Dr. Jordan B. Peterson and Bjørn Lomborg go through each of the “doable dozen,” a series of issues that cost relatively little to solve, and yet doing so would yield exponential returns for developing countries and their impoverished citizens.
Bjørn Lomborg is a Danish author, having written numerous books on climate change such as “False Alarm,” “The Skeptical Environmentalist,” and “How to Spend $75 Billion to Make the World a Better Place.” He is the president of the think tank Copenhagen Consensus Center which focuses on doing the most good for the most people, with increasingly limited budgets. Bjørn’s newest book, “Best Things First,” is set to release soon, so check out the link below to reserve your copy!
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– Chapters –
(0:30) Coming up
(2:12) Intro
(6:02) 200 sustainable development goals
(8:03) How to rank order dire needs
(14:08) The most good for your dollar
(17:28) Responsibility to the world
(18:33) Intro to the 12 Solutions: financial cost and what Humanity gains
(20:13) The resistant ethos
(25:51) Where we’re at, how far we’ve come
(27:34) Natural resources
(30:29) A famous bet, Paul Ehrlich
(35:21) Problem One: maternal and newborn health
(39:17) Family planning, low cost hospitals
(40:20) When newborns don’t breath
(42:00) Why it’s not top priority
(43:15) Politicians want visible change
(44:53) For one dollar
(45:43) Setting the agenda
(47:37) Timespan and manpower
(50:34) Needed materials for mothers in the developing world
(51:46) Problems Two and Three: Hunger and Starvation
(52:50) Efficient agriculture
(53:32) Is industrialization the wrong path forward?
(54:58) Improving seeds
(57:42) More mouths fed is more mouths to feed?
(1:03:00) Why isn’t this a “heroic” issue?
(1:05:15) The order is not an insult
(1:06:23) Fixing now in the meantime, vitamins
(1:09:08) The seriousness of being stunted in growth
(1:11:21) Community health and basic education
(1:13:38) Why you can’t just hand out food
(1:14:59) Problem Four: Corruption
(1:15:15) Procurement
(1:16:24) Real working examples
(1:19:05) Problem Five: Education
(1:19:59) Teaching without comprehension
(1:22:58) How to improve teachers and students
(1:25:10) Teach your child to read in 100 easy lessons
(1:27:00) Zone of proximal development
(1:29:10) Technology teaching
(1:36:16) Problem Six: Malaria
(1:38:50) Nicer mosquitos in the West
(1:41:21) Malaria deaths can be reduced by half for a 10 percent increase
(1:45:01) Problem Seven: Chronic Diseases
(1:46:03) Diuretics and streamlined doctors
(1:48:42) Diet and necessary outlook
(1:51:36) Problem Eight: Land Security
(1:52:20) When your farmland is your lifeblood
(1:54:15) Surveys and registration
(1:55:10) Why invest in what you’re not sure you own?
(2:00:24) Problem Nine: Trade
(2:00:53) Why we are so rich, specialization
(2:02:23) Trade accelerates civilization
(2:03:38) Negative impacts
(2:05:24) Why it’s worth endorsing
(2:09:21) Writing out your vision, mitigating displacement
(2:12:08) Problem Ten: Skill Migration
(2:14:00) Why not let everyone move?
(2:16:38) Maximizing productivity, filling the skill gaps
(2:18:19) Problem Eleven: Tuberculosis
(2:20:09) An insane death toll
(2:21:48) 45 percent remain untreated
(2:24:09) Incentivizing treatment
(2:25:39) Eradicating disease, Polio
(2:26:39) Problem Twelve: Childhood Vaccination
(2:31:05) A hunger for transcendent good
(2:33:04) Getting on board
(2:36:08) Spectacle versus practical
(2:40:47) Best Things First – Coming Soon
(2:45:28) If you feel your calling is to make change…
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Should accept yourself just the way you Are what does that say about who I Should become is that just now off the Table because I'm already good enough in Every way so am I done or something get The hell up get your act together adopt Some responsibility put your life Together develop a vision unfold all Those manifold possibilities that lurk Within be a force for good in the world And that'll be the adventure of your Life Especially for young people they have a Miss ionic urge that emerges you know in Late adolescence and runs into early Adulthood when they're trying to sort Out their lives and they want a project And they want a vision that they can be Involved in that does have some larger Scale social significance and this seems To me to be this could be recognition It's like well how about we don't have Any Direly poor people and then we see how That goes if you can improve the seed Stalk so that crops are more pesticide Resistant which you can't or more pest Resistant which you can do then you can Use less pesticide you can increase the Yield per acre so that uses less Farmland it's like why wouldn't the Greens be absolutely 100 on board with This as well if they could drop the Zero-sum presupposition and you know the
Anti-extra most to feed idea it's like Well we serve women when they're the Most vulnerable and now we serve Children when they're the most Vulnerable and there's no downside to That there's just upside so that sounds Like a perfectly good adventure and one Of the things that we find doing these Projects is that it's amazing as you Also pointed out that we spend so much Time focusing on some of these other Things like you know plastic in the Oceans and and climate change and many Other things these all worthy things Mind you and a lot of people will argue That we should do them because they will Help the world's poor the problem is They'll help them very ineffectively so For every dollar spent they will only Help them in infinitesimal part whereas If we spend that Dollar on some of these Projects that we're going to be talking About you can have an enormous impact Right here right now so again it's not To say that we shouldn't do all the Other wonderful things I'm simply making The argument we should probably do this First Oh Hello everyone watching and listening on YouTube and Associated platforms and Well on the daily wire plus too I'm here Today I'm pleased to be here today live So that's also good with Bjorn lomberg
Runs Think Tank called Copenhagen Consensus in Denmark and Bjorn has done The most detailed and reliable analysis Of Spending prioritization I would say that There are a number of Enterprises that Are underway on the international front But it's a chaotic mess of jumbled Priority and that's a big problem Because makes everything super expensive And inefficient which might be a feature Rather than a bug and Bjorn and his team Have spent Well it's more than a decade now damn Near 20 years Determining how to prioritize our Approaches on the national and International front in relationship to The multitude of problems that beset us And it's important to stress multitude Because we have a proclivity in the woke West to reduce the entire panoply of Problems that confront us or Opportunities depending on how you look At it to a single climate emergency and Then to reduce that to a single cause Carbon and then to assume that if we Oppose carbon we're now acting as the Appropriate representatives of the Messiah on the planet and none of that Constitutes acceptable theology let's Say a let alone policy so I'm going to Talk to Bjorn today about what he's been Up to recently but then we're going to
Walk through 12 projects that Bjorn and His team of economists team of it's a Meta team of economists because there's Many team is working what they believe Where we can do the most good for the Least amount of money in the shortest Period of time with the highest return All of that multi-dimensional Calculation so good to see you Bjorn Likewise thank you being at Stanford for A couple of weeks what have you been Doing there so I'm I'm a visiting fellow At the Hoover Institute at Stanford uh And so I gave the first presentation of The project that you just described uh Which is basically a project that tries To say look we'd love to do everything In the world and everybody sort of Promises everything in the world uh and We actually have it documented because The world has has made 169 uh different Targets it's priorities they're called The sustainable development goals uh Where we promised we're going to fix as You mentioned climate but we're also Going to you know fix world peace and We're gonna get rid of corruption we're Gonna make sure that everybody are well Educated and and don't starve and get Out of poverty and and that we get more Parks for handicapped people in urban Areas and we recycle more and the list Just goes on and on and and there's Something almost comical about the total
Effect of that because we're we're Promising everything to everyone all the Time but of course we're actually not Delivering on this uh we promised this From 2016 to 30. so this year we're at Halftime we're at half time of all the Global promises so remember this is Promises that every single nation in the World has signed up to the U.S Canada Pretty much everyone I think Siri is the Only one that hasn't done this yet so we Promised all this stuff we're not Delivering at all yeah and so what we're Trying to say is look if we can't do it All what should we do first right what Are the smartest one of the things I Worked on one of the relatively Early documents in this sustainable Development goal world that was the Secretary General's report on Sustainable economic development that Was about 15 years ago and One of the things I found very peculiar About it is actually what tilted me over Towards your work eventually was that There were 200 goals and I thought That's a lot of goals it's like at some Point you have so many goals that really What you're saying is we're going to do Everything at once and that's a stupid Plan because this any number any one of The goals is actually quite difficult to Attain you have to build a structure and Systems that will move towards the goal
And you have to Put the spending in place and you have To evaluate the outcome it's actually Very difficult you have to build the Local apparatuses and so I ask the Powers that be why the hell there were 200 goals and their answer was well each Of the priorities has a constituency Somewhere spread across countries or in A given country and we don't want to Offend anyone by Rank ordering our priorities and I Thought well that's all well and good Plus plus the the upside of that from a Political perspective is that you get All the moral cachet of being concerned About everything that you would be Concerned about if you were good without Any of the responsibility for actually Doing any of the difficult work and so You can go to Corp 26 or whatever the Hell it is and posture on the world Stage about your commitment to these Wonderful goals and appeal to 200 Different constituents and walk away While having agreed to spend a Tremendous amount of money stupidly but Shining at least in your own eyes and in The eyes of the press so then I was Looking around I thought well there must Be someone somewhere sensible enough to Understand that 200 goals is absurd and The only group that I could really find That had a method for rank ordering
Priorities was your team and so do you Want to explain exactly how you do that And then we'll and then we'll we can Progress with our discussion but what You think things should be done yeah so So you're absolutely right look it's Much easier for politicians to just Promise everything to everyone because Then they just seem like good guys and They don't actually make any decisions Of course they do in reality because Every year you have a budget and you Don't have infant resources on your Budget so in your budget you actually Show what it is that you really care for And so it ends up being a few things That you focus on but often without much Concern about efficiency so what we're Trying to bring to the table is in a Sense and that's what economists can do We're basically helping and I should Just say I'm a pretend Economist I'm Actually a political scientist but I Work with a lot of really really smart Economists and they look at how much Will it cost And how much good will it do remember Some things are very desirable but Really really hard to do so you know for Instance getting rid of corruption in General I'll actually tell you we do Have one good solution but in general Corruption huge problem it cost about a Trillion dollars a year or more uh for
The world but we don't know how to get Rid of it it's really hard to do because The systems that are needed to get rid Of corruption are exactly the ones that Are corrupt right so it's really hard to This has been a real problem as the Former Soviet Union countries have tried To retool because even if you import Western structures nobody trusts them Because the corruption is so Unbelievably widespread and the problem With Corruption of course is that once It's instantiated it manifests itself at Every level of society and so that's a Good example of a low resolution concept Well there's Corruptions like yeah but Now you've said very little by saying That because the devil in that situation Is definitely in the details and so you Might want to fight corruption but That's not a plan and so so yeah and so We should also so you set up teams of Economists that would rank order the Goals and then you averaged across the Teams which I also thought was brilliant Methodologically because you could argue That any given economist's analysis of Both costs and benefits is has a margin Of error of some substantive amount Right and because it's hard to assess And to forecast but Technically speaking from us the Perspective of a social scientist I Would say that that's an unbeatable
Methodology even though it's still going To produce a somewhat problematic end Because you it you you zoom in on where There's multi-dimensional measure Multi-dimensionally measured Consensus and at least in principle You'd be ironing out the errors of Any Given team of economists hopefully yes Again what we're not trying to do you Make the truth of the world but we're Just trying to make a much better Resolution of what it is that we can do So we try to identify what are things That we can actually do right so their Problem works yeah and that we have good Evidence for works at low cost with high Benefits and so what we're essentially Doing is we provide if you will a menu For the world so we a menu typically Comes with you know it has tells you What you're going to get how much you're Going to get you know a tiny pizza or a Big pizza and how much will it cost and Then of course you can make those Decisions so economists they're not Going to tell you you should do this Right but basically we're telling you Here is something that at very low cost Can give you a lot of good food how About that so on the same way in the World order we'll make a list of all the Things of all the things you'd like to Do where are really smart or that is Really very effective policies that we
Know works that would help a lot of People at low cost why don't we do that Before we do the stuff that'll cost a Lot but help very few people right right Well we should we should talk a little Bit about that as a fundamental Presupposition too because there's a Kind of utilitarianism there which is That all things considered in the Absence of other compelling reasons you Should do what you can the most Efficient way well why well because what Efficiency means because people might Say well you know some things are so Important that it's worth spending the Money on it's like yeah but there's many Things that are important and Unfortunately when you spend given that Resources are not precisely infinite When you spend money in one place that Means you're not spending it in another Place and so though if you believe that You have 12 things to do that are good Or or 169 things you have to Value Efficiency from the moral perspective Because in principle efficiency is Precisely that which allows you to Address more than you would have Otherwise been able to manage and Otherwise what are you going to make an Argument for inefficiency which is so It's weird yeah yeah so so this is well I like this because it it's zero to it Zeroed us in your methodology it also
Reduced a landscape of problems that was So diverse and and disparate that there Was no way anyone sensible could have Possibly undertaken the Enterprise and Then it's extraordinarily practical and So And it also this the other thing that I Found very striking was that in Comparison to the amount of money we're Already spending on all sorts of things The amounts that your teams have been Recommending are really rounding errors In the in the total let's say International in in the total world of International or national governance and So but then it's also demoralizing in Some sense because you understand that We could do the 12 most important and Efficient things and do a lot of good For a lot of people especially the Absolutely poor and we could do that Without really even noticing it yeah Yeah on the spending side so that's Incredibly optimistic but the problem is Is that you gotta ask yourself given That that's the case what the hell have We been doing and well that's something We'll delve in today so we're going to Go through Bjorn's 12 uh uh um suggested Projects and talk about their cost but Also about what they could do for people And I tell me if you think this is true So imagine that there's a rule of thumb Ethic that underlies the selection of
These projects we talked a little bit About efficiency but I think the ethic Is something like well if we could Alleviate material poverty absolute Poverty not relative poverty but to Start with at least absolute poverty Enough for people to eat Make sure they have access to hygienic Facilities make sure they're not uh Inhaling indoor pollution to the point That they're dying they're not starving Their kids have some opportunity there's Some option for them to expand their Temporal Horizon across decades instead Of being focusing on the necessity for The next meal because that makes them Um impulsive you might say with regards To what they're willing to do on the Environmental front and so At minimum you're trying to raise the Standard of living at the very bottom End and and you won't do that in a way That allows you to do that multiple ways And that's kind of the overall ethical Schema I would say I think I think it's What comes out of what we try to do so We're we're basically saying look uh There's a lot of different things you Can do in the world as we know there's 169 things and you know there's Literally thousands of different Projects out there we've tried to look At a lot of them and say what do we have Evidence for and what are the costs and
So we've tried to estimate and this is An impossible task so we we reasonably Assume that we've covered the whole area Of saying where can you get an enormous Amount of good for every dollar or Shilling or a rupee spent and what we Find is so we're looking at where can You spend a dollar and at least do 15 of Good this is a a a a a threshold that We've set which basically means all the Things we're talking about are Incredibly good things imagine if you Could do give a dollar to this one Project and you could do at least Fifteen dollars well we should also Point out that's not an expense then no No investment well it is an expense and Sensor because if you've spent the Dollar you don't get 59 right back right You get 15 of social benefits typically In the poor world uh you also mentioned That this is mostly for the world's poor People so we're we're looking at low and Low Middle income countries uh that's You know World Bank estimate so it Basically means that you live with less Than say uh 13 per day which is not very Much uh so this is almost this is a Little more than half the world's Population so 4.1 billion people live in The low and Low Middle income countries So that's everywhere from Malawi a very Very poor country to India uh to Bangladesh that's actually a fairly Rich
Lower middle income country uh so what That tells you is this is where the best Investments are because that's where you Can help the most people at very low Cost it'll cost them most in need Absolutely it will cost a lot to make You a little better off but it cost Actually very very little to make the World's poorest much better off and so It also has this moral sense of that is That is how we should be prioritizing Yeah and so that's the proper payment For privilege you know I would say is Once you have the economic wherewithal To be contemplating projects of the sort That we're describing you also have the Moral requirement to do that in a manner That's intelligent and also you might Say that would address the problems of The people in the most want first yes And and one of the things that we find Uh doing these projects is that it's Amazing as you also pointed out that we Spend so much time focusing on some of These other things like you know plastic In the oceans and and climate change and Many other things these all worthy Things mind you and a lot of people will Argue that we should do them because They will help the world's poor the Problem is they'll help them very Ineffectively so for every dollar spent They will only help them in Infinitesimal part whereas if we spend
That Dollar on some of these projects That we're going to be talking about you Can have an enormous impact right here Right now so again it's not to say that We shouldn't do all the other wonderful Things I'm simply making the argument we Should probably do this first yeah yeah Well and so so just to give you a sense Of proportion just you have to get a Scale of this of the 12 solutions that We come up with Um they will in total cost uh about uh I'm giving you a rough estimate here Because there's different ways to Measure it'll need about 35 billion Dollars a year in funding and that Funding could come from you know rich People like Elon Musk and Bill Gates it Could come from our development agencies Usaid or giz or whatever you know we're Spending 175 billion dollars in Development Aid every year so surely we Could afford 35 billion dollars this is Uh as you mentioned a drop in the bucket It really is a rounding error if we Spent that amount of money over this Decade we would every year save 4.2 Million Lives this is eight percent of Everyone who dies in the world we could Avoid eight percent of all death in this World of course we won't do that in Indefinitely because people have to die But we would postpone that that would be An incredible Boon for a lot of people
