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<!doctype html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
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<title>An open letter to whoever can end this — Abundance</title>
<meta name="description" content="The arithmetic says the world already produces enough for everyone. This is the short, cited letter that follows from it — addressed to anyone with the power to move resources. It costs less than you think, people exactly as capable as you have already done it, and a fairer world is measurably better even for the people at the top.">
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<div class="eyebrow">Abundance · an open letter</div>
<h1>To whoever can <em>end this.</em></h1>
<p class="lede">
Not a demand. Not an accusation. The main page does the arithmetic and
shows that the world already produces enough food, water, power, medicine,
and money for everyone alive. This is the short letter that follows from
it — addressed to anyone holding enough wealth or power to move some of it.
Including, if you are reading this, you.
</p>
<p class="small" style="margin-top: 8px;">
← <a href="index.html">Back to the arithmetic</a> · <a href="lang/es/letter.html">Español</a> · every claim below links to its source
</p>
</header>
<p class="small langnav" style="margin:14px 0 0;color:var(--fg-3)"><strong>English</strong> · <a href="lang/es/letter.html">Español</a> · <a href="lang/fr/letter.html">Français</a> · <a href="lang/pt/letter.html">Português</a> · <a href="lang/ar/letter.html">العربية</a> · <a href="lang/zh/letter.html">中文</a> · <a href="lang/hi/letter.html">हिन्दी</a></p>
<main>
<section>
<h2>1 · You were probably told the world is hard</h2>
<p>
That there is not enough to go around. That suffering is the unavoidable
cost of a world that works. That someone always has to lose. It is the
oldest story we tell, and it is the one thing the <a href="index.html">numbers
on the main page</a> contradict, line by line, with a citation under each:
the planet grows about <strong>1.4×</strong> the calories a person needs,
carries <strong>287×</strong> the renewable water, generates several times
the electricity, and produces roughly <strong>$13,000 of output per person
per year</strong> against an extreme-poverty line of about <strong>$3 a
day</strong>. The hunger, the thirst, the untreated illness — these are not
production failures. They are <em>distribution</em> outcomes. Which means
they were never laws of nature. They were always choices.
</p>
</section>
<section>
<h2>2 · It costs less than you have been told</h2>
<p>
The number that ends most of these conversations is "we can't afford it."
Here is the arithmetic, fully shown on the <a href="methodology.md">methodology
page</a>:
</p>
<blockquote>
Lifting every human on Earth to a $3/day floor would cost about
<strong>$8.98 trillion a year</strong> — 8.2% of world GDP. And that is the
expensive way to count it, because most poor people are not at zero. Paying
only the <em>gap</em> — the difference between what people have and the
line — costs well under <strong>$1 trillion a year</strong>: roughly a
single year's <em>increase</em> in global military spending.
</blockquote>
<p>
For scale: world military spending reached
<a href="https://www.sipri.org/publications/2025/sipri-fact-sheets/trends-world-military-expenditure-2024"><strong>$2.7 trillion</strong> in 2024</a>
(its tenth consecutive annual rise), and
<a href="https://www.ubs.com/global/en/media/display-page-ndp/en-20240710-gwr-2024.html">$213.8 trillion in wealth</a>
is held by the 58 million people worth more than a million dollars. Gabriel
Zucman's 2024 report for the G20 estimates that a
<a href="https://gabriel-zucman.eu/files/report-g20.pdf">2% minimum tax on
the world's ~3,000 billionaires</a> would raise $200–250 billion a year on
its own. The money to end the worst of it is not missing. It is parked.
</p>
<p>
And there is a quieter fact from economics: a dollar does not buy the same
amount of life everywhere. To someone living on $3 a day, an extra dollar is
medicine, a school day, a meal. To a billion-dollar balance sheet, the same
dollar is a rounding error. Moving it from where it does nothing to where it
does everything is not a loss. It is the highest-return transaction that
exists.
</p>
</section>
<section>
<h2>3 · You would not be the first — and the first are remembered</h2>
<p>
The most powerful argument is not a guilt trip. It is a guest list. Some of
the people most capable of keeping everything chose, instead, to give it to
the world — and history did not record them as fools. It recorded them as
the ones who got it right.
