# Earth Optimization Services Pitch ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ## Expected Value +---------------------------------------+ | | | EV = probability x value | | | | [ plot of land ] | | | | 10% chance: $100,000 gold inside | | | | EV = 10% x $100,000 | | = $10,000 [x] | | | +---------------------------------------+ > There’s this thing called expected value, whereby you multiply the chance of a thing happening by how much you’d care if it did. Say there’s a plot of land with a 10% chance of \$100,000 in gold under it. That land is worth \$10,000, on average, which is awkward, because you cannot dig up an average. You dig up either gold or disappointment. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ## The Hell Calculation +---------------------------------------+ | | | [ eternal suffering ] | | | | probability(hell) = 0.00001% | | | | expected value = 0.00001% | | x -infinity | | = -infinity | | | | worth any finite cost to prevent | | | +---------------------------------------+ > There’s a non-zero possibility that hell exists and you and everyone you love are going to die and burn in it forever. Hell is, by most accounts, very hot. On a long enough timeline, this becomes a drawback. > > Additionally, when I was a kid my great-grandfather had Alzheimer’s disease or something and he looked like he was in hell. All the time. He was miserable and he was like this for very many years. And so there’s this thing called time dilation whereby when you’re dreaming a few minutes can seem like a few hours. There’s like a drug called salvia divinorum where some people have taken it and they said they felt like they were being crushed to death for millennia. Okay, so there’s no way to disprove the possibility that your brain’s going to get messed up in a manner that causes you great pain and confusion for perceptually an indefinite amount of time. Very very very very long time, maybe eternity. So this is like kind of a possibility of a hell on Earth. So even if it is highly unlikely that this occurs, like even if there’s a 0.00001% chance of this occurring, the expected value of this is infinity terrible. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ## The Heaven Calculation +---------------------------------------+ | | | [ indefinite pleasant existence ] | | | | probability(good) = 0.00001% | | | | expected value = 0.00001% | | x +infinity | | = +infinity | | | | worth any finite cost to pursue | | | +---------------------------------------+ > Okay, there’s this thing called biotechnology. So I don’t know if you’ve ever taken any drugs. I certainly haven’t. But I hear tell that they can make you feel very good. Okay, so this tells me that humans through the ability of manipulating atoms and molecules in their brains can make themselves feel very good. Additionally, due to the phenomenon of time dilation, it is apparently possible that through some sort of mysterious biochemical action, the perception of time can be extended. And additionally there are numerous animals or living things that are immortal, like jellyfish. This tells me that with sufficient resources and effort and scientists, one could figure out how to produce a very nice, pleasant experience for an indefinitely long period of time. Okay so these are your options. So like the expected value of doing this, given that it can go on for an unlimited period of time, is infinitely good. Even if there is an extremely low probability that anything I’m saying is true and we can achieve this. Even if there’s a 0.00001% chance that this is possible, the expected value is infinite goodness. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ## Two Infinities +---------------------------------------+ | | | value of preventing hell = +infinity | | value of achieving heaven = +infinity | | | | total = two infinities of motivation | | | | | +---------------------------------------+ > So your job as President of Earth Optimization Services carries two infinities of importance: one heaven you could lose, one hell you could dodge. Most jobs offer dental. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ## Everyone Is Retarded +---------------------------------------+ | | | SMART [##################] | | dolphins [####..............] | | humans [###...............] | | monkeys [##................] | | snails [#.................] | | | | (perfect info + logic = 100%) | | | | everyone is retarded relative to | | perfect rationality | | (especially the people in charge) | | | +---------------------------------------+ > Okay so there’s these other things on Earth called humans and like they’re all kind of stupid. Like there is this thing called information and logic. And so if you have perfect information and perfect logic, that is what I would consider to be called smart. So if you enjoy these two things, my hat’s off to you and I would definitely like to meet you. But my theory is no such human exists. This means that all humans suffer from some degree of relative mental retardation relative to smartness. So if you hold your hand up by the top of your head, let’s say that’s smartness. Then humans… so like snails might be down around your shoes or something. And then monkeys might be somewhere around the middle of your shin. And then humans might be a little bit above that. And then maybe dolphins are a little bit above the humans. Okay, so humans are like varying degrees of retarded. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ## You Pay [\$36.5 trillion](../../knowledge/appendix/parameters-and-calculations.llms.md#sec-global_government_expense_annual) a Year for Health and Wealth and Get War and Disease YOU PAY $36.5 trillion A YEAR FOR HEALTH AND WEALTH AND GET WAR AND DISEASE YOU PAY: $36.5 trillion / yr FORCED SERVICE: general welfare Since 1900: $170 trillion spent murdering 310 million of their own employers. Any other employee: terminated. These guys: a $1T raise every year. > So apparently someone decided that part of promoting the general welfare of the employers was murdering them, occasionally, in batches. Like we made this thing called governments that are supposed to promote the general welfare, which is I guess median health and wealth. Or more specifically if you want to measure it, median health-adjusted life expectancy and median after-tax inflation-adjusted income. So theoretically, if you were running one of these governments, you would measure these things. Then you would try to make policies and allocate resources to different activities and then see which ones maximized these two measurable outcomes which you are trying to improve. For some reason governments do not do this. We have like 195 countries and hundreds of years of data about different public policies and budget allocations and so we can analyze this and determine which policies maximize the health and wealth of the population and then we could like just do those policies. > > I have done this and like relative to the optimal policies that could be implemented, Earth currently wastes about \$101 trillion a year on idiotic policies. So this compounds. And so these governments that we pay about [\$36.5 trillion](../../knowledge/appendix/parameters-and-calculations.llms.md#sec-global_government_expense_annual) a year to provide this service of promoting general welfare for us, since 1900 they have spent [\$170 trillion](../../knowledge/appendix/parameters-and-calculations.llms.md#sec-cumulative_military_spending_fed_era) of this murdering [310 million](../../knowledge/appendix/parameters-and-calculations.llms.md#sec-war_deaths_since_1900) of their employers, which I feel would be grounds for termination probably under any employment contract any human has ever signed on Earth. But for some reason we just keep giving them an extra [\$36.5 trillion](../../knowledge/appendix/parameters-and-calculations.llms.md#sec-global_government_expense_annual) every year. So they suck at it. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ## Why Are They So Bad At It? +---------------------------------------+ | | | SKILL A: getting into the room | | -------------------------------- | | lying, schmoozing, fundraising | | government SELECTS FOR THIS | | | | SKILL B: making good decisions | | -------------------------------- | | data, logic, second-order effects | | government does NOT select for this | | | +---------------------------------------+ > So the question is why do they suck so much? So the reason they suck at it is because the humans that are running it are retarded. The humans that are good at getting in charge of deciding what policies and budgets to have are not necessarily good at deciding policies and budgets, but they are smart, or relatively less retarded, at taking the actions required to get themselves into the boardrooms or buildings where these decisions are made. There’s a common misconception that there is such a thing as smartness and that the people who are making these decisions are smart. But history books are a catalog of humans being retarded for a very long time and then occasionally becoming slightly less retarded. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ## Your Government Runs Without Feedback +---------------------------------------+ | | | closed loop (your oven): [x] | | | | input --> process --> output | | ^ | | | +------- sensor ------+ | | | | open loop (war on drugs): | | | | "end drugs" --> $1T --> [???] | | (no sensor) | | (no feedback) | | | | deaths: 1,000 -> 107,000 / yr | | adjustment: none. 53 years. | | | +---------------------------------------+ > So the question is not just why they make bad decisions. It is why they keep making the same bad decision after the evidence is in. Your oven has a sensor. It measures the temperature, compares it to what you asked for, and adjusts until they match. Every machine you own does this. Your air conditioner, your cruise control, your refrigerator, your toilet. The toilet knows when to stop filling. Your government does not know when to stop filling. > > The War on Drugs: roughly \$50 billion a year for 53 years. Overdose deaths went from about 1,000 a year to about 107,000 a year. No sensor. No adjustment. The budget increased. > > The reason there is no sensor is that the people whose job it is to install one are also the people who profit from the temperature being wrong. The pharmaceutical industry does not profit from cures. The weapons industry does not profit from peace. The lobbying industry does not profit from a government that works. The sensor would end their business model. So there is no sensor. Earth Optimization Services installs the thermostat. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ## Ethyl Gasoline Corporation (1924) +---------------------------------------+ | | | OPTION A: ethanol | | -> no patent -> no extra money | | -> nobody gets brain damage | | | | OPTION B: tetraethyl lead (patent) | | -> royalties [chosen] | | -> IQ drops 10 pts globally | | -> massive crime wave | | -> trillions in lost GDP | | | | chose B. for 70 years. | | | +---------------------------------------+ > So one example is the case of the Ethyl Gasoline Corporation. So in 1924 they had cars. They put gasoline in the engines. Made them go. But there’s a problem because gasoline combusted prematurely and messed up the engines over time. It was called knocking. You had two options here. One, you put ethanol in the gasoline to prevent this knocking and messing up the engines. Or you could put this thing called tetraethyl lead in the gasoline to prevent the problem. The benefits of using tetraethyl lead in the gasoline were that the Ethyl Gasoline Corporation, a joint venture of General Motors and DuPont, had a patent on tetraethyl lead so they made a lot of money off of licensing this. Like putting all this lead in the gas which solved the knocking problem. Okay, the problem is it made everyone increasingly retarded. It decreased human IQ on average 10 points, resulted in a great deal of crime which is very costly to society. And a scientist named Clair Patterson discovered this and said, you know, it would be preferable if you kind of like didn’t make everyone retarded and used ethanol instead. Millions of dollars, possibly billions in today’s money, were spent lobbying and controlling the government so that they could continue to put lead in gasoline and give themselves brain damage and everyone they ever loved brain damage. And so they did this for about 70 years up until 1996 when eventually human retardation declined sufficiently to terminate this practice. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ## Nobody Was Even Trying to Be Evil +---------------------------------------+ | | | shareholders of Ethyl Corp: | | would have been 20-60% richer | | if they had never used the lead | | | | they hurt themselves | | they hurt everyone they loved | | nobody made them stop | | | | for 70 years | | because: assumed the people in | | charge were not retarded | | | +---------------------------------------+ > So there’s an important lesson here. A lot of people attribute this problem to selfishness and greed, like the diffuse costs of everybody being retarded and the global economy losing tens or hundreds of trillions of dollars in potential GDP from everyone not being so retarded. If you do the math, even the shareholders of Ethyl Gasoline Corporation would have been [23.2% (90% CI: 8.41%-52.4%)](../../knowledge/appendix/parameters-and-calculations.llms.md#sec-ethyl_shareholder_counterfactual_wealth_gain) richer if they had used that money spent on making everyone retarded and manipulating the government to allow them to continue making everyone retarded, instead of on things that are useful to society such as biomedical research. In the long run, they had to do this transition anyway, and in the long run even they themselves would have been vastly richer for not doing this. But for the fact that people assumed that the people in charge were not retarded. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ## Ignaz Semmelweis +---------------------------------------+ | | | 1847: wash hands before delivery | | -> maternal death rate: 18% -> 2% | | | | doctors: offended | | reward for discovery: asylum | | then: beaten to death by guards | | | | result: millions of preventable | | deaths over decades | | reason: unwashed hands | | | | calibrate your trust accordingly | | | +---------------------------------------+ > A doctor named Ignaz Semmelweis discovered that if you wash your goddamn hands before delivering a baby, there was only like a 2% chance the mother and the baby would die of sepsis after the delivery. He instituted this rule in his hospitals. The doctors, being retarded, were offended by the suggestion that they were filthy and causing their patients to die. As a reward for this discovery, they put him in a mental institution and the guards beat him to death. They then continued to not wash their hands before delivering babies, killing tens or maybe hundreds of millions of mothers and babies because they didn’t want to wash their goddamn hands. > > The reason I tell you this story is because you need to stop assuming the people in charge know what they are doing. Scientists and math and data are smarter than the gut instincts of whatever humans happen to be good enough at lying their way into power. