🎭 Why Voting Can’t Fix This

Your Vote Is Worth $0.0000003

Here’s some fun math to ruin your day:

Chance your vote decides an election: 1 in 60 million Value if your candidate wins: $10,000 (in policies you prefer) Expected value of voting: $0.00017 Cost of voting (time, gas, finding parking): $50 Net value: -$49.99983

Voting is literally irrational. You have better odds of dying in a car crash on the way to vote than your vote mattering.

Yet people get really mad when you point this out.

Democracy: A System Designed by Geniuses, Run by Idiots, Elected by Morons

The Founding Fathers were smart. They created checks and balances, separation of powers, all that jazz.

They just forgot one thing: Voters are idiots.

Not you, of course. You’re reading a book. But the average voter? 64% can’t name or describe what the three branches of government do.

The Rational Ignorance Problem

Here’s why democracy can’t fix our problems:

Cost of being informed: 100+ hours researching candidates and issues Benefit of being informed: Your one vote (worth $0.00017) Rational decision: Stay ignorant, watch Netflix

This isn’t stupidity. It’s math.

Why spend 100 hours researching healthcare policy when your vote won’t change anything? Better to spend that time literally doing anything else.

So we get this:

Ask the average voter about CRISPR:

  • 5% think it’s gene editing
  • 20% think it’s a new salad
  • 75% think it’s a government conspiracy

These people vote on science funding.

Democracy!

What Democracy Should Look Like vs Reality

Princeton University did a study. They analyzed 1,779 policy decisions over 20 years. The correlation between what you want and what happens? Zero. Percent.

Graph showing voter support percentage (x-axis, 0-100%) vs probability a bill becomes law (y-axis) - flat line at ~30% showing public opinion has minimal influence on legislation

But when economic elites want something? They get it 78% of the time.

You have the same political influence as your houseplant. Actually less, at least politicians pretend to care about the environment.

The chart above shows what actually happens: whether 0% or 100% of voters support a bill, it has the same ~30% chance of passing.

Here’s what democracy SHOULD look like versus the reality:

Comparative visualization showing expected (higher public support = higher likelihood of bill passage) versus actual (flat line showing ~30% passage rate regardless of support level)

The Beautiful Mathematics of Political Failure

Concentrated Benefits vs. Diffuse Costs

Sugar subsidies cost Americans $3.5 billion per year. That’s $10 per person.

Will you spend weeks fighting to save $10? No. Will sugar companies spend millions to keep their $3.5 billion? Yes.

Guess who wins?

This pattern repeats everywhere:

  • Military contractors: $999 billion concentrated benefit (37% of $2.7T global spending)
  • Taxpayers: $3,000 each in diffuse costs ($999B ÷ 333M Americans)
  • Winner: Guess

How Money Buys Power

Research shows campaign contributions don’t directly buy how politicians vote on legislation—only 1 in 4 studies support that notion.

But they do something far more effective: They buy which politicians get elected in the first place.

The numbers are stark:

If you fund the campaigns of politicians who already agree with you, you don’t need to buy their votes later. You’ve already bought the election.

And for the ones already in office, contributions buy something more subtle than votes:

  • Access: Your call gets returned, theirs goes to voicemail
  • Agenda control: Your issue gets a hearing, theirs gets buried
  • Legislative language: The exact wording that creates loopholes
  • Committee positions: $450,000 to party committees buys a seat where bills live or die

You don’t buy the vote. You buy the voter, the agenda, and the conditions that make the vote irrelevant.

The Lobbying ROI: 1,810:1 Returns

The most profitable investment in America isn’t stocks or real estate. It’s bribing politicians:

Meanwhile:

  • Breast cancer: Great lobbyists = massive funding
  • Heart disease: Kills more people, worse lobbyists = less funding
  • Rare pediatric diseases: No lobbyists = no funding

Democracy doesn’t allocate resources by need. It allocates by who can afford the best K Street firm.

