Freakonomics - Fixing the World, Bang-for-the-Buck Edition

“Here’s $2.5 trillion. You have 15 years to spend it. How do you distribute this money in a way that will achieve the most good for the world?” This is the question Bjorn Lomborg discusses on a recent freakonomics podcast. 

Freakonomics podcast –the podcast that explores the hidden side of everything, recently interviewed Bjorn Lomborg. During the interview Bjorn describes in depth the work of the Copenhagen Consensus Center and the Post-2015 Consensus project and why this work is so important.  

This podcast episode is entitled “Fixing the World, Bang-for-the-Buck Edition” and you can listen to the entire podcast here.

“We’re not the only input to this conversation, but if we’re just part of that input, it becomes harder to ignore really, really great opportunities, and it becomes harder to ignore that some of the proposed targets are not very good. We like to think of ourselves as constructing a menu for society. Imagine if you go into really expensive New York restaurant and you get this wonderful menu but there are no prices and sizes on it. Unless you have a very good expense account, you’re going to feel a little uncomfortable ordering. But what we try to do is we put prices and sizes on those different menu points. Now, that doesn’t mean that the champagne or the caviar might not be your first choice anyway, but at least now you’ll know that you can afford less for dessert. So in some sense, what we try to do is we give people a sense of proportion. Now, this is not the only thing they’re going to use, but if they’ll just use a little bit of it, chances are we’ll end up with a slightly less inefficient, if you will, outcome. And that’s still great.”

– Bjorn Lomborg, Freakonomics interview