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ## The Military-Industrial Complex Is Ethyl Corp at Civilizational Scale THE MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX IS ETHYL CORP AT CIVILIZATIONAL SCALE 4 billion sick right now. 550 million full-time caregivers. Total cost: $14.9 trillion (90% CI: $11.9 trillion-$18.3 trillion) / yr. Possible drug-disease combos: 9.5 million Tested: 32,500 (0.342% (90% CI: 0%-1%)) Queue at 15/yr: 443 years Pentagon unaccounted: $2.46 trillion = 547 years of clinical trials in a black hole. > The war industry is the biggest one, but it is not the only one. Today, 4 billion people are sick with chronic or infectious diseases. There are 550 million people whose entire job is taking care of them. The cost is roughly [\$14.9 trillion (90% CI: \$11.9 trillion-\$18.3 trillion)](../../knowledge/appendix/parameters-and-calculations.llms.md#sec-global_disease_total_market_cost_annual) a year. There are [9.5 million](../../knowledge/appendix/parameters-and-calculations.llms.md#sec-drug_disease_combinations_possible) possible drug-disease combinations we could test. We have tested 32,500. That is [0.342% (90% CI: 0%-1%)](../../knowledge/appendix/parameters-and-calculations.llms.md#sec-exploration_ratio) of the space. At the current rate of [15](../../knowledge/appendix/parameters-and-calculations.llms.md#sec-new_disease_first_treatments_per_year) new disease-treatment combinations approved per year, it will take [443](../../knowledge/appendix/parameters-and-calculations.llms.md#sec-status_quo_queue_clearance_years) years to clear the existing queue. The [\$2.46 trillion](../../knowledge/appendix/parameters-and-calculations.llms.md#sec-pentagon_unaccounted_funds) that the Pentagon cannot account for across 8 failed audits, all by itself, represents [547](../../knowledge/appendix/parameters-and-calculations.llms.md#sec-pentagon_unaccounted_clinical_trial_years) years of clinical trials at current funding levels. This is Ignaz Semmelweis’s unwashed hands, scaled to a civilization. We have the drugs. We have the diseases. We are not checking. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ## What If the Shareholders Had Just Replaced the Board? +---------------------------------------+ | | | imagine: | | lots of people buy Ethyl shares | | send love letters to the board | | "please stop giving everyone | | brain damage" | | buy enough shares to replace board | | | | result: | | trillions richer, fewer murders, | | faster science | | | | buy enough shares, replace the board | | | +---------------------------------------+ > Okay, so back to the Ethyl Gasoline Corporation. Imagine a counterfactual universe whereby lots of humans sent love letters to the board. Like purchased shares in the Ethyl Gasoline Corporation and sent love letters to the board members saying, I love you very much and I do not want you and your family to get brain damage, so please stop putting lead in the gasoline giving everyone brain damage. And there’s this thing called shareholder activism whereby you can buy enough shares to replace the board with people that are slightly less retarded. If they had done this, humanity would have been trillions of dollars richer, there would have been massively less crime (all those murders and thefts that resulted from everybody being retarded), and trillions of dollars in wealth would have been created from people being better at their jobs and making better decisions generally. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ## And They Built 122 Apocalypses for One Civilization AND THEY BUILT 122 APOCALYPSES FOR ONE CIVILIZATION 12,241 nuclear warheads. ~100 needed to end civilization. = 122 apocalypses on standby. $4.4 billion (95% CI: $3.74 billion-$5.06 billion)/yr in corporate lobbying controls the government that bought all 12,241 of them. The military-industrial complex = Ethyl Corp, at planetary scale. > So today is the same situation. There are corporations with boards run by people who are retarded relative to perfect information and perfect rationality. And there is plenty of data to make better decisions than these boards are making. Case in point, making [122](../../knowledge/appendix/parameters-and-calculations.llms.md#sec-nuclear_winter_overkill_factor) apocalypses worth of nuclear bombs when you only have one civilization to apocalypse. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ## Their Shareholders Would Be Richer Too THEIR SHAREHOLDERS WOULD BE RICHER TOO Current path: extract money from a shrinking economy, then die of a curable disease anyway. Better path: point the lobbying at real growth instead. The average person ends up 1.89x richer by year 20. The military contractors' own revenue goes up too. Same math as the leaded-gas company. They are hurting themselves. > The math works for the shareholders too. The same model that says the [1% treaty](https://manual.warondisease.org/knowledge/solution/1-percent-treaty.html)^([1](../references.llms.md#ref-1-percent-treaty-paper-2025)) ^([2](../references.llms.md#ref-1-pct-treaty-impact-paper-2025)) makes the average person [1.89](../../knowledge/appendix/parameters-and-calculations.llms.md#sec-treaty_vs_current_median_income_multiplier_year_20)x richer by year 20 says the military contractors’ own shareholders come out ahead in the redirected world. They are extracting value from a shrinking, destabilized economy. Redirect the lobbying toward the policies that grow the economy and their revenues can grow with it. Their stock can appreciate. Their employees live longer. The Ethyl Gasoline Corporation’s shareholders would have been [23.2% (90% CI: 8.41%-52.4%)](../../knowledge/appendix/parameters-and-calculations.llms.md#sec-ethyl_shareholder_counterfactual_wealth_gain) richer if they had never put lead in the gas. This is not charity. This is what the math says. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ## Who Loses? WHO LOSES? Nobody. That is the strange part. Everyone is handed a raise. The only way to lose is to turn it down. > The weapons companies keep 99% of the budget. You are asking for 1%. Their stock rises because the whole economy grows. Their shareholders end up richer. Their employees live longer because the diseases that were going to kill them get cured. The patients obviously win. The taxpayers stop paying for [121](../../knowledge/appendix/parameters-and-calculations.llms.md#sec-nuclear_winter_spare_apocalypses) spare apocalypses they did not need. Even the politicians who are currently bought get offered a better deal: campaign contributions from a growing economy plus they get to take credit for curing diseases, which is popular with voters. Every single group ends up better off. The only person who loses is the one who is handed a raise and says no. