This isn't a theoretical plan. It's a greatest hits album of things that already worked.
Before you say "this is impossible," let me remind you: humans have accidentally done smart things before.
Not often. But occasionally, when properly motivated by fear or greed (usually both), your species stumbles into competence.
You've done every single part of this plan already. You just haven't combined them yet.
You're like someone who owns flour, water, yeast, and an oven, but keeps eating them separately and wondering why bread
hasn't appeared. Pragmatic Trials: forty-four point one times More Efficient.
Traditional Phase Three trials cost forty-one thousand dollars.
Pragmatic trials embedded in routine care cost nine hundred twenty-nine dollars, a forty-four point one times cost reduction.
A Harvard meta-analysis of one hundred eight embedded pragmatic trials found median costs of just ninety-seven dollars per
patient. The ALLHAT trial showed pragmatic designs can identify superior treatments and reduced healthcare costs by billions
annually. So the cheap way is also the better way. Happens more often than you'd think.
Oxford's RECOVERY trial achieved five hundred dollars. It found life-saving COVID treatments in under one hundred days.
It saved over a million lives. Humans Doing Smart Things (Accidentally): A Collection.
That Time Humans Banned Landmines (Yes, Really). What happened: A bunch of N.G.O.s decided landmines were bad actually.
They convinced one hundred sixty nations to sign a treaty banning them in nineteen ninety-seven.
Major military powers initially opposed it. The N.G.O.s won anyway.
Why this matters for you: This proves citizen movements can create binding international law even when governments don't
want to. If humans can globally ban a weapon because "it's mean," you can definitely redirect one percent of the murder
budget to the not-murder budget. And they did it with fax machines.
Just pissed-off citizens with fax machines. You have the internet.
War Bonds: That Time Grandma Funded World War Two. What happened: Governments needed money to fight Nazis.
They sold "war bonds" (basically I.O.U.s that paid interest) directly to regular people.
Promise them profit plus dead Nazis. Kill Nazis, earn three percent.
Good deal. The U.S. raised one hundred eighty-five billion dollars (trillions in today's dollars).
Why this matters for you: Your grandparents gave the government money to stop Hitler and got four percent returns.
You're offering two hundred seventy-two percent returns to stop cancer.
VICTORY Incentive Alignment Bonds are the same thing except with better R.O.I.
and fewer Nazis (hopefully zero Nazis). Except instead of dead Nazis, you offer dead cancer cells.
The formula worked: mix moral incentives (patriotism) with financial self-interest (interest payments).
You're applying it to a different war: the one against your own mortality.
When saving the world is profitable, people trip over each other to fund it.
The Global Fund (Proof That New Health Institutions Can Exist).
What happened: In 2002, the world created a new organization to pool billions for fighting AIDS, T.B., and malaria.
It bypassed traditional bureaucracies and just... worked. Saved an estimated 70 million lives (as of 2025).
Bureaucrats everywhere were horrified. Why this matters for you: A network of decentralized institutes of health, or D.I.H.s,
isn't fantasy. It's the Global Fund but bigger and for all diseases.
If you can create new health institutions for three diseases, you can create one for all of them.
It's multiplication. You learned this when you were six. Post-World War Two: That Time America Accidentally Discovered Peace
Is Profitable. What happened: 1945: U.S. military spending was 37 percent of G.D.P.
(we were very serious about the war thing). 1948: Cut to 7 percent.
That's a 30 percentage point drop. Not 1 percent. THIRTY. The results: The greatest economic boom in human history: G.D.P.
growth was 8 percent yearly for a decade (versus the normal 2 to 3 percent).
Home ownership doubled (middle class explosion). The G.I. Bill created the modern knowledge economy.
The country built the interstate highway system. Why this matters for you: You're asking for 1 percent.
America did 30 percent and got rich. This is like asking someone who lost 100 pounds if they can spare 3 pounds.
The answer is obviously yes, and they'll probably feel better.
The 1990s: When the Berlin Wall Fell and Wallets Exploded. What happened: The Cold War ended.
Military spending dropped from 6 percent of G.D.P. to 3 percent.
That's three hundred billion dollars redirected from pointing missiles at Russia to literally anything else.
The results: The 1990s economic boom everyone remembers fondly: The Internet became commercial (freed resources).
The country saw its first budget surplus in 30 years. Unemployment was at 3.9 percent (lowest in a generation).
Productivity grew by 2.5 percent yearly (double the normal rate).
Why this matters for you: The pattern isn't subtle. Every time you stop spending money on murder, prosperity appears like
magic. It's not magic. It's arithmetic. You just keep forgetting the answer.
Switzerland: 200 Years of Not Shooting Anyone equals Being Very Rich.
Two world wars. Everyone else fought. Switzerland made chocolate.
What they have: Mountains, cows, and a complete lack of natural resources.
They're surrounded by countries that kept starting world wars.
They have been neutral since 1815. What they spend on defense: zero point seven percent of G.D.P.
(source) (purely defensive; they're not invading anyone with those Alps) (U.S.: 3.5 percent).
The results. They have ninety-three thousand dollars G.D.P.
per capita (versus U.S. seventy-six thousand dollars), which is 25 percent richer than Americans.
