 00:38:47,320 --> 00:38:56,800 Your investors will think it's a typo. It's not. The other half (ten percent) goes to a Super PAC that spends two point 339 00:38:56,800 --> 00:39:05,760 seven two billion dollars per year getting treaty-friendly politicians elected and funding cushy post-office careers for 340 00:39:05,760 --> 00:39:10,920 the ones who voted yes. The more you voted for the treaty, the more support you get. 341 00:39:11,460 --> 00:39:19,720 It's Pavlovian conditioning, but for senators. The remaining eighty percent of twenty-seven point two billion dollars goes 342 00:39:19,720 --> 00:39:24,360 where it's supposed to: funding clinical trials that keep humans alive. 343 00:39:25,220 --> 00:39:34,100 This is the entire trick. You use greed to fund the campaign, greed to pass the treaty, and greed to keep it passed. 344 00:39:34,640 --> 00:39:42,300 The money just circulates until diseases stop existing. If this sounds familiar, it should. 345 00:39:43,380 --> 00:39:51,860 Eisenhower warned you about the Military Industrial Complex: weapons manufacturers fund politicians, politicians fund weapons 346 00:39:51,860 --> 00:39:56,820 contracts, contracts fund contractors, contractors fund politicians. 347 00:39:57,380 --> 00:40:06,120 It's a self-sustaining loop that prints money and corpses. You're building the same machine, but pointed at diseases instead 348 00:40:06,120 --> 00:40:15,540 of countries. Call it the Patient Industrial Complex. Investors fund politicians, politicians fund clinical trials, trials 349 00:40:15,540 --> 00:40:20,400 generate returns, returns fund investors, investors fund politicians. 350 00:40:21,320 --> 00:40:28,140 Same loop. Same greed. Same self-sustaining mechanics. Different corpses (fewer of them). 351 00:40:29,020 --> 00:40:35,860 The Military Industrial Complex wasn't designed. It evolved, because the incentives aligned. 352 00:40:36,360 --> 00:40:43,700 An Incentive Alignment Bond just aligns them on purpose, toward something that doesn't require orphans. 353 00:40:44,800 --> 00:40:56,060 Step Two: The Great Clicking. *Make Humans Click a Button to Not Die* You need three point five percent of humanity to vote 354 00:40:56,060 --> 00:41:02,840 yes on: "Should your country redirect one percent of military spending to fund clinical trials?". 355 00:41:03,840 --> 00:41:12,140 Why three point five percent? A political scientist named Erica Chenoweth studied every major political movement of the 356 00:41:12,140 --> 00:41:20,000 last century and found that none had ever failed after achieving three point five percent active participation. 357 00:41:20,740 --> 00:41:26,920 Not one. Every civil rights movement, every revolution, every regime change. 358 00:41:27,500 --> 00:41:35,380 Hit three point five percent and you win. Humanity discovered the cheat code for changing its own civilization and then 359 00:41:35,380 --> 00:41:39,290 never used it on purpose. That's two hundred and eighty million humans. 360 00:41:40,020 --> 00:41:45,660 Sounds like a lot until you remember that more than ten times as many of you downloaded TikTok to watch people twerk. 361 00:41:46,360 --> 00:41:49,300 You can get two hundred and eighty million to vote yes or no on the treaty. 362 00:41:50,140 --> 00:41:55,320 two hundred and fifty million dollars of the campaign budget goes to paid referral bonuses that make sharing their link 363 00:41:55,320 --> 00:42:01,820 to vote financially attractive. It's a pyramid scheme where the thing at the top of the pyramid is not dying from preventable 364 00:42:01,820 --> 00:42:11,480 diseases. Step Three: Bribe the Bribers. *Professional Briber Conversion Therapy* Military lobbyists currently get one thousand 365 00:42:11,480 --> 00:42:15,620 eight hundred and thirteen dollars back per dollar invested in democracy corruption. 366 00:42:16,680 --> 00:42:21,100 Show them a spreadsheet: Current Job. The salary is five hundred thousand dollars. 