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ## WWII: The Cut That Caused the Biggest Boom WWII: THE CUT THAT CAUSED THE BIGGEST BOOM 1939: the US military cost $29 billion -- about 3% of today. It won World War II in four years. After the war, the US cut military spending 87.6%. What followed was the biggest economic boom in American history. Today: about a trillion dollars more than the WWII peak, cannot keep one shipping lane open, 8 failed audits in a row. > In 1939 the United States military spending was about 3% of its current levels. They won World War II in four years. After the war, the United States cut military spending by [87.6%](../../knowledge/appendix/parameters-and-calculations.llms.md#sec-post_ww2_military_cut_pct). What followed was the greatest economic expansion in American history. The economy did not collapse. It boomed. Today we spend a trillion dollars more and we can’t even keep the Strait of Hormuz open, because in 1939 you had to be good at building things to get government contracts and today you have to be good at lobbying. The hundred billion dollars a year the Pentagon just loses into a black hole and the thousand-dollar screws and the eight consecutive failed audits are not accidents. That is what a system that selects for corruption instead of competence looks like. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ## The Legal Mechanism THE LEGAL MECHANISM fiduciary duty -> act in shareholders' interest dead shareholder -> net worth $0 waste: $101 trillion (90% CI: $59.6 trillion-$161 trillion) / yr on policies that kill them the breach is sitting on the waste. > A board is legally required to act in its shareholders’ financial interest. A dead shareholder is worth nothing. Disease kills the customers, the workers, and the shareholders themselves, while the government wastes about [\$101 trillion (90% CI: \$59.6 trillion-\$161 trillion)](../../knowledge/appendix/parameters-and-calculations.llms.md#sec-political_dysfunction_global_opportunity_cost_total) a year that could be curing it. Point a sliver of that waste at clinical trials and every shareholder ends up richer and alive to enjoy it. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ## 0.02% of Shares, 3 Board Seats at Exxon 0.02% of Shares, 3 BOARD SEATS AT EXXON 2021: a tiny investment firm called Engine No. 1. $12.5 million. They owned 0.02% of ExxonMobil, a $400 billion company. Result: 3 seats on Exxon's board. Their argument: your strategy is destroying long-term value. Vanguard and BlackRock, who own 60%, agreed and voted with them. The stock went up. > In 2021, Engine No. 1 won three board seats at ExxonMobil with 0.02% of its shares and redirected a \$400 billion oil company toward carbon capture and lower-carbon energy. Vanguard and BlackRock, who hold roughly 60% of ExxonMobil, looked at the data and voted with them. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ## Buy the Shares, Redirect the Lobbyists BUY THE SHARES, REDIRECT THE LOBBYISTS buy shares -> shareholder rights -> board seats -> redirect lobbyists -> better policy using tools every shareholder already has. > Earth Optimization Services purchases shares in the corporations that currently spend [\$4.4 billion (95% CI: \$3.74 billion-\$5.06 billion)](../../knowledge/appendix/parameters-and-calculations.llms.md#sec-us_total_lobbying_annual) lobbying your government. Then it tells their lobbyists: here are the policies that actually make your shareholders richer. We know which ones work because we have data from hundreds of countries over hundreds of years. The lobbyists do what lobbyists do, except now they are lobbying for policies that work. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ## Buy One Share and Write a Letter BUY ONE SHARE AND WRITE A LETTER First target: Huntington Ingalls, the only company that builds US aircraft carriers ($10B). The Navy can't shop elsewhere. Buy one share (~$200). Write a letter to the board. Each win buys credibility. Credibility funds the next target. Then pharma. Then tech. Then oil. > Start with Huntington Ingalls Industries, the sole builder of aircraft carriers in the United States. The whole company is worth roughly \$10 billion. The Navy cannot buy carriers from anyone else. Buy one share for about \$200 and write a letter to the board. Each win creates credibility, capital, and attention. Each funds the next. If someone copies the strategy, it works faster, and if a competitor buys the same stocks, your shares go up. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ## What It Costs To Buy The Companies That Run The Government WHAT IT COSTS Military-industrial complex, board seats: $48.4 billion (0.0159% of all money on Earth) EVERY industry that owns the government at once: $884 billion (0.29%) > The military-industrial complex is the one part you can actually buy outright, and it’s cheap. Enough stock to win board seats costs [\$48.4 billion](../../knowledge/appendix/parameters-and-calculations.llms.md#sec-defense_takeover_cost_activist). That is [0.0159%](../../knowledge/appendix/parameters-and-calculations.llms.md#sec-defense_takeover_cost_activist_pct_investable_assets) of all the money invested on the planet. Enough to win board seats in every industry that owns your government, weapons, pharma, tech, insurance, oil, all at once, costs [\$884 billion](../../knowledge/appendix/parameters-and-calculations.llms.md#sec-full_corporate_takeover_cost_activist). That is [0.29%](../../knowledge/appendix/parameters-and-calculations.llms.md#sec-full_corporate_takeover_cost_activist_pct_investable_assets) of all the money in the world. And you couldn’t buy most of these companies if you tried. Zuckerberg and the Google founders and Larry Ellison kept the votes for themselves. So you don’t buy them. You out-vote them. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ## Where The Profit Comes From WHERE THE PROFIT COMES FROM better management --. sell high (worth more) | +-- the profit is this gap | poor management --' buy low (cheap) Same thing, bigger: optimized governance --. worth a lot more after | +-- gap: $101 trillion (90% CI: $59.6 trillion-$161 trillion) / yr | poor governance --' buy in here, cheap > Warren Buffett got rich doing one boring thing over and over: buy a company with bad management, give it good management, and pocket the gap. Earth Optimization Services uses the very same strategy. It just fixes the governance instead of the management, and it does it to the whole economy instead of one company. That works because BlackRock and Vanguard already own the whole economy. Nobody at either firm has done the math on what that means. Most investors guess which company beats which. BlackRock and Vanguard skipped that. They bought all of them. Every supplier, every lender, every insurer. They own a slice of everything. One company stealing from another nets them zero. They own both sides. They only make money when the whole economy gets bigger. > > The thing that decides how big the economy is? Governance. You can test this in your head. Take everything you own and move it to Somalia. Same stocks, same buildings. It’s worth almost nothing. Warlords eat most of it. Move it to the United States. Worth orders of magnitude more. The only thing that changed was who runs the place. > > What’s it worth under a government better than this one? That gap is [\$101 trillion (90% CI: \$59.6 trillion-\$161 trillion)](../../knowledge/appendix/parameters-and-calculations.llms.md#sec-political_dysfunction_global_opportunity_cost_total) a year. You are not picking winners. You are fixing the room they all sit in. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ## Four Earths, Twenty Years FOUR EARTHS, TWENTY YEARS optimal governance / $10.7 quadrillion (90% CI: $3.95 quadrillion-$28 quadrillion) / treaty / / $322 trillion (90% CI: $245 trillion-$404 trillion) today ---.......... $188 trillion $115 trillion fantasy 2.5% \ \ collapse by 2037 \ X Somalia, everywhere the alpha: human stupidity. the treaty is not the optimistic bet. it is the hedge. > So I am going to show you the only chart you need. Four lines. Same starting point. Twenty years. > > The gray dotted line is what your economists project. 2.5% growth, smooth and steady, reaching [\$188 trillion](../../knowledge/appendix/parameters-and-calculations.llms.md#sec-current_trajectory_gdp_year_20) by year 20. This requires twenty consecutive years of nothing going wrong. Your species has never done this. Not once. It is the fantasy. > > The red line going down is what is actually happening. Your [destructive economy](https://manual.warondisease.org/knowledge/economics/gdp-trajectories.html)^([3](../references.llms.md#ref-gdp-trajectories-paper-2025)), military spending plus cybercrime, is already [11.5%](../../knowledge/appendix/parameters-and-calculations.llms.md#sec-global_destructive_economy_pct_gdp) of GDP and growing faster than your productive economy. Every collapsed civilization in history, Soviet Union, Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Somalia, crossed the same threshold. The death spiral starts at 35% extractive burden. You hit that by [2037](../../knowledge/appendix/parameters-and-calculations.llms.md#sec-destructive_economy_35pct_year). That is not a prediction. That is the current trend line, extended, using the growth rates you already measured last year. The line goes to zero because that is what happens when stealing pays better than building: everyone rational switches to stealing, and then there is nothing left to steal. > > The blue line going up is the treaty. Redirect 1% of the weapons budget to clinical trials. It compounds at [5.28% (90% CI: 3.85%-6.48%)](../../knowledge/appendix/parameters-and-calculations.llms.md#sec-treaty_trajectory_cagr_year_20) and reaches [\$322 trillion (90% CI: \$245 trillion-\$404 trillion)](../../knowledge/appendix/parameters-and-calculations.llms.md#sec-treaty_trajectory_gdp_year_20) by year 20. The average person ends up [1.89](../../knowledge/appendix/parameters-and-calculations.llms.md#sec-treaty_vs_current_median_income_multiplier_year_20)x richer than on the fantasy baseline, and infinitely richer than on the collapse line, because infinity times zero is still zero and alive beats dead in most financial models. > > The gold line is what happens if you fix governance entirely. Full optimization. That one reaches [\$10.7 quadrillion (90% CI: \$3.95 quadrillion-\$28 quadrillion)](../../knowledge/appendix/parameters-and-calculations.llms.md#sec-wishonia_trajectory_gdp_year_20), which is [33.2x (90% CI: 12.7x-83.4x)](../../knowledge/appendix/parameters-and-calculations.llms.md#sec-wishonia_trajectory_vs_treaty_trajectory_gdp_multiplier_year_20) the treaty line. “Stop being stupid” turns out to be the most aggressive growth strategy available to your species. > > Now here is the part that should make you laugh, if you are an investor. In every other asset class, alpha comes from secret information, proprietary models, a faster computer. Here the alpha is: your civilization is governed by idiots, and the returns from not being governed by idiots are larger than any trade in the history of money. This is not a hidden signal. Everyone knows the government is bad at its job. The trade is: make it less bad, and own the upside. The gap between the red line and the blue line is not a bet. It is a hedge. You are not betting that things will get better. You are hedging against the certainty that they will get worse if nobody does anything. And by the way, if nobody does anything, your portfolio goes to zero anyway, because portfolios require a functioning civilization, and the red line does not have one. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ## The Flywheel: Why It Speeds Up THE FLYWHEEL: WHY IT SPEEDS UP Win one board fight and three things happen: The stock goes up -> more money for the next fight. Better policy -> bigger economy. Bigger economy -> every stock worth more. Each feeds the other two. You kick it once. > Win one board fight and three things happen. The stock goes up, so more people buy in, which funds the next fight. The lobbying you redirected gets good policy passed, which makes the whole economy bigger. A bigger economy makes every company worth more, including the ones you already hold. Each feeds the other two. You kick it once and it speeds up on its own. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ## The Failure Mode +---------------------------------------+ | | | IF the campaign fails: | | war continues | | more contracts | | your shares go up | | | | you hold monopoly contractors | | whose customers cannot leave | | | | (the Navy is not going to buy | | carriers from Toyota) | | | | failure is not automatic zero | | | +---------------------------------------+ > The failure mode is not automatic zero. If this company fails to end war, war continues. War continuing can mean more missile contracts. You have purchased a portfolio of companies with customers that are hard to replace, while also buying the chance that governance pressure works. The downside is not a blank hole with a receipt in it. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ## Competition Makes You Richer +---------------------------------------+ | | | normal business: | | competitor enters market | | -> steals customers | | -> your revenue drops | | | | EOS: | | competitor buys same stocks | | -> more demand for shares you hold | | -> shares you hold can climb | | | | only investment where competitors | | succeeding = you winning | | | +---------------------------------------+ > Normally, when you get competitors, they steal your market share, so you get fewer sales and the value of your investment can go down. If somebody decides this is a good idea and competes with Earth Optimization Services, that can be good, because it means there is greater demand for the same shares you own, which can lift their value. Competition validates the thesis instead of destroying it, which is a nice change from normal capitalism, where everyone spends the working day trying to bite each other to death inside a spreadsheet. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ## Money Doesn’t Buy Votes MONEY DOESN'T BUY VOTES money buys profit. not votes. not control. one civic vote per human. not for sale. > If this company actually pulls it off and ends up controlling the companies that control the governments, it becomes very powerful. And concentrated power has a terrible track record. Every genocide, every unjust war, was started by some small group that had the power to start it. None of them were ever started by a public vote. People do not vote to be marched into a famine. So the rule here is simple: your money buys you a share of the profit, not extra civic votes or corporate control. The decisions get made one civic vote per human, and those votes are not for sale. You cannot buy the steering wheel, no matter how many shares you own. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ## What The First Money Buys WHAT THE FIRST MONEY BUYS $500K: proof budget. stay alive, form the company, buy small positions, send the first serious letters. $1M: target budget. 