And a lot of societies and at the same Time we would generate economic benefits Worth 1.1 trillion dollars just to give You a sense of proportion of what that Means that means that we could almost Make sure that that every person in the Poor part of the world so the 4.1 Billion people we talked about before Could get about one dollar every day Almost one dollar every day each person So these projects that cost virtually Nothing could save eight percent of Everyone who dies and get almost all People in the lower uh in the poor half Of the world one dollar okay so I want To investigate something a little bit Darker before we start our discussion About the projects per se so one of the Things that I see emerging on the Chaotic and Confused 169 goals front is An ethos that is also not precisely Explicit but the sort of lurks beneath The surface and there are claims that go Along with it it might be that people Are listening think well this is all Obvious obviously we should spend money In the most efficient way we should Spend the least amount of money we have To spend we should do it so that it does The most good but we should also Understand that there are real Resistances to this approach and so one Of the resistances that's implicit and Sometimes explicit is the notion that
Well first of all we're playing a Zero-sum game in the world so if some People are rich other people have to be Poor there's not enough for everybody And then at which I don't believe to be True at all and economists generally Don't buy as an argument and then the Next argument would be well let's say we Could make poor people richer but that's Not sustainable because to support Everybody in the world at the Western Standard of living would take five Earths I've heard that figure bandied About and there are probably you know There are way too many people on the Planet in any case there should only be 500 million or a billion or maybe 2 Billion if if they lived you know in Poverty and so there's this notion that The planet is truly finite in some Fundamental sense there's definitely not Enough for everyone and there's no way That we can Elevate their living Standards of the poor because all that Would mean is that we're going to use up All the available resources faster and So what do you know what do you think About so first of all on the on the Serum some game remember 200 years ago We have good data for the last 200 years 200 years ago almost every one of us Were poor we're extremely poor so we Lived at less than what used to be Called one dollar a day so we were it
Was 95 of people it was 90 95 of all People this is a terrible world there's A few people who were you know Kings and And and uh Dukes and those kinds of People and then the rest of us were Living in absolute poverty we've pretty Much eradicated most of that now it's Only 10 percent that live less than a Dollar a day I would really to 215 now Uh but you know so fundamentally we can Absolutely have a world that's much Better that's much richer and one that's Obviously much better for these people Now people worried about well Sustainably live on this planet uh but What you have to remember is this is not A question of whether we have the Resources to it absolutely we have the Resources when you hear this five Earths Uh uh that's that that is a very very Bad comparison I I get why they made it Uh but it basically assumes that because Of climate changes almost entirely about Climate change because of climate change Which is a real problem uh because we Emit CO2 you have to plant Forest to Soak up that extra uh amount of CO2 and If we all lived like Americans or Americans uh then you would need five Earths what they're really saying is You'd need five Earths of forest to Plant but that's the most inefficient Way to get rid of CO2 uh uh much smarter Way would be to put up I don't know wind
Turbines and solar panels you could also Put up nuclear power plants We could have very very little uh uh Footprint so actually when you do the Math it turns out that this is this is Just Hokum yes there is a problem so we We will do well within one Earth uh even If we were much richer all of us and Even if there were more people so you Know about 10 billion people yes there Is problems with having 10 billion People but but having 10 billion rich People also means we can deal with most Of these problems If if you're poor that's the real uh of Pollution problem right right or you Pollute a lot you both you know you cut Down your Forest to keep you know to Slash burn uh so you can grow some food For your kids uh you'll have terrible Indoor air pollution you'll typically Have very inefficient production you Will have all kinds of bad things so What we really need not just morally to Get people out of poverty and to get Them to a good life but also actually That's the only way we can get people to Be so involved that they will want and They can afford to care about them right Right well we should also we also have To watch very carefully the terminology We use because when we start talking About making people Rich we need to Really explain what that means hey
Reagan I know you're picky when it comes To skin care products so tell me what Did you think of genucel skin care That's exactly right Garrett I'm the Type of person who wants to know exactly What ingredients I'm using in my Skincare routine which is why I'm loving Genucel their products are made with Antioxidants and formulated by Compounding pharmacist and they're all About preventative skin care with Summer Coming up around the corner I'll be Using genucel's powerful retinol Alternative which is safe to use on your Skin in the hot summer sun they also Have a dark spot corrector which helps Reduce the appearance of dark marks and Sunspots right now you can get them both In genucel's most popular package at Genucel.com Jordan you heard it here First don't miss out on this amazing Deal just in time for warmer days ahead Go to genucel.com Jordan to get 70 off Their most popular package every order Subscription includes a luxury gift box With two free Springtime Essentials That's two free gifts plus free shipping Go to genucel.com Jordan genucel.com Jordan When when we go back 200 years and Everybody's scrabbling around in the Dirt what that really means is that People's next meal is uncertain and so Is the sustainability of their shelter
And the opportunities for them and their Kids Are extraordinarily limited so when We're talking about wealth we're not Talking about you know cocaine and Hookers in Vegas wealth we're talking I Was not talking about Alicia yeah well People the thing is it brings up this Specter of the 1920s spouts where Capitalist who's like a complete Liberty Known as time off and you know it's it's Con it's it's hyper consumption wealth But that's not what we're talking about At the low end of the world we're Talking about providing people with Enough material security so that they Can adopt a longer-term view so that They can start to pay attention to what Sort of Planet their children and Grandchildren might inhabit and so that There are there's both reliable Provision of food and and and and and uh Shelter basic health care hygienic Availability and opportunity for their Children and so it's not exactly wealth We're after here it's getting people Away from zero absolutely so but but Also I I you know the people who are Watching this but also everyone who's Really worried about uh the we're going To become these Libertines from the 1920s do they live like that no they Don't they live nice lives where they Actually have uh Heating in the winter
And they have Cooling in the summer they Have enough food they don't have to Worry about stuff their kids go to School they have a nice life and they Can go places and experience uh the World everyone obviously would like to Have that same kind of life and so this Is not about you know absurd consumption Or anything but this is about actually Being able to have a good right well It's also as you pointed out it's also One of the things that struck me when I Was doing my original research on this Front 15 years ago was the the Overwhelming evidence and Marion tupi's Group has human progress.org has done a Nice job of delineating that that There's actually a positive relationship Between population growth above a Certain level of standard of living Let's say and more abundance and what I've come to understand in the Intervening time and this is something That's very much worth taking apart too Is that We we have this notion of natural Resource and that's always struck me as Species say because natural means it's Sort of there at hand the only real Natural resource I can think of is is Air Because all you have to do is breathe And it's there but you still have to Breathe right so there's still some
Effort involved okay but when you start Talking about even the next stage which Would be water it's like well it's water A natural resource well Water is fresh water yeah fresh water is A technological Miracle fundamentally it Takes a lot of industrial infrastructure And Innovation to get fresh water to People and of course oil petroleum is Barely a natural resource at all I mean We had petroleum forever no one figured Out what the hell to do with it until What about 1860 something like that and So now it's a natural resource but That's only because smart people figured Out how to use it and so there's always This Dynamic interplay between human Ingenuity and governance structures and Plenty and one of the things I've really Come to understand is that Abundance depends on The Integrity of the individual the Moral Integrity of the individual and The validity of the governance Structures far more than it does on Natural resources there's a zero-sum Presumption in the natural resource Discourse that's just absolutely wrong I Mean uh back in the uh you know 19 uh Early 1900s for instance iron is a big Thing you know we we used to have just Iron if it fell down as a meteorite Right uh now pretty much everything we Know is built with Iron and Steel uh and
And back in 1900 uh Carnegie the rich Guy uh worried immensely about the fact Because it's also important for military Use he worried that we were you know Using up all the good iron and that There would be nothing left over for Future generations and what were they Going to do how are they going to defend Themselves all that kind of stuff but What he failed to remember is that when Uh sure we use up the easily accessible And high quality Iron Ore so we have to Dig deeper and we have to use worse iron Ore but we also have a lot more Technology that makes it a lot easier to Dig and utilize poor iron ore and get it Out cheaper that's what Innovation means So actually what's happened is that While we have used up the easily Accessible iron ore we have access to Much much more much cheaper much more Effectively and for all of humankind and This is true for pretty much all Resources well there was the famous bet But between Paul Ehrlich and Julian Simon Ehrlich wrote the population bomb For everyone who's listening he's still Beating the same damn drum Ehrlich and His and the club of Rome types back in The 60s prognosticated that by the year 2000 there'd be Mass starvation and not Only that that the price of Commodities Would spike dramatically as scarcity Inevitable scarcity kick in so Ehrlich
And and the biological types who think His way think in malthusian terms and Malthus was a uh an English thinker he Was a pastor if I remember correctly who Posited that All things being equal natural Populations would expand to the point Where they started to over consume the Available local resources and then Collapse So that's like the yeast in a Petri dish Model of humanity and there's a couple Of problems with that is that it rarely Works that way in the natural world Because of checks and balances that Emerge in ecosystems but even more Importantly The idea that we are best modeled as Yeast in a zero-sum Petri dish is let's Call it a bit presumptuous if that Alfred North Whitehead great thinker Pointed out that the reason that human Beings think is so that we can let our Ideas die instead of us and so what that Means is that what human beings have Done is replace Um biological death You die when you do the same old stupid Thing too many times so you have to Either die and then new organisms emerge That do something different or you have To shift the way you do things which is Kind of a virtual death and that's what Thought and discourse allows is we can
Stop doing stupid things and we can Start doing more efficient things and There doesn't seem to be any real upper Limit to that and I think the evidence For that is well first of all Ehrlich Had that famous bet with Julian Simon Simons who is an economist who said all Right you can pick the basket of Commodities And all bet you this was in the 60s that By the year 2000 you can pick the Arbitrary date that those Commodities Will be less expensive not more and and That there won't be you know there won't Be instances of mass starvation except Unless they're politically produced and Of course Simon famously collected in The year 2000 because what happened even Though Ehrlich picked the basket of Commodities was that the average price Of the Commodities had gone down like So substantially the Derek had to admit That he lost the bet and that hasn't Stopped happening you know I mean I'm Old enough now so that I can remember When everyone was concerned about Overpopulation and you know at that Point in the 60s we were still human Beings were still trying to get a grip On the fact that we were sort of now Operating at a planetary level and it Wasn't obvious how much damage we might Do you know there was reason for debate At least but now we have eight billion
People rather than the four we had in The year 2000 and the doubt is quite Clear that as population has increased And governance structures improved Especially since the the Soviet Union Collapsed that all that's happened Fundamentally is we have more brain Power and everyone's far better off than They were like in all we certainly have More technology and that's that's Basically what makes it possible for us To be more people and be better off and Possibly actually leave with less uh Environmentally well right so one of the Things we have to realize is there There is a real environmental issue but Fundamentally yes but you're only going To fix them if you stop people from Worrying about where where's my next Meal gonna come from uh are my kids Actually going to be well educated so on So it's about making sure that we Actually pull people out of poverty give It put them on a path to prosperity and Then we will also fix a lot of the Environmental problems well that bromide Think globally act locally and that That's a bromide that in some ways Manifests itself on the motivational Front for environmentalists it's like Well there's some truth in that is what We're doing With this conceptual scheme is thinking Globally the global scheme is well how
Do we ameliorate absolute poverty well The the what's so wonderful about that And this is what struck me when I first Reviewed the literature was that if we Concentrated on ameliorating absolute Poverty instead of making the planet Worse we would make the planet better by The standards of the radical Environmentalists themselves and I Thought oh that's so cool we could have Our cake and eat it too and so could Everybody else and you think well that's Too good to be true and so then you do The microanalysis which is what you've Done and you find out well not only Could we do that we should do it and we Could do it so cheaply that no one would Even notice that we were doing it it Would just mean we'd stop spending money On some of the well possible possibly Not even that we can keep spending it We're spending stupidity Yeah yeah so let's delve into the Details so so what we've done is Basically look over all of the Sustainable development goals and look At where here are the really good buys Where can you actually do a lot of good For little money and so we've come up With these 12 things so these are 12 Different teams of economists who've Looked at each one of these there the Specialists the best people in their Area to look at how much would this cost
How much good would it do and what would It mean that they're the best people how Did you identify them and how would you Justify your claim that you have the Right people working on this so I think So the short answer is if you ask people In the area are these some of the best People they're they're not obviously yes Yes they they would all say yeah these Are some of the best people they're not The only people who could have done this But they're some of the best people yeah Okay we're doing this we're published Widely in the period uh literature They're all you know at the famous Universities uh and they are the ones Who set the debate on how to do this Okay so so there'd be a consensus on Their expertise even if they're they'd Be replaceable to some degree oh sure And and look again our point is not so I'm gonna you know tell you about these Things and tell you for every dollar we Spend you'll do 48 dollars of good in in This particular case you'll do this much Good of course it it's not likely to be 48 in real life yeah it might be 50. Right even yeah We don't care all that much it's going To be a lot of good but obviously we try To make the best estimates that we can And and so for instance so let me just Get started on one of these things uh so Let me take maternal and newborn Health
Uh so huge issue area so every year uh About 300 000 moms die in childbirth About 2.4 million kids die in their First 28 days on on this planet uh That's it now it's come down Dramatically it used to be much much Worse so uh you know maternal death uh Used to be about uh one in uh one of 100 Uh women who gave birth would die in Childbirth uh this was even true in in Rich countries you know some 200 years Ago and actually uh uh uh uh rich women Had higher risk because they would go to A hospital and there they would be Treated by this filthy surgeon by this Doctor who just chopped off a leg Somewhere else and then came in and Helped uh with so and there's And this was one of the reasons why uh We caught on to oh wait this might Actually be you know something about They need to wash their hands that kind Of thing uh that was a Semel wise wasn't Yes Who objected to his germ theory yes yes Uh and and likewise it used to be that Almost a fifth of every child that was Born died within the first 28 days so Now it's now it's yes 20 now is it's Only two percent so a lot of human Misery Incredible amount of uh human misery if You look back which of course is why the World is much better place but we can
Make it even better so every two minutes So you know just this little Conversation we've had here one mom has Died and nine children has died in the First 28 days of their lives yeah why Don't we do something about it turns out That it's incredibly cheap to do Something about how would you go about Doing that well fundamentally it's about A very simple thing namely make sure That more women come into giving Institutional birth now the doctors Actually wash their hands so that's a Good idea and that means especially when There are problems they will have an Opportunity to get that problem fixed That means that if you have preeclampsia Or eclampsia that basically means that You get very high blood pressure if You're a woman just around your birth uh You may very well go into seizure you May actually die and the doctors or the Nurses there will be able to help you so There's a whole range of things that the World Health Organization uh recommends It's called basic uh emergency obstetric And newborn Care by friends it's called Bee Monk and so we're we're saying we Should have bemuck and we should have Family planning it turns out that those Two things by themselves could save an Enormous amount both of kids and moms so What does that mean does that mean the Provision of more hospitals or does it
Mean the provision of special of units That specialize in in maternal care so It would have cost because you need to Have more institutional facilities these These are not the hospitals that you're Imagining they're very very cheap Institutions right they really basically Buildings with some power and you need Some nurses uh not so many doctors this Is very very low low uh uh uh uh fairly Simple stuff and then you need some very Basic things and I'll just give you one Example that you know the World Health Organization has a whole list of these But one thing uh so when newborns come Out uh uh in rich countries uh about 90 Sorry about 85 percent of them will Breathe right away which of course is What they should be doing uh 10 won't so That's why you need to dunk them in the Back and you know get them going and Then they will actually do something uh Sorry I should just That's very bad no problem no problem Um so uh then you need to dunk them but The last five percent They don't start breathing themselves You actually need to have a mask over Them and give them so five percent uh You need to have this little mask you Need to get some hand pump well in in The poor world in the rich world you Have a a more expensive right that does This right uh but but the fundamental
