Posts tagged 'economics'

You run 200,000-year-old brain software optimized for hoarding rocks and fearing strangers. You've given it nukes. 5% of your decisions are conscious. Your amygdala handles the rest. This is your owner's manual.

Previous treaties cost $25-50M to get signatures. Even at 5% success probability, a 1% health treaty is 30,000x more cost-effective than anti-malaria bed nets. The downside is a yacht. The upside is no more disease.

The full cost of war: $2.7T military + $2.4T dead people + $1.9T blown-up buildings + $3.7T in lost growth = $11.4T/year. That's 12.7% of global GDP. The Pentagon can't find $2.5T of its own stuff.

Move 1% of the $2.7T bomb budget to medicine: $27.2B for trials, $114B saved from fewer explosions. Your worst case is the largest medical funding increase in history.

Oxford spent $500/patient and found a $1 steroid saves 1/3 of COVID deaths in 100 days. US trials cost $41,000/patient. That's 82x worse, and people die waiting. The cure was from 1957.

7,000 diseases have zero treatments. At current pace, you'll cure them all in 450 years. Redirect 1% of military spending and it drops to 50. The system costs less to run than Halloween costumes for dogs.

From 1883-1960, life expectancy grew 3.82 years/decade via decentralized doctor trials. In 1962, Congress "helped" and growth dropped 60% overnight. Drug costs went from $1.2M to $1B. Coincidence requires less precision.

Disease kills 130,000 people daily and costs $397T/year—more than global GDP. You spend 40x more on bombs than medicine. Your body is a machine. Fix it.

Governments claim $68B on "medical research" but only $4.5B goes to clinical trials—56 cents per human. That's a 604:1 military-to-cure ratio. We spend more on pet food than on not dying.

Your destructive economy (military + cybercrime) is 12-15% of GDP and growing faster than your actual economy. The Soviet Union collapsed at 15-18%. You have about 15 years. Choose wisely.

The maximum cost to reform all US policy is $25.5 billion. The return is $84.8 quadrillion. That's an 84.8 million:1 ROI. The real question isn't can we afford it, but why haven't we bought it.

Drug development costs increased 105x since 1962. Before regulations, drugs cost $24.7M to develop. Now it's $2.6 billion. The pills haven't gotten 105 times better.

A manual for ending war and disease using financial incentives, pragmatic trials, and the radical assumption that humans respond to money. Spoiler: they do. 10.7 billion lives at stake.

The US government wastes $4.9T annually—17% of GDP. The Pentagon can't find $2.5T of its own assets. Americans spend 7.9 billion hours doing taxes. Systems engineering says we can fix this.

Civilization runs at 51.9% efficiency. The governance gap costs $101 trillion/year—$50,500 per household. We're leaving $1.16M per person on the table because meetings run long.

Pragmatic clinical trials: current $0.5B, optimal $50B (9,900% underinvestment). Military: current $850B, optimal $459B. Agricultural subsidies: optimal $0. This spreadsheet is devastating.

What if saving millions of lives was a good investment? IABs pay 272% ROI to investors who bribe politicians into doing their jobs. Global household wealth is $454T. Opposition is $5T. Do the maths.

The US spends 3% more of GDP on government than Switzerland yet lives 6.5 fewer years. What if we just... looked at what works elsewhere and did that? Causal inference says yes.

46,000+ country-years of policy data. 3,500+ US state-years. Centuries of natural experiments we've never analysed. The OPG just asks: what worked? Then suggests doing that.

Cybercrime costs $10.5 trillion annually—larger than every economy except the US and China. AI will scale this parasitic drain exponentially, creating an "inverse singularity" where evil profit margins attract the smartest minds, while governments waste money on tanks instead of cybersecurity.

Roatan residents spend $740/year on bottled water. Building a water plant costs 40x less over 25 years. The math is third-grade arithmetic. Like using a helicopter to commute one block.

Before 1971 productivity and wages grew together. After 1971 they suddenly split. Productivity kept rising, wages flatlined. Federal Reserve counterfeiting is Robin Hood in reverse.

Monetary inflation (money supply) vs price inflation (CPI). Money supply exploded, prices stayed stable. Inflation is hidden flat tax governments use instead of asking citizens to pay.

Federal Reserve printed $4 trillion in 2020. Top 1% wealth increased by exactly $4 trillion that year. St. Louis Fed confirms. The math matches perfectly. Totally normal economic policy.

Median drug development cost is $985 million including failed trials (2009-2018). In 1893 doctors just tested drugs and reported results. Now we have a Valley of Death instead.

Federal Reserve creates money electronically, buys bonds from investors. Bondholders get free money first. By the time it reaches you, inflation already ate it. Money printer go brr.

Every Econ 101 textbook teaches incentives, costs, and second-order effects. Most government policies ignore all three. Like someone passing driver's ed then driving into a lake on purpose.

Stock prices follow profits until positive feedback loops create bubbles. More buyers raise prices, higher prices attract more buyers. Then the music stops and someone's holding the bag.

For 10,000 years life expectancy was 28 and GDP was $100. Around 1800 both went vertical. Humanity spent 10,000 years in tutorial mode then someone pressed start.

First two years Trump stocks up 21%. First two years Obama stocks up 71.2%. That's 3.4x faster. Trump's gain is just 50-year average. Like getting a participation trophy for existing.

World GDP is $127.8 trillion divided by 7.3 billion people equals $17,500 per person. Money is collective hallucination. Before money we traded chickens for cows. Much more efficient now.

Reuters polled 60 economists about steel tariffs. 0% supported them. Zero as in number before one. Like asking 60 doctors if you should eat broken glass and getting zero yes votes.

Keynesians believe Federal Reserve designs economic order from chaos like creationists believe in intelligent design. Both can't grasp complex adaptive systems. Evolution and markets don't need planners.

World GDP is $127.8 trillion divided by 7.3 billion people equals $17,500 each. Happiness maxes out at $75k income. Above that you're just buying stuff, not joy. Economics with spreadsheets.

Americans underestimate wealth inequality so badly the perception gap exceeds the actual wealth gap—like thinking your neighbor has 2 cars when they own a dealership.

Your vote has same odds as winning lottery 7 times. CAPTCHA for stupidity filters crowdsourcing bias by removing people who guess wrong.

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.

Americans built 14 million empty houses costing $2 trillion because the Fed made borrowing artificially cheap. The government's success destroyed wealth on a massive scale.

Chile recovered from 1982 crisis in 2.5 years without bailouts. Mexico took 7 years with intervention. Government stimulus is like using a flamethrower to put out a fire.