How Much Does It Cost to Buy All the Governments?

Website: https://manual.warondisease.org/knowledge/appendix/cost-of-change-analysis.html Abstract: What is the maximum cost to achieve any policy change through legal democratic channels? We estimate $25 billion for the United States and $200 billion globally. These figures represent the upper bound of matching all opposition spending (campaign finance, lobbying) and providing career alternatives for affected legislators. For high net-societal-value policies, even these maximum costs yield extraordinary returns: military-to-health reallocation achieves a benefit-cost ratio exceeding 400,000:1, carbon pricing exceeds 1,000:1, and occupational licensing reform exceeds 2,000:1. The "political impossibility" objection thus reduces to a capital allocation problem. Political change is not impossible; it is merely expensive, and for valuable reforms, the price is trivial relative to the benefits. At system scale, the Optimal Governance Trajectory reaches 56.7x (95% CI: 19.3x-304x) the Earth baseline after 20 years, raises average income to $1.16 million (95% CI: $395,118-$6.22 million) versus $20,483 on the status-quo path, reaches $10.7 quadrillion (95% CI: $3.64 quadrillion-$57.2 quadrillion) in total output, and recovers roughly $101 trillion (95% CI: $83.3 trillion-$191 trillion)/year in suppressed value ([The Political Dysfunction Tax](https://political-dysfunction-tax.warondisease.org)). Summary: What's the maximum cost to achieve any policy change through legal democratic channels? $25B for the US, $200B globally. For high-value reforms like military-to-health reallocation, this yields ROI exceeding 400,000:1.