Kind: captions
Language: en
is not any kind of mode to be in if you
actually want to solve issues climate
change is a problem but it's not going
to be the end of the world
you wrote a book called best things
first what and we'll definitely get into
the specific things that you recommend
but even more importantly than that what
I liked about the book is that you're
helping people take a new way of
thinking which I think is incredibly
important so I want to linger for a
second on the strategy that's being
deployed right now I think you and I
agree that for the most part uh I'll be
very generous and say I think people are
well intentioned but it does not seem to
be working so I wanna what do you think
is their point are they trying to uh
scare people more and more and more
because they think that's the only way
to get people to act if you listen to
all those stories you would be panicked
I totally understand why people think oh
my God but what you need to understand
is that if you actually look at the data
most things are getting better and
better around the world and pretty much
all kinds of ways both in obvious ways
we live longer not shorter we're better
better off we're better educated all
these things and there's still lots and
lots of stuff that needs to be done
we're not nearly well educated enough
we're still dying needlessly from lots
of different things and yes climate
change is a problem but again not the
end of the world how many people die
from climate related disasters well we
have pretty good data over the last
hundred years for people dying from
floods drought storms and wildfires if
you look at how many people dying it
used to be about half a million people
each and every year on average than the
1920s today that number is down to
around 18
000. so we've seen a reduction of about
97 in deaths this is very little to do
with climate but everything to do with
the fact that we've become much smarter
we've become much more resilient uh
We've lifted a lot of people out of
poverty and that means they can actually
afford to make sure they don't die from
these very preventable uh problems and
that's of course The crucial Point
climate change will create more problems
but it will create more problems in a
world that's headed in the right
direction it'll simply slow progress
slightly that's a very different kind of
thing than saying it's the end of the
world so I think these guys so Greta
tunberg and others aren't just simply
scared because they see this in the
media picture you also ask why are a lot
of other people uh pushing this agenda
if your thing is global warming or
something
do you want people to spend money on
that uh and so you're gonna push all the
stories that give you more leverage on
that front uh but so hold on because
there's there's an assumption that you
made there and I think this is part of
the problem so what I I want to tease
out and honestly I'm talking to myself
as much as I'm talking to anybody I have
lately become very paranoid about AI I'm
normally a super optimistic guy and I
can just feel the pull of my concern and
I have a a rule in my own life where I
distrust my own emotions and when I the
reason I distrust my own emotions is I
know that I have a negativity bias I
know that I am going to be way more
likely to believe that something
negative is true I know that I'm way
more likely to click on a link that says
that we're all going to die like I get
it and as somebody building a YouTube
channel I know that if I put a way more
like Doom and Gloom terrifying headline
that people are going to click on it but
going back again to your book best
things first the thing that draws me to
you and and I really do want to stand
this point for a second about the way
that people think how to get them to
take action what the right actions are
to take I think it is important to
understand why we are where we are first
so that people can begin to unwind it
okay so I'm talking to myself what I'm
trying to say is okay look you have a
negativity bias people are going to try
to rile you up through the negativity
because that is the thing that's going
to get you to take action but what you
just said if you're somebody who's
really gotten sucked into this your mind
is taken over by the panic and you think
I want people to spend money on my
problem that to me is where this breaks
and this is where as an entrepreneur I
in fact I just tweeted out today I'm not
trying to motivate or inspire people I'm
trying to empower them with
goal-oriented solutions that actually
work and so it's that that actually work
thing that I think we have to tease
apart so my point here is I don't think
I really hope
that people don't want you to spend
money on something I hope that money
spent for them is a proxy for that's how
we get results and I think the very
problem is we have to get people to stop
talking about this is where I want you
looking this is where I want you
spending money and asking themselves
what actually works
does that make sense it totally makes
sense and and this of course is exactly
the way that I would think as well you
know it's about where do you get the
biggest bang for your buck where do you
actually get a lot of efficiency uh for
every uh uh uh motivation and and time
and uh money spent rather than where you
don't
um but I but I think so what I was
trying to talk about is if you've sort
of gotten engulfed in this one thing
that's going to do mankind uh and that
could be climate change or it could be
AI then clearly you think there's a big
meteor hurtling towards Earth there's
nothing else that matters right so I I
get that idea and that's why I think we
need to sort of take a time out and say
well that's not actually the case
certainly not for climate change I would
actually uh I I don't know if you know
those guys there's a it's an existential
uh threats uh Center at uh Oxford
University they've looked into this and
they they would probably agree with you
a lot more with AI this is not at all my
thing but that is actually something we
should be concerned about Toby ORD makes
a very sort of rough what is going to
kill mankind this century and his uh
climate change probably has a one in a
hundred chance uh of uh of doing that AI
could be a third you know 33 that's
that's a pretty big thing so clearly
over the century we should probably be
spending more time looking into that I
have nothing smart to say about that
that's just not my thing as well so I'll
I'll beg to differ with you on that so I
have often heard people in my position
that are on camera for a living say look
the way that I protect myself is I just
never talk about things I don't know
about and I think that's the wrong
approach so the reason I believe that so
I uh for a while I was teaching a
business class that I called business
decision making the reason that I taught
that class because it is hard to
convince people that that is the class
they need because if I said um
copywriting 100 million dollar
copywriting tactics people will sign up
for that class all day long now the
reason I don't teach that class is that
you can hire somebody else to do that
but if you want to be an entrepreneur
you have to be able to Think Through
novel problems so meaning not only a
problem you've never thought about
before a problem no one has thought
about before now correct me if I'm wrong
but what I see you doing in your shift
because everything that I know about you
up until best things first is climate
climate climate but best things first is
not read like a climate book at all to
me so I was like ooh here is a guy that
I again I'm gonna put words in your
mouth for a second and then you can
speak for yourself so here's how it
feels from the outside for people that
don't know you and I met 90 seconds
before we started rolling we do not know
each other at all uh but reading your
book watching a ton of interviews all of
that the thing that I put together is
you beat your head against the climate
thing forever and ever and ever and it
didn't work and you now have stepped
back to say the point I've been trying
to make this whole time is you just have
to prioritize and so I think so going
back to just to tie these ideas together
I don't think you should at all worry
about talking about a subject that you
don't know as long as you're approaching
it from a framework of thought
perspective here is how I would approach
that problem because my gut instinct is
that trying to tell people that there
isn't an asteroid hurtling towards Earth
in the form of AI in the form of uh
climate change whatever that's a losing
proposition it's never gonna people are
in the grips of panic so now my thing is
just like okay cool there's an asteroid
hurtling towards Earth it is climate
change now what do we do about it now I
understand the nuances of your argument
well enough to know the reason that
you're trying to de-escalate people is
because when panicked you make
short-term decisions because if you
think we're only going to be here for
five years you only think about
solutions that can be enacted in five
years so I get that but I want to stay
at a 30 000 for view on the way to think
through a novel problem first and then
we can sort of get sucked into the weeds
we are going to for people listening we
are going to go through the 12 things
we're going to talk about what you need
to to do but I want to do it as an
example of how to apply your framework
of thought against incredibly difficult
novel problems so one how does that
sound in terms of beat my head against
the wall with climate forever and ever
and now I'm just switching my pitch up
instead I'm going to get you excited
about things that will actually work and
it is a bit of a magic trick of like
okay I'm just going to take you over to
to the thing that is going to hopefully
get you excited about saving Millions
potentially billions of people with way
easier Solutions so there's a lot of
truth to this I I should just say I've
actually been doing both so I've both
been talking about climate for the last
20 years and I've been talking about all
the other problems like you know
tuberculosis and education in the third
world for at least uh 18 years of
thereabouts uh so but but the point is
everyone in the rich world only ever
want to talk about climate change
because that's that's what interests
people in the rich World whenever I talk
in the poor half of the world they all
want to hear about all these uh
Solutions so in that sense I'm just
happy that best things first is the
first real chance I've gotten to to make
this argument for everyone else as well
uh so I've been trying to do both things
at the same time and I think it's the
same it's the flip side of of that coin
look climate change is a real problem
but we shouldn't let that dominate so
much that we end up only spending money
or primarily spending all of our
resources there just like TB and you
know sorry tuberculosis and educational
these other things are big problems but
they shouldn't suck up all our attention
they should suck up some of our
attention and we should spend it
correctly uh and and so I'm I'm
basically trying to say you know worry
less about climate but be smart about it
and and there are some amazing ways you
can actually help uh fix climate change
but likewise be maybe a little bit more
concerned about tuberculosis and
education than we are right now oh but
there are really really smart ways to do
that and here are some of them so I
think it's the same sort of approach as
simply to say what works what do we know
actually work and I think that's
probably the the difference between what
I've been talking about in book and I've
been talking about the last 20 years
there are a lot of things we know either
work or don't work on on the AI side I'm
a little worried and again I'm talking a
little bit out of my field uh but my
sense is we don't know what works and
what doesn't work uh in in the same way
so it's much more sort of a probing
place and that's yeah so I like to sort
of basically support myself on all these
other Smart Guys who've actually already
looked across the field and said you
know what that policy and climate
doesn't work you know what that policy
for tuberculosis is incredible but I I
don't I haven't seen anything that says
in in in AI this is what stupidly
doesn't work or this is what really
works uh it it seems more like a
nebulous kind of we worry but we're not
quite sure what to do and then I I'm not
the right guy to come because I
basically just try to say here's a lot
of period research that shows us this is
dumb this is smart let's do the SMART
stuff first
yeah so that's why I think you're the
guy to talk to and I get it look I get
the impulse and maybe one day I will get
drugs so much in the public sphere that
I'll be like I give up but uh business
has taught me one immutable truth you
must learn to Think Through novel
problems which means you need a rubric
by which you think through things you
have not yet encountered so I would not
expect you or right now quite frankly
anybody to know what the answer is to
um to AI for sure maybe not even to
climate change but I would very much
expect there to be a bifurcation between
people that know the data and then
people that simply know how to approach
the problem and so um you know I beseech
everyone watching this interview you may
not know the data on a subject but if
you can build a rubric by which you know
how to approach a problem uh then you
really have something so that's what I I
want this interview to be that you and I
are going to approach these these very
difficult problems so that we can expose
the way you think again I don't know you
personally but you have quickly become
one of the people where I'm like whoa I
see the way by which you approach
problems and I find it very very useful
one of the things you've said that I
think will be a big theme as we talk
today is data is my religion I don't
even know if you remember saying it
because it was like an offhanded comment
to somebody that was like trying to push
you in a different direction uh you were
like I don't know anything about
religion data is my religion I was like
a word uh so uh I I took that note and I
was like yes so as an entrepreneur
if your data if if data isn't your
religion you will fail like that that is
just a guarantee okay so
um framing the problem within that idea
I want to to start building the basis by
which I think people ought to approach
hard problems and you let me know if
this makes sense to you so first and
foremost I don't think you can have a
conversation about solving any problem
until you say what I'll call your North
Star what is your North Star meaning
what are you optimizing for because
earlier you were saying I just want to
do what works
what do you mean works so like you you
have to Define that so one I would like
to know
what is your North Star and what when
you say do the best things first the
best for what
yes that's a very good question that is
really the the fundamental point so what
I really try to get people to think
about is there is a methodology uh that
has been used for at least half a
century which is called benefit cost
analysis that basically tries to look at
how much does a solution or a policy or
something cost
and how much good does it do and I'll
get back to just defining what exactly
is good uh but but it it sort of makes
sense if you just think about it without
you know uh probing too too deeply we
all do this in our private lives and you
know if you run a business clearly you
need to ask how much is this going to
cost how much good is it going to
deliver and then get a ratio that's why
we typically talk in in sort of you
spend a dollar and you get how many
dollars are good for the world back so
the basic is really really simple then
the question is what is the good the
cost is typically fairly obvious that's
often that you actually have to hand out
dollars it's also that you have to spend
time you have to spend other people's
time uh you have to inconvenience them
in a lot of different ways and we we
have a lot of ways that we try to
calculate that but mostly
side is a different thing and that's
where you say good good for who what
what is it that works
and and there you know again uh
economists have spent a long time on
doing this it's not the same thing to
say that they're all right or this is
the only way to think about it but I
think it's a pretty reasonable way to
try to estimate it so we say look there
are three important things in most
people's evaluation of what's good it's
good if you can make people save
people's lives or save them from having
pain or suffering in some way or another
uh that's the social impact if you will
then it's good if you can save the
environment that is you know you have
more Wetlands or you have less pollution
or something uh that you uh that you
don't kill off species those kinds of
things so environmental benefits and
then it's good if you get people out of
poverty if you give them more resources
do you have more opportunity that's
economy or uh as the UN likes to say
it's people planet and prosperity
so it's a way to try to say there are
these three different areas and we try
to model those very specifically so uh
for instance for people we try to
estimate what is the value of saving on
average one human life
very clearly most people tend to say but
that's infinite uh but if you actually
if you're going to spend money and try
to see if I spend money here I can save
on average one life and if I can save uh
spend money here I can save three lives
then it's kind of obvious I should
probably do the three lies but if you
could also spend that money say on
education or something else and make
people thirty thousand dollars richer
then what should you do well we probably
all agree well you should save three
lives rather than make thirty thousand
dollars but what it was 30 million
dollars would that be better you know at
some point there's going to be a a a
changeover certainly uh 30 billion
dollars we'd probably say yeah we should
probably do the 30 billion dollars and
we do this all the time in in you know
uh and public works for instance
um you have States deciding I come from
a place here in Sweden where the state
runs a lot more so uh excuse me if if
I'm running a little afoul of some of
the the U.S uh-centric ways of thinking
about it right but the state will go in
and say uh here's a pretty track
dangerous traffic area where people are
uh there's an intersection and there's
quite a number of people that die if we
put in a roundabout or you do you call
it a traffic Source we do we call it a
roundabout but we basically don't have
them so I'm married to a Brit so I'm
very familiar but the average American
is like what yeah yes but you know so
you drive around in a circle instead it
slows you a little bit down but it also
pretty much excludes all uh accidents so
you can save people's lives putting in a
roundabout or a traffic circle but it
also has cost it has cost and actually
putting it up and it also slows people
down there's a very clear trade-off and
a lot so people you know so the
Department of Transportation in the US
and many other places actually have very
clear routines for how much are they
willing to uh pay to put up this
roundabout or put a sender divider into
a busy road so people don't uh
accidentally go into the uh opposing
traffic and cause huge uh can I ask you
something though that I think uh some
people are going to be thinking is it
not evil to put a price on human life
be doing that but not doing that and I
think that's that's back to your sort of
30 000 feet view not putting a price on
human lives just saying everything is
important gives you no Direction because
what we're really trying to do is to
give you a sense of how much good will
you achieve if you spend the dollar here
where you'll have some people that are
lifted out of poverty some environmental
benefits and some live saved compared to
this other place where you can get the
same sort of things but in different
proportions how are you going to compare
those two if you don't actually make it
into a an explicit conversation about
how much are you willing to do and and I
think it's also important to say we all
do this individually one way to say that
is if people take more dangerous jobs
they ask for a wage increase this is you
know happens universally but people are
also happy to do a more dangerous job if
you get what uh the Brits call danger
pay yeah if you get a little more money
all right then I'll take a little more
risk or or perhaps the best way to look
at it you know you're willing to cross
the street to buy a candy bar uh but
crossing the street has a non-zero risk
of death you're essentially saying I'm
willing to take on a slight risk of
death
to have candy right and we we do these
things all the time
I am a freak for efficiency so let me
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you that so I'm obsessed with something
I call frame of reference so we all have
a frame of reference that is built of
our beliefs and values those are the two
biggest ones but usually people build
their frame of reference entirely by
accident it's based on where they grew
up what their parents celebrated the uh
you know potential lover that scorned
them whatever you you end up crafting a
view of what it is true about yourself
in the world and what ought to be true
about usually the world so you you craft
this framework but you don't realize
you've done it you don't realize that
you're making all these trade-offs all
the time and when you go to especially
in a political realm when you go to
campaign for a policy or something like
that no one ever talks about this idea
of the North Star I am optimizing for
this and in business you learn real
quickly you've got to talk about
some gnarly things because it's like we
just have to ruthlessly prioritize we
just I'm going to do this I'm willing to
spend that because when I think about my
own product for instance so one of the
things that we sell is education and I'm
like why don't we give it away for free
and the answer is because my employees
won't work for free why won't my
employees work for free like if they
could really do good but it's it's a
self-evident question but nobody stops
to go okay I get how this whole chain
works I get that nobody's going to work
for free and that's okay and so
beginning to pull all these things into
the light stop letting them be invisible
assumptions and visible values and and
this is why I think you have to ask a
question is it evil to put a price on a
human life your answer is correct you
can't do anything unless you know what
your trade-offs are but and and now this
is where I know your punch line is that
there uh I forget the group the U.N put
out 169 sustainable goals right and give
ourselves 30 years to get there
um yeah 50 okay and 15 yeah we're
halfway there and we we have basically
made no progress and so that's where
it's like well we spend a lot of money
but we haven't made the demand that we
get results so again this is why I say
you have to pull your North Star into
the light now the one thing is you gave
me three and this is part of where I
think people go awry so I'm very curious
so we've got people Planet Prosperity I