Universal healthcare with excellent quality costs 12 percent of G.D.P.
(versus U.S. 18 percent). Life expectancy is 84 years (versus U.S.
seventy-nine). Last invaded: Never (Napoleon tried in 1798, didn't go well for him).
They haven't had a war death since 1847. The difference went to education, healthcare, and trains that run on time.
(Americans: a "train that runs on time" is a train that arrives when it says it will.
I know this sounds fictional.). Why this matters for you: Peace dividends compound over centuries.
Switzerland proves you don't need oil, colonies, or weapons to get rich.
Just stop wasting money on things that explode. They've been doing this for two hundred years.
You're asking for a one percent start. The three point five percent Rule: The Cheat Code for Democracy.
What scientists discovered: When just three point five percent of a population actively participates in sustained resistance,
success becomes nearly inevitable. Not fifty-one percent. Not a majority.
Just three point five percent. Historical proof. Civil rights: three point five percent ended segregation.
Indian independence: three point five percent beat the British Empire (nuclear power defeated by non-violence, embarrassing).
Women's suffrage: three point five percent got half of humanity the vote.
Gay marriage: three point five percent made love legal. Why this matters for you: One person in every classroom.
One family on every block. That's three point five percent.
The global referendum needs two hundred eighty million people (three point five percent of humanity).
Not billions. Just three point five percent clicking "yes, I prefer not dying" on a website.
The internet reaches five billion. If humans can mobilize three point five percent to get the vote, you can mobilize three
point five percent to not die from cancer. Math says it wins.
You Have Advantages They Didn't. Internet: Instant global coordination.
Money: Subsidized healthcare creates participation incentive.
Data: You can prove what works in real-time. Urgency: one hundred fifty thousand people die daily (motivation is high).
When Good Intentions Met Reality (And Lost). Failures teach more than successes.
Here's every mistake past movements made, so you can make exciting new ones instead.
Eisenhower's Warning: A five-star General Tried to Tell You.
In nineteen sixty-one, President Dwight D. Eisenhower used his farewell address to warn you about something terrifying.
He was a five-star general. Supreme Allied Commander. The guy who beat the Nazis.
Not exactly a hippie. The warning: "We must guard against the military-industrial complex.".
The reality check: "Every gun made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies theft from those who hunger.".
The prophecy: He predicted the permanent war economy you're currently living in.
Military spending becomes self-perpetuating regardless of whether anyone's actually threatening you.
Why this matters: Eisenhower understood you can't dismantle the system.
You have to give it something more profitable to build. He was right.
Nobody listened. You never do. Now you get to try his solution: redirect the resources.
The Nuclear Freeze Movement: Millions of People, Zero Results.
What happened: In the nineteen eighties, a massive global movement tried to freeze nuclear weapons production.
Millions of protesters. Enormous popular support. Good vibes everywhere.
The result: Failed completely. Nuclear arsenals kept growing.
The signs were very moving, though. Why it failed: You cannot defeat money with good intentions.
The military-industrial complex has more money than God, and protesters have signs.
This is why a one percent treaty doesn't ask nicely; it bribes everyone into compliance.
You're not fighting greed. You're redirecting it. Morality is lovely.
Capitalism is faster. The lesson: Make peace more profitable than war, or peace loses.
Every single time. No exceptions. I checked. Occupy Wall Street: When "We're Angry" Isn't a Strategy.
What happened: In 2011, thousands occupied parks to protest economic inequality.
They changed the conversation! They raised awareness! They accomplished nothing permanent!
Why it failed: No specific demand. Just diffuse anger at "the system."
The energy dissipated because nobody knew what success looked like.
Why this matters: This plan has ONE demand: ratify a one percent treaty.
That's it. Not "fix inequality" or "be better." One specific, achievable, measurable goal.
You want to change one number from zero to one. Ambition is inspiring, but subtraction is effective.
A network of decentralized institutes of health, or D.I.H.s, a D.F.D.A.
(a decentralized F.D.A.), and the cures are all downstream of that single objective.
When you ask for everything, you get nothing. When you ask for one percent, you might get it.
On How Rich People Made Money Doing Crazy Things (And Why That Matters).
You need investment terms that don't sound insane to people with money.
Fortunately, rich people have always done insane things with money.
You just need to make this the least insane option. On The Time Junk Bonds Saved Capitalism.
Michael Milken and High-Yield ("Junk") Bonds. In the 1980s, a guy named Michael Milken figured out something revolutionary:
if you offer people high enough returns, they'll invest in almost anything.
Wall Street called these "junk bonds" because they were trash.
Milken called them "high-yield bonds" because marketing. He financed leveraged buyouts that the establishment said were
impossible. He raised billions. The establishment said it would never work.
It worked spectacularly until it didn't (Milken went to prison for unrelated fraud, which is how you know it was successful).
The Lesson: To attract capital for high-risk ventures, you must offer absurdly high returns.
VICTORY Incentive Alignment Bonds promise two hundred and seventy-two percent returns.
This isn't generosity, it's economics. It's the "high-yield" premium necessary to compensate for betting on the unprecedented
act of governments doing something smart. If people invested in literal junk, they'll invest in not dying.
