I think would your proposing would be a World-Bank type action. The world bank apparently exists to use loans as leverage to get countries to change policy. That gets close to what you're after.
The problem with using the UN for this kind of action is that the UN has never imposed a tax or tariff. This would be new territory for the UN. I'm sure countries would have some problems with sovereignty. The alternative would be that all nations would act in concert to impose these tariffs.
But then if they did that, you wouldn't have a universal refugee trust. Each nation would still have control over their own finances.
Anyway, I think through the implications of what your proposing I realize why it's been so hard to get anything to change. Any kind of action requires unprecedented worldwide coordination.
> The argument "he wasn't that important because he didn't actually invent X" is played out, and it fundamentally misses the point.
If I have a position to contribute it's that those ideas are still out there. Job's greatest gift was his sense of taste. He had refined a sense of good art.
If more management had such sense they would be better patrons feeding good art and killing tasteless hacks projects.
We talk about AI optimized to create paper clips accidentally running amok and turning the world into paper clips. Why isn't profit a similar problem? Government agencies are just AI running on meat. Give them success parameters different than raw profits.
Honestly, why can't we see this as just a variant of the instrumental convergence problem?
> and I'm an no where near the risk of my overweight family members
Yep. The "three-fold" thing sounds awful but I didn't see the actual risk factor in the article. If it's 0.000001% and rises to 0.000003% that's a three-fold increase. If you're getting lots of other positive effects and quality of life effects from use then it may well be worth the risk.
The problem with using the UN for this kind of action is that the UN has never imposed a tax or tariff. This would be new territory for the UN. I'm sure countries would have some problems with sovereignty. The alternative would be that all nations would act in concert to impose these tariffs.
But then if they did that, you wouldn't have a universal refugee trust. Each nation would still have control over their own finances.
Anyway, I think through the implications of what your proposing I realize why it's been so hard to get anything to change. Any kind of action requires unprecedented worldwide coordination.