Point is you actually need to have some Intervention if you have that hand pump So only about 50 of all hospitals in the Poor world has that it costs 65 it will Save about 25 lives uh you know along With the cost of the the the uh the uh The nurse it'll possibly cost about five Dollars to save right a human life but How many of those kids that don't Breathe well are suffer from anoxia and Then are permanently crippled as well There is a little risk but it's actually A very small risk because you go from Being fine to being crippled to die Right and and typically if you don't get It's a very so you so basically it's a Death yeah it's a sentence more Otherwise you'd have to run and get the Uh the uh the uh the mask but a little Too late so it's mostly just that that These kids will die but we can for very Little money make sure that doesn't Happen what are the impediments to Having like why that's a very good very Good question and and this is true for All the 12 things that we're going to be Talking about it's basically because This is not top priority so if you look You know and and look I'm going to be a Little facetious but only a little Facetious You know the people who rule a country They're typically old men what do they Worry about they worry about cancer they
Worry about you know heart disease That's the kind of thing that they worry About themselves women are not really uh You know they're not a high priority Issue of births are not especially for Women uh except especially because There's too many of them anyways and and And also uh if you think about it uh I Don't know if you've ever seen that in The Monty Python uh uh meaning of of Life uh they have the machine that says Please yeah yeah yeah yeah it's a Wonderful if you haven't seen it you Should definitely uh go see that so it's You know it's basically doctors like Expensive machines that are exciting and They can talk about at conferences this This little hand pump that saves you Know uh 25 lives not exciting we've seen One before so it's also very difficult For politicians to take credit for Prevention exactly which is a real it's A I mean you can be cynical about that But you know it's good to do good but It's also good to reward the those who Are seen to be doing good and when you Prevent something it just doesn't happen And so you can't really take credit for It right you can't point to it and say Well I suppose with the kids that would Be somewhat easier but generally that's A problem on the prevention front right Yeah but you can't you can't see it once Once it's happened so you're absolutely
Right but just to give you a sense of Proportion so we estimate this will cost About 4.9 billion dollars a year that's Not nothing but it's a very very small As we talked about rounding error most Of our a large part of this cost is Actually women's time because we need to Get them into hospitals uh so they it'll Take more of their time so the real Financial cost is about 2.8 billion Dollars but the benefits are and these Are just mind-blowingly big it means That we could avoid 161 000 women dying every year 161 000 women dying in childbirth we could Avoid 1.2 million kids dying so that's All those fragmented families that's all Those kids who lose their mothers that's Like there's it's not just 161 000 Deaths I mean there's a Cascade of Terrible problems that emerge from that So those are young women who are in the Prime of their life mostly speaking a Large number that we're going to have Other kids and so those kids are going To be left bereft of their mother and of Course then there's the family breakup That comes along with the fact that the Young woman has died in the tremendous Grief of the parents I mean so that That's a cataclysm that's going to Involve millions of people not the mere 160 000 and so and that can all be Prevented so so we're basically saying
For one dollar You could develop and and this of course Is where economists come across as crude Because we actually put a value of Saving a human life this is a very long Conversation about how you do that but We do that constantly in human societies We decide whether we put in roundabout Or not a roundabout will save people but It also costs money and also slows down Traffic so how much do we want to do That we make those decisions all well That's always that prioritization yes And and so we simply uh you know make That decision explicit and we take all The costs all the benefits it turns out For every dollar you spend you will do 87 of social good in the developing World why aren't we doing this this Would be incredibly cheap to do an Amazing amount of good that's just one That's just the first so have have Projects that of the sort that you Envision that are precisely targeted to This problem where have they begun to Manifest themselves already there must Be countries that are walking down this Road already I know we have hospitals in The west our obviously but I'm wondering Specifically After your team has highlighted the fact That this is a possibility and has this Economic benefit are there jurisdictions That have taken up the challenge I
Haven't seen that strongly I mean so Clearly in in most policy areas they Will say oh and we should also do good For uh you know women that give birth They also vote so you also want to make Sure that they will vote for you so it's Also one of the things that you talk About I think what so we're just coming Out with this research right now so People still haven't heard about it but I think right I think fundamentally what We're trying to do is to set the agenda So that people will actually see oh These 12 things are really really good Right I want to ask that of my Politician if you're living in a uh in The poor part of the world I want to ask That of my development agency I want to Ask that why aren't we doing this to do This so we're simply uh yeah I I I'm you Know fundamentally I I'm very optimistic Person but I don't expect that we're Just sort of you know going to make the Whole world right what we tend to say is We're simply putting forth these 12 Amazing Ideas and hopefully by putting Those out we'll at least get I don't Know six of them right right Yes right well and you've got to not be Cynical I mean the the fact is it's not Being a straightforward matter for People all of us to sort out the panoply Of problems that confront us and 169 Goals isn't ten thousand it's you know
It's already restricted to some degree Restricting that further has all sorts Of there's all sorts of political and Conceptual difficulties and then we we Don't it's also useful to understand That you know on the time scale that you And I would operate on if it took 15 Years to make any of this happen that Would seem like a long time but 15 years Is a drop in the ocean on any reasonable Historical time scale and so it's Possible that these sorts of things Could happen Comparatively quickly by historical Standards even though they look like They're crawling along to us but this Wouldn't take that long it would you Know it would take a couple of years so This is really something that's doable Very very quickly uh it would probably Not be doable in one year but it could Be done safely yeah and do you think the Man or woman power necessary to make This possible like with regards to the Training of nurses and doctors so There's there's plenty of of nurses Available for this this is not a huge Strain we're talking about much less Than one percent of the nurse Force so This is absolutely doable uh and again So the whole point here is this is Something that our development agencies Could do this is something that yeah Elon Musk or Bill Gates could uh help
Fund I'm not saying that you know I I we Should get everybody involved in saying Look let's spend these you know that was Uh 2.8 billion dollars but you know the Total bill of all the 12 is 35 billion Dollars still a very very low amount Compared to pretty much everything else And do you think you guys have detailed Out so I was just this is just flashing Through my mind as we were talking if Imagine that you had a donor that came Up with the amount of money that that Was necessary to make this a possibility Do you think it would be possible do you Do you know which levers to pull and and And which which and and strings to pull To make this actually happen in reality Like has it been detailed out at the Level of play it's almost been done at That level uh so first of all it's I I'm Not going to get the money yeah we're Not we're not the I'm an academic in That yeah yeah we've mapped out so this So in this particular case you would Engage with obviously would start with Some of the big countries India uh Nigeria those kinds of places that have Lots of of of Women that would benefit from getting More bee monk that would get benefit for Getting more of of these opportunities And you would engage with the Governments and say look you could Probably do this at this cost will give
You this much money then you'll build These facilities you've got this many Women in you'd set up those kinds of Contracts with with you know standards And you'd see if they could actually Work right now some of these multiple Places and some of these governments Will some somewhat fail yeah so what we Do is we take realistic costs so we're Actually assuming some sort of failure Uh you know reasonable failure but some Governments will just turn out to be Unreliable and then yeah probably not do That there uh but yes you could do that And you could do most of this and Obviously I'd love to help but this is I'm I'm not a guy that goes out and make Sure that we can build hospitals but I Would love to help with there's a lot of People who know how right right okay so You talked about uh provision of Respiratory emergency technology what What other what other services have to Be delivered to pregnant and birthing Mothers and and New England so it's it's About medication so you can deal with as I mentioned eclampsia and preeclampsia It's about a kangaroo care so it's about Getting uh it's a very very simple thing You just need to know that you need to Do it so you uh you need to uh dry up The baby and put it on the mother's skin We know that that actually makes the Baby much less likely to be sick and
Possibly also uh uh uh uh that's right Um yeah so it'll just simply Thrive more Uh placenta care there's a lot of other Things and again I'm not a doctors I Read these in my eyes slightly glaze Over but it's a lot of simple things That that nurses know how to do and it's A lot of the technological opportunities So it's very much about you need a Cesarean for instance uh that you can Actually have the expertise available That's why we need them in the Institution rather than giving a birth At home so these are very very simple Things very cheap an incredible benefit Okay so that's just the first one okay So that's number one they're 11 yeah Okay to talk about so uh so let me take Another thing which we we talked about With nutrition so nutrition obviously is This number two we're essentially two And three oh this is two and three so uh Because there are two different ways to To deal with this uh obviously uh for People who are actually hungry so There's a there's a there's about 769 Million people who are hungry right Right now which is a lot of people but a Much smaller proportion of people than There once was absolutely so back in 1928 so almost 100 years ago uh the League of Nations estimated that at Least two-thirds of humanity was Permanently starving two-thirds
Two-thirds more than two-thirds so That'd be that'd be five billion people Now well yeah so yeah more than yeah That's probably right so it's it's an S Outstanding number of people now it's 10 That's still yeah way too high and we Want to do something it's a lot better Than 60 cents a lot better yes so we Have come a long way but there's still Much to do so there are two ways to do This one is and I'm gonna tell you about That one first this is the long-term View this is basically about how do we Make agriculture better so agriculture Produce all the food and basically the The way that you make uh development Happen is that we stop all working on Farms you know remember in in rich Countries one or two percent of all of Us make all the food isn't that amazing I'm so happy that they're out there Doing that for me because I'm not a Farmer I wouldn't know how to do this I Know we're trying to do everything we Can to stop them at the moment yes but You know fundamentally the smart thing Is that we have a few percent of people Doing all the farming and then everybody Else does something else productive That's how we got rich yeah and you know Malawi it's still about 80 of the Population that are farmers of of the uh Working population so what what do you Think about the objections there's
Romantic objections on that front Constantly that you know it would be Better to keep the local land holder on His farm and that there's something Wrong with both industrialization and Urban and urbanization and the cities Are blight on the landscape I mean what Do you make of the Romantic arguments of That sort I think it's wonderful that People are now so rich that they can Decide that they want to go out and live Their life as Farmers again I think That's wonderful and fine and people are Absolutely welcome to do that but we Also know that most people won't do it Most people actually prefer to just have Other people produce their food for them Right and and so this is the opportunity Of an industrialized society that we Actually have a very efficient Society Where people are so rich they can afford To go back in time if you will right That's fine but most of us and they're Only doing that in a false way anyways In some real sure because the entire Industrial landscape is around them to Sustain them and yes so there's this Wonderful guy who tries to try to do Everything for himself yeah and it turns Out that's really really hard he spent About a year making a toaster It's really really hard to do yeah just Simple stuff and and it was terrible I Saw a picture of it was you know you're
Like oh my God this is not how we do Things we do things by specializing you Know you do one thing I do one thing you Know we're all better off by being Specialized we'll get to that part of The solution as well but fundamentally How do we make agriculture produce more Well there's a lot of things you could Get better irrigation you could get Better more fertilizer you could get People better educated turns out that That's very hard and they're they're not Very well functioning so for instance Irrigation uh it's very expensive so It'll probably deliver a couple of Dollars back on the dollar it's not a Bad idea but they don't work all that Well there's one thing though that works Incredibly well making seeds better Because even if you don't have good uh Access to uh to markets or to irrigation Or you have corruption all that kind of Stuff if the seed comes and it produces More food when you plant it it sort of Comes out automatically this is what the Green bread first more yeah more drought Resistant or more or more salt resistant Yeah so remember this was the first Green Revolution back in the 1960s and 70s this is Norman Bullock yeah who Later got a Nobel Prize for they Deserved it it totally deserved it he is One of the few people in the on the Planet who can put it in a CV he saved a
Billion people's lives how amazing is That to be able to put on your CV uh and And you know I just think it's so Amazing he basically made you know we Had these long variants that would you Know of Wheat and corn rice that would Grow very long and then have a few seeds Up here what he basically found was if You make it grow lower it uses less of Its energy on the stock and so there Will be more stuff on the uh I'm not Sure the kernels right so there'll be More food on them yeah the ratio of Kernel to stock you can see I'm not a Farmer right so so you know Fundamentally what that did was it made Food much more available this is what Saved India and many other places around The world but most of this was focused On Rich World Foods so you know wheat And uh corn or Maize or and rice we Still need to focus a lot more on all The other local things that you and I Probably never eat maybe haven't even Heard of you know yams sorcum uh uh These kinds of yeah so we'd find the the 10 or 15 based food stalks whatever they Are and then aim at something like a 10 Improvement or a 50 and we know we can Do that so yeah I know that so ski are The the groups the research groups Actually did the first uh Green Revolution Constantly do this but they do this with
Fairly little money and so little money Translates into little efficiency gain We know that if you spend more money we Have lots of research doing that again We work with some of the best Researchers in the area who've Documented in the past how much money do You put through and then how much more Gain do you get in an agricultural Output so how about the argument well if We fed more miles more efficiently all That would happen is that we'd have many More miles to feed in the future I mean Yeah so people will make that argument But really what happens And we see this of course this requires Us to see development all kinds of other Areas but uh you know so women need to Get more education they actually decide I'd rather have an education than a lot Of kids yeah if women have more Opportunity to do businesses they'll do Business rather than have a lot of kids And we do this in a lot of different Ways if my kids survive more I don't Need to have as many right so what we Really see is we start oh I don't have To work as hard on the farm I can start My business on the side eventually I'll Sell my farm and or some people will Start doing the farming and others will Go to the city this is how you get Development yeah well one of the one of The rules seems to be that as you
Increase the degree to which people feel Long-term security and this is Especially true for women you increase The amount of effort they will put in Per child and you decrease the total Number of children that could in itself Become a problem at some point but but At least it is a rejoinder to the people Who think well if you to if you put more You put more agar in the petri dish You're just going to get the yeast Proliferating faster that isn't what Seems to happen at all and it's also the Case and everyone listening should know This is that all the reasonable Estimates for human population indicate That we're going to peek out at Somewhere between 9 billion and 10 and Then God only knows what will happen After that or even if we last that long But it's clear at least it's clear to me And I think it's clear to you that we Can sustain 9 billion people on the Planet indefinitely if we had a clue and So the notion that we're going to Multiply ourselves up to something like 100 billion and just eat the planet Right to the Bedrock is there's no Evidence whatsoever that that's going to Occur and plenty of evidence to the Contrary yes um yeah so so fundamentally This absolute just means that we can Stop having kids being really Malnourished that we can stop having as
Much hunger in the planet and that we Can start having people being better off So what this would actually mean and This is what the model shows is that we On average would avoid avoid about 133 Million people being hungry so this Doesn't fix everything right so that's About part of that's a problem 20 25 of The of the people who are starting it's It's a yeah it's a little less than that But but obviously that would be coming Down because people get richer uh but But it's it's about you know uh uh 20 15 20 uh but and this is the main part of The benefit it will mean that farmers Can produce more food which is great for Farmers they'll actually get more money Yeah but it also means the price for Each of one of these foods go down right Which matters a lot more but yes or Eventually we'll use less yeah yeah Because per unit oh absolutely and and What that means is that people who live In the cities will have to pay less for Their food that means they can buy more Food so they can actually feed their Kids and eventually they can also spend More money on education all the other Things that matter so if you look at That whole cost so what we you're Estimating is the cost is about 5.5 Billion dollars a year again nothing Primarily to research and this would be This would totally be for research and
Enterprises so it would be uh for the Ski RN institutions so the yeah that is What these are the international Organizations have been around since the First Green Revolution that are Basically consisting a lot of of a plant Uh uh uh uh researchers I'm not quite Sure exactly what the the agronomers Probably uh and and they you know They're the guys who do all the Different kinds of seed varieties and You know can they be more uh salt Resistant more drought resistant more Vitamin A in rice all that kind of stuff Yeah and and then we would uh be giving To National research uh uh organizations So they're better uh clued into what Specifically does this particularly so We started making that a priority like We've made investigation into climate Change and priorities and we say well no We're going to shift we're going to Shift tomorrow all Spotlight onto food Development and the reason for that is To ameliorate absolute poverty and There's nothing in that but benefit Economic and otherwise and so and it's Not expensive and and look we need to do A lot of Spotlight this is 5.5 billion Dollars a year this is surrounding area Pretty much everything we talked about So that's 50 cents for everybody on the Planet per year but approximately yeah So it's it's uh uh uh well it's yeah 75
Cents or something like that yeah anyway So it's very very little money and it Really means that you would get 184 billion dollars in benefits both for Producers for the farmers and for the Consumers for the city it's about 30 30 40 33 33 back on every dollar and you'd Save 133 billion people from from Hunger Real is that not one of our top Priorities well that's a good question How is it not I mean and I think it's Simply because it's kind of It it doesn't come across as one of Those heroic things that just say yeah Why not like it should well it's strange Hey because obviously some of it's Ignorance right you have to Zero in on the right priorities and then You have to do the economic analysis and Not many people have done that and so Some of it is that we just didn't know And maybe that's God only knows how much Of it that is it might be a lot and it's Also possible that We also haven't solved the marketing Problem right because you know one of The things I've learned in the repeated Businesses that I've established and and This was hard one knowledge was that the Good idea and the product are like five Percent of the problem the the Communication about the good idea and The product is like 95 of the problem And part of the reason for that you