Why Nothing Ever Changes: A Mathematical Proof

  • Number of Americans who want lower drug prices: 330 million
  • Money they contribute to this cause: $0
  • Number of pharma executives who want high drug prices: 1,000
  • Money they contribute: $4.88 billion

1,000 > 330,000,000 (when you multiply by money)

That’s not corruption. That’s math.

Why Politicians Don’t Care About You (With Math!)

A politician needs three things:

  1. Votes (from idiots)
  2. Money (from corporations)
  3. Media coverage (from other corporations)

You provide 1/150,000,000th of item #1. Corporations provide 100% of items #2 and #3.

Who do you think they listen to?

The Median Voter Theorem (Or: Why Everything Sucks)

Political scientists have proven that in a democracy, policies converge on what the median voter wants.

The median voter:

This is who decides if we cure cancer or build more bombs.

Feel good about democracy yet?

The Iron Law of Oligarchy

Every democratic organization eventually becomes an oligarchy. It’s not a conspiracy. It’s math.

Here’s how:

  1. Organization needs leaders
  2. Leaders gain expertise and connections
  3. Leaders become irreplaceable
  4. Leaders do whatever they want
  5. Democracy becomes decoration

This happened to:

  • Every political party
  • Every union
  • Every non-profit
  • Your homeowners association
  • The PTA
  • Everything

Democracy doesn’t prevent oligarchy. It legitimizes it.

Your Congressman: A Prostitute with a Pension

Average time congressmen spend on:

They don’t even read what they vote on. The PATRIOT Act: 342 pages, voted on 45 minutes after release. The Affordable Care Act: 2,700 pages, “we have to pass it to see what’s in it.”

These people control nuclear weapons.

Sleep tight.

Congressional Committees: Available for Purchase

Committees are where real power lives. They control which bills live or die, what gets funded, and who gets regulated. No committee seat = no power.

So naturally, both parties sell them:

Position Democrats (DCCC) Republicans (NRCC) Why It Costs This Much
House Speaker $31 million $20 million Controls entire agenda
Ways & Means Chair $1.8 million $1.2 million All tax laws start here
Appropriations Chair $1.8 million $1.2 million Controls $1.7 trillion budget
Energy & Commerce $1.8 million $1.2 million Healthcare + Wall Street
Regular Committee $500K-1M $875,000 Still beats irrelevance
Basic Member $150,000+ Varies Entry fee to play

The price correlates with power. Ways and Means writes tax code affecting trillions. Appropriations decides who gets government money. Energy and Commerce oversees healthcare (17% of GDP) and Wall Street.

Don’t pay? Your bills die. Your amendments get ignored. There’s even a “giant wall of shame” displaying who hasn’t paid their dues.

This is why congressmen spend 4 hours a day fundraising. They’re not campaigning—they’re paying rent on their committee seats. The people writing your healthcare laws literally bought their positions from the same industries.

The 4-Year Attention Span: Democracy Has ADHD

  • Politician promises to “cure cancer”
  • Gets elected
  • Creates blue-ribbon commission
  • Commission recommends more committees
  • Next election happens
  • New politician promises to “cure cancer”
  • Repeat until heat death of universe

Democracy has the attention span of a goldfish on cocaine.

Real problems take decades to solve. Elections happen every 2-4 years. Politicians optimize for the next election, not the next generation.

Why No One Can Fix This

Every four years, someone promises to “fix Washington.”

Every four years, nothing changes.

Why? Because the problem isn’t the people. It’s the incentives.

You could elect 535 clones of Gandhi and within two years they’d be taking pharma money and approving bombing campaigns. The system corrupts everyone. It’s designed to.

The Voting Paradox

Democracy assumes voters want what’s best for society.

Reality:

  • Farmers vote for farm subsidies (bad for everyone else)
  • Old people vote for Social Security (paid by young people)
  • Rich people vote for tax cuts (paid by poor people)
  • Poor people vote for welfare (paid by middle class)
  • Everyone votes to steal from everyone else

It’s not a democracy. It’s a circular robbery.

