In an ideal world, we solve all the world’s problems. But we don’t. And if we do not, the question we need to ask ourselves is, which ones should we solve first? If we had, say, $50 billion dollars to spend on doing some good in the world, where should we spend it?”
TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) is chock full of fascinating mini-speeches from prominent thinkers that come from all walks of life: scientists, artists, designers, technologists, businesspeople, clergy, you name it. The presentations are of a succinct and very watchable length (about 10 minutes long), but each one thoroughly develops and presents an idea that can somehow change the world, or at least reshape the paradigm through which we view it.
Today I viewed one of the best TED clips I’ve ever seen. In it, Bjorn Lomborg, a Danish political scientist, presents an economist’s approach to prioritizing the world’s most pressing and problematic issues. There are several we face today: widespread poverty and malnutrition, lack of sanitation, communicable diseases, social injustice, trade barriers and protectionism, corrupt and exploitative governments..the list goes on and on. The question we need to resolve is not which of these problems are most deserving of our attention (they all are, really), but which of them have have the most effective, feasible, and rewarding solutions when analyzed from a cost-benefit point of view.
The “big idea” in this episode is that despite the pervasiveness of some issues, like climate change, in political rhetoric and the media, the high cost of fixing them (hundreds of billions of dollars) and the relatively small effective reward or ROI of such resolutions (delaying temperature from rising for a few years) pale in comparison to the relatively low cost and huge social benefit of, say, initiatives to prevent AIDS or malaria. We can spend billions to help some people in the distant future a small amount, or we can spend less and help far more people who are suffering immensely, right now. From this perspective, the choice easy. He explains it better than I possibly could, so listen to the whole thing yourself. It’s definitely worth it.
