Ask HN: What would you do with $700 Billion?
This is basically the title on CNN's site right now, and I thought what a great question to ask you guys.
Me? It's got to be a lunar base. Always wanted one.
Me? It's got to be a lunar base. Always wanted one.
In fact, $700b is more than enough to do this several times over, so the surplus will probably go to funding a century of other programs related to exploration, bioengineering, green technology, and other sustainable development projects.
Seriously, what could it be other than this?
My brother is a researcher in evolutionary biology. I have seen how the Bush administration has been sabotaging funding into this area over the last few years. Science should be a free for all of ideas, not influenced by politics, religion, or anything else except good hard science.
How much of the $700b will be left over after you've developed the sentient robots needed to staff this place? ;)
I'd start with a couple billion to the first company to achieve sustainable low-cost access to low Earth orbit.
I'd also hand out lesser amounts to p+B11 fusion projects (EMC2 and there's another one I can't remember right now), to fund their research, with maybe $5B to the first to get a 1GW commercial plant on-line.
Really? No bias? How about this: you'd be a sucker. People apply for grant money and are rejected because the grants are often terrible. Sure, sometimes good grants get rejected, but, overall, the review system is pretty functional. I don't know much about NSF in particular, but if they reviewed grant proposals and then gave out money without passing judgement on quality, they'd be wasting a whole lot of money. And you'd really have to remove all judgement if you wanted a system where all academics are equal. So, judgement is back. Now, tell me this: now that we're judging, can we really keep ideological bias out?
You have to remember that grant money can pay salaries. If you give it out to anyone, people will abuse it.
You make a valid point about the Bush administration, though.
Seriously, I have no idea what I'd do with that amount of money. If I was completely selfish maybe I'd buy an island somewhere. I sure as hell wouldn't use it to bail out a bunch of failed businesses whose executives have been giving themselves multi-million dollar bonuses.
I would invest it. I would buy most of wall street and wait for it to bounce back. Turn that 700b to 10 trillion.
I think it would actually be pretty hard to find ways to spend that much money. 10 trillion is an awful lot.
I don't claim to have the answers.. but I think it will take a lot more than money to solve these problems. That's assuming they can even be solved at all.
Seriously, since the moon base was pretty selfish, I should give a serious answer. I think a series of X-Prize ideas, in the $10-20 Billion range, would transform our society in ways we can barely imagine. Fusion, solar power, field propulsion -- it would be like having a war and pushing for new technology without going through all the death and destruction.
So, 700B - here's my shopping list.
Create Jurassic Park
Army of Super Oompa Loompas - perhaps with bionic implants
Moon based Laser "Defense" system
Universal Optional Breast Enhancement Surgery
Giant Robot of Doom
Another Giant Robot (so the first one never feels lonely)
Build an even bigger supercollider, just to scare the bejeezus out of the irrational people
Terraform Mars
Create a religion based around the works of Bruce Campbell
Next stupid question please!
If I couldn't find somebody to sell me a country I would build large offshore platforms or rafts that would fulfill the same function.
If I have those I will start a production company that makes those inventions and sells them at the price (or below) it costs to make the goods so everyone can use them. I would also invest in agriculture in dry area's (africa for example). What I would NOT do is waste it on politics, that's why I want the uninhabited island. If you build a facility/production company with that goal there will be government regulations about it and as most of us know, they tend to screw things up and only care for their wallet.
Also a part of that money will go to education and proper sports centers. I'm a bit overweight myself and I want people to know better then always go to McDonalds and have the option to do any sport they like, as it should be.
Ideally if you could figure out how to build a factory on the moon to mine and produce the first wave of robots/solar power too.
NASA is a horrible organization to actually get things done. I wouldn't emulate them. Burt Rutan is a hero.
The Mars rovers are the exception the proves the rule. Operational for years after a few hundred million dollars spent, while each shuttle mission eats over $1B.
Any reasonable manager would have scrapped the shuttle long ago.
The reason NASA does more is that we have more money than others, not because they are better.
The goal after all is long term benefit to the human race (or profit). Nasa hasn't done all that much towards that end. If anything, they were a good excuse to design ICBMs.
Of course, if you're willing to wait ten years for the cost to produce carbon nanotubes to drop...
Also, you don't launch a company and next year make an elevator. There is a lot of tech to develop. You don't just sit on that tech. Materials made cheap enough to build a earth bound tether would have plenty of other applications. As would the automated or teleoperated construction robots.
Also, the first elevator on the moon wouldn't require much innovation in materials at all.
But I do have a very armchair understanding of the topic.
And my estimate on costs was precisely in the vein of "next year make an elevator"--I do not doubt that there will be a space elevator long before the next 50 years pass, I merely doubt that $700b is sufficient that a feasible short term effort could be made.
A lunar elevator, while a nice proof of concept for a terrestrial space elevator, has two major problems: (1) There isn't really a point; the moon's gravity well is too weak for it to be worth it to construct an elevator any time soon. (2) Getting the material there without an existing terrestrial space elevator (and possibly even with one) is a prohibitively expensive exercise.
