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Comment by theshadowknows | Hacker News Reader

Is it me being jaded or is a billion or two dollars not really that much money anymore? I mean sure, if someone were to give me a billion dollars I'd be excited (pending dealing with taxes etc). But I mean..theres what a couple thousand people with personal fortunes that could buy the entire deposit several times over, and even more companies that could do it...maybe it'd be a great windfall to the local economy? But if Maine is anything like North Carolina then the majority of the money will get earmarked for future infrastructure projects and then get slowly siphoned off by the politicians over a few years so it won't really matter.

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We're exposed to billionaires and things priced in the billions all the time through news and media, but we forget that it's still an exceptional amount of money for a very, very limited few. Like how Instagram shows you all the exceptionally lucky people on holidays and with expensive cars and incredible beauty, so you get to feel like it's ubiquitous and you're just missing out. But the truth is that almost everyone just goes to work everyday, looking normal, driving normal cars, even the influencers.

A billion dollars is a lot of money.

A billion dollars worth of minerals is not a lot of minerals. It would be worth extracting if it were something readily shipped and processed like gold or crude. But from what I understand of lithium processing, just the equipment along might ring up in the hundreds of millions, and you still have to pay to get it extracted, processed, etc.

Billion dollar is lot even for a value of a company.

On other hand with deposits it's nothing. Reasonably considering the needed investment for exploitation from equipment, planning, permissions, workers etc. I really feel that currently it is nowhere near enough to justify exploitation. Big mines are not cheap to build or operate. I doubt 1,5B of material is enough to justify initial investment.

Not just you. That was my first thought too. Reminds me of the x-googler's post about "can't count that low"

You're not jaded, the scale seems small in comparison to things like the Ring of Fire in northern Ontario or even just Sudbury on its own, where the value of mineral deposits are pitched in the 100s of billions.

nothing really matters

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