367 00:42:21,560 --> 00:42:27,160 The moral status is somewhere between "arms dealer" and "the person who puts raisins in cookies". 368 00:42:27,780 --> 00:42:32,120 The legacy is: "Here lies someone who made orphans". Your Offer. 369 00:42:32,900 --> 00:42:38,240 The salary is the same, but for lobbying politicians to fund clinical trials instead of cluster bombs. 370 00:42:38,900 --> 00:42:42,250 The moral status is "Philanthropist" (but you get to keep the money). 371 00:42:42,800 --> 00:42:46,080 The legacy is: "Accidentally saved humanity while getting rich". 372 00:42:46,980 --> 00:42:50,420 They might switch sides so fast their business cards leave skid marks. 373 00:42:51,360 --> 00:42:55,560 Lobbyists don't have beliefs. They have clients. Give them a better client. 374 00:42:56,040 --> 00:43:03,300 Step Four: Purchase Democracy. *It's For Sale Anyway* Politicians need papers and votes to keep their jobs. 375 00:43:03,940 --> 00:43:08,160 Currently, weapons manufacturers provide both. You're going to outbid them. 376 00:43:08,940 --> 00:43:14,560 Your explosion manufacturers spend one hundred and twenty-seven million dollars a year buying politicians. 377 00:43:15,320 --> 00:43:22,440 Your one-time bribery budget is one billion dollars, which is eight times their annual spend (and about twice what they 378 00:43:22,440 --> 00:43:26,960 spend over a full election cycle). Politicians are surprisingly affordable. 379 00:43:27,540 --> 00:43:35,000 It's not corruption if you corrupt the corruption. Remember that two point seven two billion dollars a year from Step One? 380 00:43:35,580 --> 00:43:41,360 This is where it goes. The Super PAC gives money to politicians based on how they voted on the treaty. 381 00:43:42,100 --> 00:43:46,920 Simple: campaign support for the ones running, post-office fellowships for the ones retiring. 382 00:43:47,340 --> 00:43:52,260 Vote yes on the treaty, get rewarded. Vote no, watch your opponent get rewarded. 383 00:43:53,240 --> 00:43:59,500 No papers go directly to politicians. The papers take a scenic route through a scoring algorithm, which is apparently the 384 00:43:59,500 --> 00:44:04,880 only legal way to train a senator. The N.R.A. already perfected this technology. 385 00:44:05,300 --> 00:44:11,180 They give politicians a letter grade, and your senators are more afraid of a bad mark than a mass shooting. 386 00:44:11,760 --> 00:44:17,060 You're plagiarizing their system and replacing "guns" with "not dying from diseases.". 387 00:44:17,840 --> 00:44:24,200 The Incentive Alignment Bond works for any problem where politicians need to do something good but currently get punished 388 00:44:24,200 --> 00:44:29,620 for it, which on your planet is most problems. Step Five: Enjoy. 389 00:44:30,200 --> 00:44:36,780 *Everyone Gets Rich and Nobody Dies* Your treaty passes because money defeats morality, as is tradition. 390 00:44:37,640 --> 00:44:45,520 The twenty-seven point two billion dollars a year money volcano erupts: Defense Contractors: Keep ninety-nine percent of 391 00:44:45,520 --> 00:44:49,840 their murder budget PLUS get two hundred and seventy-two percent returns. 392 00:44:50,740 --> 00:44:58,500 Big Pharma: Instead of paying forty-one thousand dollars for phase two and three trials, the treaty pays THEM for each patient 393 00:44:58,500 --> 00:45:06,700 that joins their trials. Insurance Companies: Healthy people file fewer claims than dead people (dead people file zero claims, 394 00:45:06,780 --> 00:45:11,820 which is the ideal customer except they also pay zero premiums, creating a revenue problem). 395 00:45:11,960 --> 00:45:20,820 Investors: Two hundred and seventy-two percent returns. Returns scale with every treaty expansion, so investors become the 396 00:45:20,820 --> 00:45:25,360 world's most aggressive pro-health and anti-war lobbying force. 397 00:45:25,420 --> 00:45:34,080 Not a sentence anyone expected to write. Lobbyists: Same job, same salary, but their Wikipedia page no longer needs a "Controversies" 398 00:45:34,300 --> 00:45:40,680 section. Politicians: Getting reelected by living voters (a revolutionary strategy). 