love those but I you people are going to
have to knowingly bring that balance out
of the realm of the just sort of we
assume we're not really talking about it
into let's talk about it like where are
the breaking points because I so I have
a North star everything I do in my life
is about increasing human flourishing
and decreasing human suffering for as
many people as possible while at the
same time I'm the center of my life
right so I don't give everything away to
become a popper to make sure that
everybody else taken care of them maybe
that makes me a worse person I'm I'm
perfectly willing to entertain that
argument but I'm at least honest with
myself about what I do
um so for me human flourishing is
already sort of this balanced equation
between people and life I think is a
less uh easy way to remember it maybe
but life so you're not dying and
prosperity and I think I don't know if
everybody will agree with this but to me
the environment is merely people sort of
groping around for what helps with life
and prosperity and I think they go to
well if the planet isn't here if we're
damaging it and we diminish our ability
over time to live and be prosperous so
that one to me is already sort of that's
a maybe path to these two things but
these two things are ultimately the one
that we have to pull into the light and
focus on agree or disagree
I mostly agree I I think you're
absolutely uh correct if if you think
for instance about air pollution uh the
most damaging part about air pollution
is that you die so again it's really
interesting uh and and uh and likewise
uh you just mentioned if you know if
there are no uh life forms uh we're all
gonna die because of that so that's why
we would sort of selfishly really uh
want to preserve them uh but I do think
that the environment conversation goes
further than that uh so once you're out
of extreme poverty and you sort of uh
get into uh the middle class or or the
rich part of the world uh you can also
start saying I'd actually like to know
that there are whales out in the ocean
even though I'm never gonna meet them
and I don't really care about them and
they're not you know in any reasonable
way going to impact my life or not I
just like the fact that they're there or
I like the fact that there's uh you know
a lot of uh uh tropical jungle in uh and
Brazil even if I'm never going to see it
and it's certainly not really going to
impact my so we also have this this
value that it's just good stuff is there
uh and and so I think uh it's it's more
a way of really uh making sure that
everyone comes into this conversation
that we're saying we're actually valuing
all of these things so not just it can
come across as a little crass and very
uh uh human-centered look if the
Penguins really don't do anything for me
um you know kind of thing but we can
actually like the fact that they're just
penguins and and it's cooler there there
and I'm willing to spend something
remember
we're not willing to spend everything
right we we certainly care more about
making sure that our own kids and our
own surroundings are well done but I
think it's fine to bring in all of them
but obviously uh you know for most
people it's more about life than it's
about uh prosperity and then it's about
environment
okay so as you begin to try to
prioritize those things what is the
methodology that you look at it seems
that cost benefit analysis which is
where you started is one of the sort of
big pillars for you so given because I I
want to acknowledge this is incredibly
complicated and even as we pull our
North Star into focus and we can all say
we can debate obviously at the level I
don't expect everyone to share my
breakdown of what I think the North Star
ought to be but at least then we can
debate it because it's a known quantity
um but whatever anybody comes up with
actually implementing that when you have
whatever eight and a half billion people
that all have sort of competing ways of
going about something competing views
Etc et cetera competing levels of
awareness
um it it just it gets incredibly
complicated very very fast so again
going back to the framework for the
conversation for me is how do we begin
to untangle these very difficult
situations okay so Northstar we we've
got it you've laid out yours I've laid
out mine that next thing then becomes
how do you uh I'll put words in your
mouth again and tell me how close I'm
getting you use cost benefit analysis as
the way to uh not decomplexify but
navigate the complexity of the real
world which we probably have to talk
about because I think present in your
thinking is the assumption that
implementing fixes is brutally difficult
and so having fantasy like wouldn't it
be great if we could XYZ is nonsensical
and I feel like that's what you're
approaching with the idea of doing the
best things first
yeah I heard
I hear it I'll get back to that in just
a second so
we say
this is not very complicated in
principle it's of course very very
complicated if you actually have to do
the Excel sheet yes but fortunately you
know you can sort of say look I I trust
that really smart guys have done this
I'd like to just look a little bit over
their shoulder and see some of the
things that have gone into the to the
mix but then you know I can sort of see
people doing that but the simple part
the the sort of conceptual part is
actually fairly simple and that is all
there is to this conversation for me uh
and again remember this is not how I
live my life I'm not saying that's the
only way you should live your life but
that's the that's the way that I'm
trying to help the policy conversation
of what should we do uh as a community
or as a nation or as philanthropist or
whatever this is being being helped by
looking at the uh costs and the benefits
and in some sense we we compare this a
little bit to to saying imagine going
into a restaurant and getting this big
menu of all the things that you can get
but there's no prices and no sizes in
there right you have no idea what you're
going to pay for all these things that
you might order and you have no idea
what size you're going to get so when
you order a pizza you have no idea if
it's a dollar or a thousand dollars for
this pizza and you have no idea if it's
like you know this tiny little pizza or
this you know the big thing that'll feed
your whole group and more
you need to know so we're basically
trying to put prices and sizes on
society's menu we're going to tell you
it'll cost this much based on a lot of
evidence and stuff and it'll do this
much good now at the end of the day you
might still then end up saying look I I
get that you're telling me uh you know
uh
spinach is incredibly cheap and it's
good for you but I don't like spinach
I'm just not gonna buy it and that's
fine you know we we can then sort of go
through that menu afterwards and say no
I'm not going to have that but at least
we'll give you some direction to make
smarter choices I think that's that's
how we think about it and and the cost
and benefit analysis is really just a
very simple way of giving us something
where we can see ooh this gives a lot of
bang for the buck this gives a very
small bang for your butt maybe we should
do the big bang for the buck first
on that then comes some of the those
those sort of things that go into the
mix of how do we do that one is as we
talked about what's the value of a human
life uh and uh there's a lot of
legislation and and uh uh uh uh uh
analysis of this in the U.S uh uh for
instance in in 911 uh there was that
whole question of what should you
compensate the uh uh the families of the
people who died in 911 how much should
they be compensated and should people
who made more money be compensated more
because they didn't have as much they
would have they've lost them yeah this
is a big you know a sort of
philosophical but very clearly a very
big issue here what most people would
say is that most of the value there's
certainly some value in Lost income in
the future but most of the value is
simply a value that we ascribe that all
human beings have that all human beings
are in some sense equally worth and and
so in the U.S that number both from the
Environmental Protection Agency and from
uh Department of Transportation many
others uh and and it also comes out of
that whole thing of how much are you
willing to uh get paid extra for a
dangerous job that sort of suggests that
it's about 10 million dollars per Life
this does not mean that you would
imagine anyone being willing to sort of
sign off their life for 10 million
dollars that's not what that means but
it means that we as a society sort of
say look if we can save one life for
less than 10 million we'll probably put
up that roundabout or that Center
divider or whatever
if it's going to cost us a lot more than
10 million we'll probably not if if
it'll just save one life that's how
that's about the cutoff point and this
is going to make people feel
uncomfortable but there has to be a
cut-off Point somewhere you know if
you're willing to spend uh a million
sure uh 100 million no we're not going
to do it somewhere in between there has
to be that cutoff point and that with a
lot of research seems to be about uh uh
uh 10 million dollars now it's important
before we go on that this is true for a
very wealthy country like the US not
true for really poor countries one way
you can see that is if you go to the US
uh everybody drives fairly safe cars and
they'll just have one person in each
seat and they'll have a seat belt and
all kinds of stuff and they'll have
airbags and stuff go to you know India
or another uh much poorer country and
you you'll have people sitting all over
trucks uh with no airbags and no seat
belts and stuff and it's not because
they don't want they they care less
about dying than we do it's just that
they can't afford to care as much
because they have many other competing
demands and so it turns out that in
India and many other places uh the value
of a human life where the cutoff point
is is much much lower and so in our
estimates for the poor half of the world
the low and lower middle income
countries uh is about a hundred and
twenty sorry I should know this number
and now I'm getting old I'm getting
uncertain about it it's 128 000 that
feels very un unreasonable surely it
should be the same in the rich in the
poor countries but no if it was if we
really meant that we would spend all of
our health care spending all of our
money that we're currently spending in
the US we've been spending it in India
and we're not because again as we talked
about most people in America care about
people in America most people in Sweden
care most about people in Sweden and so
on and that's there's nothing wrong
about that we just got to be honest and
putting this out in the open is both
going to make it very honest and obvious
but it's also going to be a little
uncomfortable
okay so to that point I think this is a
big part of the strategy of panic and I
don't want to be naive I know that there
are some people that use Panic as a
power grab so if they can get you
worried they can get you controlled
under their thumb and doing what they
want but but again for the sake of this
conversation and just for my own sort of
sanity and world view I'm going to set
that aside and just assume that people
have good intentions so
to wrap that idea up we have people that
and I want to Steel Man the argument for
a second so you have people that are
um they really believe that there is an
asteroid headed towards Earth and again
I don't care what they think is the
worst thing nuclear war AI climate is is
irrelevant I think the you think through
the problem the same way so there is uh
an existential threat that we're facing
and the only way to get people to pay
attention and to act is by really
getting them worried they understand
that we have a negativity bias they
understand that I mean I I can triple
quintuple views on a video just by
putting a fear-inducing headline which
to anybody that follows me hey we are we
are doing our best to back way away from
that
um but
that is it's really effective and so
they look at that as a tool and they say
look I have their best interests at
heart hey everybody I'm I'm trying to
help you sincerely and I'll say you put
them in an fmri machine and they they
pass like they really are trying to help
you their empathy centers are lit up
their compassion centers are lit up they
they are trying to do good in the world
and so in an effort of trying to do good
they're they want to panic you and then
when that gets them let's say 10 of the
where they want to go they go oh I need
to panic you ten times more and so they
just keep like really freaking people
out
um so I actually understand the tactic
so what I want to understand is do you
think a little bit of panic is good and
it's a spectrum and it breaks do you
think that that's just fundamentally the
wrong way to think about it
um how do we because I as we get into to
best things first and the specifics
I think you have sort of abandoned that
strategy altogether
yes
so I I would I I guess I guess my answer
would be twofold so I I would I I
certainly try to not deal in panic uh
because as as we started off talking
about it's very hard to imagine that
that actually helps you make smarter
decisions
um uh but also I think in some ways it's
not like me saying we shouldn't panic
and we should take that Panic out that
there's not going to be a lot of panic
in the world anyway uh so I I I tend to
see the world very much as a marginal
conversation and I'm simply trying to
set out some unpanic advice that in a
pretty panicked world can help us be a
little smarter uh and and I think that's
the right way to do it so I'm basically
saying well if you look at this world
and look at it without panic but simply
ask what kind of things can you do
and how much will they cost and how much
good will they do for people planning
prosperity and then you have a sense of
oh that might be the right thing to do
now again if if if you're then looking
at the the menu and I've said oh these
are very cost effective and these are
terribly cost ineffective maybe you've
just heard about did you hear about this
Aspartame is now giving you cancer which
is you know I don't know if you saw fa
uh FDA actually came out and said come
on guys you know that this is very
unusual it's just it's just one of those
many things you know that you you get
health advice but maybe you're going to
be looking at my menu and say oh but
that has aspartame in it so that's
that's the only thing I'm concerned
about fine you know if that makes sense
for you but at least I'm trying to give
you unpanic advice and I think that
that's helpful and if it helps some
people move to more towards smarter
policies that's great
okay so that makes a lot of sense to me
I want to take a biological approach to
this I think it um I think it's very
important for people to understand
you're having a biological experience if
you can understand yourself through the
lens of biology you're going to be able
to make way more rational decisions the
reason I think panic in the final
analysis is not the way to go is you're
triggering the sympathetic nervous
system you're putting people into fight
or flight like even looking and I am I
am but a headline reader when it comes
to climate in general and really just a
headline reader when it comes to Greta
um but you know seeing the the really
emotional outpouring
um the you know fear of like I don't
have a future and crying and really like
expressing a lot of distress
again assuming that that is all really
sincere and I have not seen anything
that makes me believe she is anything
but a hundred percent sincere
um
the blood is leaving your prefrontal
cortex which is the seat of higher level
cognition so you've moved yourself into
an incredibly emotional state which will
get you to act but it won't get you to
be rational it won't get you to do
cost-benefit analysis and as somebody
who really believes my mission in life
is to empower people with goal-oriented
things actually help them that work in
the real world
um lesson maybe not lesson number one
but lesson number two or three is you
you you must get control of your
emotions you must be really skeptical
emotions are necessary we can't make
decisions without them I'm not saying be
a robot some of the most amazing things
in life are are driven by emotion
um but you really have to have a
skeptical eye towards what emotions do
to your physiology and whether that puts
you in a position where you're making
the best decisions or not and I'll put
it to people like this let's say you're
on national television and you have to
win at a game of Jeopardy whatever uh do
you really want to be crying
hysterically during that do you want to
be anxiety through the roof or do you
really want to be
rational calm at ease and
I think part of what makes your message
um
struggle for the kind of attention I
will say I watched a debate with you
where the audience got to vote on who
was most persuasive from your opening
there were three of you uh you were the
most I would say just sort of rational
like hey we need to do things to improve
the world and we just have to be
cost-benefit analysis about it and the
other two were some variation of you
need to be really worried and this is
either sort of a a middle problem or
this is like full-blown panic and it
just ranked full-blown panic had the
most votes middle Panic had middle votes
and then your calm rational was in third
place and the more you guys talked the
more it just settled into those three
positions and so
the reason that I think
that you aren't
in positions like that you don't just
naturally spring to the top even though
I found your arguments the most
compelling uh is because it isn't
putting people in an emotionally
heightened state but is also more likely
to get a more thoughtful
useful path to execution
all right anything I said there that
feels incorrect for where you're at and
how you see things
I totally agree and and again I also
think uh uh I I get the idea of saying
I'm certainly not going to win any
popularity uh contest with uh with with
just sort of uh making a very rational
and calm argument but I think uh when
when a lot of people and I I hear this a
lot uh when you sort of give people this
alternative view then when you've calmed
down because you know you can't be in
panic all the time you st you start sort
of to think about well maybe that guy
who who just had that calm argument
that's not that's not totally off and
again my point is simply to take up a
world that's pretty panic and make us
slightly smarter and you know I'm I'm
all happy if if that helps a little bit
if we push ourselves in the right
direction by writing the book and this
is also uh my my Think Tank uh one of
our sort of core ideas uh our goal is
not to make everything right oh I love
that but it's about making the world
slightly less wrong uh so you know I'm
simply trying to push in the right
direction uh and anything I can do to to
help that that I'm happy no I love that
um one thing that I I am very troubled
by because of my own limited cognitive
abilities is another issue with the the
rational arguments that we're going to
go through here in best things first is
holding a nuanced position is very
difficult in that it's just hard to
explain it's hard to explain to other
people it's hard to explain to yourself
but it's very easy to say AI is going to
kill us all it's very easy to say that
um we're not all the ice caps are going
to melt and the sea level is going to
rise by six feet and we're just gonna
all be obliterated
um those are easy positions to hold on
to right like I saw a headline that said
hot takes in in a a world that's heating
up or something like that I was like oh
that's just so linguistically clever and
it like is easy to hold on to those
ideas but but it's far more difficult to
walk people through the nuanced position
of well Innovation is really going to
combat a lot of that and for a while I
don't know that it's still true but for
a while actually global warming was
causing more ice to form in Antarctica
so in the Arctic Circle it was melting
but in the Antarctic it was it was
freezing it didn't I don't think last
for very long but it's like you get
these very complicated things so that's
hard whereas the other side is easy and
again I'm talking to myself here like I
understand I'm over here taking notes
because ideas will pop into my head and
be oh God if I don't write this down
that sort of nuanced understanding of
this moment will will pass me by and so
I'm saying all of this because I really
want people to begin thinking through
how how is it that I Timmy Sally you
know Jimmy Jerome out there how do I
make decisions how do I think through
these different things and and really
begin to crystallize that in a way that
allows them to to think well through
problems okay so with that setup
you end up going from
being known for or having written books
about climate to now you're writing
books about these this other side that
you said that you've been dealing with
already for 18 plus years which
highlight your North Star as being
you've walked us through it so
um people Planet Prosperity are the
words typically used around these things
it feels like it sits pretty well with
your view
so how did you come up with the 12 I
know the 12 aren't in any particular
order if I remember correctly
um but what was the criteria for the 12
that you chose
and and if you can like even just run us
through a handful of them to orient
people to what this is so let me just
take take the background for this first
uh and that was what you mentioned with
the 169 uh targets uh so the UN has
actually set targets for all kinds of
things for 2030. uh you know this is a
well-intentioned list of saying we want
to make for a better work uh so it runs
from 2016 to 2030 so this year is we're
at halfway uh uh to these uh sorry we're
at halftime uh for these goals but we're
nowhere near halfway uh and that's
basically the point because the UN ended
up basically promising everything to
everyone so they talk about we should uh
you know get rid of poverty we should
get rid of hunger we should get rid of
corruption and War and climate change
and we should fix uh uh infectious
diseases oh and chronic diseases too and
we should also make sure that there's uh
there's no want for any other kind of
thing and we should have better
University education we should have good
jobs for everyone and we should have
organic apples for everyone and
Community Gardens and the whole thing
and you're sort of like really you know
yes of course you know I would love this
world where we had everything to
everyone but clearly if you're promising
everything to everyone you have no
priorities you're literally not giving
in a direction you're just saying all
good things in apple pie but why is that
bad so that that sounds amazing and I
think part of people's hang up is uh
what's the problem like that sounds
awesome yes let's do it and we have
Bjorn there are so many people in the
world there's so much wealth like come
on come on can't can't Elon Musk solve
these problems by himself
so so I I can put it to you in a way I
love which is just numbers uh so if you
try to cost how much this is going to
cost it'll probably cost an additional