You just need to price it correctly. On The Time George Soros Broke England.
George Soros and The Quantum Fund. In 1992, George Soros risked ten billion dollars betting that the U.K.
would have to leave the European Exchange Rate Mechanism. This was a binary political bet: Either the U.K.
government capitulates, or Soros loses everything. He won. Made over one billion dollars in a single day.
The Bank of England lost. The Queen was reportedly not amused.
(She had her own money problems, being the Queen.). The Lesson: You can deploy immense private capital to bet on political
outcomes. The trick is framing it as sophisticated arbitrage.
What it really is: gambling on whether governments will do the obvious thing or the stupid thing.
History suggests governments usually do the stupid thing. But occasionally, when you make the smart thing profitable enough,
they surprise you. That's the bet. On When Smart People Lost All Their Money (The Cautionary Tales).
Long-Term Capital Management (L.T.C.M.): When Nobel Laureates Get Humbled In 1998, a hedge fund run by actual Nobel Prize
winners collapsed. It required a three point six billion dollars bailout.
Their crime? Building sophisticated mathematical models that accounted for everything except the part where Russia just...
defaults. Whoops. These were the smartest people in finance.
Nobels. P.h.D.s from M.I.T. Models that predicted everything except reality, which is the one thing models need to predict.
The Lesson: Never underestimate systemic risk, also known as "the part where everything goes wrong at once.".
For this project, the "black swan" is complete political failure.
Everyone says no, the treaty dies, and you look stupid. This is why the plan includes: Assurance contracts: Miss the fundraising
target? Everyone gets their money back. No partial failures allowed.
First-loss philanthropic capital: Rich altruists absorb the initial losses so regular investors don't get wiped out if things
go sideways. It's risk mitigation for people who understand that Nobel laureates can still be catastrophically wrong.
The South Sea Bubble (1720): When Everyone Went Insane In 1720, people in England went collectively mad.
They invested in a company that promised a monopoly on trade with South America.
Neat! Except the company had almost no actual trade. And no profits.
And no business plan beyond "tell people we're going to be really rich.".
The stock went up one thousand percent. Then it crashed. Everyone lost everything.
Isaac Newton lost twenty thousand pounds (in today's money, "a lot").
He famously said "I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people.".
The Lesson: Speculation based on hype alone ends badly. This is why VICTORY Incentive Alignment Bond payouts are contractually
tied to real, verifiable events: Treaty ratification (actual government signatures).
Real government money flowing into the one percent Treaty Fund.
Actual treatments being tested in pragmatic clinical trials.
No hype. No maybes. No "we're going to be really rich someday."
Just math tied to observable reality. If you're going to lose your money, at least it won't be because the plan promised
a monopoly on South American trade without checking if South America exists.
The Ultimate Failsafe: The Worst-Case Scenario is Still a Win.
Imagine every dollar of the twenty-seven point two billion dollars is mismanaged, wasted, or dumped into the ocean.
The world would *still* be better off, because you'd still have a one percent reduction in the global capacity for organized
violence. Fewer bombs, fewer missiles, fewer A.I.-powered weapons systems.
The worst outcome is still a net gain. The best outcome cures your cancer and your grandmother's Alzheimer's.
Failure is still a victory. Success changes the course of human history.
It's a bet you can't afford not to take. How Your D.F.D.A. Would Compare to History's Best Health Interventions.
The best health interventions in history have delivered extraordinary returns on investment.
Smallpox eradication returned hundreds of dollars for every dollar spent.
Childhood vaccines, clean water, and tobacco control all delivered similar orders-of-magnitude returns.
A decentralized drug assessment framework projects even higher R.O.I.
than any of them: eighty-four point eight million to one. (Total societal benefit including lives saved and disability-adjusted
life years, or D.A.L.Y.s, averted, not R. and D. savings alone.
The R. and D.-only R.O.I. is six hundred thirty-seven to one.) Decentralized drug assessment has a return on investment
of eighty-four point eight million to one. The cost per quality-adjusted life year, or Q.A.L.Y., is dominant and cost-saving,
providing between five thousand and over ninety thousand Q.A.L.Y.s per million dollars.
Smallpox Eradication has a return on investment between one hundred fifty-nine to one and four hundred to one.
It is cost-saving and provided over ten thousand Q.A.L.Y.s per million dollars.
Childhood Vaccination in the U.S. has a return on investment between ten to one and sixteen to one.
It is cost-saving and provides between one thousand and ten thousand Q.A.L.Y.s per million dollars.
Clean Water and Sanitation has a return on investment between four to one and twenty-one to one.
It is cost-saving and provides between one thousand and ten thousand Q.A.L.Y.s per million dollars.
Tobacco Control has a return on investment between twenty to one and one thousand fifty-seven to one.
It is cost-saving and provides between one thousand and ten thousand Q.A.L.Y.s per million dollars.
That includes smallpox eradication, which is widely considered the best thing humanity ever did on purpose.
The difference: this accelerates the entire R. and D. ecosystem rather than targeting one disease.
It's the difference between fixing one pothole and repaving the road.