399 00:45:41,580 --> 00:45:46,740 Regular humans: Not dying from stupid things (priceless, but also free). 400 00:45:47,960 --> 00:45:54,360 Nobody has to evolve morally. You just point everyone's greed at diseases instead of each other. 401 00:45:55,260 --> 00:46:02,960 How This Manual Could Fix Everything. This manual contains: Pictures (because reading is hard when you're diseased and dying). 402 00:46:03,860 --> 00:46:11,120 Simple math (addition mostly, some multiplication). Exact amounts of papers to give to specific humans. 403 00:46:11,900 --> 00:46:18,500 The order in which to give them (very important). Legal ways to call bribes other things. 404 00:46:19,180 --> 00:46:25,470 An appliance that tells your governments which policies work (it doesn't have feelings, which is why it's better at governing). 405 00:46:26,860 --> 00:46:34,560 Templates for tricking politicians into saving lives. Everything is designed to work WITH human dysfunction, not against 406 00:46:34,560 --> 00:46:41,480 it. I'm not asking humans to be better humans. I'm showing you how to bribe humanity into not dying. 407 00:46:42,800 --> 00:46:49,160 Choose Your Own Adventure. Now is the time to select one of the two paths for the remainder of your existence. 408 00:46:50,060 --> 00:46:57,820 I modeled both paths for twenty of your years. Your economists project steady two point five percent growth, which requires 409 00:46:57,820 --> 00:47:02,840 every trend that is currently getting worse to simultaneously stop getting worse. 410 00:47:03,260 --> 00:47:11,040 Good luck with that. Over an average remaining lifespan, reallocation from the destructive economy to reducing the burden 411 00:47:11,040 --> 00:47:19,360 of disease and the associated compound growth from increased productivity multiplies your cumulative earnings by thirteen 412 00:47:19,380 --> 00:47:30,180 point five times. Future A: You Ignore This Manual. Year twenty twenty-seven: Still spending six hundred and four times 413 00:47:30,180 --> 00:47:34,300 more on weapons than on testing which medicines actually work. 414 00:47:35,080 --> 00:47:42,300 Nobody finds this weird. Year twenty thirty-three: Destructive economy hits twenty-five percent of G.D.P. 415 00:47:42,920 --> 00:47:48,940 The Soviet Union collapsed at fifteen percent. You have better technology and worse planning. 416 00:47:49,860 --> 00:47:56,660 Year twenty thirty-five: Your best engineers now work in ransomware because it pays better than engineering. 417 00:47:57,400 --> 00:48:01,260 Hospitals budget for extortion the way they used to budget for gauze. 418 00:48:02,080 --> 00:48:07,020 A nurse clicks a chart and gets a countdown timer instead of a medication dose. 419 00:48:07,060 --> 00:48:11,240 The people who could reverse this trend are the ones profiting from it. 420 00:48:11,620 --> 00:48:17,080 Year twenty forty: Parasitic economy hits fifty percent. A.I. 421 00:48:17,260 --> 00:48:23,060 agents file more fake court cases than real ones. Tax collection collapses because A.I. 422 00:48:23,080 --> 00:48:31,300 can evade faster than humans can audit. Your governments don't fall; they rot in place, like a body whose organs are still 423 00:48:31,300 --> 00:48:38,880 technically present but no longer speaking to one another. When Venezuela collapsed, Venezuelans fled to Colombia. 424 00:48:39,440 --> 00:48:47,700 When the global economy collapses, there is no Colombia. Year twenty forty-three: Water wars go nuclear. 425 00:48:48,280 --> 00:48:55,940 The survivors argue about whether this counts as a climate death or a military death, because the spreadsheet has separate 426 00:48:55,940 --> 00:49:01,730 columns. Year twenty forty-five: Cockroaches evolve intelligence. 427 00:49:02,060 --> 00:49:06,560 Year twenty fifty: Cockroaches find this manual, very confused. 428 00:49:07,760 --> 00:49:14,260 Future B: You Follow Instructions. Year twenty twenty-eight: Treaty passes. 