10 to 15 trillion dollars to give you a
sense in proportion right now the Global
Tax intake of all governments in the
world
is 15 trillion dollars so we basically
have to double
Global Taxes I don't think anyone is
going to vote for that we just don't
have enough money to do all these things
so hold on because I think we have to
attack some of the common misconceptions
I think people are okay with that and I
think that they would say yeah uh I'm
middle class so it just doesn't really
apply to me but tax the corporations tax
the rich and we're good like I don't
think if you were to pull the world for
whatever that means uh I think they'd be
like yeah double taxes
actually ask people that question uh of
course you would end up paying at the
end of the day you know this given that
the global GDP is only this large about
a hundred trillion dollars this is you
know 15 of of of of global income each
and every year
this is gonna have to go out from
something else that you otherwise would
have had uh so this is real money that
is not going to be available to you
that's why I'm simply trying to make the
point of saying we don't have enough
resources to deliver everything to
everyone
and so we are going to end up making
hard priorities but if we don't talk
about them they'll end up being
priorities that are set instead by some
things grabbing a lot more attention
than the global sphere and they get some
funding and then lots and lots of things
get very little attention and hence we
don't end up spending any money on it
that's of course why we're failing on
all of these targets so the U.N
Secretary General they've been pushing
this for a very long time uh they came
out with what I thought was a
surprisingly honest uh report a couple
of months ago and basically said we're
failing on all of these targets uh we're
failing they didn't say this but we're
failing because we've tried to say let's
do everything which means there's no
Direction what should you spend on next
okay so I'm gonna I want to pause it
there for a second and then we'll
certainly get into why priorities matter
but I I want to address directly this
the taxing so whenever you can solve
something with a thought experiment do
and so I think in the answer that you
just gave there we've already run the
experiment of whether more taxes are
going to solve the problem so if we're
trying to tackle a certain subset of
these problems
um with enough resources that we still
aren't getting the desired outcome and
so pouring more money into the problem
is not going to create the solution that
you want and I can't remember if I read
this in the book or if I've just heard
you talk about it in interviews but
there was a South American country that
doubled their investment into education
and it did not yield Indonesia excuse me
walk people through that as as but one
example of how oftentimes not always but
oftentimes the answer isn't more money
it's better strategy or better
priorities
yes so this this this goes for education
and almost everyone in the world would
agree that education is incredibly
important and there's a huge lack of
Education everywhere but of course most
most crucially for the world's poor half
uh so we have about half a billion
almost half a billion kids in Primary
School in in the poor half of the world
and while they're in school and they're
at least technically learning to read
they can't actually Pro process really
really simple sentences so give them a
sentence that says Vijay has a red hat
blue shirt and yellow shoes what color
is the Hat now the answer is red right
but but 80 of these kids cannot answer
this after having read this sentence
they can sort of process the individual
words but it just doesn't glue together
in their native language
yes this is in their native language yes
how how big of a sample size is this one
country this is just this is uh this is
uh uh UNESCO uh I believe it's about uh
uh 40 is 50 000 uh kids from across uh
the poor half of the world uh so we're
very in multiple countries yeah yeah in
many different countries we're very sure
yes what what that means is you've
taught them to be able to say
Red Hat okay red hat but but they
haven't actually learned to glue that
together into a sentence that they can
sort of make meaning of if you say it to
them of course they can actually solve
the problem because they I mean they're
they're well aware of how to you know
navigate a world where you tell them
stories that kind of thing but they
don't read
of a sentence they read the individual
words right and this is one of the many
many problems there's a lot of these
kinds of uh indicators so there's a lot
of really
really
uh there's a lot of people with really
really poor education they've
technically learned stuff but they don't
actually have that ability and that of
course hugely affect their own Futures
and it also affect their country's
Futures because this is what makes you
rich if you're well educated you can
actually process a lot of stuff you can
become incredibly productive in fact
gives you a salary but also makes your
country rich and that's why this is so
important so Indonesia as one of many
have but you know they actually put
their uh their uh wallet where their
voices were and and said look we really
care about education so we're going to
double our spending and education so
they they went from 10 of of the state
budget to 20 of their state budget they
so they basically made a lot more money
available uh remember their economy has
also grown so it's actually more than a
doubling
um but what they basically did was they
hired another more a little more than a
million extra teachers so they
dramatically reduce class sizes and they
doubled the spending uh sorry the pay
for each teacher which is you know
incredible imagine that you all actually
have all that uh available money
um and because of the way they did it so
they did it in different regions at
different times you can actually do a
pseudo-random controlled trial study uh
basically looking at you know uh where
they did it first you should see the
impacts first and then where they did it
later you should see the impact later
and there's this very famous study
that's been hugely cited uh that tried
to do exactly that and it's called Uh
and you can sort of tell the outcome
from the title it's called double for
nothing uh so what they found was that
despite doubling spending on education
there was no outcome uh there was no
change in the educational outcome now
the teachers were happier which of
course is nice thing but presumably not
you know your primary objective uh from
from spending more money in the in the
educational system and we already knew
that uh and and again this goes back to
we have lots and lots of information
uh more money for teachers is great for
teachers but it doesn't have much impact
or any impact at all class sizes are
only very little impact there are lots
of things that don't work in education
there's a few things that do work and so
what I'm trying to basically push is to
say look we have this so the World Bank
has put together a huge list of very
very large it's a paper but it really is
a book uh of all the things that we've
ever tested in education and they find
that you know half of all the things
that you think work don't uh most of the
other things almost don't and then
there's a few things that do
and and so what I'm trying to say is
well if you want to do education do the
stuff that really works yes it's not the
thing that's gonna get you know
obviously teachers would like uh
doubling pay for teachers to work I I
totally get that uh but you know uh
parents also like to have a smaller
class sizes because it feels like that
should really work and yeah yes it does
work a little bit but it's very very
costly because you need to hire a lot
more teachers so what we try to
emphasize is there's an incredibly
effective way to do education let's do
that first and that's where you know the
best things first come in it's simply to
say there's way to spend fairly little
money and get huge impacts there's also
a way to spend lots of money and get
very little or no impact I think we
should do the first one first
all right so now talk to me about the
nature of prioritization why is it
problematic to try to do a lot of things
at once like assume that the 169 things
were just we had all the money and the
resources in the world
would we then be fine or no still having
169 things is going to be problematic
I should just I'm a political scientist
some pretend Economist right uh but yeah
the sort of standard argument for
economists those you fix anything with
enough money
to the Moon if we want it to it'd be
fantastically expensive but in principle
do you actually believe that
well I I say that as a as a as a as an
argument no we we would probably need
someone back down here uh but yeah sorry
not sorry not the Moon part the that
with enough money you can solve any
problem actually don't think that's true
personally
so so that that simply so for an
economist that would be a more sort of
an argument of saying that that that
just redefines what what enough money
means some things so so can you make
everyone happy for instance probably not
I'm not gonna you know talk about sort
of very subjective kind of things uh
although I would I would imagine we
could make a sort of simulation machine
that could make people happy or drugs
that would just make them you know think
that they are happy that kind of thing
uh but but you know certainly all sort
of outcome oriented things uh we can get
to any uh sort of level of of uh of
eradication if we're just willing to
throw enough money at it uh something
yes okay so if something would be that
yeah let's move on it's certainly true
I'm not sure whether it's it's true out
in the extreme so but I'm looking
forward to your counter exam yeah when
you say marginally true what do you mean
so I mean
for the next year
trillion dollars which is a large amount
of money right but not you know a
hundred trillion dollars which is the
whole Global uh GDP uh for for an extra
trillion dollars right now for the next
year we could solve any kind of problem
within a trillion dollars right
obviously we couldn't do more than that
but you you tell me what you want to fix
and we could in principle do that uh for
a trillion dollars but we couldn't do it
for a trillion trillion dollars just
simply because you know that money is
not there uh we wouldn't know how to do
it uh we wouldn't be able to you know
can you eradicate so Bill Gates has this
conversation about uh uh getting rid of
the last polio you you I don't know if
you know he's trying to eradicate polio
which would be a wonderful thing to do
uh but unfortunately uh there's a little
bit of polio in Pakistan and a few other
countries and uh these countries are
very worried about uh uh vaccinations
partly because uh we actually uh cheated
with uh Osama bin Laden about we we said
that it was a polio thing uh do you
remember they wanted to make sure that
it was Osama bin Laden who was living in
that compound so they actually had
someone go there and say pretend to be a
a polio expert and they were going to
test people for whether they had Polio
that was how we got the DNA to know that
it was uh Osama Bin Laden but of course
that has a really bad uh side effect
that people think maybe it's just the
CIA coming to try to kill you kind of
thing uh and there you know there's a
lot of other things they think that uh
that it's Christians trying to uh limit
the population of Muslims that kind of
thing so there's a lot of and and when
you get down to you're trying to you
know inoculate the last three people and
you don't know who they are kind of
thing that that gets really hard and
maybe money just can't solve that
problem so I I would I would I bet and
again my sense is if we gave everyone in
Pakistan a billion dollars each we could
probably do it you know sort of thing
but not with realistic money okay so
here's my take on that so
um one you and I both subscribe that
data is the right religion uh when
talking about things like this
um and so I don't have the data on this
so this is my gut instinct based on more
than 20 years as an entrepreneur uh the
more Capital you have the less
um
disciplined people tend to be so as you
pour money into a system I think you
begin to break things I don't think that
you just go oh this is a resistant
problem pour more and more money into it
but that does not mean that money isn't
an effective solution when coupled with
intelligence and so that's where this
really becomes an issue and so you need
only look at different countries right
different countries have had wildly
different outcomes uh is it culture is
it the people that run for either
elected office or dictators just the not
the wisest most compassionate
intelligent person ends up being the the
leader or the leadership class like that
is certainly going to be a big part of
this and look not to denigrate myself
but if you've got an extra trillion
dollars laying around I would highly
encourage you to give it to Elon Musk
and not to me as he just has a track
record you know I'm over here like
killing myself to run one company and
homeboy has like seven companies and you
know they're all multi-billion dollar
companies
um so there there are people that are
either better you know he would say that
he's better at engineering than me and I
would completely concede that point uh
so
there are people that are better with
capital allocation or they're better at
engineering their way out of a problem
whether that's Computer Engineering or
physical engineering
like they just have a different skill
set and so given that skill set is not
evenly distributed uh and that different
people are going to be good at different
things different people are going to
pursue
um public office running a company
solving a problem whatever and that just
throwing money at it has not seemed to
solve this problem you've got corruption
and a whole host of uh well-meaning
people that oh Pay Teachers more it's
just the wrong solution
so you really need a a sustainable
feedback loop it's what I call the
physics of progress I think it's the
only way to move forward and the physics
of progress
um
was something I thought I had come up
with and then I realized it's just a
scientific method recontextualized for
business uh and you come up with your
best guess your hypothesis on this is
what we would need to do to solve this
problem you turn that into a thing that
you can do so an experiment uh you run
that experiment and before you start the
experiment you need to know what is your
desired outcome and what is the
predicted outcome of this particular
test and so when you run the test you
look at the results and this is where
most people fall down they either don't
know how to accurately analyze the data
or if the data tells them that their
approach was inadequate ego kicks in and
they just aren't willing to see the
truth that is right there before them uh
and I mean if you're in politics you are
highly incentivized not to be wrong uh
so oh lo and behold the data says
exactly what we wanted it to say even
though we're not making any progress
somehow so you get that data you
basically further educate yourself you
now have a more enlightened hypothesis a
better experiment and you just run it
and so you you live in that Loop and as
far as I can tell it is the only path
forward to solve these incredibly large
challenges but when I've seen incredibly
bright well-meaning people still
struggle to effectively run the physics
of progress I'm like this is where it
seems like Things Fall Apart to me and
why the solution isn't uh more and more
and more more money it really is like
how do you get the the brightest people
you can possibly find in that area
with as much usable data as humanly
possible in a loop where they can fail
and get smarter on this sort of
continually
improving spiral
no I I totally agree uh I'll I'll just
say I I think maybe I I came across a
little wrong because I I was asking that
or answering that very sort of
hypothetical
and we if we had enough money solve any
one problem and I think yes you get
worse and worse at it but you can't you
know you could certainly solve polio if
you just had enough trillions because we
could just give a trillion to everyone
and make sure they got vaccinated kind
of thing and and and then everyone even
the most hardened sort of uh you know uh
uh uh Muslim Crusader would say okay
yeah
that sort of thing and and likewise you
can solve any one problem with
sufficient money but I'm not arguing
that we should be doing it because it'll
be very very bad and that's of course
what we're essentially trying to do is
to say there are some things we know
work really well there are some things
we know don't work let's do the ones
that work really well and furthermore
your whole point about how you need to
progress and find more knowledge that's
absolutely true in business because it's
very unlikely that you can just come in
and do what others already do and make a
lot of money on it no you have to be
better than everybody there but for
Global problems it turns out that we
actually already know some of the
smartest things we're just not spending
money on them because they have bad PR
because nobody really cares that kind of
thing so I don't even have to be
particularly smart I mean I'd like to
believe that some of the people that we
work with are really really smart but
you know fundamentally I'm not coming
here and saying here's a fantastic
Innovation it's just simply saying it
turns out that it with an education
there's been you know at least a couple
thousand education economists over the
last 50 years trying to work on what
works and what doesn't and they've found
out no it's not about doubling the
spending on on teachers or having lower
class rate uh ratios mostly it's about
these very very simple things so I don't
even have to sort of uh you know we we
say innovate the Deep uh deep plate or
you know reinvent the yeah that's that's
pretty even the wheel I know but uh
wherever you're about to go to the Deep
something
flat plate but you know that that it is
not an American saying how about that
but yeah anyway
so but but yeah we're we're simply
basically saying here are stuff we
already know is great and we've done the
numbers and this is how great they are
okay so um when you guys were rolling up
to come up with the things you were
going to do and I'm guessing you didn't
set did you set out to say like it needs
to be a dozen I'm guessing not so yeah
so that was actually a question sorry I
totally took it in a different direction
how do we come up with the toil so we
started with the un's 169 promises uh
and basically said look let's try and
look at how effective can all of these
be if you do them in the smartest
possible way now
now it turns out if you read them uh
about half of them are just simply
impossible to even operationalize
they're more sort of aspirational nice
things to do but we really tried our
best and what we found and this is back
in 2014-15 because we're actually trying
to advise the U.N to not set 169 but
just set the very most effective ones uh
and we completely failed because you
know I met with most of the UN
ambassadors who set these targets and
they were like oh this is very
interesting what you're doing but we're
not actually they didn't say this very
very loud but they said we're not
actually trying to make the best targets
you know when I spoke to the Brazilian
Ambassador he was saying I'm trying to
get Brazil's Five Points in there and
you know the Norwegian Ambassador was
trying to get Norway's Four Points in
there and that's how we ended up with
169 things it was basically just what
all the capitals saw would be uh
wonderful to have in this wonderful big
document for the whole world but that
meant that we could actually see which
one were really effective and which one
weren't and so we set uh this was on
Nobel laurance we said we're going to
call everything that delivers more than
15 back in every dollar a phenomenal
outcome and so we just wanted to focus
on the most phenomenal outcomes of
course there's no magical limit where 15
sort of turn you know if it's 15.5 it's
great if it's 14.5 we should never do it
it's just sort of a way to to calibrate
what are the very very best things we uh
we want to do so this time we went back
and reanalyzed all of the studies that
we did we also talked to a lot of
economists to find out are there other
things that we should be uh looking at
now that we didn't look at back then and
also are there some of the things for
instance uh cell phone coverage turned
out to have do 17 back on the dollar
because it it increases economic growth
in the country so it might actually be a
good idea for a kind I'll try to make
sure fundamentally if you have no
coverage you have a very ineffective
distribution of of goods and services in
the country so we know empirically back
back then so this is data from the early
2000s if you get more uh and for most
poor countries it's almost all cell
phone coverage uh so cell phone uh both
that you can talk and that you get 3G
that's basically it that actually
increases your growth rate and because
it costs you know say hundreds of
millions or maybe a billion or so uh to
increase it but your economy if this can
increase your growth rate by a couple uh
tens of percentage points that's a great
investment but this is no longer the
case because this has all happened uh
you know going from 3G to 5G nice you
get you know you get better uh view on
Netflix but it's not going to
dramatically change your spending
anymore uh it was much more you know
those those people who uh so this is one
of the studies that we made uh if you're
a fisherman and you have the opportunity
you've just caught fish uh you're still
out in the uh you know away from two
different Harbors you can go online and
see where can I get most for my fish
yeah which is really which Harper has
the most demand or the most need for my
fish that actually increases societal
production uh but you know whether you
have 3G or 5G doesn't really matter so
this was one that we recommended back in
2015 but not anymore uh and and so we
went through them and that was how we
ended up with 12. these were simply the
12 that made the cut of uh delivering 15
or more dollars back on the dollar on
average they actually deliver 52 dollars
back in the dollar so it's just a
fantastically huge uh bang for your buck
uh and and there there's certainly more
out there it'd be very very surprising
if we've caught everything in the whole
world but we believe that we've really
scoured it so it's probably most of what
we should have in there so the 12th
there's probably a real 14 I don't know
what the last two are but these are 12
Amazing Ideas and these 12 ideas are
really amazing and we are very very good
uh uh reasons to believe that that's
true very interesting so I thought it
was going to be something like oh we
took an 80 20 approach what are going to
be the 20 of things that yield 80 of the
value uh but instead what you guys did
is just set a a marker if we get a 1 to
15 return then we'll call that a win and
let's just see how many things settle
out and it happened to b12.