Might be cynical about that and say well That's all sales and marketing it's like No it's communication because Especially if your idea is new and Radical people don't even know it exists And how the Heller is how the Heller Anybody how the hell are people going to Purchase it if they don't know about it And so I guess part of what we've been Working on too is well exactly how do You go about marketing this and how do You make it an adventure and the Adventure is something like well you Know especially for young people they Have a mess ionic urge that emerges you Know in late adolescence it runs into Early adulthood when they're trying to Sort out their lives they want a project And they want a vision that they can be Involved in that does have some larger Scale social significance and this seems To me to be an exciting Vision it's like Well how about we don't have any Direly poor people and then we see how That goes and and obviously that means Well we need to make sure that babies Don't die when they're born and neither Do their mothers and then once they're Born well how about we provide them with Some food and if we can do that in a way There's also a way of getting rid of the Resistances it's like well if you can Improve the seed stalk so that crops are More pesticide resistant which you can't
Or or more pest resistant which you can Do then you can use less pesticide you Can increase the yield per acre so that Uses less Farmland it's like why Wouldn't the greens be absolutely 100 on Board with this as well if they could Drop the zero-sum presupposition and you Know the anti-extra most defeat idea It's like well we serve women when They're the most vulnerable and now we Serve children when they're the most Vulnerable and there's no downside to That there's just upside so that sounds Like a perfectly good Adventure me and And I think that is exactly that's also What I'm trying to do here on this Podcast that we're actually trying to Get people enthusiastic about it I'm Also writing about this in 35 papers Around the world and yeah I'm writing a Book about this so I'm trying to get That exact exact excitement it doesn't Mean we shouldn't also focus on other Problems but simply we're saying why Don't we do this first what's the book Best things first best things first so Yeah it's about these 12 Amazing Ideas That can basically fix uh a lot of Problems that can make the world uh the Life much better for the world's poorest And it can also fix our problem uh our Global problems when does that come out Development goals uh so in the next Month and a half okay okay and so it's
The end of February right now so it'll Be like mid mid April mid April Something like that so everybody can Best things first you guys can keep an Eye out for that but you know I'll make Sure that I mention it continually too So yeah yeah that's another thing for For nutrition so yeah obviously it's Great to say we're going to make much Better food for you guys in 20 years but If you're hungry right now it kind of Doesn't help right so we're also looking At how do you actually get food right Now uh so uh the the sort of tendency is To say well we should just hand out food It turns out that that's very prone to Corruption yeah fairly expensive it's Hard to decide on the local farmers yes That if you hand it out for free it Actually you know generates a lot of Negative uh feedbacks for Farmers so What we're looking at are the effective Ways so one effective way or uh uh Probably the most effective way is by Realizing that the most important years When you need food are the first what They call the first thousand days so the Nine months in the mom and the first two Years uh because that's where your brain Is being developed that's basically Where the tracks for the rest of your Life is being laid right and so right Now almost everyone in the world almost All uh pregnant moms get folic acid and
Iron that's good because that actually Avoids anemia and some birth defects but We could do much more so what we're Investigating this is the World Health Organization recommendation but there's Another one that's underway that show Shows that you could actually replace This pill with another pill that has a Lot more vitamins so basically a vitamin A and A B1 B2 B6 B12 and you know on and On so 13 more things what that would do Would it would cost very little it's Already being produced so it's basically Switching out one pill for the other Yeah and it would cost very little but It would mean that the mom would be less Likely to give birth either with low Birth weight or early birth both of Which have negative consequences down The line cascading expenses and decrease In eventual productivity exactly yeah And and likewise calcium uh those are Big tablets they're more costly but and And we're not giving to most uh pregnant Moms we should and that would also save A lot of uh a lot of children uh from uh From being born with low birth weight it Turns out that if you do this you could Probably do about thirty dollars back in The dollar for about 300 million dollars Then at the same time we're also Investigating there's a way to give uh More food to kids at low cost which is If you tell moms that it's a great idea
To feed your child well uh you'd imagine That most moms would know this but Actually they lack the the knowledge of How you feed them well uh we see a lot Of kids that even in well-placed Families that are still not well fed uh And and so how would you define well-fed So so it's it's a question of saying That you have high stunting rates so That's one way of measuring yeah that You're not as tall as you should be uh Compared to your age it's one of the Best simplest ways of measuring we know That if you're stunned it there's a good Chance that you're also going to get Less development and you'll be less Productive in your yeah yeah well if You're stunted because brain development Is so complex and so energy and resource Expensive compared to the rest of Physiological tissue that if you're Stunted in the broad sense you're also Going to be stunted neurology magically And so that's and even small decrements In cognitive ability which is directly Related to neurological Integrity have Walloping effects on long-term Productivity you might think well Productivity isn't everything it's like Well First of all that's debatable and second Of all okay perhaps it's not Spiritual Development although it probably is Um but all things considered why
Wouldn't you want people to be more Efficient in the use of their labor Rather than less efficient and also Shows the limits of what it means to be An economist because we're only looking At the way of saying okay so you become Smarter that means you become more Productive that means you get a higher Income yeah we look at that higher Income but clearly you being smarter is Probably something that also means that You will have a better life inside the Other way so that's actually clearer the Relationship between well-being and Cognitive power is pretty positive part Well not merely not least because if you Have higher General cognitive ability You tend just to be more successful at Everything you do and the reason for That fundamentally is because you can Process more units of information per Unit of time and so obviously that's Obviously that's better because it's Tied in do the very definition of better Yes and and and at least again uh most Of the people that we're debating with Most of the people who are watching this Uh this podcast would would probably not Want to say oh I'd actually think it Would be better if you're less you know Right if you're a little more stunted Yes shorter people have a smaller carbon Footprint yeah yeah anyway so so uh we Estimate this will cost about 1.4
Billion dollars in total all these Things we talked about and it'll Generate benefits about 35 billion Dollars a year uh most of it and so when You're educating women what what are you Telling them exactly so you're you're Basically you're you have a uh uh a Wow a community health worker that comes Out visit the the woman so she has a lot Of people in the same neighborhood She'll come out visit the woman for half An hour go through what is it that you Feed your child maybe you should feed it Less of the oh are you giving sugar all This this early no that's not a good Idea you should do more of this it's Just basic it's very very basic stuff And then she comes and visits it nine Times and we've estimated what's the Cost of that yeah and you know this is Based on a lot of different studies that Have shown that you actually get less Stunning when you do more of this uh Teaching now the women also have to pay For the food because they're you're Assuming that they have that extra Capacity so they can but but the food is Still Incorporated and the cost of of Our calculator okay but the beautiful Thing is we're not actually have to pay For the food uh we only have to pay for The education of it uh so we don't have To worry about why so so well because That's by Design you could have one
Where you also hand out yeah but that Becomes much harder and you get more Corruption right but if you just do the Education you get less benefits but you Get much less cost much less cost so I'm Simply saying this is partly a Redistribution of available resources is Only a redistribution that's simply Telling uh uh essentially the moms you Can feed your kid better that will be Great for your kid and the moms will Respond partly by saying okay I'm gonna You know spend a little less at the Cinema and and give them a little more Food I'm right joking I don't know what They're right right decide but Fundamentally that means at very low Cost but we are incorporating the cost That she's now spending on the food for A for a child but she does it very much More effectively than we could ever so You're really looking at Interventions that are as minimal as Possible that produce the fewest Cascading negative consequences and that Leverage we're not looking at the most The cheapest ones but we're looking at For the most effective yeah yeah right Yeah so that will often be things that Cost fairly little that have very little You know corruption potential and and Inefficient potential for instance if You hand out food uh so I I saw this When I I visited with the food minister
In in India uh you know uh uh they it's Politically very advantageous to say I'm Going to give out food yeah but Everybody kind of know by now that what That actually means is you're going to Give someone a lot of money to get buy Some food and hand it out to the poor uh They're going to take a lot of the money They're going to use some of it for food Yeah and then they'll buy the worst food You could possibly get so you end up With these incredibly almost unedible uh Biscuits uh that unless you're really Really hungry you're just not gonna eat It right right so so there's a lot of Loss in this whereas of course if you Just tell the woman you should feed your Kid better and you should possibly give This is what it means yes then you're More like likely to actually have the Woman make sure she actually buys this But she buys it cheaply and she you know She feeds her right and you leave that Decision-making power in her hands too Which is also appropriate if you're Looking at what efficient use of Distributed resources it's not so top Down that way exactly right so those are The first three so okay yeah of the First three solutions so let me just uh Move on to the fourth and as you also Realize these are very very desperate uh Desperate desperate it sounds like Desperate to me that's not what it is
Right this uh uh things because you know There are a lot of different ways that We can make uh better use of resources So we talked about corruption before uh In general we don't really know well how To fix corruption but there is one way That we found that you can dramatically Reduce corruption so this is in so the Thing that's called e-procurement or Electronic procurement sounds incredibly Boring uh but when you think about it The biggest spending in most countries Is actually unprocurement so you buy Anything from pens to roads and Roads Obviously being much more expensive Procurement essentially is is Large-scale purchasing purchasing from Governments so in in developing Countries and poor countries of course Half of the world it's about half of the Of the government budget that's spent on Purchasing big stuff yeah and it's Obviously hugely corrupt right uh so uh One of the ways that you can avoid some Of that corruption is by basically Putting these bids up on what what is Essentially eBay uh you know you make a A a website for this and we've known This for a long time for a lot of Different countries uh that if you do That it becomes harder to uh to be Corrupt there'll still be some Corruption yeah you get less corrupt you Actually get higher quality because more
People hear about it and you get lower Prices and that's of course what really Means that you can get more for your Money in that government so then have There been places We worked with Bangladesh who's done it Uh Ukraine has done it and actually Helped Ukraine in a totally different Way when the war broke out because it's Very very quick they could actually Start asking for other resources through The e-procurement system very very Quickly and obviously they need a lot More war related so you put out like a Statement of requests and then you Invite you invite permissions invite Local businesses to bid on this so yeah Bangladesh it used to be that you know You would put put this request up and And some official uh publication and Then you'd have to come in with a sealed Envelope in a particular government Office for this for this bid but the Guys in this local area had already you Know they they already decided you're Going to get that yeah yeah yeah and so What they actually did was nepotism They actually put up goons outside the Office so you couldn't physically come In with your bid uh and that's how they You know got a lot of extra money with And Eve procurement system that becomes Much much harder right sure you can Still do that but we know and we've done
The testing we know that actually on Average reduces prices by 6.75 percent And because there's such a lot of money And because this is very very cheap so We estimate the total cost so that's a Three percent Improvement in the budgets Overall given so so and you know the Finance Minister in Bangladesh loved it Because it was just you know basically Free money right uh and and and so uh we Estimate about 30 countries still need To do this and they could do it for the Cost uh annual cost so there's a lot of Phasing costs but they're very very Cheap you need to educate hundreds of Thousands of uh bureaucrats but again That's fairly cheap and you need to you Know sustain this all the way through It'll cost about 72 million dollars so Virtually nothing per year the benefit Is that they will be about 10 billion Dollars right well and you so how do you Calculate the knock-on benefits of Actually effective Distributing money Instead of to criminals to the people Who can actually do the work because you Can imagine there's got to be a Multiplier effect of that too because You want to set up your Society so that The financial rewards are delivered to The people who actually produce real Goods right and we we had a whole Conversation about that we decided not To include that so this is an
Underestimate if anything okay because Clearly if you have more money you could Actually build more schools or you could Get better hospitals and that would have It its own knock-on effect but yeah That's that's an unreasonable extra way To be this is already so good you don't Need to make it more fantastic right Right yeah it simply delivers an Enormous amount of benefit at very low Cost again this is one of the things we Should be doing so we've covered Um early childhood and birth Intervention we've covered nutrition We've covered uh corruption reduction And uh now and and agriculture yes and Agriculture research and reform yes Exactly and now we're going to switch to Topic 5 which is education education yes So so look we spent the last couple Decades uh getting old kids into schools Uh and that's great because then they Have a chance to learn but unfortunately Many places in the world uh kids learn Almost nothing and so just getting them Into school is not enough you actually Need to learn in there and that's the Next problem the learning crisis as they Call it is basically that a large part Of the world's uh kids uh Primary School Students don't learn anything and so That means they don't become literate For example what are some basic measures The the point is we're very focused on
Literacy yeah and it actually turns out That we're teaching almost everyone to Read a word but they cannot string these Words together and actually make a Sentence so they can't get to the point Of meaning exactly so there's uh you Know we don't we have pizza studies in Rich countries that sort of show Showcase how how much do you learn uh But in poor countries we don't have that But there's some parts of it where you Actually ask the same kind of questions In a lot of different countries and they Show very very bad poor results uh so Let me just give you one sort of reading Experience uh they they have to read This the following sentence Vijay has a Red hat a blue shirt and yellow socks What color is the hat right it's red by The way but but it turns out eighty Percent of all kids in the developing World at 10 years old can't answer this No do the sentence is the initial Sentence there with the question or do They have to read yeah yeah yes there so They don't know how to refer back Together I'm not sure they actually know How they so they they know that there's Red in there somewhere but there's also Blue and they also read yellow so There's no sense of that they didn't Understand the basic comprehension yes Yeah so so we've learned to we've Learned basic literacy but we don't have
Actual comprehension yeah yeah and it's The same thing in math you ask people uh Questions like uh uh two people there Are six pieces of cheese there's two People how do you divide it equally Between the two people and you know About about eighty percent you establish A call me in the state and then each get Zero pieces of cheeks no I don't think We're that far away okay so so Fundamentally the problem here is that We're just simply really bad at teaching These kids so how do you solve this uh Well we know some ways that don't work It's not about building more schools now Building more schools get more kids into Uh these schools which is nice but they Don't actually learn anything more uh if You for instance increase the teacher Pay it turns out so Indonesia did this Uh back in 2005 they doubled these Spending on schools and most of that Went to teachers they hired a lot more Teachers to have one of the world's Lowest uh class ratios uh but but Fundamentally they gave teachers a lot More pay uh and because it was staggered Across the different regions we can Actually do an experiment on this and See did it have any impact on uh on Learning it turned out it had none there Was Zero impact on increasing the pay of Teaching now it made the teachers much More happy uh which of course could also
Be a political uh uh consideration but Surely the outcome of spending money on Education should be that you get higher Learning and none of that happened it's A very famous paper it's called double For nothing uh and and so you know Fundamentally we know how not to do this Also reducing class sizes which a lot of People talk about yes it does help a Little bit but at very high cost so Here's some really really effective ways That you could do this instead so There's two different ways one is That you focus on making the teacher Better the second one is you focus on Making the kid better at learning the First one how do you make the teacher Better remember a lot of these teachers Are not very well educated they're you Know they're possibly not very uh Enthusiastic either they don't quite Know how to do this if you give them Better pedagogy so this is a this is Very very well established through a lot Of countries Kenya's uh is is taking This to all their schools right now Um it's basically about making Semi-scripted uh uh uh uh lesson lessons Lesson plans for each one of the classes That the teacher is going to go through So you go for three days before the uh Year starts uh you learn this you sort Of get all the teachers excited they Meet some of the other teachers from
Yeah from from the area then you get Them these structured teacher plans you Get them a text message every week this Week you're going to teach this this and This and you know sort of get them Enthusiastic you have some people come Out so you're teaching the teachers well They're teaching the kids and you're uh You have some people come out and and uh You'll look at them and give them Feedback not in the sense of we're gonna Fire you because you're not very good But this is how you could do it better Uh they come back a couple of times During the year uh for some extra uh Learning together with some of the other Teachers this all has costs yeah but It's very cheap so it turns out this Will cost about nine dollars per child Per year remember the average spend is About 350 per kid uh you know to schools And all these other things That's a very very small uh fraction This means that you actually can see the Kids learn much much more for every year They go to school instead of just Learning one year of school uh of one Normal year yeah they almost learned two Years of school you almost doubled the Learning for a three percent Improvement In increment cost yes this is a great Investment we find that I had this book I used on my kids when They were little uh called how to teach