</p>
<h3>They sold the insulin patent for one dollar</h3>
<p>
In 1923 Frederick Banting, Charles Best, and James Collip each sold their
share of the insulin patent to the University of Toronto for <strong>$1</strong>,
so the hormone could not be monopolized and could be made widely under quality
control. (Honestly: the famous line "insulin belongs to the world" is almost
certainly apocryphal — trust the deed, not the quote. And the deed alone
didn't hold; a century on, insulin pricing is one of the cleanest cases of
<a href="index.html#card-insulin">manufactured scarcity</a> on the main page.
Giving the patent away mattered. It just wasn't enough by itself.)
</p>
<p class="src">Source: <a href="https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/insulin-patent-dollar/">Snopes — the $1 patent (and the apocryphal quote)</a> · <a href="https://bantinghousenhs.ca/insulin-patent-sold-for-1/">Banting House NHS</a></p>
<h3>"Could you patent the sun?"</h3>
<p>
On 12 April 1955, the day the polio vaccine was declared safe, Edward R.
Murrow asked Jonas Salk on CBS who owned the patent:
</p>
<blockquote>"Well, the people, I would say. There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?" — Jonas Salk</blockquote>
<p>
There was no patent, and the vaccine went to manufacturers without royalty.
(In fairness, the foundation's lawyers had already judged it likely
unpatentable — so the precise claim is "there was no patent," not "he locked
away a fortune and threw away the key." It is the sentiment that endured.)
</p>
<p class="src">Source: <a href="https://www.democracynow.org/2021/1/15/coronavirus_polio_vaccine_development_peter_salk">Democracy Now! — transcript of the Murrow exchange</a></p>
<h3>"The man who dies thus rich dies disgraced"</h3>
<p>
Andrew Carnegie wrote that in <em>The Gospel of Wealth</em> (1889), arguing
the rich are only trustees of their fortune; he then funded
<strong>2,509 public libraries</strong>. The caveat belongs right here, in
plain sight: three years later his manager broke the Homestead strike with
armed Pinkertons and gutted the union. Philanthropy is not absolution. But
the libraries are still open — and "dies disgraced" is the line history kept.
</p>
<p class="src">Source: <a href="https://www.carnegie.org/about/our-history/gospelofwealth/">Carnegie Corporation — The Gospel of Wealth (full text)</a></p>
<h3>He died with almost nothing, on purpose</h3>
<p>
Chuck Feeney gave away more than <strong>$8 billion</strong> through The
Atlantic Philanthropies — much of it anonymously — and died in 2023 having
kept only a modest amount for himself. His phrase for it was
<em>Giving While Living</em>:
</p>
<blockquote>"I cannot think of a more personally rewarding and appropriate use of wealth than to give while one is living." — Chuck Feeney</blockquote>
<p class="src">Source: <a href="https://www.atlanticphilanthropies.org/news/the-atlantic-philanthropies-community-mourn-the-loss-of-founder-charles-f-feeney">The Atlantic Philanthropies</a></p>
<h3>"Earth is now our only shareholder"</h3>
<p>
In September 2022 Yvon Chouinard gave away Patagonia — transferring the
company to a trust and a nonprofit so roughly $100 million a year in profit
funds climate work instead of enriching owners.
</p>
<blockquote>"Instead of extracting value from nature… we are using the wealth Patagonia creates to protect the source. We're making Earth our only shareholder." — Yvon Chouinard</blockquote>
<p>
(Candidly: the structure was also tax-efficient and the family kept board
control — but the profit really does leave the family, for the planet.)
</p>
<p class="src">Source: <a href="https://www.patagoniaworks.com/press/2022/9/14/patagonias-next-chapter-earth-is-now-our-only-shareholder">Patagonia Works — press release</a></p>
<p>
And you would not be alone. More than <strong>250 of the world's wealthiest
people</strong>, across 31 countries, have signed the
<a href="https://www.givingpledge.org/">Giving Pledge</a> to give away most of
their fortunes. (It's non-binding and self-reported, and several have grown
richer faster than they've given — so a signature is an intention, not a
delivery. Intentions still beat their absence, and a kept one beats everything.)
</p>
</section>
<section>
<h2>4 · A fairer world is better — for you too</h2>
<p>
This is the part that surprises people. Reducing the distance between the
top and the bottom does not only help the bottom. The evidence is that it
lifts the whole society, including the people at the top of it.
</p>
<h3>More equal places are better to live in — at every income</h3>
<p>
Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, comparing the richest two dozen countries
and the 50 US states (<em>The Spirit Level</em>, 2009), found that more
<em>unequal</em> rich societies do worse across the board — physical and
mental health, violence, imprisonment, social mobility — and that the harm
reaches up the income ladder, not just along the bottom of it:
</p>
<blockquote>"More unequal societies are bad for almost everyone within them — the well-off as well as the poor." — Wilkinson & Pickett</blockquote>
<p>
(Honestly: these are cross-country correlations, and critics argue they shift
with which countries you include. Treat it as a strong association, not proof.