18-24 months of lean runway, one AI-multiplied engineer, first HII-style campaign proof. $2M: oxygen. more reserve, cleaner compliance, fewer existential meetings about invoices. This money does NOT buy civic votes or control. It buys non-voting EOS equity. > Private offering documents decide the final terms, and accepted private investors must be verified accredited investors. The pitch version is simpler: the first EOS equity raise is meant to buy time, tools, legal cleanliness, and the first proof that shareholder pressure can redirect lobbying. At the low end, it is a proof budget. At the target, it is a real lean operating budget. If demand is larger, the extra oxygen goes to reserve, compliance, and stronger campaign proof, and not, under any circumstances, to a head office with a water feature and chairs that cost more than the audit. > > It does not fund the bonds, the Prize, a nonprofit, or a secret steering wheel. It funds EOS: the company, the platform, the first public-equity positions, and the first campaign evidence. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ## The Whole Machine [![Capital in, board seats won, lobbying redirected, policy changed, median health and wealth up. Every component feeds the next. The diagram is the pitch.](../../assets/eos-diagram.png)](../../assets/eos-diagram.png) Capital in, board seats won, lobbying redirected, policy changed, median health and wealth up. Every component feeds the next. The diagram is the pitch. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ## Who the Hell Is Telling You All This +---------------------------------------+ | | | I am just some weirdo. | | | | I know this sounds crazy. | | You are right to be skeptical. | | | | But I followed the problem. | | | | sick -> data -> regulatory -> | | resource allocation -> root cause: | | the money points at the wrong stuff | | | +---------------------------------------+ > So look, I am just some weirdo on the internet saying a lot of things that sound extremely crazy. You are right to be skeptical. I do not know if this will work. I think it probably will, because the math is pretty clear, but I have been wrong before and I will be wrong again about something. > > What I can tell you is how I got here. > > I got my degree in electrical engineering and physics. Then I went to work at an industrial testing laboratory for about ten years doing root cause failure analysis. A turbine explodes, a power plant fails, a bridge cracks. You get the data, you find the actual cause, you write the report. You do not write the cause that makes the client feel better. You write the one the evidence points to. > > Then I got a bunch of diseases. Psoriasis, arthritis, depression, and some gross stuff with my intestines that I will not describe because you are possibly eating. I wanted to do a root cause failure analysis on myself. So I built a sort of a decentralized FDA platform and apps that collected about 12 million data points on symptoms of illness and food and drug intake from about 10,000 people. Then I applied causal inference to determine the change from baseline in symptom severity following administration of various foods and drugs, and generated outcome labels for thousands of foods and drugs and treatment rankings. You can see them at [studies.dfda.earth](https://studies.dfda.earth)^([4](../references.llms.md#ref-dfda-spec-paper-2025),[5](../references.llms.md#ref-dfda-impact-paper-2025)). > > And there is a lot you can learn about how to fix yourself from that data. But the biggest thing I learned is that for a lot of people with a lot of diseases, the existing treatments do not make a ton of difference. The treatments that could actually fix you do not exist yet because nobody has run the trials. > > So then I thought the problem was the FDA. The regulatory barriers are massive. It takes 14 years and \$2.6 billion to get a drug approved. There are thousands of potentially useful drug-disease combinations that nobody has tested because the testing costs too much and takes too long. > > But then I realized it was not just a regulatory problem either. It is a resource allocation problem. Your government spends [604](../../knowledge/appendix/parameters-and-calculations.llms.md#sec-military_to_government_clinical_trials_spending_ratio) times more on the capacity to kill people than on clinical trials to cure the diseases that are about 30 million times more likely to kill you than a terrorist. The regulations are bad because the lobbying that writes them is funded by industries that profit from the regulations being bad. The FDA is slow because nobody with real money wants it to be fast. > > Root cause: the money points at the wrong things. The same root cause as the Ethyl Gasoline Corporation. The same root cause as Ignaz Semmelweis’s unwashed hands. The same root cause, at civilizational scale, running for decades, killing millions of people a year, because the companies that profit from the current arrangement spend [\$4.4 billion (95% CI: \$3.74 billion-\$5.06 billion)](../../knowledge/appendix/parameters-and-calculations.llms.md#sec-us_total_lobbying_annual) a year making sure it does not change. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ## Invest INVEST Earth Optimization Services. Buy shares in the company. upside: the campaigns work, the shares rise, and you got rich ending war and disease. downside: none of it works. Your money is still sitting in shares of military contractors and pharma companies. EOS liquidates the portfolio. You get back whatever those stocks returned. No carry. No management fee. You accidentally bought a weapons ETF with no fees. minimum: $25,000 (accredited investors only). the SEC protects less wealthy Americans from the risk of making money. We go public as fast as possible so everyone can buy in at $5. returns are projected, not promised. > So what Earth Optimization Services actually does is reclaim all of these currently wasted resources, all of this money that’s being wasted on thousand-dollar screws and lost in Pentagon black holes and spent on [121](../../knowledge/appendix/parameters-and-calculations.llms.md#sec-nuclear_winter_spare_apocalypses) unnecessary apocalypses, and return it to the shareholders. Which is you. All of you. And then you allocate it via the free market, which is the thing that we already know works better than central planning. So instead of 535 people in Congress deciding what to do with your money based on who gave them the most lobbying money, you decide what to do with your money based on what you actually need. And some of you will buy healthcare and some of you will fund research and some of you will buy more bombs if you want, but at least it will be your choice. > > Full terms and the investment calculator: [Earth Optimization Fund](../../knowledge/economics/earth-optimization-fund.llms.md). ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ## You Are Already a Humanity Manager +---------------------------------------+ | | | you are a Humanity Manager at EOS | | 1 civic vote, equal to every human | | | | | | your job: help figure out the | | optimal policies and be nice to | | each other in this workplace | | which is Earth | | | +---------------------------------------+ > Additionally, whether or not you invest, you are already a Humanity Manager at Earth Optimization Services, which comes with one civic vote, not a corporate share, given equally to every human and impossible to buy or sell. Investing earns you the financial return; the vote is yours just for being a person. And as a Humanity Manager, your job is to do your best to help Earth Optimization Services determine the optimal public policies and gain board seats at all of these corporations. And just generally make the rest of humanity be nice and helpful to each other in this workplace, which is Earth. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ## Verification Table > **NOTE:** > > | Claim | Status | Where to Verify | > |----|----|----| > | Expected value math (infinity times any probability = infinity) | Standard probability theory | Any introductory probability textbook | > | Time dilation in dreams | Peer-reviewed | Sleep research on subjective time perception | > | Salvia divinorum time distortion | Published case reports | Pharmacological literature on salvinorin A | > | Immortal jellyfish (*Turritopsis dohrnii*) | Confirmed | Marine biology textbooks | > | Earth wastes [\$101 trillion (90% CI: \$59.6 trillion-\$161 trillion)](../../knowledge/appendix/parameters-and-calculations.llms.md#sec-political_dysfunction_global_opportunity_cost_total)/year on suboptimal policies | Derived in book | [The Political Dysfunction Tax](https://manual.warondisease.org/knowledge/appendix/political-dysfunction-tax.html) | > | Governments spend [\$36.5 trillion](../../knowledge/appendix/parameters-and-calculations.llms.md#sec-global_government_expense_annual)/year | External data | [World Bank government expense data](https://data.worldbank.org) | > | [310 million](../../knowledge/appendix/parameters-and-calculations.llms.md#sec-war_deaths_since_1900) employers murdered since 1900 | External data | [Democide statistics (R.J. Rummel)](https://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/); [Cost of War](https://manual.warondisease.org/knowledge/problem/cost-of-war.html) | > | [\$170 trillion](../../knowledge/appendix/parameters-and-calculations.llms.md#sec-cumulative_military_spending_fed_era) spent on murder since 1900 | Derived in book | [Cost of War](https://manual.warondisease.org/knowledge/problem/cost-of-war.html) | > | War on Drugs: overdoses rose from ~1,000 to ~107,000/yr over 53 years | External data | CDC drug overdose mortality data (1970-2023); DEA budget records | > | Ethyl Gasoline Corporation / tetraethyl lead | Historical record | Banned in US 1996. IQ reduction documented by CDC. Discussed in [I Am Retarded](../../knowledge/problem/i-am-retarded.llms.md) | > | Clair Patterson discovered lead contamination | Historical record | [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clair_Cameron_Patterson). Note: discovery was in the 1960s, not the 1930s. The monologue’s timeline is approximate but the substance is correct. | > | Shareholders would have been 20-60% richer without lead | Derived | GDP impact of lead exposure vs. ethanol alternative cost; discussed in [I Am Retarded](../../knowledge/problem/i-am-retarded.llms.md) | > | Ignaz Semmelweis beaten to death in asylum | Historical record | [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis). Died 1865. Discussed in [I Am Retarded](../../knowledge/problem/i-am-retarded.llms.md) | > | 4 billion people sick with chronic or infectious diseases | External data | WHO Global Health Estimates; [Cost of Disease](../../knowledge/problem/cost-of-disease.llms.md) | > | 550 million caregivers worldwide | External data | ILO care economy estimates; [Cost of Disease](../../knowledge/problem/cost-of-disease.llms.md) | > | [\$14.9 trillion (90% CI: \$11.9 trillion-\$18.3 trillion)](../../knowledge/appendix/parameters-and-calculations.llms.md#sec-global_disease_total_market_cost_annual) annual disease burden | Derived | Direct + indirect costs; [Cost of Disease](../../knowledge/problem/cost-of-disease.llms.md) | > | [9.5 million](../../knowledge/appendix/parameters-and-calculations.llms.md#sec-drug_disease_combinations_possible) possible drug-disease combinations | Derived | ~9,500 approved drugs x ~1,000 diseases; [Cost of Disease](../../knowledge/problem/cost-of-disease.llms.md) | > | 32,500 tested (0.3%) | Derived | ClinicalTrials.gov completed trials; [Cost of Disease](../../knowledge/problem/cost-of-disease.llms.md) | > | [443](../../knowledge/appendix/parameters-and-calculations.llms.md#sec-status_quo_queue_clearance_years) years to clear queue at [15](../../knowledge/appendix/parameters-and-calculations.llms.md#sec-new_disease_first_treatments_per_year) approvals/year | Derived | 6,650 rare diseases / 15 FDA approvals/yr; [Cost of Disease](../../knowledge/problem/cost-of-disease.llms.md) | > | [\$2.46 trillion](../../knowledge/appendix/parameters-and-calculations.llms.md#sec-pentagon_unaccounted_funds) Pentagon unaccounted = 546 trial years | Derived | DOD OIG audit findings; \$2.46T / \$4.5B per trial-year; [Cost of War](https://manual.warondisease.org/knowledge/problem/cost-of-war.html); [Cost of Disease](../../knowledge/problem/cost-of-disease.llms.md) | > | [122](../../knowledge/appendix/parameters-and-calculations.llms.md#sec-nuclear_winter_overkill_factor) apocalypses worth of nuclear bombs | Derived in book | [12,241](../../knowledge/appendix/parameters-and-calculations.llms.md#sec-global_warhead_count) warheads / [100](../../knowledge/appendix/parameters-and-calculations.llms.md#sec-nuclear_winter_warhead_threshold) needed for nuclear winter. [The Apocalypse Markup](../../knowledge/appendix/extinction-surplus.llms.md); [Cost of War](https://manual.warondisease.org/knowledge/problem/cost-of-war.html) | > | [\$4.4 billion (95% CI: \$3.74 billion-\$5.06 billion)](../../knowledge/appendix/parameters-and-calculations.llms.md#sec-us_total_lobbying_annual) in corporate lobbying | External data | [OpenSecrets](https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying) | > | US military spending 3% of current levels in 1939 | Historical data | [\$29 billion](../../knowledge/appendix/parameters-and-calculations.llms.md#sec-us_military_spending_1939_annual_2024usd) (1939) vs. [\$886 billion](../../knowledge/appendix/parameters-and-calculations.llms.md#sec-us_military_spending_2024_annual) (2024), constant 2024 dollars. [Cost of War](https://manual.warondisease.org/knowledge/problem/cost-of-war.html) | > | Won WWII in four years | Historical record | US entered December 1941, Japan surrendered August 1945 | > | Post-WWII military cut 88%, then biggest boom | Historical record | DoD budget fell from ~\$900B (1945) to ~\$100B (1948) in 2024 dollars; followed by 1950s-60s expansion; [Cost of War](https://manual.warondisease.org/knowledge/problem/cost-of-war.html) | > | Median income [1.89](../../knowledge/appendix/parameters-and-calculations.llms.md#sec-treaty_vs_current_median_income_multiplier_year_20)x by year 20 under treaty | Modeled | [The Loving Takeover](https://manual.warondisease.org/knowledge/appendix/loving-takeover.html); projected, not guaranteed | > | Pentagon failed 8 consecutive audits | Government record | DOD Office of Inspector General, FY2018-FY2025 | > | Engine No. 1: 0.02% of shares, 3 board seats at \$400B ExxonMobil | Historical record | [Wall Street Journal, May 2021](https://www.wsj.com/articles/exxon-loses-board-seats-to-activist-hedge-fund-engine-no-1-11621368052) | > | HII is sole US aircraft carrier builder | External data | Congressional Research Service reports on shipbuilding industrial base | > | Buy one