Your kid your child to read in 100 easy Lessons and it's it was produced by Behavioral psychologists and basically What they do is provide 10-minute Scripted lessons so all you have to do Is sit down and read the words Everything's laid out and so it makes it Extremely simple for the parent to do Because the parent can do it even under Conditions of exhaustion and it only Takes 10 minutes of attention on this on The part of the child and in three Months you get you don't only get word Recognition literacy you get the ability For the child to start to comprehend That the phrase and sentence level which Is by the way when spontaneous enjoyment Of reading kicks in right because the Automatization of letter and word Recognition is effortful and that's even True up to the level of the phrase but As soon as you can get a phrase at a Glance then it starts to become Entertaining rather than ever yeah yeah Exactly it's hard to thresh So so now you said well if you use these Behavioral methods and and train Teachers who are very untrained about Exactly what to do you can imagine as Well that's much more positive for them Too because the classroom isn't chaotic And unstructured and one of the Joys of being a teacher and there are Many things about being a teacher that
Aren't joyful is to actually see that What you're doing has some positive Effect so so teachers are a little Ambivalent about this because it also it It they feel like it removes some of Their uh uh autonomy yeah and you can Worry about that once they're expert oh Absolutely so I I get that and but so Again we're not saying that if you spend This money everything will be perfect We're saying it'll be better and we know How much better on average because it's Pretty good exactly twice as good yeah And the other way is to remember that The kids are struggling mostly so almost Everywhere in the world we put all the 12 year olds in the same grade for all The 11 year olds in the same grade And that somewhat Works in red countries Because everybody has been going to School and have enough food and we're You know paying attention but in poor Country these kids are all over the Place so some of them are struggling I Have no idea what's going on some of Them are incredibly bored and way ahead And don't really bother about the Teacher what is the teacher going to do When you have you know this vast I mean You're going to try to sort of Hit the Middle and you're going to fail with Most of these kids One way that we know works really well Is to teach at the right level yeah so
That's the zone of proximal development Exactly so you say here if you're in a Sixth grade there's a few people who are Actually at seventh grade level there's A few there are sixth grade there's a Lot of they're in a fourth grade and There's even some that are first grade If you imagine you actually teach each One at their right level they will learn A lot more now you can do that in two Ways one is that you actually split them Out in the into these grades that's That's socially a little hard because You put you know 12 year olds together With six-year-olds yeah and you know you Sort of point out 12 year olds yes he's Not that smart kind of thing yeah uh It takes uh you need more teachers to do That you do that one hour a day they do That in pratham for instance in India And it works and we know it works so Again it costs about 21 dollars per kid And it delivers about the same as what We talk about the structured uh teacher Plans it delivers about two years of Learning for every one year you go to School this is just one hour a day so Again fantastic improvements so that's a That's probably the only hour that they Actually learn very likely but again uh For social benefits uh it's probably a Really bad idea to imagine having the 12 Year old and six-year-old yeah together All the time and that's why it's just
One hour a day uh at least that's how The studies Yes yes that's what we're basing it on Another way to do it which I I like more You know who who am I to know uh um is To do this with technology so you Basically do this with tablets so you Buy a bunch of tablets and the kids will One hour a day go and sit down with a Tablet and the tablet very quickly Learns who you are uh you obviously log Into that particular one you have a Program that teaches them either Mathematics or the the local language And it will be in the local language and It very quickly finds out oh you're at That level so I'm going to start Teaching you at this level it is one of The most enjoyable hours of the day it Sure it is man and again zone of Proximal development defines enjoyment Right enjoyment technically you get a Dopamine kick From anything that is associated with Positive emotion and what dopamine does Is indicate that you're moving at the Proper rate towards a desired goal That's the actual signal and then that Feels rewarding but it also the dopamine Actually strengthens the circuits that Are co-activated with with those events So if you put the kid in the zone of Proximal development where they're on The incremental edge of learning not
Only do they feel good about it but the Neural circuits that are operating at That time grow more effectively so yeah So that's all there's nothing about that That isn't good no no exactly and again This is fairly cheap it's 31 now this is More expensive you have to buy the Tablets uh given that there you just Need it one hour a day a lot of Different students are going to be using The same tablet you need to have a place You can lock them in so they don't Disappear still some of them will Disappear also because of corruption uh You probably also need some solar panels Because these places don't have Electricity uh to uh to recharge them uh So every day they get charge all of that Is included in those costs the benefit Is that this will actually give almost Three years of learning for every one Year in school and that's an hour a day This is just one hour a day so basically If you spend eight hours a day seven Hours you learn virtually nothing like You normally did and then one hour you Learn almost all of it isn't that Amazing that we can do that yeah well Computers are unbelievably good when They're used properly at finding that Zone of proximal development and for for For for for uh Necessities like basic Automatization say of letter recognition Computers are unbeatable because they
Can do repeated Mass practice in a way That would drive any adult start craving Math right because you could get the you Know a kid who can't see the difference Between D's and B's for example you Could just have them practice that 500 Times you know for 15 minutes a day for A week and they'd have the letter Recognition down you'd never get that in The standard classroom not probably in The entire educational lifetime time of The child so yeah that's very cool That's all that's all crucial bits here Is that the cost is still you still have The teacher so the teacher will be Sitting in the room helping oversee this Actually they very rarely need them but Right you need to make sure that the Teachers don't think that the computers Are going to take over their job right Right uh and that's incredibly important Otherwise you're not going to have the Teachers play along and then you won't Be able and then is that it it doesn't Have to be the case that the computers Are going to replace their job and and Shouldn't be the case it just means that Their there the the teacher should be Available to help solve the problems That the kids are encountering while They're engaged in the learning exactly And so so and and so overall so Malawi For instance a country that we worked in Where we pointed this out as a very very
Good intervention is now actually Setting up this for the entire primary School system oh cool uh so yeah again These are things that we There's uh so there's about 467 million kids in primary school today In in the uh and the poor half of the World we're estimating what would it Cost to get 90 of them one of these Three things that we talk about we don't Know whether they interact we don't know Whether you can actually double up you Can both have uh you know a tablet and Have teacher plans we don't know whether That works so there's no reason to Assume that it would drop out like I Doubt if it's I doubt if it's additive And it would be lovely if it was Multiplicative but like if you look at The effects of programs like Head Start For example you don't get that Multiplicative effect but I think you Could reasonably assume some near linear Effect so so we're we're simply making The very simple Assumption of saying we Don't know what different countries and Different schools would do so we're Simply assuming you do one-third of each Of these three things right which is a Rough approximation just simply to get a Sense of how much good would this do Turns out that this would do 65 of good For every dollar spent so we would spend About 9 9.8 billion dollars per year
Over the Set uh over this decade and the Benefits would come only we're only look At the productivity benefits that these Kids would become smarter yeah hence get Higher salaries that it means that they Would help produce more economic growth In in their long-term future worth about 800 or 2 000 per kit depending on which Uh uh property we're talking about so Basically about 600 billion dollars a Year right this is by itself almost half Of the total economic benefit that we're Talking about this is also you know this Is education we're making everyone get About four percent more over the Lifetime in productivity that's an Incredible achievement and again this is A very small part as we talk about it's Very likely once you get started on this You're going to do more of these yeah Yeah well you mentioned how many how Many of the Undiscovered Geniuses in the World whose potential you would unlock I Mean you get one Genius Like Norman Burlog and orlog and the entire planet's Different and so and that's one of the Advantages of all these extra mouths to Feed is that you know one of ten Thousand of those people is going to be One person in ten thousand and we could Definitely use more of those definitely Definitely We'll be right back first we wanted to Give you a sneak peek at Jordan's new
Series Exodus So the Hebrews created history as we Know it Bend the fabric of reality and that you Can treat people instrumentally and that You can bow to the Tyrant and violate Your conscience without cause you will Pay the piper it's going to call you out Of that slavery into Freedom even if That pulls you into the desert And we're going to see that there's Something else going on here that is far More Cosmic and deeper than what you can Imagine the highest Is presented precisely as that spirit That allies itself with the cause of Freedom against tyranny I want villains To get punished but do you want the Villains to learn before they have to Pay the ultimate price that's such a Christian question Right so okay so that's number five What's number six number six let's look At malaria so malaria is a big problem With the world uh it used to be Incredibly deadly across the world so we Have this idea of malaria being a Tropical disease and and typically one That happens in Africa which is Absolutely true today but it used to be Everywhere so Austin was malaria Washington was malaria it was too damn Cold in Canada for malaria In the U.S 36 of the U.S states were
Endemic in malaria uh we have malaria And Finland and Archangel in Russia uh It was you know huge in in Moscow during The second world war it was pretty much Everywhere so we estimate about One-tenth of all death uh in 1900 was Because of uh malaria uh but mosquitoes Happen to be the worst enemy of mankind Really really bad I mean for a lot of Reasons Transfer of uh the malaria parasite yeah What happened was and this is true for a Lot of development well we got rich and We got medication so when you get rich You start draining this water right That's what England did and you know Mosquitoes live in swamps so that Actually reduced the amount of of uh of Uh mosquitoes you also get better Nourished and that means that when you Get malaria you don't have as bad of a Reaction you don't get as a sick you can Also afford more uh uh protection so You'll have build a house with screens For instance then you don't get uh uh Then you don't get malaria and then you Can afford the medication so you know Back in the 1600s we found queenine The park from a a tree yeah It's in tonic for anybody yeah And and uh and actually that was what People were drinking in India gin and Tonic that was yeah at least Justification for it right
Um and and uh the uh um uh the Spanish Got incredibly rich on this and they Actually kept it on the wraps for a very Long time so only very rich Well eventually the uh the Dutch found a Way to smuggle some of those seeds out And they uh they grew in in Indonesia And then you know we got a lot more Quinine eventually the world uh or the Uh uh uh the parasite uh got resistant To queenine uh that also happened to the Artificial uh uh uh uh uh production of It that we that we then turn on now we Have artemisinin and we're starting to See the same kind of thing happening so Getting drugs is obviously important but It's not the only part of the solution So basically we eradicated this in most Of Rich world there's virtually no Malaria in the rich World it used to be Huge in India for instance it's Virtually no malaria there either and That's over how many decades in India so This is this is over the last century uh Basically that we got rid of it because You got rich because uh you have uh Medication but and this is crucial we Also have much nicer mosquitoes and Mosquito uh and and malaria parasites so Are mosquitoes like to bite uh uh uh uh Livestock as well and that matters Because what you need for transmission And malaria is that I have malaria the Mosquito bites me and then it flies over
And bite you right right but if there's A nice cow right next to you it might Bite the cow and that and then there's No transmission so if you have a lot of Livestock and you have more livestock as You get right so we need to breed cows That are more delicious to mosquitoes Exactly but the problem this is why we Have almost all malaria in Africa is That the mosquitoes only the mosquitoes Are in Africa only like to bite humans So they have much more intense uh uh Transmission of malaria and what what Basically happened in all kinds of other Places of the world was we disrupted Part of the transmission and you really Just need to disrupt it enough that it's Only the female mosquito right that the Female mosquito and typically don't get To bite two people so it doesn't get to Bite one that has it and then transfer It to someone else but it dies after one And a half of those for for a number of Different reasons we just need to get to That but in Africa they bite so many Times before they die that even if you Disrupt part of the transmission it Doesn't help they also badly set up Because the parasite is more deadly in Africa than anywhere else it's just you Know bad luck of the draw that's why you Have almost all the uh uh the malaria in Africa now it's 95 it's actually just Four countries half of it uh so about
600 000 people die every year more than Half of them die in Nigeria in Tanzania In Niger and the Democratic Republic of Congo so it's a very very limited Problem to sub-Saharan Africa and what We then look at is uh there you know Obviously you need to have medication And we we do have medication across the World but the most important part is to Get mosquito Nets we know that that's a Very cheap way of dramatically reducing So these would be and that's red versus The person-to-person biting of the Mosquitoes so these are insecticide Treated mosquito Nets uh so they work in Two ways you sleep under them and so They they have this physical barrier That prevents the mosquito to come in Yeah and also when it sits on these and It often will do it'll actually die from The pesticide and those two things can Actually disrupt uh malaria so we Estimate if you increase this uh so Remember all of these uh Nets are being Distributed we've distributed more than Uh uh Two or three hundred million Nets every Year Um all of these nets need to be Distributed we're assuming what would Happen if we increase that by 10 yeah That will have a cost yes but it'll also Have a huge benefit because you'll Actually be able to see about a
Reduction of half uh come 2030 of the Number of people that get infected with Malaria so we could actually reduce uh This by half over the decade that would Be about 200 000 people that we could Save every year and if we could do that It would also save much more on the Hospitalization cost and remember this Would also be about 240 million cases of Malaria so most people get malaria they Don't die right they just get really Really sick and then it recurs too A lot Of them so there's not that many people Many many of the people will get it Several times and that means that they Will be less productive they can't go to Work we actually estimate the benefit Would also be about 10 billion dollars Both in in preserved health care costs That's more than just the the Nets would Cost and in uh productivity cost the Total cost is 1.1 billion dollars so Again that's a 10 increase in the number Of Nets that are distributed so for Every dollar spent you do 48 dollars of Good it's an amazing return you do so so You know even if you just look at the The save the malaria parasite Environmentalists haven't come after you On that Frontier no I don't know I think I think most people Feel that yes mosquitoes and malaria Parasites are something that we could You know we could just have in a zoo we
Could have we could have fewer of them Yeah certainly okay it's good to have a Consensus on that first yeah so so Fundamentally we could do an amazing Amount of good and you could actually Just by looking at the savings You would get more Savings in the Healthcare sector than the extra bed Nets would cost why are we not doing it Because it's two different pots of money Right right so and of course weird Structural impediments right and it Comes a couple of years later so yeah That's the kind of thing again imagine If you know I don't know uh Elon Musk Was to say I am going to spend 1.1 Billion Elon are you listening yeah and Then we could get we could save 200 000 Every year yeah Facing achievement and again this is Something it's fun to set up some Crowdfunding projects for some of these Things you know because it'd be Interesting I was thinking about Taxation the other night and Taxation is Well people take your money and then They do with it what they want and you Might say well we have to have taxes and I really wonder I wonder if you put Forward a sufficiently attractive Proposal and ask people if they would be Willing to donate if you could raise Enough money to do these sorts of things Without compulsion you know if the story
Was set up right this isn't tremendously Expensive and besides you wouldn't have To raise all the money to start doing it And so wow so that's something very very Much worth thinking through okay so That's number six right malaria anything Else on the malarial front no okay What's number seven so uh uh chronic Diseases or what's known as Non-communicable diseases so you know in Days have passed almost everyone died From infectious disease chronic disease Is actually only something you die of if You don't die from infectious disease Anymore right it's something you die of When you get old mostly uh and so it's Something we should actually be happy About most of the world now dies from uh Chronic disease not from that's the Definition of human progress it is you Know later death so if you think about It we're very worried about the fact That more and more people were dying From cancer more and more people who Were dying from heart disease right Cardiovascular disease uh and the world And we thought oh my god there must be Something in the environment right stuff Like that no we're just living long Enough to have it yes exactly we've Stopped dying from infectious disease And this is even true in the low and Low Middle income countries now uh we're Seeing the the uh you know people live
Longer and longer and now they will die From chronic disease so we need to start Having a conversation about can we do Something about that so we work with one Of the big teams from the John Hopkins University who've actually done all These studies and all of these things And so they gave us a very very long List of the stuff that you can do and Some of them are really really uh cost Effective I'm just going to tell you about two of Them uh because there's a lot of them And most of them are fairly small one of Them is that a lot of people live with Heart failure so it kills about uh yeah Probably 350 000 people uh a year that We could avoid uh from heart failure It's basically the fact that you're uh That your heart is tired yeah uh and it Can't pump enough uh and it causes you Exhaustion you you get out of breath and Eventually it means to you that you Limit your movements you don't become as Productive you have a bad life yeah um And one of the simple ways you can do Something about that is give people Diuretics uh so basically P more they Get rid of some of their water it means That they become there is less that the Heart has to pump out to uh and so it's Simply it's a very cheap way of making Sure that people can live longer now They will still die eventually from this