yes and also remember we had really
smart people so again I I'm not the guy
who's I'm just a sock puppet who talks
about all the smart stuff that other
people have done uh but in reality we
had some really smart education people
work on the education Solutions uh
nutrition people and nutrition and uh
tuberculosis people and tuberculosis so
these are all the people who've done
this for uh Decades of their lives work
with a lot of the other people who've
done similarly who have all the
knowledge of what works and what doesn't
and seeing all the results and then they
have done the estimates of how much will
this cost and there we include all the
you know the stupid stuff that's going
to happen so we always include that some
of this is going to go to corruption
some of this is going to you know go
down with with the you know just gentle
incompetence and so on but what is
realistic if you spend this much money
how much can you realistically get out
and what will that impact be in terms of
save lives and save uh and more
prosperity in better environment
that's very interesting
um are you familiar with the guys that
wrote the book for economics
yes
I'm curious is so when you were talking
about the phone and the internet having
this big impact on um You didn't say GDP
but I interpreted it as GDP uh
that is very interesting to me that and
that rang that same Bell that
Freakonomics rang which is the the
outcome that you get from doing things
can often be very surprising and I'm
really curious on the the phone one
what what is it what's the fundamental
thing there that's happening do you
think is it and I'm sure it's a
Confluence of a few things but is it
that I now have access to the internet
and so I can get ideas very rapidly is
it communication so I can get the price
for my fish and I know where to go
um is it I can just reach out and talk
to somebody to do business deals and I
no longer have to worry about the
infrastructure of the company all of the
above like what what is the principle at
work there
so again these are mostly studies that
have just been done across a wide area
of economies where you see that the more
internet you get and this again is the
early 2000s you get higher growth rates
uh so they don't actually separate it
out but my reading of the literature is
that to a very large extent it's that it
becomes easier for you to make optimal
choices so for the fishermen to find out
where to go but also uh for you to get a
good loan if you want to have a loan if
you live in a village you go to the guy
who lend out money and you sort of have
to either accept it or or decline it but
now you can go on your phone this as
like a decade later and basically ask
for a loan and find out how much it's
going to cost and get a much cheaper
loan uh and and again the guys who want
to lend out money we're stuck with the
people that they were close to now they
can actually lend out to the best people
with the best I ideas around the whole
country and so on so it's simply an
efficiency multiplier uh the fact that
you suddenly got a lot more information
so I think this was again the idea was
that when you have no information or
very little information and it's very
hard in most of these countries to get a
landline because that's controlled by
the bureaucracy and it's really hard to
use and and obviously even if you have a
landline you have to call someone who
will then help you find this information
now suddenly you have this information
straight up uh it just makes life much
easier also for many poor countries it's
just simply a question of having banking
banking access uh so you may know in
Kenya for instance uh they they had uh
basically money on their cell phone uh
and the people who sold cell phone cell
phone minutes were the ones where you
could also go and pay in uh say I have
10 bucks or something instead of having
it rolled up in my sock and and worry
about being mugged at night or that I
lose it in some way I give it to the guy
who sells the cell phone minutes and he
puts it into my phone and then I can
actually pay with my phone by you know
basically doing a text someone else
three dollars or you know the equivalent
local uh currency and then they can get
it on their account and so on so you
basically have uh banking for the really
poor and that means that they can become
much more effective it's also a
wonderful way of of reducing crime it
also means you know a lot of people uh
would spend a long time to when when you
had sufficient resources like 100 or 200
you'd actually take a bus to the big
city to deposit in a bank and you no
longer need that so there's a lot of
these kinds of things and I think it's
all of these things accumulating
it's really interesting that basically
the book is a snapshot in time it's
these are the things right now but like
you were talking about back in 2015 it
was a different set of things
so because I've been on my sort of
Doomer Arc with AI I am a huge believer
in AI I'm just trying to work through
myself uh there are also uh things
coming our way that if we're not
thoughtful about we're not going to
navigate well but I have a feeling that
in the not too distant future as you
re-up what the the everything that gives
a 1 to 15 Return part of that is going
to be deploying AI to the poorest places
in the world if your assessment is
correct that what this really is about
is the efficiency of markets so that the
guy with the fish knows where to go
because that's actually going to change
from day to day for sure it could change
from hour to hour and when I think about
Waze I don't know if you guys know what
that is but um
so it was bought I think by Google but
uh Waze was an is a technology that
would say Okay based on where you're
going where you're at in your car go
here turn right here turn left here it
would take you in some of the weirdest
ways possible but not only was it
responding to traffic it was controlling
traffic and so it would know oh I'm
going to divvy things up in this way and
so AI will be the same like hey if if
you're gonna get to the fish market by
1205 go to this fish market person if
you're gonna get there at 12 15 make
sure that you go to this person because
this is what we've seen over time the
price has changed based on timing and
all that day of the week whatever uh and
AI will just be able to Crunch so much
data going back to data is really the
thing that we need to understand all
right anyway utterly fascinating that
this becomes like these snapshots that
are rolling and and what is going to be
useful in one uh pretty narrow window
will change relatively rapidly okay
um what I should just say it's not that
rapid so we have 16 things uh four of
them we dropped and this was one of them
with the internet because it's now been
built out uh some of it was because
there it become new data uh and then one
of them uh we actually brought on so
sorry we we dropped five and then we
brought one more on uh which uh which is
basically controlling uh uh uh heart
medication uh so a very large part of
the rich world uh of old people are in
heart medication and it's one of the
remember heart disease or cardiovascular
disease really as the biggest killer in
the world uh and we've dramatically
reduced it's still the biggest kill but
we've dramatically reduced it in the
rich World basically because we've
learned how to control blood pressure uh
for old people uh and we do it with very
cheap medication we need to do that in
the poor part of the world because
they're also increasingly getting old
and one of the things we tried to do was
uh when we did this in 2015 it was
fairly expensive still to do uh mostly
because it was really you have to have a
lot of doctors involved no uh and
semi-annual tests and all that stuff and
they found a smarter and more
streamlined way to do it and now it
delivers 16 back on the dollar so this
is one of the things but most of these
things are just simply good ideas and
they're going to be good ideas still in
most of of the 2020s very interesting so
it's not like you know tomorrow all this
knowledge is going to be useless it's
going to be pretty stuck for for the
2020s I think
I hope you're wrong because the angle I
was coming at it from is that hey we
actually are lit and in fact here's
something that's important we are
lifting people out of poverty at at an
almost alarming rate like it's really
exciting and
in terms of taking the opposite attack
of instead of trying to panic people
really getting people optimistic
hopefully only realistically because I
don't want to make the exact same
mistake in the opposite direction I'm
going to lie about how good it is and
just try to get people excited
um but if when we do things like uh get
cell phones in people's hands or
um I know one of the things that you
guys I think if I remember correctly is
on the list is just like a little
breathing apparatus that gets babies
that some like five percent of all
infants just they fail to breathe
immediately and if you breathe form a
couple times then it jump starts and all
is well so that if we actually do these
things like there really is a a
noticeable
um consequence of that okay so uh let's
talk about the actual things that people
can do what was the biggest bang for
buck on your list so if one to 15 was
the cut off what was the one that was
like 1 to 30 or whatever
so we try not to do that because uh uh
because this it's not a it's not a
competition between these these are just
simply all amazing uh but given that
you've asked for it and it's not
surprising that that's what happens uh
the the thing that is in some sense the
smallest is most likely to have the
biggest bang because it's easier to have
a big bang if you're really small so one
of the things we've also tried to
emphasize well you know think of it this
way if you were just talking about how
can I spend one dollar you can spend one
dollar in a particularly you know Silly
situation and make a huge uh difference
but it's harder to do that with a
billion dollars uh but obviously it's
not really interesting to write a book
about how you can spend one dollar
because once you've spent one dollar
that's no longer interesting and so we
tried to do this for pretty big problems
but I'm given that you've asked me what
is the biggest one it turns out the
biggest one is what's called
e-procurement uh and it sounds
incredibly boring but if you think about
it uh corruption is a huge problem of
the world so about we we estimate but
for obvious reasons we don't know how
big of a problem corruption is because
there's nobody who answers correctly on
those surveys uh but you know it's it's
probably at least a trillion dollars uh
of cost from corruption and it's very
likely uh much more than that and
there's very little that you can do
about corruption uh it's actually one of
the places we talk about how I believe
that you can just spend money and get
rid of it but obviously corruption is
actually one of the places where you
can't spend money and get rid of it
because you're just gonna you know sort
of generate more uh corruption with more
with most of the things that you could
do something about but it turns out
vast amount of corruption is associated
with procurement from States this is you
know governments basically buying buying
anything from pens to roads but
obviously the roads are much much more
expensive so it's mostly infrastructure
that kind of really expensive spending
that is hugely corrupt but it turns out
that there's a really great way to deal
with this and that's e-procurement it's
basically putting the procurement on
eBay if you will
right now in many countries uh this has
happened in most rich countries so we
are actually doing this uh but there's
still about 70 countries out of the 200
countries in the world who still haven't
done it so there's a huge opportunity to
do this uh and and we we did work for
instance in Bangladesh uh where they've
taken over some of the British uh rules
so they had very elaborate rules of how
you bid for for contracts so you know
the local government will say we want to
build this road they'll publish it in an
obscure journal or obscure newspaper
somewhere then people will hand in
sealed envelopes with their bids and
then they're presumably going to pick
the lowest bid uh but the reality often
is that the ruling Elite have already
decided who's going to get the you know
the bid and then they literally put up
goons outside the office where you have
to hand in your seal envelope so you
physically can't get in there
and and so what happens is if you put it
online as in on an eBay uh kind of
service then suddenly it becomes much
harder you can still do this you can
make sort of the E equivalent of of
goons but it's harder to do it's more
visible if you try to do it and also you
get many many more people to hear about
this it's not in some obscure uh place
and you can also do it faster so what it
turns out is that when you do this so we
got uh we work with Bangladeshi
government to actually uh implemented
four percent of all the spending that
they had on e-procurement uh and and we
could see the difference in spending
both in quality so you typically get
higher quality and you get lower prices
this is not surprising you know everyone
who's done on eBay will know that when
you ask lots of people uh how much
you're going to pay for this you'll end
up with a lower prices you'll basically
get you know a better quality so this
great
we found that this could save Bangladesh
about 700 million dollars each and every
year and the cost of doing this is
Trivial and it's a it's in the tens of
millions of dollars once so it's a
really really great setup and you can
actually get we estimate 125 back on
each dollar now the reason why it
doesn't happen of course is and we you
know the Bangladeshi Finance Minister he
he went all in and said I'd love you of
course he'd love to have 700 million
dollars extra but all of the people just
below him wouldn't because they're the
ones who get all the bribes and and so
obviously they're sort of like very
resistant to this so there's there's a
lot of work that goes and you need to
put in a lot of uh political will to do
it but ultimately this will be great for
your country and so we estimate for
about 70 uh 76 million dollars so
everything else I'm going to be talking
about is billion dollars but for 76 a
million dollars you can basically build
these protocols you can build the
computer systems they could also take
them from other countries but they
typically don't
um and build these uh uh do more
development with all the officials who
have to do it
you will end up saving about 10 billion
dollars each and every year on average
for these other uh uh uh 70 for these
remaining 17 countries so for
trivial amounts of money we can do an
amazing amount of good and this is one
of the reasons why we're saying this is
certainly one of the 12 best things we
should do we can really make all
governments provide more for Less uh and
with higher quality
you can reboot your life your health
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the tactics that I learned while growing
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yeah so where this really starts to get
interesting to me is that as you
when you really step back and you look
at okay what is the problem we're trying
to solve so going back people Planet
Prosperity there's a real consequence to
prosperity and
a lot of these
I don't know if you would make this
through line but when I was going
through all the different pieces one of
the things that kept coming back up is
as humans Thrive they begin to prosper
and then there's a real knock-on effect
to that Prosperity so before we go
through some more of the 12
I'd like to ask directly what are the
consequences of taking someone out of
poverty
it
it I think we almost can't can't imagine
because you and I and most who are
probably listening to this just simply
because the on the internet map several
hours to spend on listening on this are
just so far removed from absolute
grinding poverty where you really don't
know whether your kids are going to
survive whether you're going to have
enough money uh to make it through the
day yet let alone uh next month uh and
you're you're forced to you know so
about 700 and uh sorry 680 million
people live for what what most people
have heard of less than one dollar a day
that's actually two dollars and fifteen
uh uh uh per day uh uh now because of
inflation that's way too many but when I
was a kid that number was a lot bigger
yes yes and that you that was also what
you said you know we've had amazing
progress in dealing with uh uh uh uh
poverty uh one of the things that I I
actually read that in the book uh if you
take over the last 25 years be each and
every day we have lifted as a human
Collective the World Has Lifted 138
000 people out of poverty each and every
day for the last 25 years man uh it is
just astounding and and so again it also
goes to your point of saying you know we
hear a lot about this uh the world is
terrible and yes there are problems out
there uh but each and every day every
paper in the world could have it as a
headline over the last 24 hours the
world lifted 138 000 people out of
poverty
and we could have had that every day and
we don't because it's not a news story
it's not you know sexy or interesting in
the same way as oh my God you know this
airplane crashed or something but we
should recognize this is a huge
achievement and this is what me
people to start making slightly longer
term decisions so we know for instance
when people start to have a little bit
of capital and this will often just be
you know a a goat or a couple of
chickens or something that they can
actually sell they start thinking more
about how can I make sure that my kids
regularly go to school so that they can
learn more so that they can become more
prosperous and be even more uh uh uh
productive than I am and you know make
their law their kids lives even better
so you know it has this knock on
education that that's exactly what I
want to talk about these knock-on
effects so one of them is education
um what what else is a consequence of
pulling people out of grinding poverty
that they can avoid dying from easily
curable infectious diseases if if a
country has more than ten thousand
dollars per per person per year in GDP
there's no malaria
so yeah fundamentally once you get
sufficiently rich you as an individual
can afford to buy the medication which
means that you won't have the malaria
parasite in you that's good for you
because then you survive or you make
sure that your kid gets this medication
but it also means that you know
but if they bite you and you don't have
malaria it can't get malaria to me
because it doesn't have the malaria
mosquito to go around it needs to fight
other people who have malaria in order
to transmit this and so what happens is
you both have people buying this
medication and then the society that
sets up uh regulations and also you know
drains the swamps and make sure that you
spray those places that are really pesky
and make sure that when you know when
somebody comes in uh we have this a
couple times a year somebody comes in uh
with a deceased from uh from from a poor
country they come into Sweden then we
treat them because we can afford to so
once a country gets sufficiently Rich
you don't die from easily curable
infectious diseases and of course
lifting everyone else up is both great
because you can actually do a lot more
good but it also means you stop dying
and your kids stop dying yeah so this
this through find that I think you
intended but certainly that I took away
from your work is that okay
as we start tackling these things with
the people Prosperity Planet as a North
star we're looking at what does the most
good as uh you know benchmarked against
those three things as we begin to do
this there becomes a self-reinforcing
loop now I often heard you talk about
this in terms of climate change but I
thought it was a really brilliant
rejoinder to hey I get it you're trying
to address all this stuff at the level
of climate but if you address this at
