Appendix G — 🎯 The Best Idea in the World

Why Every Advocacy Organization Should Drop What They’re Doing and Focus on This Instead

You run an environmental organization. Or a poverty nonprofit. Or a peace group. Or human rights advocacy.

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: The 1% Treaty is probably more cost-effective at achieving your goals than whatever you’re currently doing.

This isn’t arrogance. It’s math.

The Meta-Argument: Why This Beats Everything Else

The Problem with Single-Issue Advocacy:

Most organizations fight symptoms of a deeper problem. You’re bailing water while the ship has a massive hole in it.

The 1% Treaty fixes the hole.

The root cause of most global problems isn’t lack of solutions, it’s resource misallocation on a planetary scale. Humanity spends 40X more on creating problems (war, destruction) than solving them (disease, poverty, climate).

The 1% Treaty doesn’t just redirect money. It creates the first systematic financial incentive structure for global cooperation. It’s a systems intervention that makes solving problems more profitable than creating them.

For Environmental Organizations

Your Current Fight: Spend decades planting trees, building renewable energy, restoring ecosystems, while wars can erase all of it in hours.

The Brutal Reality:

Why the 1% Treaty is Better:

  • Protect Your Work: Reduce conflict = protect decades of environmental progress from being destroyed in warfare
  • Root Cause: Most environmental destruction is caused by conflict—deforestation from conflict minerals, military as top global polluter
  • Scale: $27B annually could fund more climate action than most environmental organizations’ combined budgets
  • Global Cooperation Template: Successfully redirecting military budgets proves humanity can coordinate on planetary-scale problems

Bottom Line: You can’t save the planet while wars keep destroying it faster than you can fix it.

For Anti-Poverty Organizations

Your Current Fight: Provide aid while conflicts create more poverty than you can solve.

Why the 1% Treaty is Better:

Bottom Line: You can’t end poverty while conflicts keep creating it faster than you can solve it.

For Peace Organizations

Your Current Fight: 70+ years of moral appeals to “choose peace.” How’s that working?

Why the 1% Treaty is Better:

  • Financial Incentives > Moral Appeals: We make peace literally more profitable than war
  • Systematic Approach: Instead of appealing to consciences, we align financial interests with peaceful outcomes
  • Proven Model: WWII war bonds raised $185B from 85M Americans by making citizens stakeholders in victory
  • Measurable Progress: Concrete 1% reduction vs. abstract “peace building”

Bottom Line: If moral arguments worked, we’d have peace by now. Time to make it profitable.

For Human Rights Organizations

Your Current Fight: Document abuses and appeal to international bodies with no enforcement power.

Why the 1% Treaty is Better:

  • Prevention > Documentation: Address the root cause of displacement, torture, and human rights violations (conflict)
  • Democratic Governance: $27B treasury controlled by global citizens, not corrupt governments
  • Health as Human Right: dFDA protocol provides 80X more efficient access to treatments
  • Economic Rights: VICTORY bonds give every human financial stake in global peace dividend

Bottom Line: Human rights violations happen during conflicts. End conflicts, reduce violations.

For Disease Advocacy Organizations

Your Current Fight: Compete for limited NIH/research funding while Pentagon loses $2.5T by accident.

Why the 1% Treaty is Better:

  • 80X Efficiency: Oxford RECOVERY trial cost $500/patient vs $41,000 traditional trials
  • Scale: $27B annually = 40% increase in global health research funding
  • No Competition: Instead of fighting other disease groups for scraps, expand the entire pie
  • Systemic Solution: Fix the underlying resource allocation problem

The Math:

  • Current: Fight for your 0.01% slice of $67.5B medical research
  • With 1% Treaty: Get your slice of $94.5B (40% larger pie)

Bottom Line: Stop competing for crumbs. Redirect the whole bakery.

The Convergence Argument

Every major global problem has the same root cause, resource misallocation that prioritizes destruction over creation.

The 1% Treaty doesn’t just solve one problem. It creates a self-reinforcing flywheel:

  1. Reduces conflict → Less environmental destruction, poverty, displacement
  2. Increases health research → Healthier populations, more productive economies
  3. Creates global cooperation precedent → Template for climate action, AI safety, etc.
  4. Aligns financial incentives → Makes solving problems more profitable than creating them

This is why it’s the best idea in the world. It’s not just high-impact, it’s multiplicatively high-impact across every cause area.

For Effective Altruism Organizations

You Already Get This.

The 1% Treaty has:

If you’re doing cause prioritization and this isn’t #1 on your list, check your math.

The Uncomfortable Question

“But what about my organization’s mission?”

Your mission is to solve problems. This solves problems faster and more cost-effectively than your current approach.

“But we have expertise in our specific area.”

Great! Use that expertise to implement solutions once we redirect the resources to fund them properly.

“But donors expect us to focus on our cause area.”

Show them the math. Donors want impact per dollar. This delivers more impact per dollar for their cause than direct work.

The Call to Action

For Organization Leaders:

  1. Run the numbers. Calculate your cost per life saved/problem solved vs. the 1% Treaty’s impact
  2. Redirect resources. Reallocate advocacy spend toward 1% Treaty passage
  3. Join the coalition. Coordinate with other orgs who’ve done the same math

For Donors:

  1. Pause recurring donations to single-issue organizations
  2. Fund VICTORY bonds instead for higher ROI
  3. Tell your favorite nonprofits to read this document

For Staff at Advocacy Organizations:

  1. Forward this to leadership with the subject “Higher ROI than our current work”
  2. Run internal cost-effectiveness analysis comparing your programs to 1% Treaty support
  3. Consider switching organizations if leadership won’t pivot to higher-impact work

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: “Isn’t this incredibly arrogant to claim we have the best idea?”

A: It’s not arrogance when you have the data. 463:1 ROI, 80X efficiency improvement, and capturing 0.16% of $16.5T annual waste is just math.

Q: “What if the 1% Treaty fails?”

A: What if your current approach fails? It’s been failing for decades. At least this has a theory of systemic change.

Q: “Won’t this put nonprofits out of business?”

A: No. It puts them in the business of solving problems with 40X more resources instead of fighting for scraps.

Q: “How do we maintain organizational identity?”

A: Keep your mission. Change your method. Environmental groups can do environmental work with $27B in funding instead of $27M.

The Bottom Line

Every minute you spend on anything other than the 1% Treaty is opportunity cost.

Every dollar raised for single-issue advocacy is a dollar that could have 10-100X more impact redirecting military budgets.

Every year we delay is 63 million preventable deaths, $16.5 trillion in waste, and the continued risk of nuclear winter.

This is the best idea in the world because it’s the highest-leverage intervention for every cause you care about.

The question isn’t whether you should work on this. The question is whether you can do the math and still justify working on anything else.

Learn More

Contact: orgs@warondisease.org for organizational partnerships

“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now. The best time to redirect humanity’s resources from destruction to creation was when we invented nuclear weapons. The second best time is now.”