Special Interest Groups: Democracy’s Real Winners

Number of voters: 240 million Number who care about sugar subsidies: 0 Number of sugar companies: 10 Number who care about sugar subsidies: 10 Winner: Big Sugar

This repeats for every industry:

  • Corn: 4,000 farmers beat 330 million consumers
  • Defense: 5 contractors beat 330 million taxpayers
  • Pharma: 50 companies beat 330 million patients

In democracy, the minority always beats the majority. The concentrated always beat the diffuse. The organized always beat the disorganized.

That’s not a bug. It’s the operating system.

Why Your Political Tribe Is Also Worthless

Republicans say they want small government. Republican presidents increase spending.

Democrats say they want to help poor people. Democrat cities have the most homeless.

Libertarians say they want freedom. Libertarians can’t even agree what a road is.

They’re all selling the same product: Hope that voting matters.

It doesn’t.

The Solution Democracy Can’t Provide

Democracy can’t solve coordination problems. It creates them.

Example: Climate change

  • Cost to fix: $1 trillion
  • Benefit: Survival of species
  • Problem: Benefits are in 50 years, costs are today
  • Democratic solution: Argue about it until Miami is underwater

Example: Medical research

  • Cost: $100 billion
  • Benefit: Cure all disease
  • Problem: Benefits are diffuse, costs are concentrated
  • Democratic solution: Spend it on bombs instead

Democracy optimizes for short-term concentrated benefits. Every time.

Public Choice Theory: The Nobel Prize for Cynicism

In 1986, James Buchanan won the Nobel Prize in Economics for proving what everyone already knew:

People don’t suddenly become angels when they work for the government.

This is Public Choice Theory: bureaucrats, politicians, and regulators are just as selfish as everyone else. They just have better PR.

What They Actually Maximize

Actor Should Maximize Actually Maximizes Result
NIH Cures Grants awarded No cures
FDA Lives saved Avoiding lawsuits Deadly delays
Congress Voter welfare Campaign donations Corporate welfare
Pharma Health outcomes Recurring revenue Chronic disease preferred
Defense Contractor National security Government contracts Endless wars

Nobody in the system is incentivized to cure disease. Or end war.

The Libertarian Paradox

Libertarians say: Government fails because it’s run by self-interested people

Socialists say: Government fails because it’s underfunded

Public Choice Theory says: Government fails because self-interested people are in positions where their interests conflict with good outcomes

The solution: Design systems where self-interest produces good outcomes

Why This Is Actually Good News

Democracy can’t fix these problems. But markets can.

Markets don’t care if voters are stupid. Markets don’t care if politicians are corrupt. Markets care about one thing: profit.

So make the right thing profitable.

That’s what the 1% Treaty does. It doesn’t try to fix democracy. It bypasses it entirely.

Instead of convincing 240 million voters to be smart (impossible), we convince 1,000 investors to be greedy (automatic).

Why This Is Liberating

You don’t need to:

  • Find virtuous leaders
  • Hope politicians care
  • Wait for bureaucrats to change
  • Convince anyone to be less selfish

You just need to align their selfishness with your goals.

The Beautiful Hack

Democracy fails because:

  • Voters are rationally ignorant
  • Politicians follow incentives
  • Special interests concentrate benefits
  • Costs are diffused to everyone

The 1% Treaty solution:

  • Don’t need informed voters (investors do the math)
  • Create better incentives (make health profitable)
  • Concentrate benefits for reform (VICTORY bonds)
  • Diffuse costs to military budget (they won’t notice 1%)

We’re using democracy’s bugs as features.

Your Choice

Option A: Keep voting and hope it matters this time (it won’t)

Option B: Accept that democracy is broken and use market incentives instead

The Founding Fathers were geniuses, but they didn’t anticipate:

  • Television
  • The internet
  • Nuclear weapons
  • Global pandemics
  • Voters who think vaccines cause autism

Democracy made sense in 1789. In 2025, it’s a cargo cult.