the level of remove people from poverty
you're actually solving for the thing I
think you all actually want to solve for
which is that humans are able to deal
with climate better than they were
before because one of the the sort of
counter-intuitive things that I've heard
you say that certainly doesn't get
talked about is that uh it used to be
some ungodly number of people I think
000 people a year were killed by climate
related
um uh Devastation and now that number's
like eleven thousand and so that that's
a 99 reduction in the thing that that
people are really worried about and I
was like how the hell is that possible
like what are we doing and then you were
like you should get them out of poverty
and some of these things just become and
and I should stop I'm really couching it
because because I think that there is a
sense and of course I am very biased
because I have I have done very well for
myself but there's this sense of like
people that have generated wealth are
evil and I want people to understand
like we want everyone to be wealthy
instead of everyone being poor like if
we're trying to to make things equal and
we want to see people all in an even
playing field I would really encourage
people to look at uh things you can do
to lift people up rather than knock
people down because they become more
resilient because their kids are more
likely to survive because they're more
likely to get educated and some of the
things in fact one of the things that we
should probably address head on is
do you believe the world is
fundamentally better off with less
people
um all right so I just want to answer
the the other part or comment on the
other part I think that's exactly right
that this is a question of saying if you
can make people better off they will
become better off in so many other ways
uh I I think most people don't have a
clear picture 200 years ago so in 1820
uh it's estimated that 90 of everyone
living on the planet
were below a dollar a day or the two
2.15 today
we were extremely poor except for a very
very small class of people who all wore
those fancy ropes and and and lowered it
over uh the rest of us uh and and we've
basically gone from a world where ninety
percent were poor to a world where in 90
or actually
92 or three percent are not poor that's
a fan
world
world that's worth going for and so that
just uh emphasizes your your argument
now a lot of people will say uh if if we
had fewer people we would have less
pressure on the environment it's
typically sort of an environmental Pro
uh uh sort of argument and and
technically that's obviously true uh all
other things equal uh if you had fewer
people there would be you know less air
pollution there'd be less uh pressure on
nature because we wouldn't have to grow
as much food and so on uh the problem
with that argument is really just sorry
who is going to stop being there uh you
know it's not like there's who's gonna
stop having kids man yeah yeah so when
you sort of probe people a little bit on
this conversation it's typically you
know what there's a little bit too many
of you and just enough of me uh which
you know sort of comes across as a
little hypocritical
um the real answer of course is it's not
like we have a lever where we can say
you know what we're 8 billion but now
we're going to turn it down to 2 billion
or at least not without going into some
really really nasty ways to reduce those
numbers right so the reality is
what we can discuss is what kind of
future would we like would we like a
world where there's 12 billion people or
we like a world where there's like nine
billion people or we like a world where
there's seven billion people by the end
of the century uh and that's something
that we to a certain degree can decide
on uh and and I think what we know
reduces the number of people is getting
more opportunities for women and getting
more education for women so that is
women can get better educated and they
can actually get a job they can have
businesses and if they have those things
it typically means they will want to
have fewer kids because the Alternatives
just got better right uh and and and I
think everyone would agree those are
good things education for women and
opportunities for women and that will
sort of automatically uh reduce the the
load nobody's worried about this sort of
runaway population which I think is
really the backbone for much of the
conversation about oh we should have
fewer people that will end up with 20 or
30 or 100 billion uh people that's just
not in the in the cards and I think we
also need to recognize and this is I
think still an unsolved
question to what extent is a society
where you end up with fewer people we're
seeing that in many rich countries today
not in the US still because you're
having a lot of people immigrate into
the US uh but you know for instance
Japan Russia very clearly although
Russia is sort of an outline so many
other ways let's let's look at Japan you
know countries where you have women
deciding to on average if you had sort
of a repopulation or a permanent uh
sorry a stable population uh the average
woman would get 2.1 kids so two to
replicate the man and the woman and then
point one uh because some of these kids
are going to die before uh they get old
enough to get their own kids so 2.1 is
sort of stable level and many of these
countries South Korea many others uh you
have just over one and that will lead to
dramatic depopulation that means
suddenly your house is no longer as much
worth especially actually if you're in
the countryside because nobody will be
living there in 50 or 100 years it means
a lot of your infrastructure is going to
be outmoded it also means that there'll
be a lot fewer people to take care of
you when you get old and now we imagine
that you know robots and that kind of
thing could take over for some of that
that's crazy that that's real talk now
that's nuts although I'm I'm a little
concerned about you know my my old age
just being careful by robots but yeah
who knows maybe that could be very nice
um but but it has a lot of potential
downsides as well and then of course
there's that overarching argument of
saying
fewer people means less innovation
uh so there's a real cost and and the
way it's often been argued is that uh an
extra person means an extra mouth which
is a problem because you need to feed
that mouth but it also means an extra
pair of hands that can actually work and
an extra brain that can come up with a
brilliant new idea and and the the sort
of out of those things is not settled I
think it's probably arguable that uh
that it's not overall good to have a lot
fewer people but again my argument is
much more of a marginal point is not to
say if you want to go from the 8 billion
we have now down to a billion now
because there's no way to do that
without killing a lot of people and I
don't see anyone being actually willing
to do that uh but the real question is
how do we want to get it in 2100 and
honestly this is just not something that
we can precisely engineer we should get
women better opportunities and that will
mean fewer kids and that will probably
mean that we'll be more likely to end it
you know nine or maybe even seven
billion uh by the end of the century and
then I think we will start having that
conversation about saying how do we get
women to have more kids uh which is
going to be whole other kettle of fish
well we're already there in some places
for sure I know that there have been
incentives in Japan and I think Korea
China is well I think started well they
had a would they tax you if you didn't
have enough kids I don't remember so
forgive me on that but there there are
incentives that are being rolled out now
in different countries because the
population is far Not only is it far
more likely to collapse it is already
decreasing uh at some pretty dramatic
rates and this is math you can't raise a
kid faster uh takes nine months to make
one and then you gotta raise them to
maturity and you know give them some
time before they have their own kids so
that once that starts declining that's a
pretty slow reversal it takes
multi-generations to get that moving in
the opposite direction and so far at
least in rich countries to my knowledge
um the incentives just to have more kids
have not worked well if I am tracking
they work a little bit as you would
imagine yeah all the things equal you're
more likely to have more kids but they
they only work marginally so you know
instead of having 1.2 you might you know
squeeze people up to 1.3 so it's going
to be a little bit of the solution uh
but it's not the main part of the
solution uh and again this goes to a lot
of other things uh and uh and now I'm
gonna pull that card of saying this is
not my expertise uh but but in some ways
my my point is I'm trying to trade in on
stuff we know works
uh so we know that e-procurement is
something we should do the the the uh
the the
number of kids is almost the opposite
kind of argument we've no clue on how to
make that number move dramatically and
we have no idea whether that's actually
a really good or a really bad thing and
people will have varying views on on
this all across the Spectrum and that's
why I would say look this is this is an
interesting conversation I think it's
very unlikely that we will have a huge
impact on this in any short or medium
term uh and what we want to do is to
make sure that women have better
opportunities and that will have a very
predictable outcome of saying we're not
going to end up at the 10 20 uh billion
uh people by the end of the century so
we can sort of lay that uh Panic to rest
all right let's get back to some of the
things that work so we've so far talked
about e-procurement the baby breathing
thing I certainly mentioned that briefly
uh what are some other ones that have
big impacts
so let me actually just take you up on
that one because that's just a very very
small part of it it's it's uh helping
moms and uh uh uh newborn kids uh just
around pregnancy it's a terribly
dangerous thing he used to be very
dangerous for women in rich countries uh
to be treated uh uh you know to have to
be pregnant uh almost a percent of all
women in pregnancy would die uh this is
terribly dangerous uh it was actually
more dangerous for rich women uh back in
the 1800s uh because they would be more
likely to go to hospitals and in the
hospitals the doctor would just from
amputating a leg and then you know come
and mess around and give you a Peril
fever I'm not sure what's that called in
English uh but yeah the thing that you
die from uh so so uh so the idea here is
we've put done that under control but
still about 300 000 women die each and
every year uh and Pregnant see and about
2.3 million kids die in their first 28
days in life and we
fix this this is not rocket science
uh uh institutional birth so when
complications arise There's an
opportunity to do something about it and
then that you have those very basic uh
emergency obstetric opportunities and
this is a package of things one of the
things that you mentioned is this uh
this mask that you give kids so as you
mentioned five percent of all kids uh
come out and Mom and don't breathe and
you basically need to put a mask on them
and pump in air into their lungs and
then they start going and then they're
safe uh and you need that in poor
country but even if you come into a a
birth facility many of them won't have
this uh this little mask it costs what
75 uh and over its three year lifetime
it can probably save about 25 lives
that's a enormous effective thing now
I'm not arguing that everybody should go
out and do it you know GoFundMe uh thing
just for that because this is about
getting all of the structure in there so
it's about getting the moms into uh
giving birth and institutions so about
two-thirds do that now we're asking we
should get like 90 of all uh women in
there and then these institutions should
have a lot of different things they
should have disinfectants they should
have clean water you'd imagine these
were obvious things but they're still
not implemented we've identified how
much would that cost much of this is
also just simply when the hospital
administrator decides what should you
buy uh uh with your uh with your budget
uh a lot of them and end up with buying
the machine that says ping if you
remember that one from Monty Python only
because of you but yes I I am yes
it's a it's a skid way where you know
they have all the doctors all the
machines in there because the
administrator is coming and they want to
show the most expensive machine that
says pain and that's all we ever learn
about it but you know they're so oh
there's something oh we're missing the
mom right so so they re they realize
that John Clays is doing most of the
talking it's a very fun uh uh skit but
you know fundamentally you get the idea
that nobody no doctor is going to be
excited about getting this mask I mean
how's that fun I'm not going to go to a
conference and say we have a mask for 75
right you want to be able to have we
have the newest MRI scanner or whatever
it is right but we need to get Hospital
administrators and everybody else to
spend money on boring old stuff that
actually save a lot of people so we
estimate that the total cost is going to
be about five billion dollars a lot of
this is cost for the women uh so it's
almost 2 billion of that cost that's the
cost in terms of lost income for the
women typically you'll work right up to
the day and possibly even some of the
day where you give birth and then the
day after you'll you'll go back to work
uh but here if you go into an
institution you'll actually have to take
some days off and that has a huge cost
and when we're doing this in 27 million
women every year that actually adds up
uh so three billion dollars in actual
cost and then 2 billion dollars an extra
cost for the women
that total cost will save about 166 000
moms and they'll save 1.2 million kids
each and every dollar will on average
deliver 87 worth of good that's just one
of those many amazing things we could do
so you know again we've had some of
these people do all of the math
all of the costs and costs all of the
different
and of course this is not true in this
in a total metaphysical sense it's not
like all the cents and and dollars are
gonna uh tally up exactly but it's the
best knowledge that we have or what our
best models show what this increase
would cost and how many people this
would save it's just a phenomenal uh uh
policy okay so uh for whatever reason
this one just hit me in terms of okay uh
going back to climate no one here
certainly not I and I know not you is
saying that climate it we we are saying
climate is a problem uh it needs to be
addressed and but when you go back to uh
people Planet prosperity and you're
taking the balance of those if you're
only losing 500 000 people to climate
problems
um now and what you're just talking
about getting women into institutions
for birth getting them the sanitization
getting them the little breathing thing
um if if that saving over a million
people you're already 2x of when climate
was the worst in terms of the number of
people that it was killing which was 500
000. it's now whatever eleven thousand
so compared to even what climate is now
it's just massive massive massive
massive uh lee more impactful in terms
of saving lives but it does beg the
question so if I'm somebody that's like
really really the climate is is the
meteorite streaking towards Earth that
is going to uh just cause you know mass
extinction basically I go to the the
movie um the day after tomorrow did you
see that movie
yes okay so uh that that was really
sobering this thought that like okay
we're everything is just so delicately
balanced and if we fall out of balance
then like this cascading thing can
happen that basically brings an Ice Age
effectively overnight and even if even
if that happened say over 12 months it
it would just be unimaginably
devastating
um
it so it begs the question is there
anything that we see in the data that
leads us to believe that
let's just assume we do nothing for
climate and everybody just keeps doing
their thing and we keep making people
richer uh China keeps bringing on coal
plants like just every bad bad bad bad
bad bad
um
could it get that kind of catastrophic
so uh if you just ask it could it is
there a non-zero probability that it
could be a catastrophic yes of course
there there's a non-zero probability for
everything redhead women could take over
the world tomorrow uh that's a non-zero
probability right so so that that's not
really the question the question is is
it realistic that this
the answer is no uh so uh in almost all
of the UN clouds yeah this is what I was
going to ask based on the data it's a no
well no the you can't base this in data
because we you know we're you're talking
about the future so you have to base it
on models uh because we don't have data
for the future we're worried about the
future so we have to ask what are the
models indicate will happen if in in
reason in reasonable worst case outcomes
uh and and almost everything that the
U.N climate panel shows is this is a
problem but that it's not by any means
sort of end of the world or anywhere
close to that uh so the only climate
account so climate economics have spent
a very large time trying to estimate not
just what is the bad things that could
happen but try to give that an economic
estimate so you know get get a sense of
proportion how bad will this be and so
the only climate Economist to win the
Nobel Prize in climate economics uh
William nordhaus from Yale University in
2018 his model show uh but many other
models show reasonably as a similar uh
outcomes show that if we do nothing and
again nobody is suggesting that that's
the right out uh that that's the right
policy decision but if we just let
everything happen uh and and just let
sort of global warming get worse and
worse then by the end of the century
all the negative impacts on all the
positive impacts remember there's both
negatives and positive but the negatives
outweigh the process that's why it's a
net negative uh the net negative will
feel like we're four percent less
well-off than we otherwise would be so
it's a four percent problem that's
that's basically what he won the Nobel
Prize for and that's a certainly a
problem now remember by the end of the
century the U.N estimate that we will be
much richer than we are today they
actually estimate on a reasonable sort
of middle of the road scenario uh that
the average person in the world will be
450 as rich as he or she is today so
that's a phenomenally much better world
that's one where we've lifted a lot of
people out of poverty as well there'll
be no poverty no one dollar a day
Poverty of course then we'll be worrying
about you know 100 a day poverty instead
or ten dollars of poverty whatever but
fundamentally so on average we expect
that we'll be 450 as Rich by the end of
the century but because of global
warming unmitigated global warming it'll
feel like we're only 434 percent is Rich
four percent reduction of that right so
434 as rich is not the end of the world
it's is a much better world but it's a
slightly less better world than it
otherwise would have been which is that
that must be very controversial is Nord
house a controversial figure because
obviously
he's become controversial he's become
controversial every you know look pretty
much everyone in climate economics
agrees with him uh you can
sort of come up with these really really
unrealistic it might be even 10 but it's
not going to change the argument uh you
need to get up to you know 80 90 close
to 100 for this really to hit home uh
and nobody can show these sorts of
numbers there's some people out there
who say that but they have no good
evidence for why this would be the case
and and so and they're not well
respected is there any model from a
crackpot or otherwise I mean a player in
the space
um yes but a player in the space even if
they're considered like I'm not so sure
about this guy is there anybody that has
models that um put that kind of number
on the board that this would be an 80 to