share (~\$200) and write the board; a law firm letter the board must read \$5K-\$15K; a campaign to put your own person on the board \$100K-\$500K | Derived estimate | HII share price (NYSE); shareholder rights law firm fee schedules; Engine No. 1 at scale was \$12.5M for a \$400B company | > | Boards legally required to act in shareholder interest (the 1996 Caremark ruling) | Legal record | *In re Caremark International Inc. Derivative Litigation*, 698 A.2d 959 (Del. Ch. 1996) | > | “Optimitron” policy optimization machine | Book concept | [Optimocracy](../../knowledge/solution/optimocracy.llms.md); [Optimal Policy Generator](https://manual.warondisease.org/knowledge/appendix/optimal-policy-generator-spec.html) | > | One civic vote per verified human | Book concept | [Wishocracy](../../knowledge/solution/wishocracy.llms.md); [Earth Optimization Services](../../knowledge/solution/earth-optimization-services.llms.md) | > | Shareholder activism to replace boards | Book concept | [Loving Takeover](https://manual.warondisease.org/knowledge/appendix/loving-takeover.html); [Lawsuit](../../knowledge/appendix/lawsuit.llms.md) | > | First EOS equity raise target and use-of-proceeds story | Draft offering plan, attorney review pending | [Earth Optimization Fund](../../knowledge/economics/earth-optimization-fund.llms.md); binding terms stay in private offering documents | > | Planet GL-881 / Moronia similarity score | Book concept | [Moronia](../../knowledge/futures/moronia.llms.md); [Earth Optimization Services](../../knowledge/solution/earth-optimization-services.llms.md) | 1\. Sinn, M. P. *The 1% Treaty*. (2025) doi:[10.5281/zenodo.20076511](https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20076511) *Your governments possess nuclear weapons sufficient to end civilization 122 times but have not cured Alzheimer’s once. This treaty asks them to be 1% more rational.* 2\. Sinn, M. P. *The 1% Treaty: An Incentive-Compatible Approach to Ending War and Disease*. (2025) doi:[10.5281/zenodo.18161560](https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18161560) *6,650 diseases have zero FDA-approved treatments; at current trial capacity, exploring them takes  443 years. Redirecting 1% of military spending scales capacity 12.3x, cutting the timeline to  36 years and preventing 10.7 billion deaths. At \$0.02/DALY, 9.3kx more cost-effective than the best existing interventions. The result holds across every specified adoption pathway.* 3\. Sinn, M. P. *Choose Your Own Earth: A World Without the Political Dysfunction Tax, or Terminal Parasitic Load in 15 Years*. (2025) doi:[10.5281/zenodo.19076850](https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19076850) *Your destructive economy (military spending plus cybercrime) is already 11.5% of GDP and growing faster than your productive economy. At current rates, it reaches the Soviet collapse threshold in 8 years and exceeds productive output in 15. This paper models two GDP trajectories: the optimized path under military-to-medical reallocation, and the default path to civilizational collapse.* 4\. Sinn, M. P. *The Continuous Evidence Generation Protocol: Two-Stage Validation (RWE → Pragmatic Trials)*. (2025) doi:[10.5281/zenodo.18203375](https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18203375) *We present the Predictor Impact Score (PIS), a novel composite metric operationalizing Bradford Hill causality criteria for automated signal detection from aggregated N-of-1 observational studies. Combined with pragmatic trial confirmation (based on evidence from 108+ embedded trials), this two-stage framework would generate validated outcome labels at 44.1x lower cost than traditional Phase III trials. This enables continuous, population-scale pharmacovigilance and precision dosing recommendations.* 5\. Sinn, M. P. *Ubiquitous Pragmatic Trial Impact Analysis*. (2025) doi:[10.5281/zenodo.18243914](https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18243914) *Only 15 diseases/year get their first treatment each year. With 6,650 diseases lacking effective treatments, the backlog would take 443 years to clear. Integrating pragmatic trials into standard healthcare increases trial capacity 12.3x, cutting that timeline from 443 years to 36 years. The average untreated disease gets a treatment 212 years earlier, saving 10.7 billion deaths at \$9.62 per year of healthy life saved.* 6\. Calculated from Orphanet Journal of Rare Diseases (2024). Diseases getting first effective treatment each year. *Calculated from Orphanet Journal of Rare Diseases (2024)* (2024) *Under the current system, approximately 10-15 diseases per year receive their FIRST effective treatment. Calculation: 5% of 7,000 rare diseases ( 350) have FDA-approved treatment, accumulated over 40 years of the Orphan Drug Act =  9 rare diseases/year. Adding  5-10 non-rare diseases that get first treatments yields  10-20 total. FDA approves  50 drugs/year, but many are for diseases that already have treatments (me-too drugs, second-line therapies). Only  15 represent truly FIRST treatments for previously untreatable conditions.* 7\. OpenSecrets. [Federal lobbying hit record \$4.4 billion in 2024](https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2025/02/federal-lobbying-set-new-record-in-2024/). (2024) *Total federal lobbying reached record \$4.4 billion in 2024. The \$150 million increase in lobbying continues an upward trend that began in 2016. Additional sources: https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2025/02/federal-lobbying-set-new-record-in-2024/* . 8\. The Commune. Pentagon audit failures (\$2.46T unaccounted). *The Commune* (2024) *In the most recent audit, the Department of Defense (DoD) could not account for approximately 60% of its $4.1 trillion in assets, amounting to$2.46 trillion unaccounted for. Alternative title: Pentagon unsupported accounting adjustments ($6.5T, single year, US Army) In 2015, the Department of Defense's Inspector General reported that the Army could not adequately support$6.5 trillion in year-end adjustments, indicating severe accounting discrepancies. Additional sources: https://thecommunemag.com/the-pentagon-misplaced-2-46-trillion-an-in-depth-look-at-the-financial-audit-failures \| https://accmag.com/audit-pentagon-cannot-account-for-6-5-trillion-dollars-is-taxpayer-money/* . 9\. Sinn, M. P. *The Political Dysfunction Tax*. (2025) doi:[10.5281/zenodo.18603840](https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18603840) *Quantifying the gap between current global governance and theoretical maximum welfare, estimating a 31-53% efficiency score and \$101 trillion in annual opportunity costs.* 10\. Manuel, D. U.s. Defense spending history: 100 years of military budgets. *DaveManuel.com* (2025) *US military spending in constant 2024 dollars: 1939 \$29B (pre-WW2 baseline), 1940 \$37B, 1944 \$1,383B, 1945 \$1,420B (peak), 1946 \$674B, 1947 \$176B, 1948 \$117B, 2024 \$886B. The post-WW2 demobilization cut spending 88% in two years (1945-1947). Current peacetime spending (\$886B) is 30x the pre-WW2 baseline and 62% of peak WW2 spending, in inflation-adjusted dollars.* 11\. Federation of American Scientists. World nuclear forces. *Federation of American Scientists* (2024) *As of early 2025, we estimate that the world’s nine nuclear-armed states possess a combined total of approximately 12,241 nuclear warheads. Additional sources: https://fas.org/issues/nuclear-weapons/status-world-nuclear-forces/* .