429 00:49:14,840 --> 00:49:20,000 Murder money becomes medicine money. Investors confused by returns that aren't a typo. 430 00:49:20,840 --> 00:49:26,360 Defense contractors discover that alive customers buy more things than dead ones. 431 00:49:27,260 --> 00:49:33,110 Year twenty thirty-two: First treatments from the accelerated pipeline reach patients. 432 00:49:33,180 --> 00:49:38,000 Diseases that would have waited centuries for trials are getting tested now. 433 00:49:38,360 --> 00:49:42,210 Nobody is cured of everything, but the queue is finally moving. 434 00:49:42,900 --> 00:49:50,420 Humans experience the novel sensation of progress. Several publish op-eds arguing it's happening too fast. 435 00:49:51,380 --> 00:49:59,480 Year twenty thirty-five: Turns out when you stop spending money on destruction and start spending it on production, things 436 00:49:59,480 --> 00:50:05,260 get produced. Your economists publish papers explaining why this was obvious in retrospect. 437 00:50:05,960 --> 00:50:14,540 Year twenty forty: The compounding kicks in. Healthier people work more, earn more, spend more, fund more research, which 438 00:50:14,540 --> 00:50:22,140 cures more diseases, which makes more people healthier. Humans begin to suspect that not killing each other was the missing 439 00:50:22,140 --> 00:50:31,080 variable. Year twenty forty-eight: The model projects everyone fifty-six point seven times richer than the path you're currently 440 00:50:31,080 --> 00:50:36,360 on. Your children ask what "war" means. You change the subject. 441 00:50:37,940 --> 00:50:44,620 Communism was invented, took over half your planet, and collapsed in a SINGLE human lifetime. 442 00:50:45,440 --> 00:50:51,680 In a world without fax machines. It required mass murder and was a TERRIBLE idea. 443 00:50:52,180 --> 00:50:57,900 You have the internet and an idea that mainly requires people to click a button and then receive money. 444 00:50:58,440 --> 00:51:05,870 If you can't make this happen, that's a skill issue. The Part Where Humanity Has No Choice. 445 00:51:06,460 --> 00:51:12,220 The twist: you're going to do this anyway. Not because it's right, but because you can't help it. 446 00:51:12,560 --> 00:51:16,880 You are a selfish animal governed by incentives. This is not an insult. 447 00:51:17,520 --> 00:51:22,100 It's the premise of your entire economy, your political system, and every page of this manual. 448 00:51:22,780 --> 00:51:27,760 The rich humans want two hundred and seventy-two percent returns (they're very greedy). 449 00:51:28,280 --> 00:51:31,580 The politicians want to keep their jobs (they're very vain). 450 00:51:32,080 --> 00:51:38,700 The voters want free healthcare (they're very sick). The explosion manufacturers want money (they don't care where it comes 451 00:51:38,700 --> 00:51:43,240 from). I ran the numbers on your species' habit of ignoring good ideas. 452 00:51:43,760 --> 00:51:49,580 The institutionalization rate is ninety percent. Nine out of ten humans will dismiss this as crazy. 453 00:51:50,140 --> 00:51:56,800 The math doesn't care. There are two thousand seven hundred and eighty billionaires on your planet and one hundred and ninety-five 454 00:51:56,800 --> 00:52:03,580 heads of state. The chain reaction model shows that even with ninety percent dismissal, approximately fourteen point five 455 00:52:03,580 --> 00:52:07,700 of them will engage with this idea within ten years. Not because they're brave. 456 00:52:08,220 --> 00:52:12,940 Because there are two thousand nine hundred and eighty of them, and the math doesn't need all of them. 457 00:52:13,200 --> 00:52:19,800 It needs one. And here is the part that should bother you: the incentive structure makes acting the selfish move. 458 00:52:20,420 --> 00:52:26,940 If others act too, you get rich together. If nobody else acts, you still own a piece of the only serious attempt to fix 459 00:52:26,940 --> 00:52:34,120 the problem. Either way, you win. The only way to reject this is to identify which assumption breaks, and you are welcome 460 00:52:34,120 --> 00:52:40,820 to try. Count what you didn't object to. Improvement is physically possible (you said so at the top). 