But markets? Markets turned feudal peasants into TikTok influencers. Markets put computers in our pockets more powerful than what sent men to the moon. Markets work.

We’re not making people better. We’re making better systems for selfish people.

And since everyone’s selfish, those systems will actually work.

Let’s use what works.

A Brief History of Human Decision-Making (Spoiler: It’s Bad)

Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.

Churchill said that. He was drunk at the time, but still right.

Here’s how humanity currently makes decisions:

  1. Ancient Times: Biggest guy with club decides everything. Sometimes eaten by tiger. New biggest guy takes over.

  2. Classical Era: Guys in togas vote. Women, slaves, and anyone interesting excluded. Socrates forced to drink poison for asking questions.

  3. Medieval Period: God allegedly tells one inbred family what to do. Family mostly interested in cousin-marriage and cathedral construction.

  4. Modern Democracy: Millions vote for representatives who ignore them. Representatives vote based on bribes. Lobbyists write the actual laws. Everyone pretends this makes sense.

  5. Current System: All of the above, plus Twitter.

Why Your Brain Can’t Handle Democracy

The human brain evolved to:

  • Remember where the good berries are
  • Run from tigers
  • Decide who to mate with
  • Hold grudges against that guy who stole your mammoth meat

The human brain did NOT evolve to:

  • Understand compound interest
  • Evaluate 10,000 budget proposals
  • Comprehend exponential growth
  • Care about people 10,000 miles away
  • Think about consequences beyond next Tuesday

Your working memory can hold about 7 things. That’s it. Seven. The phone number length isn’t a coincidence.

Yet we ask people to:

  • Choose between thousands of political candidates
  • Understand the federal budget ($6 trillion of complexity)
  • Have opinions on every global crisis simultaneously
  • Rank the importance of infinite problems
  • Do all this while checking Instagram

No wonder democracy produces results like:

  • The platypus (God’s committee design)
  • The U.S. tax code (27,000 pages of pure evil)
  • Pineapple pizza (crimes against Italy)

We’re asking chimp brains to do quantum physics. Then we’re surprised when the chimps elect other chimps who throw feces at each other on C-SPAN.

How Government Actually Allocates Money (A Horror Story)

The Current Budget Process: Democracy Theater

Here’s how your government decides to spend trillions:

Step 1: Lobbyists Write Checks

  • Defense contractors donate $50 million
  • Pharmaceutical companies donate $40 million
  • Teachers unions donate their lunch money
  • Poor people donate nothing (mistake)

Step 2: Politicians Pretend to Think

  • Hold hearings nobody watches
  • Read reports nobody wrote
  • Make speeches nobody believes
  • Vote based on who paid them

Step 3: The Budget Emerges

Like a demon from a committee meeting:

Step 4: Everyone Gets Mad

  • Conservatives: “Too much welfare!”
  • Liberals: “Too much warfare!”
  • Economists: “None of this makes sense!”
  • Lobbyists: “Perfect, same time next year?”

This system has produced:

  • $30 trillion in national debt
  • Bridges collapsing while we build new bombers
  • Schools using textbooks from 1987
  • The F-35 fighter jet (doesn’t fight, barely jets)

P.S. - If you still believe in democracy, ask yourself: Would you let 150 million random Americans perform your heart surgery by voting on each incision? No? Then why let them vote on healthcare policy? At least with surgery, you’d die quickly.

Regulatory Capture: How Industries Write Their Own Rules

The best investment in America isn’t stocks or real estate. It’s buying politicians. As detailed earlier, the return on investment for lobbying is astronomical, with studies showing returns as high as 1,810:1.

How to Buy a Democracy: A Practical Guide

  1. Hire an Ex-Congressman: There are 13,700 registered lobbyists in Washington, and half of them used to work in the government they’re now bribing. The revolving door spins so fast it powers half of DC.