90 reduction in the growth rate the
worst that's out there and I think most
people would agree this was pretty well
been debunked and we could I could walk
you through that but that that take
quite a while uh as sort of uh is it 23
and that's it's just simply wrong and in
many many different ways but that's a
period study that has been referenced a
lot but even that would not generate
this right it would be sort of a decade
worth of of economic growth that we'd
lose out on over this Century which
obviously would be tragic and would be
uh better to not have that but it's not
going to be by any realistic sense uh
the end of the world and it's not going
to be such that we'll be worse off will
be less well will be less better off uh
than we otherwise would have been and
that's the crucial bit
that's the the the sort of the the
missing conversation in this if it's the
end of the world it makes good sense to
say you should throw everything in the
kitchen sink at this if it's a problem
you should obviously and you know Nord
house sense a four percent problem
you should be if you can throw one or
two percent at it and fix all of it
that's great but if you throw you know
five to ten percent at it and fix a
little bit of the four percent that's
really stupid and so that's the
conversation that you really need to
have and unfortunately uh much of the
con much of the policy conversation is
let's throw a five to ten percent at it
and only fix part of it which turns out
to be a very poor use of resource uh it
doesn't mean we shouldn't fix it but we
should fix it much smarter
yeah okay so um if I were to channel the
people because
um there there is a
ooh I don't want to get uh sucked into
all the debates but I do want to be fair
to some of the things that uh are out
there and at least their frame of
reference Nobel Memorial Prize winner
Joseph stiglitz said it would be
outright dangerous for people to be
persuaded by Bjorn lomborg's arguments
um so what if if I'm gonna put that hat
on and I'm gonna Channel him for a
second I want to make sure that we start
teasing these things out so
um one you said that uh
Nordstrom Nord house thank you uh that
he's become a controversial figure so I
I want to make sure everybody
understands there's a lot of debate
around this stuff and so um if if I
channel uh
um the guy thank you uh if I Channel him
what I would say is hey look uh I can't
help but notice that climate is not on
your 12 things so you say let's do
something about it but you wrote a whole
book about let's do these 12 things
first and uh we've just spent the last
30 years finally getting people to pay
attention to the only thing that really
is existential uh I love it I love the
idea of
um pulling uh getting women to have
birth in hospitals I I understand that
but like that's never going to be
existential so why are we wasting even a
second on things that are just sort of
incremental Improvement when we have
this thing that that could truly be
cataclysmic
um hurtling at us so I've already heard
you and you've said it multiple times in
this interview and you've definitely
spent a lot of time saying it to other
people that uh this just isn't world
ending and without getting into like a
full-blown bringing somebody else on to
challenge all the points I just want to
plant for people that okay this this is
where we get into sort of this is a
debated thing but what I hear you saying
and this is what I found compelling but
let me know if I'm I'm making a leap too
far here that
when we look at that 250 percent better
we are specifically talking about the
kind of things that are in the 12 or
maybe exactly the 12 like those are the
things that are actually going to have
the impact on prosperity and people so
lives and prosperity that we want and by
raising those who thinks you will very
intentionally but it it's just a second
order consequence take care of the
climate is that your stance
somewhat uh so let me just first of all
I have a whole bottle of uh of sticklets
uh and sticklitz is not a climate
Economist but you know he's a smart guy
uh and and he's certainly so what's the
difference because he won a Nobel Prize
for something with climate in the title
of
signaling essentially uh his most famous
model is on on why it's really hard to
sell used cars uh because you know
whether it's a good or a bad car a lemon
uh but other people don't
um it's a very good paper uh uh it's a
it's a fun Point uh We've debated
several times uh I I think sticklitz is
in way of his head and he knows that
that's what I think uh but that's a
that's a conversation for a different
time uh uh North house is only
controversial not among economists but
among all the people who want desperate
strong climate action because obviously
that you that that's not compatible with
what he's actually found uh and and so I
think it's mostly sort of a recent
argument uh that I don't like his
conclusion so he must be wrong uh which
is not a terribly strong scientific
argument uh but but that's a whole
different kind of conversation but I
think it's very crucial Point why don't
I have climate as one of these uh 12.
and the simple answer is it's because
there is no climate policy that has you
know a substantial sort of uh uh
spending that delivers at least fifteen
dollars back in the dollar now most
climate policies that we do in the west
so for instance the Paris agreement
delivers about 10 cents back on the
dollar that is it actually destroys
value it costs a lot of money and it
delivers a little bit of good for
climate so it's a bad idea uh now you
can have a lot of conversation a lot of
people would be very angry to hear that
I think we have very good academic
arguments that it's less than a dollar
back in the dollar uh but you know 10
cents exactly who knows it could be 30
cents there's some people who would even
argue you know if you really sort of
tune all the characters to get the right
politically uh right result you might
make it one and a half dollars back in
the dollar that is it it's a good
investment but it's nowhere near as good
an investment as these other things
I'm going to ask a really gross question
and now I am way over my head uh but
this is very much a thinking through
novel problems
um a guy that I know called Tom tells me
you should just go ahead yep that's
that's where I'm at ooh am I gonna
perhaps Rue the day I don't think I've
ever uttered this name uh in the podcast
maybe once or twice but uh Trump pulled
America out of the Paris
uh climate agreement whatever I'm not
sure how to frame it
um was he right
uh uh I think he was possibly right for
the wrong reasons I mean his argument
was basically this is costing America a
lot of money and it's not doing very
much good so I'm gonna pull it out it's
not gonna do America a lot of good
remember the reason why we care about
global warm consumably is because this
will affect all of the world it'll
actually not affect rich countries all
that much partly because rich countries
are uh typically fairly High latitude
countries so more warmth I come from
Sweden right I mean not like your
problem be sorry that it gets a little
better weather but if you live further
uh you know closer to the Equator that
is actually a problem uh partly when
you're richer you're also more resilient
so you'll have less problems with you
know more storms or more uh uh uh more
floods that kind of thing so so I I
think there's some truth to this I would
never just go ahead and say this is you
know Trump was just right on this and
and good for him it's more sort of a a
the way I heard it was that you know he
got part of it but it was not you know
the right way to deal with with this
would have been to say we should do
something else and we actually did that
uh all the way back to our start of our
conversation we not only did this for
all the really smart things to do in the
world which is the best things first we
also did a similar process where we said
if you were to spend money on climate
how would you do that in the best
possible way so not say anything else
just say we want to spend money on
climate where do you get the biggest
bang for your biggest climate bank for
your buck and it turns out by far the
best investment is in innovation
and if you think about it it really
makes sense uh back in the 1950s Los
Angeles was a terribly polluted place
mostly because of course the solution
was not to tell everyone I'm sorry could
you walk instead because that that would
never convince anyone in Los Angeles
right but the solution was instead
innovating what was known as the
catalytic converter a little Gizmo
innovated in 1978 that you put on a car
tailpipe and it basically get rid of
most of the pollution uh this is the air
pollution part uh but that's why you can
drive a lot longer and much cleaner I'm
not saying that Los Angeles is great or
anything but it's much much cleaner than
it was in 1950s mostly because of that
Innovation yeah it has a cost of a
couple hundred dollars but we basically
convinced everyone in the world for a
couple hundred dollars sure I'll do that
in order to knock cough and we've gotten
everyone in the world to do that that's
how we solve global warming not by
telling everyone to be worse off but by
telling people if you invest a little
bit of money and we're talking about 100
billion dollars there uh for for
Innovation and research and development
and green energy you will innovate the
technologies that are going to be so
cheap faster so that everyone will
eventually switch and let me just give
you one example and then I I would love
to go back to the other uh to the other
things uh but Craig Venture the guy who
uh cracked the human face Craig Venter
yeah no I know him oh cool yeah yeah
well by any means but he's he's he's uh
he's he's a he seems like very
interesting guy I don't know uh but he
has a lot of slightly crazy ideas but
also really really interesting ideas so
one of his ideas is uh imagine taking a
gene modified algae that basically takes
sunlight and CO2 and transforms it in to
oil then we just put it on the ocean
surface we grow our own Saudi Arabia out
there it'll soak up all the CO2 so then
we'll Harvest all the oil and then we'll
keep our entire fossil fuel economy but
driven on this oil that we just produced
out in the ocean surface so it's CO2
neutral how cool is that right you can
make it work in principle but it's not
anywhere close to commercially viable
but yeah let's give that man a couple
million dollars to see if he can make
this work a lot cheaper and a lot better
if he can he'll be the richest guy in
the world and he will make every one of
us much much better off because we'll
have you know basically infinite uh uh
uh uh energy without the CO2 problem
that'd be fantastic now there's a very
good chance this won't work right but we
should invest in a thousand things like
that and we really just need one or a
few of them to come true and those are
the ones that are going to power the
21st century right now we're instead
saying no no let's make it more costly
to cut back on on co2 it's going to cost
these trillions of dollars rich
countries are sort of saying where they
want to do it but poor countries China
India Africa no not going to happen and
so in reality we're spending a lot of
money and we're very likely to not
achieve anything and that's why I'm
Arcane and that was what our Economist
showed and we had three Nobel Lorax
involved in this and they basically said
the very best long-term solution is to
dramatically increase our investment in
green energy r d so we should definitely
do that but
found was that was
11 back in the dollar so had we said
that that will Target at you know 10
instead but that's just historically not
what we've done is not because we want
it to sort of skew this is just because
we didn't want to have you know if we if
we'd set in a five we'd have what um 40
or 100 different ideas it will also be
much harder to know whether we've gotten
all of them and that's why we've
historically set it at 15. uh so that's
why
green Innovation is not in there uh but
you know fundamentally it's just simply
a question saying where can you spend
the money and do the most good but it it
necessitates that you stop believing oh
but if we don't fix my favorite problem
first Nothing Else Matters uh and and
you know a reasonable number of people
will say look they'll still be poor
people in 2030 but if we don't do
something about climate it'll be the end
of the world and I I get that if if
that's your frame of mind that actually
makes perfect sense it just happens to
not be correct right okay so
um going back
um we've got e-procurement we've got
mothers going into Hospital sanitation
babies breathings that's two uh hit us
with number three
so uh take um uh some of these very very
simple diseases like tuberculosis and
malaria uh tuberculosis is what killed a
fourth of everyone in the 1800s uh if
you watch Moulin Rouge it's a team oh
I'm gonna give away the ending uh spoilo
right uh uh and and you know she dies
from tuberculosis uh everybody died from
tuberculosis this is a huge killer we
estimated over the last 200 years about
a billion people died from tuberculosis
it was a tsunami of death uh over much
of the rich world and then we got
antibiotics you know we used to send
people in sanatorium now we fixed it
with antibiotics we're fine we don't
have tuberculosis or essentially don't
have tuberculosis uh there's a little
bit of tuberculosis with the HIV
epidemic from the 80s onwards but it's
still very very little in rich countries
and it's mainly uh uh a a knock-on
effect of HIV it's not actually
tuberculosis it's just the thing that
kills uh some of the people with HIV so
the reality is we fix in the rich world
but we haven't done that in the poor
part of the world this is simply about
making sure that people keep taking
their medication uh and and one of the
reasons why that's hard is you actually
have to take your medication for half a
year uh if you've ever you know had a uh
your doctor prescribed you two weeks of
of antibiotics or something you know
after uh you get well after the first
week it's kind of hard to remember to do
it the other week right and imagine
doing this for a whole half year uh so
there's lots of you know you game
gamified you get people in apps you uh
you get uh tuberculosis Anonymous where
you meet one so a week or a month and
say yes I took all my medications and
you know that kind of stuff you give
people a little prize to do it and it
feels a little wrong that you have to
give people a prize you know like a
juice carton or something uh but if you
think about it if you make sure that
these people don't have tuberculosis
they don't get to pass it on to 10 to 15
other people that's how you stop an
epidemic uh so it has huge societal
benefits and then there's also a very
large number of people that have
tuberculosis that never get discovered
uh so three four five million people
each year we need to go out and Screen
those much more in Bangladesh again they
had uh uh old typically uh uh uh uh
widows that would have 15 families in
their neighborhood and they would go
every once in a while and listen to them
and say hey has anyone been coughing for
a long while and if if the answer keeps
being yes then they make sure that that
person gets in and get checked up on on
tuberculosis those kinds of things yes
it has a cost we estimate it would cost
about six billion dollars in total but
then we could long term avoid almost a
million people dying each and every year
from tuberculosis this
liver for 46 dollars of social benefits
this is just an incredible uh investment
likewise with malaria I'm not going to
go into that but it's basically about
getting more mosquito Nets out uh we
used to have lots of malaria malaria was
endemic in 36 states in the U.S it was
uh you know it was so endemic in India
for instance that many places in India
we believe in the early part of last
century were unlivable uh but now we've
eradicated many different places mostly
in the rich world it's almost gone in
most of the places but in Africa mostly
because they have a mosquito that only
bite people whereas we have mosquitoes
that'll bite people and livestock so if
you have lots of livestock there's a lot
less chances you're actually going to
get the malaria and they also have a
worse kind of uh malaria a more deadly
kind of malaria so they're just simply
they they have the Unlucky draw uh but
if we get more mosquito Nets insecticide
Street mosquito Nets we could save about
half of the there's about 600 000 people
die each year uh for about 1.1 billion
dollars we could save about 200 000
lives each and every year again so the
benefit cost ratio is about 48. so these
some boring things you know TB and
tuberculosis or malaria not sexy things
that we talk about but they just happen
pretty rad if your kid is the one that
has the tuberculosis so let me see
exactly like now they're incredibly
important for those people uh and and of
course also we believe uh that not only
uh is malaria terrible uh for the people
who die but most people actually don't
die from malaria they're just terribly
terribly ill and so we believe a lot of
people in Africa are actually employed
such that you need to have two employees
because one of them is going to be as
likely to be sick with malaria and
that's of course terribly inefficient uh
so you could also make the the societies
much more effective and hence richer and
more resilient and more prosperous if
you got rid of malaria so this is just
one of those no-brainers that we should
be doing all right
um so I think it would be useful to go
through all of them uh I don't know if
you you can pop them off just off the
top of your head give you one more
because we talked we talked about
education at first and I think it'd be
great to just finish that out that's
also it's the most expensive thing that
we're suggesting and it's also one of
the most impactful of of all of these
things that we're talking about so as as
we as we talked about there's a huge
Darth of good education in the world uh
so we we work really really hard on
getting all the people in the poor part
of the world into school they're now in
school but they're not learning very
much so the right answer is not to you
know double teachers pays or build lots
more schools or that kind of thing yes
it has some benefit somewhere and some
countries actually have a lot more kids
coming in so they will have to build
schools but it's not the way that you
actually solve this problem the way you
solve it and so we asked a lot of of the
world's top uh economy uh education
economists they all said the same thing
there are two ways that you saw this one
is to teach at the right level and I'm
just going to tell you what that is so
don't separate by age separate by skill
set
well yes so so you know if everywhere in
the world we have all the 12 year olds
in the same class all the 13 year olds
in the same class but especially in poor
countries these 12 year olds are widely
different nobility some of them are way
ahead of the teacher many of them no
clue what's going on in the in the class
ideally that teacher should teach each
one of those kids at his or her own
level but of course you can't do that if
you have 50 kids in in your class but
what you can do and we know this from
lots and lots of experiments you and and
large-scale experiments with hundreds of
thousands of kids if you put these kids
say in front of a tablet one hour a day
this tablet has educational software on
it it'll very quickly find out where
your exact level is and start teaching
you at that level so your whole day will
be seven hours of boring old classes
that don't really work and then one hour
of this where you actually get to
interact with uh the uh the tablet would
you be familiar with the X prize um they
did a prize around learning on this is
that part of what you guys looked at
I know that it's there uh but no this
this is this is research that's been
going on for at least 10 15 years where
they have investigated these sorts of of
uh educational softwares and found out
how much does it cost also one of the