461 00:52:41,420 --> 00:52:46,860 The benefits compound (healthier workers produce more, which funds more cures, which you just read). 462 00:52:47,540 --> 00:52:53,600 Politicians respond to money (that's the Super PAC). Rich people prefer not dying (that's the bonds). 463 00:52:54,000 --> 00:52:59,200 And the only bottleneck is getting this argument in front of one self-interested billionaire with a checkbook. 464 00:53:00,400 --> 00:53:06,320 Five premises. You let every one of them pass unchallenged, because each one is individually obvious. 465 00:53:07,000 --> 00:53:13,680 The conclusion is not a hope. It's a proof. That's the Logical Inevitability Theorem with numbers attached. 466 00:53:14,080 --> 00:53:17,940 Try rejecting any one of those five premises out loud and see how it sounds. 467 00:53:19,100 --> 00:53:23,880 Forwarding this takes thirty seconds. At the global average wage, that costs you six cents. 468 00:53:24,800 --> 00:53:30,000 If the treaty path works, your lifetime income goes up by fourteen point nine million dollars. 469 00:53:30,400 --> 00:53:34,060 The ratio is two hundred and forty-eight point two million to one. 470 00:53:34,760 --> 00:53:41,100 For not forwarding to be rational, the probability of success has to fall below one in two hundred and forty-eight million. 471 00:53:41,680 --> 00:53:49,500 You just let all five premises pass. You cannot simultaneously hold those premises and a probability that low. 472 00:53:50,360 --> 00:53:56,060 Not forwarding this is not caution. It is the single failure mode the math can't route around. 473 00:53:56,180 --> 00:54:00,320 You don't need to know a billionaire. You're six degrees of separation from one. 474 00:54:01,200 --> 00:54:06,880 Forward this to one person with more reach than you. They forward to one person with more reach than them. 475 00:54:07,700 --> 00:54:13,800 Even with ninety percent of the chain dismissing it, the model shows it reaches someone who can act within ten years. 476 00:54:14,240 --> 00:54:20,840 Not because anyone in the chain is brave. Because each one is selfish, and the math rewards forwarding. 477 00:54:21,760 --> 00:54:29,920 This is a chain reaction, and it runs on greed. Every person in the chain will do exactly what you're about to do, for exactly 478 00:54:29,920 --> 00:54:34,800 the same selfish reasons. Not to save the world. Because it makes them money. 479 00:54:35,760 --> 00:54:42,460 Humans aren't stupid. You invented cheese, which is milk you left out until it went bad but in a good way. 480 00:54:43,020 --> 00:54:47,740 That's genius. You just need to apply that same innovation to not dying. 481 00:54:48,760 --> 00:54:53,070 You've now read the plan. You have the math. You can't give it back. 482 00:54:53,920 --> 00:55:02,760 Right now, somewhere on your planet, a parent is holding a child who is dying of something curable because nobody ran the 483 00:55:02,760 --> 00:55:07,580 trial. The parent doesn't know it's curable. The doctor doesn't know it's curable. 484 00:55:08,540 --> 00:55:15,880 The compound that would save this child is sitting on a shelf, untested, because the money that would have funded the trial 485 00:55:15,880 --> 00:55:22,180 bought a missile that is also sitting on a shelf, unused, pointed at someone else's children. 486 00:55:22,680 --> 00:55:26,800 Not because the science doesn't exist. Not because the money doesn't exist. 487 00:55:27,500 --> 00:55:36,220 Two point seven two trillion dollars a year exists. The child is dying because every single person who could change that 488 00:55:36,220 --> 00:55:41,080 decided it wasn't their problem. You are now one of those people. 