But on average we can save about 350 000 People uh every year And they will live about six years Longer this is very different from Malaria which is very much about young Kids uh this is mostly older people that You can help so that's one way it has Benefit cost ratio of 41. uh the other Thing and this has become very prevalent In all of the rich world is tackling People's high blood pressure so the Biggest killer in the world is Cardiovascular disease so that basically Heart disease and stuff that's related To the blood vessels Um And much of this is due to high blood Pressure we have very very cheap Medication a lot of people in the rich World are in heart medication uh uh Sorry are in the blood pressure uh Hypertension yeah uh Medicaid I am uh And and you know it has some cost you Need to screen people you need to have The doctor decide uh which pills are you Going to get you need to go back and Check whether they work uh once or twice A year and obviously you can do some of This cheaper so we're looking a lot of On replacing the doctor with nurses yeah Right and that kind of stuff and you Also need to decide what kind of drugs Do you need some of them are very cheap Some are not quite as cheap if you do
The whole math you can probably save Again about almost a million people uh Every year at a benefit cost of about 16. so again a very good investment you Can do a lot of good for these things But and they have there's more as a as a Steve Jobs used to say Um there's also uh looking at some of These things that kill us some most so That would be tobacco alcohol Trans fat and salt we know these things Are bad for you some of these things are Hard to do something about but some of Them are very easy to do something about So for instance tobacco yeah you can Just simply put and well Health Organization estimate we should have a Tax that make them four times as Expensive cigarettes as the production Costs yeah Um that's sort of a Target yeah well I'm I'm not much for top-down government Intervention but the fact that since I've been Young Smoking has just about disappeared in Canada and I just can't see that as Anything but a fundamental social good Exactly so what we look at is the cost Of doing that is you know natural Negligible uh yeah it's just a changing Of some uh some laws and then you need a Little bit of enforcement but the real Cost is the fact that there's a lot of Smokers who will now not be able to
Smoke and they will have you know They're losing a benefit they clearly Like to be able to smoke yeah but that Benefit is bad outweighed by both the Health benefits that they will get but Also as you point out all the younger Generations who then won't be able to Who won't take up smoking because it's So damn expensive so fundamentally what We find is that having a a tobacco tax Uh generates a benefit of about 105. so A really really good investment and Again it can save about a couple hundred Thousand uh people from dying uh Likewise with uh alcohol alcohol has all Kinds of bad effects people clearly like It so you also need to take that into Account the cause of and solution to all The world's problems according to Homer Simpsons okay there you go uh and and You know but but it creates a lot of Accidents it create a lot of violence uh And and You also get people who commit suicide Because of this it has a lot of diseases And a little bit like secondhand smoking It also negatively affects a lot of Other people because you know it leads To spousal abuse and child abuse and Contributed to cancer especially with Smoking yeah so so there are lots of Reasons why we want to regulate again uh You can both regulate it through Advertising uh so you can't advertise in
Certain shows and that kind of stuff and Also through just simply High attack Taxation those things we estimate in Total if you add up all of this will Cost about 4.4 billion dollars but it'll Save one and a half million lives every Year again this is just one of those Things it'll it'll generate benefits of 23 dollars back on every dollar it's not The very very best thing this is still 23 to one return it's an amazing uh Return this is one of the things we Should be doing I mean people are happy When they can invest their money and get A one in 20 return this is a 23 to 1 Return that's 400 times better and yeah And it's not at the top of your list all Right number eight so land tenure Security this is something that most People have noticed no no if you buy an Apartment or a house in the rich world Yeah you own it yeah strangely enough Yes that's really really nice it means When you put in a new kitchen you know It'll be nice for you and eventually It'll increase the sales value yeah now In most of developing countries you Don't know if you own stuff yeah because There's really bad registration Or Hernando uh Commander DeSoto De Soto Yeah yeah he laid that out very nicely About 20 years ago exactly he points out This and and I'm I'm starting to talk About owning a house or or an apartment
Because that's what we understand in the Rich world but of course for the vast Majority of people in the poor part of The world it's about owning your land Yes exactly a place where you're going To be farming you don't know if you own This you have really bad cadastral Surveys and you have uh you know these These uh different scripts typically in Different parts of the government that Tells you maybe you own it maybe this Other guy owns it and there's a no clear Title yes yeah well the thing is owner There is no difference between ownership And title right you own something Insofar as no one else can stake a claim To it and so if the title is unclear Because you kind of think of ownership As something like physical presence it's Not that it's Undisputed it's Undisputed Sovereignty over that territory and a Lot of that has to do with the Conceptual web the paperwork has to be Done properly the titles have to be Transferred uh the the I know this DeSoto was so interesting he took out His teams of economists into the field Into these uh tent cities you know these Burials essentially because so many People have migrated into cities and all These people who were in these tent Cities Um squatters so to speak had land But of course the boundaries weren't set
And they didn't have title and so they Couldn't raise a mortgage so one of the Things DeSoto did because almost all the People that they were studying had dogs And the dogs knew where the boundaries Were because dogs know those sorts of Things and they negotiate with other Dogs about it quite intensely and other People and so one of the things they Used to demarcate territory to start the Process of title registration going so Because the thing is if you're squatting On a piece of land in an urban area You're actually not poor you just can't Capitalize on what you own just and most Many many people start their small Business by getting a second loan on Their on their property and so you can Start capitalizing what you own can't do That without title so no exactly so what We're looking at is that most places in The developing World lack cadastral Surveys is it's basically that you have A list of everything of all land in your Nation yeah and who does that belong to So yeah right unless you have that list You you can't write the names in front Of them right so you can't tax Effectively then either neither that uh But but mostly you just don't know who Owns what yeah so you need to have these Surveys done they're called catastrous Service and you also need to have Effective registration which is somewhat
Expensive what happens when you do this And and you're absolutely right one of The things and that was kind of DeSoto He basically said this means that There's a lot of debt Capital you can't Raise yes yeah he was talking about 10 Trillion dollars that the poor can't use As collateral for making a loan that Could actually help them start a Business and they're also not motivated To do improvements on their property Because there's no evidence that they'll Only improve if if you own this if you Don't know if you own the land you're Likely to not plant something that'll Only give fruit in say five or ten years Because you don't know if you're gonna Own it you're not going to take out all The stones because that'll only really Be a benefit in the next 30 Years yeah So you're not going to improve it as Much who will improve it somewhat but Just not nearly as much and of course if You own don't know if you own the house In the city so about a fifth of all People in the developing world uh Believe that over the next five years They'll be evicted from where they live Right now yeah that's right that's right That's terrible terrible thing to have Hanging over your head and it certainly Affects your unbelievably demoralizing Exactly right and anxiety provoking so What we're trying to do is to basically
Set up the system so that it's more Secure uh and what you do is then you Have the surveys you you start working With all these different uh uh people Who might have claims remember yeah once You start this process of saying who Actually owns this bit of land you will Get a lot of dissatisfaction yeah Because people say no I own it I own and And then you need some sort of conflict Resolution some of it can be dealt on The local level you'll also need a lot More uh uh uh Court ability so yeah Access to courts yeah so many developing Countries uh uh it's already taking up a Third or a half of all all uh civil Legisl uh uh uh litigation litigation uh Uh that is land litigation uh and this Will uh you know balloon certainly in The first couple of years so that you do This the benefits so that is those are Real costs yeah but the benefit Will be that you will be able to have Much more productive land yeah so what We're finding is on on agricultural side You will basically have 15 higher Productivity that's amazing opportunity Uh for for people in the land area now This will also be fairly expensive so we Estimate the benefit cost ratio is about 18 for cities because it costs less There's less land to a document there's Many more people in there and the values Are typically higher there it simply
Means when we know this from a lot of Studies it simply means that your house Or your uh your apartment becomes a lot More worth and right simply because you Now know that you own it people are Willing to pay more for it so it's about Well any uncertainty about ownership Will reduce the value of Any Given piece Of property to almost zero yes so the Total cost is about 2.2 billion dollars A year and the net benefit sorry the Benefit is about 49 billion dollars in Increased productivity and Agriculture And increased value in cities right so As you pointed out you're going to have A substance will increase in people's Feeling of security as well well not Just feeling of security actual security Because they're not likely to be evicted In the same way but of course economists Would tend to say that's exactly what's Reflected in the price sure sure and so We we we would tend to say we've said That but absolutely you're right that it Probably means a lot more that you are Actually able to start doing all kinds Of other things yeah well you'll take Risks because well one of the things That stops people from taking risk is The degree of risk they're already Exposed to so because people can Tolerate a certain amount of uncertainty But but um and also remember we're we're Just looking at what we know works so we
Know that there's good evidence that if You know you're only allowance look if You know you own the land you will be 15 More productive yeah but chances are you Will also take out a second loan you'll Start a little business you'll do all These other things they'll actually make Your whole life much much better but so All of the stuff that I'm telling you Now is probably very conservative yeah Well that's another thing I really like About your approach is that you you you Don't go out into the derivative end of Economic projection right you're staying Fairly close to the to the direct Consequences and also you know look These are so good things we don't need To saturate them and and also and and I Think this is important for the whole Project you asked me early on uh you Know why should we why should we believe This you know yes these are uh people From some really really good Universities and so on but it's also Because we don't have a stake in any of This honestly I don't right I don't care What is the best outcomes you know I'm Looking at it and saying all right this This was what came out of it uh it could Have been other things I'm I'm not an Advocate for any one of these things Yeah except for the fact that the Evidence shows us this is an incredibly Good thing well you can tell that as
Well and so another one of the things I Liked about your approach is that There's no acts being ground and the Evidence for that is well there's no Bias in terms of the selection of the Domains that you're attempting to make Progress on I mean uh land surveys and The provision of prenatal and natal care To women aren't in the same bin and so There's there's no implicit or explicit Agenda happening here except the ones we Already laid out which is something like Most amount of good done for the least You know the least uh the least Privileged people at the lowest possible Cost you have to accept that as a Reasonable framework to begin with and You can debate about that but once Having done that I do think you end up With the kind of outcomes that you've Been describing so we're going to move On to uh I believe it's Issue Number Nine now I'm hoping you keep I I do Believe it's Issue Number Nine and so so What are we what are we confronting on That front so trade trade is one of Those things that a lot of economists Tell you are really really good uh it's It's an obvious thing if you think about It we talked about the uh you know Making your own toaster before yeah if You have to do everything yourself You're really bad at all of them and you Don't get a lot make your own computer
Chip yes that's probably that's not a Good idea yeah uh and and and so what we Have basically achieved is one of the Reasons why we're so rich is that Everyone does what they do best yeah That's Nations and individuals and Companies and then we trade among each Others uh so I do a tiny bit High Hopefully pretty well and then I get Everyone else to do you know my Mountain Dew and all the other important things In my life uh and and that's how we all Work and that's great that really makes Us all much more effective we should Have a lot of trouble it's also a way of Addressing inequality you know in some Fundamental sense because if we set up a Landscape where each person can operate At their highest level of expertise well That's pretty good deal for them but It's and it means that the largest and Most diverse possible number of people Can play the game successfully it's an Interesting way of looking at inequality Because you might think well everyone Should contribute the same thing but That's this is a way of doing that at a Meta level it's like no you you should Be encouraged to contribute where you Can contribute best even by your own Standards where you have real expertise And it's a very rare person you find I Have a lot of very very impaired people In my clinical practice you know who are
Having a struggle in the broader Economic Market but it's almost Impossible to find someone who doesn't Have something that they can offer That's of real practical utility on some Dimension and and then a free trade Landscape opens up all these different Niches so that people can occupy them Regardless of their underlying skills And talents let's say so I would tend to Agree with you I think we should Recognize the fact that you know when When when trade opened up and we got Industrialization in the rich world it Was basically we took off and the rest Of the world didn't that's one of the Reasons why we have we've had a very Very unequal world for quite a while now What's happening is that a lot of the Poorer world is catching up yeah and and That actually means that uh inequality As dramatically dropped uh at least Since 2000 a large part of that of Course is China also some of it because Yeah yeah and that's bringing up the Bottoman absolutely so this is this is Good uh but but you know there is an Argument and that's one of the reasons Why I think inequality is somewhat of uh Of a slippery slope yeah inequality is Not by itself uh an amazing achievement Because one of the simplest ways to make Sure you don't have inequalities by Making everyone poor yes and communist
Approach and that's not a you know not Necessary most people wouldn't see that As a great outcome right uh and and so What we have to make sure is that Everybody can participate in this and One of the problems that have happened So we used to be very focused on saying We should have more uh trade that's a Good thing it actually means that we all Become richer uh but as we increasingly Realized uh you know with the battle Through Seattle back in was it 1999 and You know the whole uh the whole uh doh Around and essentially the breakdown in More uh free trade agreements was that a Lot of people realized but there are Also negative impacts from trade and That's absolutely true if you have trade And if you have more trade it means if You work in an area where you're not Quite as good as the guys who are Trading yeah you will see your salary Drop or you will possibly yeah or or if You're facing corrupt uh corrupt Competition I mean this is partly what Happened to the working class in the Let's say outside of China is that the Chinese were very efficient at providing Low-cost labor but there was also no Shortage of corruption in that and Unfortunately the people who paid the Highest price for that were working Class people in the west now they got Cheaper goods and the Chinese weren't
Starving and were much less likely to Propose a geopolitical danger as a Consequence of that but it was still Fell disproportionately on their backs And and this is you know sort of the Rust Belt of the US and many other Places some of it may be unreasonable And part of China but I think it was Also just inevitable that if you open up For a wide range of things that you can Do much cheaper in China and yeah Vietnam and many other places uh you Will see some people who will actually See their pay go down Economists were very bad at doing that And I I've been partially uh guilty of That we would just say oh everybody gets Much richer yeah which is not quite true A lot of people get a lot richer most People probably in the long run get Better off yeah but there are some People who are very clearly in the short And medium term not better off yeah and We need to say that so we've actually Done I'm very excited about this Particular paper We've done probably the first paper that Actually tries to look at both the cost And the benefits of free trade yeah uh We've done it with a standard uh uh uh Free trade model uh We've we we're not Looking at particularly how do you Increase trade we just simply say let's Assume we increase trade by five percent
You could do that through a Free Trade Agreement you could do it by making a Transportation cheaper so that more People will want to uh transport you Could have lower tariffs there's a lot Of different ways you can do it we're Not talking about that we're simply Saying let's look at the case of us Having five percent more trade what Would that do what are the costs what Are the benefits and it turns out that Not surprisingly overall we'd be much Better off uh the world would be about 11 trillion dollars better off over the Next 50 years but There's a cost of about a trillion Dollars and that's the cost of all the People who work in import exposed right Industries so you know essentially think Of and this is obviously an old term uh Term thinking but think of the people Who work in t-shirt sewing Industries in Rich countries yeah yeah they're not Going to have a job in five or ten years If you open up for trade now eventually They'll be doing other works and I I Think there are very few people who sit Around and feel like I really missed out On that uh you know t-shirt sewing Opportunity right yeah so overall in the Long run we all get better off but there Are certainly losses those losses are Mostly in the rich world because and This is when you think about it it's not
Surprising because they have to where Yeah that's where you were least Effective at doing the stuff that poor Countries do really effectively right Right and and so what we see is that in The rich world the benefit cost ratio of Free trade or or trade is only seven to One so you get seven dollars back you Get free cheaper and are Goods in Walmart but yes some people also lose Out and those people of course lose out In a much bigger way yeah they're the Ones who are going to be shouting at the Politicians and likely make the Politicians say ah maybe we don't want Voting for Donald Trump exactly whereas In the poorer part of the world the Benefits vastly outweigh the costs so We're we're estimating uh the the costs Of free trade is about 1.7 billion Dollars a year that's not nothing but The benefits is 166 billion dollars wow So the benefits and this is in the Bottom half of the of the bottom half of The world yeah 95 to one wow so again It's rich people who are saying oh maybe We shouldn't have so much free trade Although it actually helps everyone it's The poorest of the rich people who are Most charged by that right which is not A trivial problem I get that and we Should certainly address that and we Should also recognize that even in the Rich world we get seven dollars back for