  2. Speak the Universal Language (Money): In 2023, corporations spent $4.1 billion on lobbying. That’s $7.7 million per congressman, who makes only $174,000 a year.

  3. Write the Laws Yourself: Pharmaceutical companies and defense contractors literally write their own regulations and budgets. The Medicare Modernization Act of 2003, written by pharma lobbyists, banned the government from negotiating drug prices, leading to Americans paying $1,200 for insulin that costs $6 to make.

The Money Machine: How Regulatory Capture Works

  1. Campaign Contributions: Perfectly legal bribes. Citizens United made corporations people, and people can donate unlimited money through Super PACs.

  2. Revolving Door: Work in government, learn the system, sell that knowledge to the highest bidder. It’s LinkedIn for corruption.

  3. Lobbying: Hire people to whisper sweet nothings (and campaign donation promises) in politicians’ ears.

  4. Jobs Blackmail: Spread operations across districts. Threaten to leave if politicians don’t cooperate. “Nice employment rate you got there. Shame if something happened to it.”

  5. Regulatory Capture: Get your people appointed to agencies that regulate you. The fox doesn’t guard the henhouse - the fox owns the henhouse and charges the chickens rent.

The Military-Industrial Complex: Murder Inc.

Lockheed Martin’s business model is a masterclass in political leverage. By distributing operations across 42 states, they ensure that any attempt to cut funding for a program like the $1.7 trillion F-35 fighter jet is met with furious opposition from senators protecting local “jobs.”

The Defense Budget: A Comedy in Three Acts

Act 1: The Pentagon requests nearly a trillion dollars for “readiness,” a figure detailed in the Cost of War chapter.

Act 2: Congress adds $25 billion the Pentagon didn’t ask for.

Act 3: Money goes to contractors in key congressional districts.

Curtain falls. Audience (taxpayers) weeps.

The Pentagon has never passed an audit. They literally don’t know where trillions of dollars went. But somehow they know they need more.

Big Pharma: Your Dealer Has a Lobbyist

The pharmaceutical industry employs 3 lobbyists for every member of Congress, ensuring that policies favor profit over patients. The result is a system where a drug patent sold for $1 in 1922 now costs Americans $300 per vial, and where the FDA gets 75% of its drug review budget from the companies it regulates.

The Incentive Structure From Hell

The entire system is perfectly incentivized to maintain the status quo:

  • Pharmaceutical Companies: Cures are a one-time payment; treatments are a recurring revenue stream.
  • FDA Regulators: Approving a bad drug ends a career; delaying a good one has no consequences.
  • Politicians: Funding research is boring; creating new agencies provides photo ops.

Everyone who matters wins. Everyone who’s dying loses.

The Solution They Don’t Want

Here’s the secret: Their whole system depends on diffuse costs and concentrated benefits.

Each American loses $100 to corruption. Not worth fighting over. Each corporation gains $100 million. Very worth fighting for.

But what if we concentrated the benefits of reform? What if curing disease was more profitable than treating it? What if peace paid better than war?

That’s what the 1% Treaty does. It doesn’t fight the system. It hijacks it.

You’re going to out-bribe the bribers.

The Beautiful Irony

The same lobbying system that created this mess is the feature we will exploit. Lockheed Martin and Pfizer don’t love war and disease; they love money. By making health and peace the most profitable investments in history, we can hijack the system and buy our democracy back.

Your Democracy: An Auction House

Every law is for sale. Every regulation negotiable. Every politician has a price.

That’s not cynicism. That’s Wednesday in Washington.

The military-industrial complex figured this out in 1961. Big Pharma perfected it in the 1990s. Wall Street turned it into an art form in 2008.

Now it’s your turn.

You’re not going to fix democracy. That’s impossible. You’re going to buy it back.

One perfectly legal bribe at a time.

P.S. - If this chapter depressed you, remember: The same system that lets corporations buy politicians also lets you buy them back. The corruption is the feature you’re going to exploit. It’s like using the Death Star’s exhaust port, but with spreadsheets instead of proton torpedoes.