A measure of what no current global metric measures: the degree to which our civilization is allocating abundance toward the reduction of scarcity — or accelerating its amplification.
Ravinder Nath Bhalla, MD · Co-authored with Claude (Anthropic)
The Ratio That Shames Us
$2,890B
Military spending (2025)
$411B
End hunger + poverty
What it would cost to choose life
End hunger ($93B)3.2% of military
End extreme poverty ($318B)11.0% of military
End both ($411B)14.2% of military
What we choose to spend instead
Global gambling ($575B)More than ending both combined
Global advertising ($1,000B)Persuading ourselves to buy things
Global luxury goods ($1,660B)5× the cost of ending both
Ending hunger and extreme poverty together costs 14.2% of military spending. We wager more on chance ($575B) than it would cost to eliminate both. We spend a trillion dollars a year persuading ourselves to buy things. Luxury goods alone — $1.66 trillion — could end both five times over. For a median US earner, their share of ending extreme poverty is $135/year.
Six Dimensions
What the index measures — click to expand.
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Hunger & Sustenance
318 million face crisis hunger. Earth produces enough for 8.2 billion. Ending hunger costs $93B/yr — 3.2% of military spending, less than a sixth of what we wager annually.
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The world produces enough food for every person alive. The gap is not production — it is allocation. A scarcity orientation applied to an abundance reality.
$93B to address3.2% of military
🏚️
Extreme Poverty
533 million live below $2.15/day. Ending this costs $318B/yr — 0.3% of global GDP. Less than a third of what we spend on advertising. Less than a fifth of luxury goods.
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For a median US earner, their share is $135/year. Over 100 billionaires could each eliminate poverty in an entire country from investment earnings alone.
$318B to address11.0% of military
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Environmental Integrity
Species are going extinct at 1,000× the background rate. Coral reefs, aquifers, and biodiversity — four billion years of heritage — are being consumed in centuries.
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These are not resources being depleted. They are the evolutionary heritage being consumed. The double death: moral extinction preceding physical extinction.
⚖️
Inequity at Its Highest
The wealth gap widens with each technological revolution. Previous revolutions made tasks easier but did not improve self-care, connection, or equity.
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When a single individual's annual investment earnings could eliminate poverty in a country — and do not — that is not a failure of resources. It is a failure of values.
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War & Consequences
$2.89 trillion on military in 2025 — 11th consecutive year of growth. Ending hunger AND poverty together costs ~14% of that.
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A civilization that spends 20× more on the capacity to destroy than on the elimination of hunger has made a choice. The index makes that choice visible.
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Human Connection Deficit
60-70% of communication is non-verbal — tone, presence, the body's language. Screen-mediated interaction is displacing embodied connection at civilizational scale.
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The slow subjugation: not a catastrophe but a chronic erosion of the great reason's language, noticed only when the capacity to speak it has atrophied beyond recovery.
The Algorithm
Five principles for allocating abundance to reduce scarcity.
1
The Diversion Ratio
For every dollar invested in AI development, a calculated percentage is allocated to abundance dimensions — proportional to the ratios the index reveals.
2
The Child Test
Before any AI system is deployed at scale: what is the impact on a child who has no voice in the decision? If the deployment increases food prices, displaces workers, concentrates wealth, or degrades the environment — it is flagged and the cost must be offset.
3
Temporal Expansion
Every deployment evaluated at 1 year, 20 years, and 100 years. Long-term impact weighted more heavily than short-term — the inverse of current practice.
4
The Environmental Floor
No deployment whose net effect accelerates species extinction, aquifer depletion, or carbon concentration beyond thresholds may externalize those costs. The true cost made visible.
5
The Human Connection Audit
Every AI product mediating human communication is audited for its impact on embodied connection — the great reason's language. What it displaces is measured. A compensating investment is proposed.
Diversion Ratio Calculator
If the global AI industry generates ~$500B in annual revenue, what percentage diverted would fund abundance?
3.2%
End world hunger$93B — 18.6%
End extreme poverty$318B — 63.6%
End both$411B — 82.2%
For comparison — what we already spend
🎰 Global gambling$575B/yr
📺 Global advertising$1,000B/yr
💎 Global luxury goods$1,660B/yr
🔫 Global military$2,890B/yr
The Surcharge Mechanism
A surcharge on gambling, advertising, and luxury goods — three industries whose entire business model is the amplification of appetite — plus a token contribution from military budgets. No income taxes. No sacrifice. A surcharge on wanting what you do not need, to feed those who do not have what they need to survive.
Military contribution
0.01%
= $0.3B from $2,890B
Surcharge on gambling, advertising & luxury goods
12.7%
🎰 Gambling
$73.0B
📺 Advertising
$127.0B
💎 Luxury goods
$210.8B
Total generated
$411.1B
Target: $411B
✓ Hunger + poverty eliminated
At a 12.7% surcharge on three discretionary industries plus a 0.01% military contribution — a rounding error in the defense budget — hunger and extreme poverty are eliminated worldwide. No income taxes. No austerity. A surcharge on appetite to fund survival.
Beyond Binary
The Quantum Possibility
This algorithm is binary — rules, thresholds, ratios. It is the small reason's approach to a great reason's problem. Necessary but insufficient.
Can a machine be built that holds the child test, the environmental test, the evolutionary obligation, the long-term view, and the immediate human need in superposition — resolving them contextually, the way the body resolves its billions of simultaneous processes? That machine does not yet exist. Naming it is the first act of making it thinkable.