Appendix A, interactive
Which way does the money pull?
A weapons maker earns more as conflict rises. A charge on that harm is meant to change the arithmetic. This model, taken from the formal appendix to the Peace Dividend Mandate, lets you set the level of conflict and the terms of the charge, and see where a contractor’s own interest points: toward more conflict, or toward less.
Set the level of conflict
Each party weighs the same question: what does one more step toward conflict earn, and what does it cost? Whichever is larger decides which way it pushes.
How to read the cards: the red bar is what one more step toward conflict would earn; the green bar is what that step would cost under the rule. Whichever bar is longer decides which way the arrow points, and so where that party would put its influence.
Where the money goes
Worldwide, at full implementation, the paper estimates the yearly sum at $1.4 trillion under the 2 : 1 baseline and $3.5 trillion under the 5 : 1 ratio of active major conflict.
Because the ratio climbs with conflict, the worse a war becomes, the more money is obliged to flow toward ending it.
Change who pays, and how much
Three settings matter most. Try a scenario, or move the sliders yourself.
How much of the charge the contractor recovers in contract prices. Pass-through, φ.
The paper sets 5 : 1, the conservative end of the documented five-to-seven range.
The textbook remedy, like a carbon tax: a fixed charge per unit of harm, rate τ. No such charge exists today; set it to 0 to see the world as it is.
From peace to war, all at once
Which way each party pushes
The contractor's profit at every level
Under a flat tax the curve bends upward, so the most profitable point sits at an extreme, usually the far right (Proposition A.1). Under the Mandate the curve bends downward, giving a single best point inside the range (Proposition A.2). The dial's position is marked in gold.
A cause of war that a rule can change
Wars have many causes, and most of them lie beyond the reach of any policy: grievance, ideology, fear, the ambitions of particular men. One cause is plainer. Under the present arrangement, the industry that arms the world earns more as conflict deepens and pays nothing toward what conflict costs, so its considerable influence leans toward more of it. Of all the causes of war, that one can be changed by a rule.
The Peace Dividend Mandate is such a rule. It asks nothing of human nature and waits on no change of heart; in the paper's own words, it requires only that the war economy be made to pay for what it costs. Once it does, the most powerful commercial interest in the business of conflict acquires a financial reason to want peace; where the cost is passed on in contract prices, the government that buys from it acquires that reason instead, and the cost of war appears in the public budget for voters to see. Either way, the money goes to the people working to build peace.
Change of this kind begins with people who understand it. If the argument persuades you, read the summary, pass this page to someone who would want to see it, and ask the people who represent you whether they have considered it.
The model in full
Show the mathematicsHide the mathematics
A representative contractor chooses, and lobbies over, an externality level H ∈ [0, 1]. Every quantity below is computed exactly from these forms; nothing is simulated or fitted at run time. Units are multiples of baseline weapons spend (s₀ = 1, H̄ = 1).
Propositions A.1 and A.2 are stated in the paper with the firm bearing the whole burden (φ = 0). Here they are evaluated on the firm's retained payoff m − (1−φ)B, which reduces to the paper's case at φ = 0.
| Result | At current parameters | Status |
|---|
Marginal return against marginal burden
Lobbying inverts wherever the burden borne lies above the margin (shaded). The flat charge crosses once and is overtaken from above at H*; where the Mandate's schedule is steep enough, its burden crosses from below and stays above, the point a calibrated schedule places at the defensive baseline.
Ratio schedule
The tier schedule is a step approximation to a continuous Pigouvian schedule ρ(H) = λ(H) (§A.5).