things you need to recognize is that
some of these tablets will be stolen
some of them will be corrupt some of the
teachers won't know how to do it uh you
also need solar panels to make sure that
you have uh electricity if you don't
have uh power out in the middle of
nowhere uh you also need uh lockers so
you can lock in the uh the tablets at
night uh there's a lot of things that
can go wrong and we've estimated all of
these things also and crucially this is
why you only have it one hour a day that
the kids don't get the tablet it turns
out that that's a really bad thing
because then they mostly just end up
watching uh Netflix and doing all kinds
of other things so funny really fast on
this because this is where our Worlds
Collide a little bit with my obsession
with AI so I brought up uh the X prize
the did a prize around this they wanted
make sure that all kids were getting
educated emad mostac won that prize he's
the guy that went on to found stability
AI which gave us stability diffusion
which at one point accounted for like
the top
10 apps on the app store for iPhone were
all built on the back of stability
diffusion so his obsession is how do we
use AI to educate people how do we make
it open source how do we get it in the
hands of all these kids and I there were
two things that happened around the X
prize I don't know where the borders are
so what I'm about to say I think was
Iman but I'm not entirely sure but it
was definitely tied to the X prize they
went into some just ridiculously
impoverished Village
um there was like a border fence they
cut a hole in the fence and they have
fixed effectively an iPad a tablet and
they they did not say a word the tablet
wasn't even in the native language they
just affixed it with an internet
connection and something like three
weeks later they had 12 year olds
teaching themselves molecular biology
because they were just navigating around
and finding this stuff and finding
videos and things they were interested
in I was just like that is insane and to
me it speaks this idea of when you get
somebody who can learn at their own pace
you will be shocked at how quickly they
like find that lane of like okay I
comprehend at this level and then they
just go ham because to your earlier
point about 3G and getting people access
to phones in the internet
the world's knowledge is at your
fingertips the second you have access to
the internet it's it's really pretty
incredible I I was not at all surprised
to see education on your list
now and and and and the reason why we
are advocating this particular
technology is partly because if you do
one hour a day you can partly you can
spread out the usage of the uh the
tablets with lots of other kids so the
cost of the tablet becomes less of cost
per kid it's also that you need teachers
Buy in uh not surprisingly teachers are
worried that AI or technology will
basically take over their job uh and so
by making sure that the teacher will sit
with the kids for that one hour
ostensibly to help them with technology
problems but really to say this is part
of your job so they're not worried about
this is the way to make sure that
teachers will actually embrace this sort
of solution making it possible to start
this conversation and also this is what
we've studied we've studied this
particular thing we know this is
incredibly good it's possible that
there's an even better thing out there
but this is pretty good already so what
we find is for about twenty one dollars
you can get a kid one hour a day for a
whole year on this tablet so the tablet
will be spread out over I think it's
three or four years the solar panels for
10 years the the boxes also for 10 years
uh you also need to build a new
classroom where you can do this and
that's also spread over 20 years and uh
and and and obviously the software is
almost all up there but it's very very
cheap when you have to do it for
millions of kids anyway and so if you
look at that total cost is about 31
sorry twenty one dollars for one kid for
one year but it means that for one year
going to school so seven hours of boring
school one hour of actually learning
lots of stuff you end up having learned
as much as you normally would in one
year over three years sorry I said that
badly right so every year you go to
school you learn what you normally would
have learned in three years you're
simply three times as good and it
matters in an hour
yeah and then when you go out and you
become uh an adult you will be more
productive because now you actually have
learned a lot more stuff much better and
that means and we know this from a lot
of research that reflects in your hourly
wage you'll simply have a higher hourly
wage and so we've estimated what's that
value over time in all of these
countries and what we find is that for
about 10 billion dollars so this is
going to cost about 10 billion dollars
to ramp this up to a lot of places so
get 90 of all kids in the poor half of
the world this opportunity but the
benefit it is that these kids will each
and every year make 600 billion dollars
more in good uh and and higher income
remember they'll actually make Six
Trillion but this is far off and so
we're discounting it back to today it's
worth less because it's far ends in the
future so it's about 600 billion dollars
and that means for every dollar spent
you'll do 65 dollars of good I should
just say this is not the only way that
we're talking there's also and you
actually mentioned that you could also
do without the technology so you just
simply one hour a day you take all the
kids who should be in first grade and
put them in to first grade you take all
the kids who should be in second grade
and put them into a sec a real second
grade it has a lot of social problems
because you end up putting you know six
years old and 12 year olds and you also
kind of point out yeah you know uh Steve
here not the prices of the bunch yeah
I'm not gonna have the kind of adherence
yeah but they but it's much cheaper
because you don't need the applets uh
and it's less effective but it's also
much cheaper so we actually find it's
also a really good idea they do it in in
India for instance so we're suggesting
that could be part of the solution the
last part is teachers are really bad
teachers are poorly paid most uh most
most places around the world and they
are struggling many of them are just you
know a tiny bit better than the kids
that they have to teach and so if you
give them structure or what we call
semi-structured teacher plans so you
basically make an outline of what you
should teach today and tomorrow
every hour for the whole uh year if you
do that and then take them in on some
courses and that this has been done uh
Kenya is now uh taking this out to the
whole country after having done it for
about 10 of the population uh so we know
this works it costs very very little and
it can make the teachers become better
teachers and then you send out text
messages to them every uh every week
boom this week you're going to be
teaching this this and this and you know
it just simply makes the teachers teach
better and so you can both get the kids
to learn better that's the learning at
the right level and you can get the
teachers to teach better and what we say
is we don't know what countries are
going to pick so we're simply saying
one-third of each of these three if you
do that it'll cost 10 billion dollars
but the benefit will be about 600
billion dollars this is definitely one
of the things we should do yeah no joke
that one feels like the beginning of a
virtuous cycle and again I'm at the risk
of beating a dead horse with how I've
interpreted what you've put together
here is this sense of uh
all of the problems that we really care
about are Downstream of a few things
keep people alive that's one make sure
that when they're born that they survive
that the mother survives so that she can
have the next kid that she can raise
them well
um and then getting them educated is
gonna create this upward spiral so
um if like imagine for a second that
you're getting them that tablet they're
getting more educated then they even
even if you spread this out over
Generations which I don't think you need
to do is you conceptualize this but even
if you did a more educated parent is
going to have a more educated child and
then that's just going to compound and
compound and compound this is part of
how the you know the West becomes the
West it's not like intellect is is
unevenly distributed it's that there are
oftentimes Geographic things that create
this sort of early disadvantage for some
people or like malaria and things up
just you've got a bad draw of the the
lottery on mosquitoes which is
impossible to think that it can have
that kind of consequence but you just
walked us through the math it obviously
does and so by getting them in this
educational spiral you get them moving
upwards the GDP goes up they're more
wealthy they can afford more education
they start having fewer kids more
attention on the kids that they do have
pouring more resources into those kids
and so it's just like you just get
richer and richer and better and better
and that's really really interesting and
I just want to hammer a point home
because you're also able to handle all
other problems better yeah right great
point so your whole thesis around you
become more resilient so again just uh
climate being a gravitational Center for
you because so much of your life has
revolved around this that people are far
more likely to survive climate
catastrophe or be able to avoid climate
catastrophe uh if they are wealthier
because there are just so many of the
knock-on effects we've been talking
about and so going back one thing that I
I've heard you bring up many times but I
never hear the interviewer push on this
I just want to highlight this is you you
spend an hour a day on the tablet and
you get three years worth of learning in
one year and what happens if you're on
the tablet for all eight hours of the
day like I'm sure it's not completely
linear but man it's going to be even
better it's crazy I even think here in
the Western World we would be we would
be a lot farther ahead if we
standardized the lesson plans again
always Based on data so what teacher
where created what lesson plan that
yielded what outcome now you standardize
that across as many people as you can
get to take it in and then it becomes a
battle of curriculum right so right now
we do that at the effectively at the at
the national level so it's Nation versus
Nation but
um man we really I'm going back to AI uh
with AI we could really begin to track
this stuff so the people in this class
with this curriculum using this software
got this outcome on standardized tests
track them over time do this well in
high school do this well in college make
this much money like now you can really
really start to optimize the stuff it
becomes really incredible I totally
agree I I want to put down a few Flags
here which is just there's a lot of
stuff we don't know well uh so we don't
know what it would uh what the impact
would be of eight hours of tablet use my
suspicion is that kids would be tired of
it uh covet was a good example of uh
distance learning is really really hard
because you know what's going to keep
the kids there they also learn a lot of
other things in school so I I you know I
would love to do some tests and actually
find out is is one hour the right uh
answer and it probably isn't the reason
why it's done is because it's much more
acceptable to teachers it's much less
sort of disruptive of the whole
educational model and I think that's
probably right if you want this to
happen in the real world first but yes
of course we should actually have a
conversation about should we do this a
lot more but then also you know look at
what are the potential negative side
effects uh one obviously is that uh one
of the outcomes of going to school is
that you learn to navigate a social
setting but the main point here is again
to say that that there are other things
you need to learn and we need to make
sure sure that we don't just get so
excited with technology that that's the
only thing out uh one thing is uh so do
you remember the uh one laptop a child
that was a very very common thing uh
like 10 15 years ago uh and everybody
loved the idea uh but everybody that I
knew would be saying but we haven't
actually tested and when you started
testing it turned out it was not good at
all it actually and that's that's why it
turned out that that it had no impact on
learning uh and it turned out that uh
teachers were saying that it actually
make the made the kids less attentive in
class uh so so what we know from the
evidence is that this is you you don't
just give them a a computer because what
happens is they're going to end up
watching Netflix right but what you want
to do is to make sure that you put them
in structured situations where they
learn a lot using the tablet and maybe
one hour is as much as you can sort of
handle a day uh and I could certainly
imagine I would get really bored if I
had to do this eight hours a day uh even
if there was somebody sitting over my
you know breathing down my neck and
saying you'd have to you know stay on on
this target the other bit I just want to
mention was we actually don't look at
the compound effects of saying so now
we've gotten richer now that means the
kids uh this kid when he or she grows up
will be much better educated so their
kids will be even better educated and
they'll leave this virtues like I think
it's right but we don't have the data to
prove it it's just way too hard to do so
this tells you something else namely
that it's very likely that most of the
things I've just presented to you are
underestimates of how good they are
because we just you know when I talk to
uh uh the tuberculosis people
they will tell you how many people don't
die from tuberculosis because yeah
they're doctors and that's what they
that's how they think about it but the
fact that this this will so tuberculosis
typically hit uh uh uh uh people in the
30s 40s you know just when they become
parents
uh and so this means you lose your a mom
or a dad and you know the whole family
sort of careen's out of control we don't
know what that has of an impact but it's
very likely not good uh so the real
benefit of this is probably much much
higher but we don't include that because
we don't have good enough models to it
most people don't you know so in
education we only look at the income
impact because that's how education
economists think about the whole world
but clearly learning more also means
that you'll probably at least to a
certain point be happier and you'll be
more likely to experience successes and
other things you know there's a whole
lot you'll probably be better Democratic
citizen there are all kinds of better uh
outcomes that we haven't included so
many of these I suspect are vast
underestimates of the real benefits but
again I don't feel like I have you know
if if we get 52 back in the dollar I
don't think we have to sort of uh say
but it might actually be even better
than that yeah no for sure
um okay so I admittedly I think I'm a
bigger believer in uh how valuable the
time of the technology would be but I'll
let that go for now
um I I want to make sure that we at
least give people a headline uh on the
remaining I think eight that we still
have to go through let's go through them
all and and then we'll pick a couple to
to Really dive into and then there's a
another really important question I want
to ask
so
um I'll just go through the list here uh
so we look at nutrition obviously hunger
is a big problem it turns out it's kind
of hard to give out nutrition because if
you give out food it's hugely
potentially corrupt and so that's why uh
we don't have a really good solution we
have some reasonably good solutions for
nutrition that gives 18 back in the
dollar it's actually one of the lowest
uh but we estimate you should spend 1.4
billion dollars there and you can do
some really good uh chronic diseases
sorry but there's another way to fix uh
nutrition which is agricultural research
and development so if you remember what
really we were worried back in the 60s
and 70s that uh a lot of people would
just simply die from Hunger you know
people estimated that India was just a
basket case and you know we just had to
triage and let India go kind of thing uh
there's just not enough food for
everyone and it would just get worse and
worse instead we had what was known as
the Green Revolution which basically
made seeds much more productive so you
had you planted a rice seed or a wheat
seed or a corn seed and it simply
produced two or three times the yield
per acre that simply is just magic out
of the box and that's what basically
saved a lot of human beings the guy he
uh uh he got a Nobel Prize uh Peace
Prize for for doing this and his credit
for saving a billion people uh so you
know it's crazy how like that nobody
knows that guy's name
yeah this is where our negativity bias
is and as I have one too but it drives
me crazy that like there's not statues
of that guy yes but you know the it is
very easy to get people to panic about
what might happen but it's hard to get
them to celebrate what actually happens
crazy but we should just mention his
name Norman Bullock everybody should
know his name but yeah so uh so but we
need a Green Revolution for the poor
half of the world because this was for
Rice wheat and uh and corn uh which is
mostly rich country uh uh crops we need
it for sorghum and kasawa and all these
other things that you've never heard of
but also could use with much higher
productivity that would both mean that
you would produce more which is great
for Farmers but you'd also have low
prices which is great for urban
consumers of these food products and it
would also mean lower hunger uh we'd get
about 100 million uh people fewer uh
starving so we estimate spend 5.5
billion dollars there and you get a bang
for about 33. so we should definitely do
that uh chronic diseases uh you know um
you can't avoid people dying that's just
not going to happen uh but chronic
diseases is something that hits us when
we stop infectious diseases and we can
stop that from happening too soon so
that's typically heart disease and
cancer cancer turns out to be much much
harder to do something about but we
should get people those pills which we
talked about earlier uh for uh for lower
heart pressure uh and a few other things
and you can do this and it turns out it
costs about 4.4 billion dollars uh the
average bang for your buck is going to
be 23 you can save one and a half
million lies the reason why it's not
bigger is because these are old people
that we're saving unlike people uh we
save uh from you know tuberculosis or
from malaria which are typically much
younger people saving older people means
you only save them say six or seven
years that's nice but it's not as nice
as saving a life all the way through
right um then we should do uh land
tenure security uh so a lot of people
don't why do you guys call it that
that's such a weird way of saying um own
your
I don't think our our academic people
would have allowed us to say that but
that is true uh own your uh and
this is this is mainly a question of
saying that you are not certain that you
owned your land yeah this matters a lot
if you're a farmer uh if I don't know if
I have this land in five or ten years
I'm not going to invest in digging up
all the stones and improving the soil or
getting irrigation or planting an
orchard that'll only start giving fruits
in five or ten years I'm gonna just do
the quick and dirty thing because that's
the only thing I know will you know pay
out while I'm still there
um and that of course lowers
productivity and likewise if I have a
house in an urban setting or an
apartment I'm not going to change my
kitchen this is actually not the main
thing that you do but this is sort of a
first world way of thinking about all
right I'm not going to change the
kitchen if I don't know if I can sell it
and get that money back eventually if if
I might just get replaced actually about