Every dollar how is this best to it how Do you best address the problem of the Poorest strata in the rich World bearing The brunt of the free trade problem well So I think first of all you need to Recognize yes yes and then you also Should say we should have much better Re-education so these these guys should Have the opportunity first of all you Know I come from you know a rich welfare Estates where we would take care of These people we would fund them for many Years and say you know you you can get Unemployment insurance for quite a while Uh you you will get a re-education you Can do all kinds of other things so Access to retraining yes and Re-education sorry that sounds like it Yeah yeah So more secondary education more Education uh that you would get all Those things that would enable you to Now get another job and of course what One things that can happen is that you Actually realize oh I actually really Like doing something else you know right Stuck in one place and and so this could Also be an opportunity again that's hard Sell rated yeah well you know why I Developed this software to help people Develop a vision for their life you know So what they do it's a prioritization Exercise that's again in some ways it's It's very it's a very it's a very good
Thing for people to do and we had the we Had students I'll just tell you one Study they went to a trade school a Mohawk College in Ontario and they sat Down and wrote out a vision for their Life on seven dimensions and so that was The dimensions are intimate relationship Family uh Job and Career Education Personal uh self-care on the medical and And and uh psychological front Regulation of Temptation like alcohol And drug abuse and use of time outside Of work right so now imagine you could Have what you wanted Now you could have it in those seven Domains Um five years down the road how would You strategize towards that so we had Students do this for 90 minutes when They first came into their orientation Session before they went to trade school Or at night they wrote for 90 minutes About what they've done in the last two Weeks and we decreased the dropout rate 50 percent and so for a 10 intervention By the way and uh in other studies we'd Increase the GPA 35 but what was really Cool was that the biggest increases were Among the most disaffected populations So the biggest effect was for minority Men and it was for minority men who had A bad academic record who didn't have Well-formulated plans about what they Were going to college for and so the
Reason I'm bringing that up is because In these one of the ways of addressing These problems of a transition let's say An entry-level economic jobs that would Be displaced would be also to retool the Way that we handle those situations Psychologically so that people could see An expanding Horizon of opportunity Instead of just what would you say the Forcible removal of their one source of Income now it's not an easy thing to do But it's not impossible and I've worked With lots of clinical clients who had to Make you know lateral job Transitions And if they could get their attitude Properly oriented and with a bit of luck They could take the opportunity to raise Themselves up the economic hierarchy Instead of merely suffering as a Consequence of the displacement so these Things aren't impossible so so that's Part of what we need to do yeah maybe we Should have that in our yeah yeah but Then we have 13 and that doesn't sound Good yeah yeah right right right right We'd have to add an addition yeah okay So so so but basically increase trade Yeah you will have huge impact uh for The poor part of the world and we could Do this also well for the rich part of The world okay so absolutely okay um so This is so that was what was this while We're on ten now all right ten so 10 is Skilled migration so economists like to
Say we should have free trade so we Should have movement of goods yeah but We should also have movement of people And this will have a lot more of sort of A political Dimension yeah feel somewhat Uncomfortable about some of these things But let me just give you the economic Argument first so a lot of economists Will tell you and I think there's some Value to this point uh if you look at For instance people who work in McDonald's they have a very very set Setup of how should you work yet a Person who works in McDonald in Nigeria Makes about 1 15 of what the same person With the same skills get in the U.S this Is simply a question of saying if you Live in a country true where you're Surrounded by a lot of other really Highly productive people you are also More productive and so what happens is If you take a person who has grown up in Say Nigeria and we've done we've looked At those kinds of cases uh that have Have had Nigerian education and then Moved to the U.S they have about five Times as much as high an income as if They'd stayed back in in yeah simply Because they're more productive uh they Still have have had a pretty bad Education which is why they don't get 15 Times as much but they get much higher Productivity so economists would tend to Say
Why don't we let everyone move right now If you did that so there's surveys for Instance Bangladesh they asked young People uh if you could would you like to Move to another country right uh 92 say They would like to at least try now a Lot of people would probably return Because they also you know there's Something about your home country and All that kind of stuff but yeah a lot of People would want to move Uh economists will tell you there are Trillions of dollars to be to be had out There so they're talking about you know If you just let out you know let Everyone move it turns out that the Model showed that about 2.4 billion People would move to the rich countries Of workers that's you know like five Times as many four times as many as what We have of all workers in the rich Countries so from an economist point of View you just say oh they become more You know uh uh productive I think it's Leaving out some really really big Things like like the carrying capacity For transformation in the countries Imagine just you know building the Houses and all that yeah it's just I I think it's slightly a one of those Uh uh castles in the air that academics Are very good at doing yeah I think There's some point to that making making In this so you know uh uh Tom shelling
Uh one of the Nobel laureates I used to Work with he's unfortunately dead now uh He would usually say well if if we could Imagine uh if we worry about poverty in The in the poor World imagine if you Could move a large portion of these People from the poor world to the rich World and make them Rich that would be Good wouldn't it and yes it would be Good but but not if it means that it Will make everyone in the rich world Really really annoyed for instance Because it actually will reduce their Pay many other things so yeah look this Is not going to happen but what could Happen that's what that's the proposal That we're looking at is skilled Migration so Canada for instance Actually Embraces the idea of bringing In skilled migrants because it's a great Way for Canada to uh to become richer But there's a uh many places there's a Lack of of Engineers and doctors and so We look at that now remember if you move These people from poor countries Actually means that the poor countries Will lose out yes yes they will have What what people sort of uh uh tend to Call uh brain drain yeah but we actually Find them that's also what most of the Literature finds is if you move them They will also send more yeah we really Saw this in with Indians in Silicon Valley right because there was a
Tremendous brain drain from India Especially from the Indian Institute of Technology to Silicon Valley but man They dumped billions of dollars back Into India and generated a whole I.T Industry there that's just like killing It that's a great that's a great example Yeah yeah and so we actually estimate This will even be beneficial for the Poor countries so the sender countries But of course this will mostly be Beneficial for those people who are Moving to the rich world and it will be Beneficial also for the rich world but Because these are poor people we're Basically making poor people anybody any Sense of how you prioritize what skills Should be required so is that a nation To Nation no we looked at a lot of Different uh interventions and only Doctors and Engineers will have such a Great uh differential that it actually Pays more than fifteen dollars back in College I see because if you move you Know your uh uh your McDonald's worker You will get benefit but not just nearly As much and there's also a number of Costs there so What you're doing is you're maximizing The ability of the most in-demand Productive people to move and your sense Is that will be a benefit to them but Also to to the countries that they've Left behind and uh yes and also to the
Countries that they move yes of course And we're only saying 10 more than what You already have so right a country that Has a lot we'll take in a little more Countries have almost no will take 10 More of that almost so so basically what It is it's a more intelligent Immigration it's a politically feasible Thing to do yeah yeah and it turns out That it'll cost about 2.8 billion Dollars but it'll generate about 50 Billion dollars in benefits mostly to These poor uh people who are now moving To uh uh uh rich countries and becoming More uh productive but also because They'll be sending back money and Helping generate more education and more Uh investing and as you pointed out and We're investing in in local uh Businesses right back where they came From right so overall it's a good idea It's not know it's it's about 20 back on The dollar so it's a good idea it's not The best thing yeah we should do all That again it's number ten again well Well uh so so um uh so we should also Talk about one other infectious disease So we talked about malaria okay uh but Tuberculosis side shoot or is this Number 11 no this is 11. okay it's 11. Uh well if we're counting yeah at some Point we need to go back and make sure Because we're not quite sure what the 12th is but we'll figure that out uh but
You know 11th uh tuberculosis and again There's no point we're not making a list Of priorities we're saying all 12 are Amazing yeah so uh uh uh okay so they're Not necessarily rank ordered they're not 12. they're not okay okay no and that And that's crucial for us because we're Not usually we we we would have rank Ordered yeah but these are so cheap and So good that we should just do them Their rank ordered sort of if you will Compared to everything else yeah okay Okay we're simply saying let's do those 12. so so that's also why so that would Be like advice to any national Government do at least one of these Things Twelve yeah exactly so number 11 is Tuberculosis uh so tuberculosis is a Huge disease it's killed over the last 200 years about a billion people yeah uh You know if you think back in the 1800s Pretty much anyone you know from the 1800s probably died from tuberculosis About a fourth of all death was due to Tuberculosis and all the you know the People who died before that time Typically tuberculosis uh it's a very City oriented uh disease so we've known It throughout human history but it was Really only when people got together in Big cities you need a lot of people Together in in in pretty dense areas for Tuberculosis is really to get going so
It happened you know around 1600 uh in European cities we had a little bit of It in Rome and Rome back in in ancient Times but this was really something that Came to the fore in 16 1700. so in in 17 In 1800 in London for instance Um about one of every hundred people Died every year from tuberculosis so More people died from tuberculosis in The 1800 then died from all diseases Today in London uh you know it's just Outstanding how many how much this is Now what basically fixed it was we got An antibiotics we know how to get rid of It so we got rid of it around 40s 50s so It basically drops down it dropped down Before because you got richer you'd uh When you when you're better fed you Don't get uh tuberculosis easily you Sent people off to sanatoria so uh we Think it didn't actually help very much But it got rid of them right so they Didn't infect someone else but we Basically got rid of tuberculosis yet is The world's leading infectious disease Killer so it kills some 1.4 1.5 million People it killed last year more people Than dying from covet so covet is Certainly outweighed it in 2020 and 2021 Not in 2022 and so Tuberculosis back as the leading Infectious disease killer yeah virtually Nobody cares about it because we don't Get it anymore it's just right poor
People it's marginalized people yeah uh And so in India in in uh when they uh Got independence in 1947 Um they realized that they had a huge uh Tuberculosis problem they had about half A million people dying from tuberculosis Every year last year India had about Half a million people dying from Tuberculosis now admittedly they've Grown to about four times the size so It's a relatively smaller problem but It's still a huge problem so we can save Most of these people by investing in two Things so it's basically about making Sure that we discover more of the Tuberculosis the big problem right now Is that we believe we don't know we Believe that about 10 or 11 million People get tuberculosis every year but We only diagnose about six of them so The rest of them are this untreated Reservoir now what happens is that when You have tuberculosis you'll typically Go to a doctor but it's also very uh Stigmatizing to have tuberculosis in Many places so you kind of go to the Doctor and you hope him to say oh no It's not tuberculosis right right if you Go to a private doctor you do that a lot In India and many other places the Doctor obviously has an incentive to Keep you happy so he will likely say no Don't worry take this drug this other Thing you know take this green powder
Whatever it is and so you don't get Treated and you know 45 of people who Remain untreated die from this so we Need to get more people identified you Do that by screening you need to do this In large proportions so these are very Marginalized people it would be people In slum cities yeah maybe people in Prisons and uh you know the the people Who do uh mining uh mining communities Those kinds of places where you screen People so in Bangladesh for instance we Work with uh Uh the world's biggest uh NGO that that Has you know more than a million workers There uh they would hire old women to Walk around and knock on people's doors And say has anyone been coughing a lot Lately uh and you know try to get them Involved and then try to get them tested And then you can get on treatment most Government actually offer this treatment For free but the problem is it takes six Months to get rid of tuberculosis and if You've ever gotten a medication for you Know you just have to take it for 14 Days you get better after what you know A week then it becomes hard to remember Yeah yeah and science is a huge problem If you have to do this for a half a year Yeah you're likely not to do it so what We're also saying is and and we're Working together in a way that'll Increase antibiotic resistance right
Absolutely and if you stop yeah yeah Very very bad and suddenly get a Situation where the it becomes a Resistant tuberculosis yeah and it Becomes much more costly and much harder To deal with and a much bigger Public Health threat absolutely so what you Need to do is to incentivize people one Of the ways is you know I have some sort Of Alcoholics Anonymous kind of way Unique once a week and say yeah proudly Yes I took all my yeah a tuberculosis Medication you can get an app uh you can Also have premiums you know you get like A juice box or something for every week Where you've done this uh where you've Taken your medication yeah and it seems A little weird to pay people to take Their medication because it's weird once You understand How likely it is that People won't be compliant no you know Because they deny they have the illness Or they're skeptical of the drugs or They forget because you do forget things You have to do every day unless it's Really instilled as a habit and so no Compliance is a major problem yeah and And and and remember if you have someone Who's untreated chances are that that Person every year will give on the Tuberculosis to somewhere between five And fifteen other people wow so you know By coughing so the the point is if we Can get that person to take his drugs or
Drugs it means Not only would that Person survive but he or she won't pass It on yeah and they won't be making this A multi-drug resistant tuberculosis Right so we estimate that you can do About 46 dollars of social good for Every dollar spent it'll cost 6.2 billion dollars but the benefit will Be and now I forget I have to look at my You know there's too many numbers in This project you said about 40 to 1. so The benefit won't be about 200 million Uh so so sorry yes that's because I Don't actually remember that number it's 600 000 people will save every uh every Year for this uh for this decade but as We get further in It's actually an Underestimate of how good it's going to Be because eventually we'll save almost Everyone we'll get tuberculosis down to Uh 100 200 right so it'd be nice to be Nice to Target that as a disease to Eradicate if that was possibility we've Eradicated smallpox and down here killed Off polio we eradicate a smallpox and That was amazing achievement we haven't Gotten rid of Poland no and it turns out It's really really hard to do these Things uh so so again we should probably Be careful about saying we'd love to Eradicate it turns out that that's very Hard uh smallpox only infects humans it Doesn't have a natural uh uh reservoir Uh as tuberculosis many other diseases
Happen Why it's much much harder to get rid of Right right so what we're looking at is Minimalizing minimizing it to the degree That that's possible so okay so why Don't you take a look at the list well I I remember it now because it's okay okay So number 12 is childhood vaccination uh So you know obviously we know that Vaccinations are incredibly good uh We've uh as you pointed out with Smallpox we've gotten rid of smallpox Smallpox was a reason why we started With vaccinations it was you know it it Probably from uh before 1900 we estimate That one in seven people of everyone Who's ever lived on the planet died from Smallpox uh and and and basically we got Rid of it it killed about 300 million in In the 20th century and then we got rid Of it last documented case was in 1978. This is an amazing achievement we Estimated Wuhan that's re-cooking it up that's True oh now you just left me with that Bad I didn't mention my uh anyway so so You know fundamentally if we hadn't Gotten rid of it we estimate that every Year we would have about 5 million People dying from smallpox that's just An incredible achievement we've gotten Rid of a lot of measles yeah so we give You know uh kids uh measles vaccinations By all means please get your measles
Vaccination there's a few people who Don't get it and that's a very bad idea It saves you know literally millions of Children's lives uh we have uh we have Pertussis and tetanus and we have lots Of other things that we're vaccinating Against we're increasingly starting to Vaccinate against a lot of other things That you probably haven't heard or maybe Haven't heard about wrote about viruses Oh so you know the major part of why a Lot of children get diarrhea if you get Rotavirus vaccinations you can actually Reduce the amount of diarrhea and also Reduce the number of kids that die great Investment we're also starting to Vaccinate against stuff that only Happens far into the future so uh for Instance hepatitis uh B uh that's not Something that kids die from now but if You're vaccine now it means they avoid Getting you know a chronic liver disease And eventually die from liver cancer When they become old if you vaccinate Against human papilloma virus HPV you Avoid especially girls getting cervical Cancer these are all great Investments And what we show is if you actually Spent an extra 1.7 million dollars this Is what Gabi as of the Global Alliance For a vaccine they're projecting that They could do more into the future so They're already vaccinating a lot of People uh
Billion or billion so Billy yeah it is It's not that cheap yeah but if you did That you could save an extra half a Million kids dying every year kids a few Uh old people as well right uh from from The uh Hepatitis B and so on so the the Point here being again you could get 48 Dollars back on each dollar spent Beauty of this is again is it's Something we know how to do it's not Rocket science it's very very simple to Do so again I've basically given you an Outline of 12 amazing things and these Are you know I I hope they're sort of Interesting stories and they sort of Give us a a both a perspective of how Far we've come but also how the poorest Part of the world still needs to come Further and you know how to do this for 35 billion dollars in total so it's 41 Billion but 6 billion is in consumer Costs so these are the costs of you know You you don't get to enjoy your tobacco Right that you need to go to a clinic And actually take a bus ticket but it's Not something we need public resources For 35 billion dollars and you could get Benefits so you could save 4.2 million People's lives every year that's across The 12. that's across the 12. yeah and You could get benefits and economic Benefits of 1.1 trillion dollars so That's about one dollar per person per Day in the core part of the world
For 35 billion dollars so again you know What I would love to see is that we Engage uh you know Global Affairs Canada That's not what it call anymore a usaid GIC the Japanese government but also all Governments in the world and all good People of Will and you know if there's Somebody out there listening who have a Billion dollars you know that's what you Should be spending your money yeah yeah Yeah that's the kind of thing where we Could make an incredible amount of Effort oh sorry an incredible amount of Impact at very low cost well you know There is obviously Um this hunger Perhaps more particular particularly in The developed World perhaps because People now have the luxury of Contemplating such things to be engaged In some Enterprise that is aimed at some Transcendent good let's say and like I See the climate apocalyptic Catastrophizing as a form of religious Striving I think it's Um Unsophisticated and ill-aimed and Contaminated with a fair bit of Malevolence but by the same token I see The reason that it's attractive to young People as we mentioned earlier is that There is some sense that well you should Atone for your privilege we are rich in The west and some of that's a