Research into the construction of a space elevator is a worthwhile pursuit likely to result in many useful technological advances. But $700b is not enough to construct one in the short term from existing technology, and is too much to be usefully applied to further research.
construction of a space elevator is a worthwhile pursuit likely to result in many useful technological advanceAlso, a lunar elevator might not be the best choice. Perhaps a mass driver or sky hook on the moon would be better. I would still start on the moon before constructing the first inch of tether around earth.
Just to give a sense of scale.
87 next generation aircraft carriers (or about 155 current-generation aircraft carriers)
500 stealth bombers (or 5000 stealth fighters)
10 years of federal education spending in the US
1.1% of the worldwide annual GDP
2/5 of the combined net worth of the 100 wealthiest people (or, if you prefer, 12 times the net worth of Bill Gates, or about 1/6 of the combined net worth of the 1000 wealthiest people)
23 times the total annual income tax collected from the lower 50% of filers with positive adjusted gross income in 2006 (see http://www.taxfoundation.org/news/show/250.html)
When I've got a good rate with a few of the girls, and my DIMM banks are filled, I'd probably start building a loyal robot army to help fight the evil ones that come with the inevitable robot apocalypse.
Each of which, incidentally, will require RAM.
That's not anarchy, since each republic would presumably have its own government.
The last time the US did this they not only got all the money back, they even made a small profit.
To join along: if I had the money I'd spend all of it on as many nuclear reactors, to generate electricity, as I could. I'd standardize the design to keep the costs as low as possible.
With some of the profits, I'd pick another country and iterate.
after that, i'd take the half of the remaining and invest it in technology and fields that i'd like to see improved (i.e. space travel, science, alternative energy, etc etc)
i'd take the other half and invest/give it to more charitable devices (poverty relief & research, disease research, land preservation funds, etc etc)
basically, try and make the world a better place.
i've always wanted to live on an island, thanks for shitting on my dreams in a hypothetical thread :*-(
Friends?
I'd take a small amount of it ($2-3 million if i could be sure of good interest returns over time, more commensurate with inability to do same) and return the rest to the taxpayers.
Alternatively I'd use that money to buy/start a small nation with a refortified constitution and the freedoms we've lost over the last century.
1. get people in the developing world clean water, access to enough food, and healthcare
2. give people money to get themselves out of debt (with accountability)
3. lobby the US government for various tax (simplicity is needed), healthcare, and humanitarian laws
4. funding for major energy research results
Some people are poor because they're honestly down on their luck, and need a helping hand. The majority on the other hand are simply unemployable, or horrible with their finances. Give them a handout and the money will simply end up in richer people's hands. That's not helping them.
...wait, isn't that YCombinator?
I think it would be a great experiment, though.
I think the bar for poor needs to be a little lower than 50k/year.
In fact, $50k is approximately the median household income (for 2007), with mean household sizes in that income bracket at about 2.6.
I wasn't shooting for the poor. I was shooting for a bunch of people. It's roughly half of the households in the country. That's a lot of liquid capital to inject into the economy at once -- around 5% of our GNP.
American, meet the reason for your economic crisis.
I've got a $100K job offer pending my graduation, and even with that I still have to be aware of my budget to even save something.
Remember - most of america is not SF!!!
Get a mortgage on something like this: http://www.househunterbob.com/Listing/ViewListingDetails.asp... and for $50K per year - you can buy 500 houses!
edit I'd make sure all of the employee's were out of the buildings, of course...
50 billion 3rd world sweat shops to jump start the worlds economy.
100 billion, retro fit a lane on all US highway's with electric grids / contacts so there is no need for battery systems and we can go electric now. I would start by targeting the commercial trucking industry and then move to cars.
1billion fun money for me.
And I don't know about the rest.
He traveled the world and came back with the price tag: $1 trillion. That is not to relief, but to END poverty worldwide.
Note: Most of the figures in the attached article are in lire, with a conversion rate of 2000 lire to 1$US--the annual in and outflow of the Catholic church is on the order of hundreds of millions of $US; it is only their total assets that are on the order of trillions.
"Will mankind one day without the net expenditure of energy be able to restore the sun to its full youthfulness even after it had died of old age?"
Long-term, that would be the most useful possible way to spend the money.
BSOD
Then I would fund a bunch of funding into cures for third world evils like malaria and such.
Bribe all genociding warmongers (e.g. in Sudan) into retirement. Pay for relocation and land redistribution of affected ethnic groups.
Immunize all children in the USA.
Then, with the other 600 billion, I guess you could throw an awesome party.
i mean, no more poverty and educating every child on earth for 7 years seems like a good idea...
10 billion for space elevator research
10 billion for terraforming mars research
10 billion in scholarships available to anyone in the world as well as the money needed to pull strings to get the smartest kids into the best colleges.
10 billion for a clean water research
30 billion in free contraception/medical for every country.
Compact self-contained hydroponic gardens (think shipping container).
Cure HIV
Eliminate hunger
Eliminate thirst
Take over Equatorial Guinea
It would be easy to invest in modern pharmaceutical manufacturing plants in African nations with generous IP laws and then start making modern HIV medications available for practically nothing.
Curing cancer is more of a crapshoot, but throwing several hundred billion at the problem would be a good start, if nothing else.
Proper distribution of the money remaining could go a long way towards eliminating extreme poverty.
baller-life-style-money: 10$million.
my own scientific/tech projects, 1billion.
rest i would donate to various scientifc rpoject sand charity.