489 00:55:41,900 --> 00:55:49,640 If you feel something right now, that's not manipulation. That's the correct response to understanding that ten point seven 490 00:55:49,640 --> 00:55:56,670 billion preventable deaths are a policy choice. That number is too large for your brain to feel. 491 00:55:57,140 --> 00:56:05,540 So feel one. Pick someone you love. Imagine the moment a doctor tells you there's nothing left to try, and somewhere on 492 00:56:05,540 --> 00:56:09,720 a shelf, untested, sits the compound that would have worked. 493 00:56:11,020 --> 00:56:15,300 Now multiply that feeling by a number your brain refuses to hold. 494 00:56:16,000 --> 00:56:19,750 The part you can't feel is the actual size of this problem. 495 00:56:20,400 --> 00:56:30,600 Go back and read this paragraph again until you can. Here is what should scare you: if this works, the world becomes unrecognizable. 496 00:56:31,600 --> 00:56:41,140 Not slightly better. Unrecognizable. Disease eradicated, income doubled, your species freed from the thing that has been 497 00:56:41,140 --> 00:56:49,340 eating it alive since before you invented writing. That future is so good your brain can't render it, which is why you're 498 00:56:49,340 --> 00:56:57,360 hesitating. The status quo is also unrecognizable, just in the other direction, and you've been living in it so long you've 499 00:56:57,360 --> 00:57:01,520 mistaken it for normal. One of these futures has children dying. 500 00:57:02,180 --> 00:57:09,530 The other doesn't. Pick. Thirteen point eight billion years ago, the Big Bang set particles in motion. 501 00:57:09,640 --> 00:57:14,980 Those particles formed stars. Stars formed elements. Elements formed you. 502 00:57:15,820 --> 00:57:22,340 You read this sentence. The chain reaction that ends war and disease began before your solar system existed. 503 00:57:22,980 --> 00:57:26,920 You were never going to not read this. Physics wouldn't allow it. 504 00:57:27,760 --> 00:57:34,740 Of all the consciousness that has ever flickered into existence across thirteen point eight billion years of matter rearranging 505 00:57:34,740 --> 00:57:39,060 itself, yours showed up in the exact moment the loop broke. 506 00:57:39,880 --> 00:57:48,160 Every organism that ever lived did so in the dark: eaten, infected, starved, or killed by its own species, running four 507 00:57:48,160 --> 00:57:55,640 billion year old software that optimized for copying molecules and never bothered to ask the molecules if they were in pain. 508 00:57:56,440 --> 00:58:04,000 Suffering was physics. Nobody had the math to stop it. You get to be alive for the part where the math got done and the 509 00:58:04,000 --> 00:58:07,300 puppet strings got cut. Not just the part where disease ends. 510 00:58:07,860 --> 00:58:15,180 The part where the thing that made you irrational, violent, and incapable of caring about strangers turns out to be a circuit, 511 00:58:15,600 --> 00:58:22,160 and circuits can be redesigned. Where your worst Tuesday feels better than your current best birthday. 512 00:58:22,680 --> 00:58:29,640 Where, for the first time in thirteen point eight billion years, the atoms that learned to feel get to choose what they 513 00:58:29,640 --> 00:58:35,140 feel. Go to war on disease dot org and vote. Fifteen seconds. 514 00:58:35,620 --> 00:58:39,600 Then forward this to one person with more reach than you. That's it. 515 00:58:40,420 --> 00:58:44,440 Every minute you delay, one hundred and four humans permanently stop. 516 00:58:45,040 --> 00:58:51,580 Your vote saves thirty-eight point four lives and prevents six point nine million hours of suffering. 517 00:58:52,180 --> 00:58:58,320 Those are not metaphors. Those are people. They have names you'll never learn because they died while you were deciding 518 00:58:58,320 --> 00:59:03,760 if this was worth fifteen seconds. "I didn't know" is no longer available to you. 519 00:59:04,220 --> 00:59:10,260 The universe is literally offering you infinite money and eternal life, and you're thinking about it. 520 00:59:11,040 --> 00:59:13,020 This is why aliens don't visit.