a billion people out of 5 billion people
they ask in the world think that it's
very likely that they will be evicted
from something they think they own in
the next five years this is crazy and so
it's about getting making sure that you
get the uh uh the structure set up so
you you need to have for instance
cadastral surveys basically land maps
that show who owns everything and then
suddenly you start realizing that you
and your neighbor don't agree on what I
actually own no no my grandfather
actually said it went here but then you
you know work it out with the elders and
then you need to have some of this go to
court but it will dramatically improve
uh efficiency in your Society because a
lot of these societies are very based on
agriculture still that's a great way to
do it so we estimate the the net bang
it's going to cost 1.8 billion dollars
but also from a capital standpoint that
the property you own is typically
people's most uh their their biggest
investment the thing they can borrow
against the thing that allows them to
extract value from their own efforts
anyway we could totally derail on that
but that that one is is huge yeah huge
yes so there's two left I'm just gonna
talk uh very briefly about skilled
migration which is something a lot of
economists would argue uh if you look at
uh someone uh who works at you know say
McDonald's and and uh in Ethiopia and
the very same job done in the U.S the
pay is about 15 times higher right
you're just simply much more productive
in most places where you have lots of
other smart people around you that's
just basically how it is uh and and one
argument that a lot of economists would
actually make is there's a huge
misallocation of work in the world so a
lot more of the world's poor should
actually be working in rich countries
that would be great for them and
obviously that would be great for
inequality however this would also be
hugely politically problematic a lot of
of people would not like to see a couple
billion people move uh to the rich West
it's also unlikely that this would
actually work out as well as a lot of
economists argue but what we find is if
you focus on skilled migration and if
you're focused on a small amount so you
basically say imagine 10 more skilled
migration than you already have so that
means a country like Canada has lots of
immigrants would take 10 of a fairly
large number but countries that are very
skeptical would take 10 of a very low
number if you do that for really skilled
so that's doctors Engineers stem workers
generally you could actually move these
people and make them much more
productive in their new countries and
that would have huge benefits it would
even benefit the poorer countries yes
they would lose their doctors in the
short while but what it would mean would
that it would be more advantageous to
learn to become a doctor because you
have an opportunity to actually go to a
rich places well and it would also mean
that you would have remittances that
would more more than outweigh the loss
that you would see uh from from losing
your doctor so overall we find that
those would call 2.8 billion dollars but
the benefit would be 20 times that
the last one and this is the one I just
want to uh spend a little more time on
is free trade or more trade uh we've
known for a very very long time the one
of the real reasons why we get richer is
that we trade with each other you do
what you're best at I do what I'm best
at then we trade and that means we both
get a better outcome than if you've done
everything yourself and I've done
everything myself this is you know old
knowledge back from Adam Smith and uh
Ricardo and many others and we used to a
very very strong understanding from most
of the uh uh the elite in the world that
more trade was actually good we also
used to neglect the fact that it's not
good for everyone if you sewed t-shirts
in the 1970s in the U.S you would lose
out when you started opening up for
Bangladesh right because they can just
simply sew t-shirts better and cheaper
in Bangladesh so you would lose out your
job and that was what happened to a
certain extent and you know the the Rust
Belt is a good example of that there's
actually people who lose out to free
trade
and so economists have been very very
bad at addressing this what has happened
is because a lot of people have sort of
almost weaponized that uh uh that Rust
Belt that's what's happened with Trump
and many others that you know we've made
this into maybe we shouldn't have free
trade or we should at least have a lot
less of it uh we should make sure we
Bargo China we should make sure we
embargo a lot of different places that
actually makes all of us less well-off
but it will help these people in the
Rust Belt so the argument has been maybe
that's a uh uh uh uh a
a loss that's worth taking to make sure
that these people have can still work in
in you know shipping uh what where you
build ships shipyards
um or that kind of thing instead of just
sending all of it to South Korea and now
on to Vietnam and other places well so
that's going to end up being a a very
politically challenging problem because
if that's a large enough voting
constituency because one thing I don't
want to be Pollyanna about is a lot of
the things that you're pitching or like
hey guys we're already in the wealthy
West and so if you're struggling in the
wealthy West a lot of these things don't
really apply to you uh and so I I have a
feeling they're going to be less
receptive and they're gonna be like
that's not making my life better uh so
why would I ever vote for that so so
what we've done here is and I think this
is the first time it's been academically
done is to try and estimate what is the
benefits of free trade that is we all
get richer but also what are the cost to
free trade that is the people who work
in import exposed Industries will have a
risk of losing their jobs or seeing
lower pay or just simply being
essentially uh uh dropping out of their
pushed out of the marketplace
yes pushed automatically much better uh
and and we've done that model and then
done it with a standardized uh trade
model and then looked at what would
happen if we increased global trade by
five percent
and it turns out that for rich countries
that is where most of the costs are
going to come that's of course why rich
countries now have gotten ooh maybe
we're not all that sure about uh uh uh
free trade it turns out that for rich
countries trade is still overall a great
thing it turns out that the benefits of
of an extra five percent trade is about
eight trillion dollars but the costs are
about a trillion dollars so you get
seven seven times as much good out of it
as the cost but the costs are real and
significant
and that's why we need to be much more
aware of saying look if you're going to
have trade you also need to make sure
that you do something for the Rust Belt
that's more education it's more
opportunity to move to other sectors
where they can then be competitive again
and maybe just straight out that we also
subsidize them at least for a couple
years you know Unemployment uh benefits
of some sort this is not going to solve
all the problems but it's certainly
addressing there's a real issue but even
for rich countries this is a great thing
we can do seven dollars of good for
every dollar we end up losing that's a
great thing and there's certainly enough
money to go around to make sure that we
compensate the losers but for the poor
half of the world it turns out the
benefits are astounding for every dollar
spent that is locked jobs lost they will
gain 95 benefits and that's basically
because all of the trade that they're
going to be doing is the stuff that they
can do better so the poor half of the
world will do amazingly good with us the
rich world will also do good but not
nearly as good so we have to be more
clear on our our understanding that
we're going to address the downside the
rust belts of the world but
fundamentally free trade is just a way
to make everyone richer but we have to
be aware that there are trade-offs and
we have to be you know cognizant of that
but I think the study helps us say maybe
we shouldn't be quite as gloom and
against uh trade we should just
recognize it has that downsides but we
can actually afford uh to do something
about it so that's the last one it's
going to cost 1.7 billion dollars but
it's going to generate 166 billion
dollars of benefits for the poor half of
the world or 95 back in the dollar
man that that one's very interesting so
I want to take head on
um what the potential challenges would
be so
um and this is where I'm going to speak
directly to my uh climate concern
brothers and sisters out in the world
okay so
um I keep drawing this direct parallel I
feel like maybe you don't agree quite as
fervently and you'll let me know here
but that as we lift the poor half of the
world out of poverty they will as a
matter of course
um
they will and the problem is they're
going to pass through a period where
they're worse for the environment but
they're going to then get to a point
where they're better for the environment
and so if we take a longer View and this
is where uh you're we just keep coming
back to if you believe the world is
ending in five years we've got real
problems and so you constantly have to
um I mean you've been very clear about
what your thoughts are there but man I'm
realizing as as I even try to explain
this now that it really does hinge on
can we one are you right that we don't
have this really near-term uh
catastrophes during Us in the face I am
not knowledgeable enough in this this is
where I go to I can tell you how I think
through the problem but I cannot at all
give you data
um but the if we understand that like
California in the 50s yes or China today
which China is both bringing on more
green energy I think than anybody else
but they're also bringing out more coal
plants than anybody else uh and so it is
this sort of mixed bag but that you you
want to push people up into a a much
more wealthy place as fast as humanly
possible because with that will come The
Innovation will come the fewer children
will come the bigger investment into
those kids will become the more
education all that and as we do that the
data shows that they will care far more
about the future thusly they will care
far more about the environment and they
will be better stewards which feels like
the way through if we can get everybody
to understand that uh that we don't have
a near-term we have a problem we have a
problem that needs to be addressed and
we should be addressing it right now
today
but that we do have more time maybe than
than people think uh okay so but with
that we get back to
um you're going to get a lot of people
pushing back on that I uh you weren't in
America when this was popping off but
there was like this whole weird moment
that that I really got caught off guard
by which was hey AI is going to take
over trucking jobs everybody thought
that was going to be the first thing and
truck or sorry you're just out of luck
and people said well they should learn
to code and I was like yeah word they
should learn to code because the reality
is
um you I don't think it wise for people
to just say oh I'm facing a change I
don't know how to code that's for people
smarter than me I give up right but it
it you would get banned off of Twitter
at one point you would get uh your video
de-listed on YouTube if you said the
phrase learn to code and I was like what
like I get it not everybody's going to
do it not everybody's going to be
willing whatever but to say you can't
even say it like that that just doesn't
make any sense to me I'm very dizzy by
that but I accept now that that is a
reality so you're going to run into
people who are like hey do not uh open
free trade we tried that terrible we
become over reliant on China people have
leverage against us we Outsource our
infrastructure we strip our jobs you get
a Rust Belt you get Detroit like just
all all bad things what on Earth are you
doing
um is there any argument other than
cheaper Goods which is I'm guessing
where you're saying that we get the
value so is there any argument other
than cheaper goods and hey you're
helping the world's poor and that makes
them care more about the future and
therefore they'll be better for the
environment are those the only two
opportunities we have to convince people
or is there anything else
so I I want to I want to get back and
answer answer your question but I think
I actually first want to take this uh a
step back uh if you remember I I was
saying I'm simply saying here's a menu
with prices and sizes these are 12 great
things I'd be very surprised if everyone
will take all 12 of them and that's
great yeah if if most people take end up
taking six of them I'm I'm all happy and
excited about this so let me ask you one
quick point on that when you guys came
up with a 12 you're like oh man like
free trade made the list damn it and uh
the environment didn't like were you
kind of like why couldn't the
environment be 55 return
so you
another one I'm
a very brief story uh on uh on Coral
briefs uh that we estimated uh delivered
24 back in the dollar uh but since then
there's a new study app that showed that
one basic problem that was missing was
that when you restrict a fishing for a
while that makes more fish and that
makes more uh uh uh
it makes more tourism and it makes more
ecological value which is all great but
it also restricts the local fishermen
and if if it has to have a real impact
it actually has to have a real cost and
that cost was not included
um uh and and so what we found was well
this is actually not a terribly great
investment it's probably two or three
but it's not 15 and it's not 24 either
uh so that's one of the things we we
pull out yes I was really annoyed
because I would love to have had it so
well you know it's a great thing but you
can't you know you can't argue with us
you you we have to uh uh uh cut it the
way that we that we see and the best
evidence that's that's out there
um the main point here again is to say
if we take the total of everything we've
just talked about
it'll cost 35 billion dollars a year
this is everything all 12. 35 billion 35
billion dollars and it'll save 4.2
Million Lives and it'll generate 1.1
trillion dollars for the world's poor
half
this is just an outstanding opportunity
and remember while I don't think you
have and I certainly don't have 35
billion dollars in the money you know in
my back pocket to just Finance this
um but on a global level this really is
couch change uh you know of all the
different things that we're spending on
I'm simply saying let's do these best
things first this does not mean that you
can't argue for your favorite thing and
that could be climate change or AI or
any other thing I'm simply saying we're
so rich that we at least should do these
12 incredibly cheap and Incredibly
powerful things first so just to give
you an example
um right now the world spends about 1.1
trillion dollars on climate we can
probably spend 35 billion dollars and
then get back to spending almost 1.1
trillion dollars in this every year the
world spent two trillion dollars in
military you know maybe we should just
take out the 35 billion dollars and then
get back to spending two trillion
dollars in on Military and so on so my
argument is not to say that you can't
also be engaged in all kinds of other
things it's just that the argument seems
to tell us that when you do the analysis
these 12 things are so good that it's
almost immoral not to just get those 12
things done now there's reasons why
these don't happen you know for instance
the tuberculosis it doesn't happen
because if you're rich in a rich country
you don't get tuberculosis but also if
you're rich in a poor country you don't
get tuberculosis these are poor people
in poor countries often without a voice
you know they're the migrant workers or
the uh mining industry or you know
prison population those kinds of places
and they don't get you a lot of votes
but we should get this word out that
this is actually a great thing to make
sure that people don't die from these
things and make sure that their local
governments spend more money on the
philanthropists and usaid and others
spend more money on and likewise with
all these 12 things so I'm simply making
the argument these are best things first
let's just squeeze that little 35
billion dollars in there uh and then get
back to all the other things that we
that we would constantly debate and and
given the very small size of this it's
really not a a big conversation I'm not
asking for us to spend as we talked
about with the 169 I'm not asking us to
spend another 15 trillion dollars which
would be hard to do but 35 billion
dollars which is like what 500 times
less
man that's crazy now one thing when I
was taking notes
um I only got nine things so there was
something that I have put together into
a couple uh similar ones or mashed
together so but anybody that took notes
like I did might be going 12. I've only
got nine so I want to make sure that we
get them all uh here's what I have
um e-procurement the baby breathing
mother giving birth in institutions
um we've got infectious disease
Solutions
education
tuberculosis I wondered about that so
that that takes us to ten uh then we've
got education nutrition hunger is that
two different ones
yeah nutrition is one so that's that's
about getting uh uh vitamins to pregnant
mothers and calcium to pregnant mothers
and to get uh uh uh feeding but if it's
only one line item is what I'm saying
yes that's nutrition the other one was
agriculture of research and
developments communities but they both
address nutrition yes so now we're up to
11. yep so uh then we've got chronic
diseases
land tenured security
skilled migration free trade so there's
still one that I can't account for then
that's and that is right I miss that
that's childhood immunization uh so it's
basically you know we we've uh immunized
a lot of the world uh giving them
vaccines against measles and many others
and it's been a phenomenal benefit we
estimate the saves somewhere between
four and possibly as many as seven
million kids each and every year this is
just you know we should definitely be
doing this you can have all the
conversations about vaccine for for
covet but you know vaccines against uh
uh uh uh measles we just know works and
is incredibly effective it'll cost more
to get the last 10 15 that I'm missing
in the world uh but even with that uh
for about 1.7 billion dollars you can
save half a million extra kids and it
means that for every dollar spent you'll
do a hundred and one dollars back on on
on the dollar
then it's really really incredible this
this whole thing is has blown my mind
and I just want to um thank you for
giving a conceptual framework that
people can follow I think it's it's
really brilliant way of thinking through
hard problems prioritizing and truly
doing the best things first where can
people follow you to get more of this uh
very wise way of thinking
so uh on uh Twitter uh longboard uh
Beyond lombork that's my Twitter handle
uh we have uh so the Copenhagen
consensus my Think Tank who's organized
all of this uh so Copenhagen
consensus.org uh as well you can see it
and then of course you can uh read the
book I just want to show you the book
because we actually published the
conclusion on the cover and most people
don't see it right in front but it
actually has this line is it says
benefits here and that has the cost down
here so you can literally see yeah
I have that book and didn't even notice
that that's what that was there you go
so the conclusion is on the cover you
just have to watch the cover and then
you're done amazing man thank you so
much for joining me today boys and girls
if you haven't already be sure to
subscribe and until next time my friends
be legendary take care peace
if you like this conversation check out
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talk to me about the three forces that
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under attack what is going on how do we
step back and think about this moment