Consequence of our own uh diligence Driving forward but some of it's a Consequence of being arbitrarily born in A favorable place and so I think Everyone feels that there's something Morally incumbent upon them to return in Proportion to what they've received and Then that's channeled into a kind of Apocalyptic hysteria and that's Unfortunate and produces Kickback Effects that aren't good though I mean Correct me if you think I'm wrong but I Look at Germany now and I think well Look guys you're you're hyper concerned About the planet you've reduced that to Carbon you've put in place these Incredibly expensive energy proposals That have quintupled the cost of energy Roughly speaking Made it much more unreliable made Germany much more dependent on single Points failure like Russia for Distribution and Supply but worst of all Perhaps also increase the pollution That's produced by the energy generating Enterprises rather than made it better And that just seems like a really bad Strategy right it doesn't even succeed By the criteria laid down by the people Who are aiming at the outcome then I Look at your Strategy which is very low cost and I Think well here's a place where everyone Could have the opportunity to contribute
In a dozen ways all of which are I think Self-evidently good we could argue about The details of implementation and you Know you mentioned for example on the Immigration front that there are Political complexities that have to be Taken into account there but mostly your Propositions were well let's make our Immigration policy somewhat more Intelligent which is not that radical a Solution and I can't see why People couldn't be on board with this if If Well And I do think mostly it's ignorance That stopping it from happening right I Mean we've really only been wrestling With these large-scale Global problems Conceptually since probably what the Early 1960s it's only 60 years it's not That surprising we're not that good at It yet and so I also think it's another Thing I mean fundamentally what is it That you read about in the papers you Read about stuff that really seems scary Yes and and scary stuff is not that uh 1.5 million people die from tuberculosis Because because they did that for the Last 50 years yeah it doesn't seem like And oh it's not none I know of you know So it feels like it's far away and it's Not really it doesn't seem farther away Than climate change well but climate Change has this and and I think climate
Changes is one a very very prominent uh Uh sort of uh uh building block of the Same kind of thing it seems like this Could actually hit you and certainly Your children so it's being right and Weather is also local yes it's being Portrayed as something that is Negatively affecting you right here now And it could become the end of the world So you know uh and and look that makes Sense if if climate change or something Else really was the end of the world if It was media hurtling towards Earth that Would destroy us all in 10 years if we Don't do something about it we should do Nothing else than think about that Meteorite because nothing else would Matter I think a lot of people actually Think about climate in that and in that Way and if you do that it kind of makes Sense yes if you accept the apocalyptic Nature it's wrong because that's not What the U.N climate panel is telling us It is one of many problems that the World needs to fix and unfortunately it Turns out that most of the things that We can do as you pointed out uh you know In in Germany you end up spending an Enormous amount of money to do a little Bit of good well I would actually argue Certainly on the climate front they have Made it a little bit better but very Little better at very high cost uh and And and and the air pollution for a
Variety of reasons have come down and Almost all rich countries uh just simply Because of Regulation air pollution is Only weakly related uh to uh uh carbon Emissions fundamentally because you know It's about putting a catalytic converter On your car it's about making sure oh by The way that's not one we got right About not having diesel cars uh we Obviously switched to diesel cars Because we're worried about climate that Turned out to be a very bad deal you Know those kinds of things but Fundamentally I think it's not a it's Not a discussion between people who want To do stupid things versus people who Want to do good things it's more a Question people who want to do Spectacular things which often end up Being Fairly in effect ineffective that is They'll do very little good at really Really high cost remember changing the Entire energy system in order to help People a hundred years from now is not a Terribly effective way of helping Compared to something where you I don't Know give them a jab and then they don't Die or get them get the maternal uh uh The the pregnant moms uh uh uh uh Slightly uh more encompassing vitamin Pill those kinds of things they they Don't seem as as uh Majestic if you will Yeah but they just happen to be much
Much more effective and so again I I I Would love to see if we can't make it Such that the world can start be a Little more sort of I want to do Something that actually is really good Yeah rather than I want to be the guy Who stands up for the the thing that has The most media attention yeah I was very I was very curious so we had the sdg uh Uh uh so uh so every year in Denmark uh People meet with all the politics At one Island uh and it's a very fun Thing and there's lots of talks and all Kinds of things and you get to see you Know politicians right up close and the People you typically just see on TV and Stuff it's it's a very good sort of Setup one year it was on the sdgs and They actually invited me uh which a lot Of people got very annoyed about uh but You know so they they also had uh uh These uh 17 so there's 17 cross-cutting Goals for the sdgs and they're like no Hunger no disease you know uh better Employment no climate change that kind Of thing and then people could put in I Think it was Pebbles uh to show what They wanted There's like a little bit a little bit a Little bit climate Punk It was totally over Than ever so and I think you know it's a Niche issue you know I get it you know If you're rich you're not worried about
Tuberculosis you're not worried about Poverty you're not worried about and Then if you really think this is the end Of the world this is the thing that You're going to focus on I think so the Way I'm I'm looking at this is much more About saying look I get that there are All these things that you want to do and Surely climate is not the only thing and We need to make sure you have sort of an Adequate understanding of how bad it is It's a problem not the end of the world But surely we should also do something About uh you know uh corruption surely We should also do something about world Peace yeah surely we should do something About all these things then we also need To recognize we're not we're doing Really badly on both climate and on Corruption and on world peace and all These other things so we're fighting Against people's desire to make a Complex situation as simple as possible Yeah so you collapse it to a single Variable and then you have a single Pathway to moral virtue we're fighting Against the desire the narcissistic Desire for unearned moral virtue on that Front because then you can put yourself Forward as the let's say carbon dioxide Savior and you've done all the work We're fighting against the fact that Negative apocalyptic information Garners Disproportionate attention that's a deep
Psychological problem because we are Tilted more towards observing negative Information and you're trying to put Forward a positive View and that that That is a harder thing to to manage uh You have to tell a very good story in That case because you don't have that Immediate cachet of the apocalyptic Right and then we're also fighting Against the fact that To walk through the material that you Have been providing for us for example Today and this has been condensed a lot And it's taken decades to collapse it Basically took three hours and so that's You know that's more exposure to issues Of international governance likely that Most people get in their whole life Right well yeah well I know that people Think about political issues an average Of something approximating three minutes A week right because I mean people like You and I oh my God so we've just taken Up the whole the whole your whole Lifetime the whole lifetime of political Thought but but sorry guys people do Have a glancing familiarity with such Things partly because they're properly Concerned with the local domain but that Doesn't mean that I don't think that That means that there's any reason for Despair my sense is and and I think We've seen that in the collaborative Ventures that we've undertaken too is
That when you provide people with the Information there is incremental Movement towards appreciating it and so So so what do you see happening in the Media future you have this book coming Out tell us again what that is so the Book basically make this argument with All the wonderful graphs and you know I'm a statistician I think you know Those kinds of graphs where you see how We used to die a lot and now we die a Lot less but this is mostly for Sub-Saharan Africa and here's how you Can fix it those kinds of things great Stories uh I think you know a lot of People will like it and it'll make it Much easier to sort of get the idea of Saying this is where I really want to Spend my time and my effort in making The world a better place uh so that's Called uh best things first you're right It's coming out mid April the best Things first yes yep uh and and then I Think what will happen is because we're Asking for so little money yeah so 30 25 Billion on I can actually Envision so I Don't know if you remember Um uh somebody sort of suggested to Elon Musk that he could get rid of all a World hunger for six billion yeah it was Somewhat of a misinterpretation from the World food program uh and it turned out There was a lot less he basically said Hey guys if I can eradicate world hunger
For six billion dollars I'm willing to Do it show me how to do it yeah and then Turn it oh we can't quite do that uh and And you know I I I so I'm not gonna Offer Elon that deal because it's not Available we can't do something that Good but he could you know save uh you Know uh uh you know if he spent 1.1 Billion dollars a year on on malaria he Could save 200 000 people every year Right he could do all of these things And you know he could do any combination Of this and of course Elon Musk is just Sort of the most visible guy we need to Set up a reward program like the Nobel One for each of these 12 domains where There's one person a year working on Each of these 12 things who gets who Gets recognized you know because well I Mean these things it's it's it's good to Do good and it's good to reward people Who are doing good that helps to expand The story and it seems to me that Looking for Cardinal contributors on Each front I mean people are looking Especially people who've been hyper Fortunate they are often seriously Looking for a way to provide Compensation for their disproportionate Advantage I would say and to provide People with a pathway to that that was Real I should also just say this this Whole project is funded by The Gates Foundation uh and I also talked to Gates
Himself about this so you know he Clearly does a lot of these things and He will probably also want to contribute To this but there are lots of you know Uh very wealthy people but I think it Also it's incumbent in us we spend 175 Billion dollars on development Aid and a Lot of this goes to nice things but Honestly not nearly as effective things As what we're you know some of it goes To very very effective things we Shouldn't just just dismantled the whole Thing but a lot of it also goes to you Know uh and I've seen this in a lot of Developing countries where you know a Lot of rich people come down and say you Worry about the climate right we'd like To give you uh a place to you know uh uh Uh we'll uh collect the methane from Your local garbage dump and get you some Energy with that yeah and they're like Yeah that was not quite what we wanted But if you're going to give it right for Free we'll take it rather than say no Yeah uh but but the sense is this was Not what we would have chosen ourselves Yeah and I I think in some sense we have A a moral requirement to come out and Say maybe we should make sure we give The stuff do you think these 12 steps That you they you they fit into that Category these are these are programs That the developing countries would be Thrilled to participate in if it was on
The table again I think if you ask any One politician they would say some of These 12 and then some really dumb Things right so you know for instance in India uh uh one one thing that they love To do politicians is a Pharma loan Waivers so yeah basically they say you Know what you guys loaned a lot of money I'm gonna waver all of that we're just Gonna pay it off for you uh which is Obviously very popular and Incredibly Bad idea uh partly it's incredibly Costly for the government to pay off This yeah those loans because you now Know that the government will probably Do it next time you'll take a really bad Bad loans pleasure to punish the people Who actually paid the loans exactly and And the banks will increasingly not give Loans to smallhold Farmers because they Know that they're going to be forgiven But the government will be really late And paying it off so they'll actually Lose a lot of money so they have all Kinds of bad impacts so you know Politicians being politicians and I Understand they they want to get Reelected they'll also be doing some bad Bad proposal but they will also want to Embrace some of these great plans and we Should all as individuals say this is Some of the things so what do you think What do you think people who are Watching and listening apart from being
More generally informed about the fact That these options exist and also Hearing a narrative that isn't It sort of multi-dimensionally Apocalyptic which I think is quite Interesting well you're saying look Here's 12 Bins of serious problems these are Serious problems tuberculosis but They're not apocalyptic I don't know They're terrible right they're not right But you know you could you could but if You were also paranoid you could see Apocalyptic possibilities emerging from Them too like a really decent antibiotic Resistant tuberculosis would be quite The bloody catastrophe so I mean there Are places where positive feedback loops Could be developing on any of these Fronts so what what I'm pointing out is That there's many serious problems with I I would love for people to take uh Take away from from this conversation That if I want to be a good person these Are some of the 12. I'm you know just Pick one yeah and say you know whenever People uh uh you know next time say we Should do something about plastic straws In the ocean or yeah we should do Something about climate change Absolutely but we haven't been doing Very well on these things right I Actually have this really really simple Incredibly effective policy proposal
Shouldn't we do that first right right And you just have those argue the Argument is not to say no to everything Else yes just to say of all the things We can do shouldn't we do the very most Effective things first yeah and and so You ask me what's going to happen next So the UN is going to get together in September uh and uh and you know sort of Say yay we're halfway on our sustainable Development goals and then in a in a More a soft voice there I was going to Say and we're not doing very well right Uh and and so if we can get enough Attention to these 12 things and the Fact that this will cost about 35 Billion dollars a year I actually think And and remember it's actually uh as a Ramping up so it's about it it starts at 25 billion dollars and then 50 billion Dollars for for a variety of reasons so So yeah I actually think we could get Most governments on board for saying Yeah we're gonna promise us remember We've already promised all this Unrealistic stuff so why not also Promise this and giving up the Incremental cost is low I I think we Could actually get people to say come September we have badly screwed up all The promises that we've given the world Maybe we should just do this extra Little push 35 billion dollars and Actually do an amazing amount of good
More good than we've done in a very very Long time at very low cost and we know This is some of the most effective stuff We could possibly do in the world I Think the doable doesn't the doable Doesn't I like that that's the financial Times we didn't even think of that but Yeah it's it's a great you know a way of Saying let's do first thing best things First yeah I can't do my own yeah best Things first yeah well that seems like a Good principle all right Bjorn that was Great man so uh for all of you who've Been watching and listening uh your time And attention is much appreciated uh You'll have to take a take keep an eye Out for Bjorn's book best things first Mid April and then you'll have the Arguments at hand in in book form and That's always helpful Um and thank you to the Daily wire plus People for facilitating this Conversation to the film crew here in Calgary El Alberta that's where we Happen to be today Bjorn and I happen to Be in the same neck of the woods so That's good and we'll uh well we'll Continue our conversations as we move Forward we've got other things cooking On the International Development front Which I'm going to be talking about very Soon on this YouTube channel or may have Already come out before this does so Well I'm and I'm happy to do anything I
Can to facilitate communication about The doable dozen and best things first So good to talk to you today man Likewise yeah I'm actually writing in 35 papers around The world on all of these topics every So the financial Post in in Canada uh But you know the biggest daily in India And in Indonesia and many other places In the world and so you know we should Be sharing that every week yes Absolutely we'll do that that's the Short version of each one of these so 800 words uh you get the uh the uh yeah You said you've been getting a lot of Interest in newspapers in the poorest Half of the world because the they do See that the 12 proposals they probably Care about these right right right right Right yeah yeah well it's also necessary For us to do one thing maybe we can Close with this one thing that's really Disturbed me like truly Disturbed me in The last year has been this insistence This apparent neocolonial insistence on The part of wealthy people in the west That we just can't afford to have the Developed World strive to attain the Same levels of security and opportunity That we've reached in the west and first Of all I don't think there's any Empirical evidence for that I don't Think it's I think it's pretty damn weak Claim on the factual front given that if
You make people richer they start caring About the environment plus their Children like don't die and get to be Educated which seems to be a plus but It's also it's also morally Reprehensible I do not understand why we Think it's in our proper moral purview To be saying to people in the bottom Half of the developing world that you Know Well turns out if you industrialize There's some costs and the environment Bears some of those costs and well we Just don't think that you should do it And we're not going to help you do it And I don't see that as moral in the Least quite contrary it's terrible and And terrible you're absolutely right We're doing it again I understand this From the point of view if you really Believe the end of the world is nigh and You know global warming is the leading Issue yeah then it may make sense to say I'm sorry everyone has to just stay poor And actually I'd like to start that with Yourselves and and that's of course why This won't work because you can't even Convince your own countries to become Poor and you certainly can't convince The poor countries to say yeah sure We'll stay poor uh so it's not going to Happen but partly just simply making it A little harder for poor countries to Get out of poverty as as in my view Immoral yeah but you know yeah
Fundamentally we need to get people to Realize yes climate change is a real Problem but it's not this catastrophic End of the world this is there's nothing In the U.N climate panel the new reports That came out from 2021 2022 uh these You know 1600 Pages there's no Apocalypse Apocalypse in there yeah there is some Problems that we will face and most of These problems will be much alleviated By people not being in poverty right but You know if a hurricane hits uh if it Hits Florida yeah it costs a lot of Money but it basically don't kill very Many people if it hits in Guatemala the Same hurricane it'll kill lots of people And shut down the economy that's the Point of being richer yeah not poor that You're actually much more excited so so Again we need to get people to realize This is one of many problems and it's Unfortunately one of the places where You can spend a lot of money and Actually have very little impact whereas These 12 things you can spend little Money and have an enormous amount of Impact so again my point is not to say That we shouldn't spend money on all of These things and make sure that we try To work make a better world but all the Pet projects you want as long as you do The things that actually work first Right first yeah all right good hey
Thanks you bet man you bet yep yep well And again thanks for everyone watching And listening and uh well That's that guys and Um onward we go Thank you all Hello everyone I would encourage you to Continue listening to my conversation With my guests on dailywireplus.com