It still points one way.)
</p>
<p class="src">Source: <a href="https://equalitytrust.org.uk/the-spirit-level/">The Equality Trust — The Spirit Level</a></p>
<h3>Past a point, more money stops buying much more life</h3>
<p>
A dollar is not worth the same to everyone. Layard, Mayraz and Nickell (2008),
across 50+ countries, estimated that each additional <em>percent</em> of income
adds about the same wellbeing regardless of where you start — which means a
dollar does vastly more good at $3 a day than on a billion-dollar balance
sheet. The money-and-happiness research (Kahneman & Deaton 2010;
Killingsworth 2021; their joint 2023 reconciliation) refined the old
"$75,000 plateau": money keeps helping, but with steeply diminishing returns.
The marginal dollar you would not notice is, somewhere else, a life.
</p>
<p class="src">Source: <a href="https://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/dp0784.pdf">Layard, Mayraz & Nickell (LSE CEP)</a> · <a href="https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1011492107">Kahneman & Deaton (PNAS)</a></p>
<h3>Inequality quietly corrodes the trust everyone lives on</h3>
<p>
Eric Uslaner found economic equality to be the single strongest predictor of
whether people trust one another at all; Oishi, Kesebir and Diener (2011)
found Americans were, on average, happier in the years when inequality was
lower — through perceived fairness and trust. Gated communities and private
security are what you buy when the shared fabric frays. A fairer society is a
less anxious one to be wealthy in.
</p>
<p class="src">Source: <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0956797611417262">Oishi, Kesebir & Diener (Psychological Science)</a> · <a href="http://gvptsites.umd.edu/uslaner/uslanermoralfoundations.pdf">Uslaner, The Moral Foundations of Trust</a></p>
<h3>The people who got there are already saying it</h3>
<p>
You don't have to take it from us. In 2011 Warren Buffett wrote that he paid a
lower federal tax rate — <strong>17.4%</strong> — than anyone else in his
office, and asked to be taxed more. Ahead of Davos 2024,
<strong>260 millionaires and billionaires</strong> from 17 countries signed an
open letter, <em>Proud to Pay More</em>:
</p>
<blockquote>"Our request is simple: we ask you to tax us, the very richest in society. This will not fundamentally alter our standard of living, nor deprive our children, nor harm our nations' economic growth." — Proud to Pay More (2024)</blockquote>
<p class="src">Source: <a href="https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2011/aug/18/warren-buffett/warren-buffett-says-super-rich-pay-lower-taxes-oth/">Buffett, "Stop Coddling the Super-Rich"</a> · <a href="https://proudtopaymore.org/toolkit">Proud to Pay More</a></p>
</section>
<section>
<h2>5 · You are not the villain in this story</h2>
<p>
In Ursula K. Le Guin's <em>The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas</em>, a whole
city's happiness rests on one child's suffering in a basement, and every
citizen is told the bargain is necessary. The
<a href="index.html#omelas">main page asks the empirical question</a> the
story leaves open: is the suffering actually load-bearing? Does the comfort
of the few <em>require</em> the misery of the many?
</p>
<p>
Every well-designed test we have — the
<a href="index.html#pilots">cash-transfer pilots</a>, the
<a href="case-studies.html">eleven countries that chose differently</a> —
gives the same answer: <strong>no.</strong> When the suffering is lifted, the
predicted collapse does not come. The basement was never holding up the city.
</p>
<p>
Which means something gentle and enormous at once: you did not build the
basement, and you are not required to keep its door shut. The system handed
you a role in a story that insists someone must lose. The data says the story
is false. You are not the villain. But you may be one of the very few people
alive with a hand on the latch.
</p>
</section>
<section id="yourshare">
<h2>6 · What your share could do</h2>
<p>
Abstract trillions are easy to wave away, so make it concrete and personal.
Move the slider to your own scale. The arithmetic below uses only the cited
figures already on this site — a $3/day floor is $1,095 per person per year,
the average shortfall below the line is about $1/day, and a generic insulin
pen costs $0.94 to make.
