War costs you $74,259 in lifetime taxes. That's a car's worth of money spent on bombs instead of things that don't explode people.
Think by Numbers runs cost-benefit analyses for a species that spends $604 on weapons for every $1 on clinical trials. We suspect a math error.
The Declaration of Optimization
These governments have enough weapons to end civilization 122 times over. Current military spending is enough money to buy 850 bullets for every person alive every single year. You only need to kill everyone once for everyone to be dead. (I checked.) The remaining murder capacity is sheer waste.
For every 604 dollars they spend on the capacity for orphan manufacturing, they only spend one on clinical trials that might cure the diseases that will slowly torture and brutally murder you and everyone you have ever loved.
Your chance of being killed by a terrorist? 1 in 30 million. Your chance of dying of a disease? 100%.
This is suboptimal.
Posts, Ranked by Extinction-Prevention Potential
Fed loans 0% interest to zombie companies that don't produce value. Japan's approach gave them 3 decades to recover. Volcker's alternative (1979) crashed then boomed.
47 fields study suffering but none study suffering itself. It's like having Flame, Smoke, and Heat departments but nobody puts out fires.
FDA restricted what 23andMe tells you about your DNA. Takes doctors 17 years to use new genetic research. Free tools interpret your data now.
Political platform asks "what if you tried helping people instead of signaling tribal affiliation?" Uses third-grade math. Revolutionary, apparently.
USPS junk mail 65% discount kills 100 million trees annually. You pay $126/year so credit card offers arrive faster. Beautiful circle of life.
Government spending above 25% of GDP slows economic growth. OECD countries prove it. Every dollar above 25% is basically lighting money on fire and calling it policy.
Every 1% reduction in REM sleep increases dementia risk 9%. Brain has self-cleaning mode that requires sleep. You ignore it and drink coffee instead.
Farmed catfish causes 20,000 times more suffering than milk per kg. The math is third grade, but your dinner choices remain catastrophic.
FDA banned monoclonal antibodies despite 30% efficacy. They ignored $3.7T Long COVID cost, risked $600M in preventable hospitalizations.