In medicine, practitioners sometimes use the acronym MED, which stands for “minimum effective dose”. This is the smallest amount of a substance needed to provide a clinically significant response that is also statistically significant. Keep that term in mind for me.

In Mr. Arroyo’s paper, the number of people cited to be dying of hunger per day in his first source is 25,000, but I could not see how that source calculated this number. Checking the World Food Programme’s website, they did have some calculations, which suggested a daily number of hunger deaths between 8,000 and 19,000. [1]

This is still too many people dying of hunger, and a response is obviously urgently needed, but in contrast to Mr. Arroyo, I do not believe that shifting the world’s economy to communism from capitalism is the appropriate response. In fact, the countries which have the strongest market freedoms are not the ones that are starving.

Let’s take a look at where these hungry reside: Ethiopia, Somalia, Yemen, South Sudan, and Afghanistan.

What do these nations have in common? The inclusion of Yemen and Afghanistan tells us that it’s not an Africa problem. In fact, there are several countries in Sub-Saharan Africa that are not doing that badly, Botswana being a prime example, as was shown to me once in this (older) infographic. [2]

I’d like to share something with the reader called the “Index of Economic Freedom”, which ranks countries by 12 factors, which are broadly grouped into four categories [3]:

1. Rule of Law (property rights, judicial effectiveness, government integrity)

2. Government Size (tax burden, government spending, fiscal health)

3. Regulatory Efficiency (business freedom, labor freedom, monetary freedom)

4. Market Openness (trade freedom, investment freedom, financial freedom)

All countries were ranked on these 12 factors, and all countries were ranked in order, a straightforward numbered list from “best” to “worst”.

The countries at the top of this list all turned out to be countries where it is pretty nice to live, countries where people aren’t starving to death every day.

The reader may be surprised to find that the U.S. was not near the top of this list, was barely in the top septile, and was quite outclassed by the Nordic countries, which are often paradoxically paraded as socialist success stories. (The U.S. was ranked #25, while Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Norway were 9-12, respectively.) [4]

Where then, would we find our previously mentioned countries, the ones where the starving to death is happening? Well, out of 176 countries, Ethiopia was ranked #155, Sudan was ranked #173. Afghanistan, Somalia, and Yemen were so far removed from the above factors that there was not even enough data to rank them.

For this reason, in contrast to Mr. Arroyo, I would disagree that markets are the problem leading to poverty; I would suggest that they are more likely to be a solution.

But market development takes time – time that these dying people do not have, and time which we need to spend most effectively. Focusing our efforts on those smallest interventions (therefore to cause the least friction/resistance from those powers which could implement them, and also the least expensive) which would have the largest result would logically be the best course of action. What would these interventions be?

Well, in 2008, a group of Nobel-prize-winning economists were tasked with finding these “MED” approaches that would focus specifically on implementing what are referred to by the U.N. as the “SDGs”, or Sustainable Development Goals, prime among which was eradicating poverty and hunger. The question posed was: “Considering the world has finite resources, if an extra $75 billion were to be allocated for the SDGs, where would it be spent most effectively? Where would humanity get the best ‘bang for its buck’?”

These economists found an interesting solution: free vitamins. It turns out that most of these deaths of hunger were actually deaths of malnutrition, in particular Vitamin A, zinc, iodine, and iron. [5]  It’s not just a lack of calories that these victims of hunger are suffering from, it’s a lack of nutrients. More interestingly, these economists noted this simple intervention would actually have a significant return on investment (ROI): deficiencies in these vitamins and nutrients cause lack of development in the hippocampus, affecting these children’s future capacity to contribute effectively to the economy.

In more recent congregations of these economic experts, other suggestions included investment in agricultural research, and even an increase in food production (despite the global food surplus, extra is still needed to offset the  effects of climate change). They also suggest improving the economy by improving access to cell phones so these small-scale farmers have better access to markets to trade their products, and also buy cheap fertilizers, such as nitrogen, phosphate, and potash, and also significant public investment in producing local fertilizer plants, which could then sell fertilizer to farmers.

Another current solution comes again from the amazing technology of the cell phone. Reuters currently sends text messages to these small-scale farmers including growing advice, up-to-date and location-specific weather forecasts (!!), local price information, and information to access international commodities markets.

These economic interventions, some public and some private, could be considered the Minimum Effective Dose to both reduce death and improve cognitive function: two extremely Transhumanist goals – Transhumanist bang-for-your-buck.

One will note that we are gaining significant transhumanist benefits with an intervention that would cause much less friction (and is therefore more likely, and realistic) than overthrowing society, and which also carries much less risk.

Longevity and immortality are in our grasp, and it is true that the rich will first get these benefits. However, just like how in 1987’s Wall Street, even Gordon Gekko had a now-ridiculous-looking mini-TV accessible only to the ultra-wealthy, and how now even these poorest of the poor are benefiting from the rapid spread of the cell phone throughout global society, immortality technology will, too, spread to all who desire it, and if our goal is a humanitarian one, the MED is to bring markets to the countries that are starving.

Zach Richardson is the Director of Publication for the U.S. Transhumanist Party. Find out more about him here. 

[1] Action Against Hunger et al. “Humanitarian organisations estimate one person dying of hunger every four seconds”. September 20, 2022. https://reliefweb.int/report/world/humanitarian-organisations-estimate-one-person-dying-hunger-every-four-seconds

[2] “A Story of Two Neighbors: Botswana vs. Zimbabwe, Stats”. Reddit. March 31, 2018. https://www.reddit.com/r/Floathouse/comments/88gay9/a_story_of_two_neighbors_botswana_vs_zimbabwe/

[3] “The 12 Economic Freedoms: Policies for Lasting Progress and Prosperity”. The Heritage Foundation. 2023 Index of Economic Freedom. https://www.heritage.org/index/pdf/2023/book/02_2023_IndexofEconomicFreedom_12-ECONOMIC-FREEDOMS.pdf

[4] The Heritage Foundation. 2023 Index of Economic Freedom. Country Rankings. https://www.heritage.org/index/ranking

[5] Copenhagen Consensus 2008 – Results. https://www.copenhagenconsensus.com/sites/default/files/cc08_results_final_0.pdf

[6] “Third Copenhagen Consensus: Hunger and Malnutrition Assessment, Hoddinott Rosegrant Torero”. Copenhagen Consensus Center.  https://www.copenhagenconsensus.com/publication/third-copenhagen-consensus-hunger-and-malnutrition-assessment-hoddinott-rosegrant