</p>
<div class="card">
<div class="dial">
<div class="dial-label">
<span class="dial-name">If you could move…</span>
<span class="dial-value">$<span id="ls-wealth">5.0B</span></span>
</div>
<input type="range" id="ls-range" min="6" max="11.4" step="0.01" value="9.7" aria-label="wealth you could draw on">
<div class="dial-note">net worth or assets you could draw on (log scale, $1M–$250B)</div>
</div>
<p style="margin-top:14px">
A one-time <strong>2%</strong> of that — the rate
<a href="https://gabriel-zucman.eu/files/report-g20.pdf">Zucman proposes as an
<em>annual</em> minimum</a> for billionaires — is
<strong class="num" id="ls-two">$100M</strong>. That alone is enough for:
</p>
<ul>
<li><strong id="ls-floor">91 million</strong> — people lifted to the $3/day floor for a full year</li>
<li><strong id="ls-gap">274 million</strong> — person-years pulled out of extreme poverty (closing the gap)</li>
<li><strong id="ls-insulin">106 million</strong> — generic insulin pens, at their production cost</li>
</ul>
<p class="small" id="ls-collective" style="margin-bottom:0"></p>
</div>
<p class="small">
This is the same sanity-check arithmetic as the
<a href="index.html#dials">main page's calculator</a> — a sense of scale, not a
delivery plan. Delivery is genuinely hard. The only claim here is that the
resources are not the thing standing in the way.
</p>
</section>
<script>
(function(){
var R=document.getElementById('ls-range'); if(!R) return;
var FLOOR=1095, GAP=365, INS=0.94, GLOBAL_GAP=1e12;
function money(n){ if(n>=1e12)return '$'+(n/1e12).toFixed(2)+'T'; if(n>=1e9)return '$'+(n/1e9).toFixed(1)+'B'; if(n>=1e6)return '$'+(n/1e6).toFixed(0)+'M'; return '$'+Math.round(n).toLocaleString(); }
function wealth(n){ if(n>=1e9)return (n/1e9).toFixed(1)+'B'; if(n>=1e6)return (n/1e6).toFixed(0)+'M'; return Math.round(n).toLocaleString(); }
function count(n){ if(n>=1e9)return (n/1e9).toFixed(2)+' billion'; if(n>=1e6)return (n/1e6).toFixed(1)+' million'; if(n>=1e3)return Math.round(n/1e3)+',000'; return Math.round(n).toLocaleString(); }
function upd(){
var w=Math.pow(10, parseFloat(R.value)), two=w*0.02;
document.getElementById('ls-wealth').textContent=wealth(w);
document.getElementById('ls-two').textContent=money(two);
document.getElementById('ls-floor').textContent=count(two/FLOOR);
document.getElementById('ls-gap').textContent=count(two/GAP);
document.getElementById('ls-insulin').textContent=count(two/INS);
var share=two/GLOBAL_GAP*100;
document.getElementById('ls-collective').textContent=
'Your 2% alone is '+(share>=0.1?share.toFixed(1):share.toFixed(2))+
'% of the entire ~$1 trillion annual global poverty gap. You can’t close it by yourself — but the ~3,000 people at this scale, together at 2% a year, would cover roughly a quarter of it ($200–250B, Zucman), every year.';
}
R.addEventListener('input',upd); upd();
})();
</script>
<section>
<h2>7 · The division is done</h2>
<p>
That is the whole of it. We did the arithmetic so the "we can't" would stop
being a fact and start being a decision. Everything on this site is in the
public domain — take it, check it, try to disprove it. If a number is wrong,
<a href="https://github.com/lordbasilaiassistant-sudo/Abundance">tell us and
we will fix it</a>. If it is right, then what remains is not an accounting
problem.
</p>
<p>
The ones who walked away from Omelas left in the dark, alone, toward a place
Le Guin could not describe. You have an easier road than they did: you can
see exactly where it goes, it is cheaper than you feared, and you would be in
good company. The world already produces enough. The only open question is
whether it reaches everyone — and that part, finally, is a choice.
</p>
<p class="src" style="margin-top: 28px;">
Read the evidence: <a href="index.html">the arithmetic</a> ·
<a href="case-studies.html">eleven countries that chose differently</a> ·
<a href="methodology.md">methodology & honest limits</a> ·
<a href="bibliography.md">the full literature</a>.
</p>
</section>
<section>
<h2>8 · Pass it on</h2>
<p>
If any of this landed, the most useful thing you can do is hand it to someone
with the power to act — or someone who needs to believe it is possible. It is
public domain; no permission required, no attribution needed, no strings.
</p>
<p class="src">
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