Ask HN: If you've got $1 Trillion for a Year. How would you best spend it | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: If you've got $1 Trillion for a Year. How would you best spend it

9 pointsfrade3320 comments

Let me put my thoughts first.

1. Initiate massive industrialization in the 3rd World.

2. Create as many jobs as I could.

Expected Results.

1. Massive job creation would lead to improved economy for the 3rd World, filling the gap between 3rd and the 1st World.

2. People would become busier, Literacy rate would go up, Crime and Terrorism factors will be significantly reduced.

Overall, the world would become even better and more civilized place.

No rocket science here.

PS: Bill Gates, Warren, Please don't donate money, Donate jobs.

They have to be the right kind of jobs. Graeber's bullshit jobs comes to mind.

Plus having read a bit about Nepal having travelled there, many of the poor people work their arses off, but much of the money goes to absentee landlords. I think inequality of wealth is the problem more than inequality of income. The poor generally do work a lot.

For 3rd world countries that actually want to join the 1st world, this is great. But I'm afraid that we're creating a global monoculture (spreading western-style capitalism everywhere) and this is not in society's long-term best interest.

Some people might not want "jobs" as we define them. Some might not want an "economy" as we define it. I think we should do our best to shield peoples who don't want to buy in to our system from having to do it.

By no means do I want to condemn people to lives of toiling for giant multinational corporations if they would be perfectly happy being self-sufficient yet isolated.

Massive industrialization in the 3rd world could just kill the climate machine, the biodiversity and damage the planet beyond repair for all of us.

One rarely touched upon subject is that of education. Almost across the board globally where you see severe poverty you see much lower rates of education and much inflated rates of crime / violence.

I'd give $50 million to the Khan Academy to continue what they are doing at a much increased pace. I'd partner with SpaceX to speed up their mesh Internet satellites in space idea. Then I'd subsidize renewable energy sources such as hydro, wind, and solar electricity throughout much of the poorest parts of the world. The key would be subsidizing the hardware but teaching locals how to operate and maintain this new infrastructure themselves.

Next would be standardized teaching of teachers from local areas to provide free schooling throughout most of the poorest and unreached parts of the world. This would be in partnership with the Khan Academy (or a similar institution of nonprofit status). They could tailor the curriculums to basic education and trades that benefit the local area. Examples would be farming, skilled trades, medicine, etc. if a Kaizen approach was followed, it should slowly improve the economy and thereby the world.

The overarching goal would be self sufficiency. It allows those with no hope to build ladders by teaching others to build ladders that let them climb out of the hole (metaphorically speaking) they are stuck in.

An important factor relating to education is merely getting people engaged in doing something - allow for productivity. You of course have to have a (safe) place for people to gather, make sure those people can get there, make sure they are fed, and then they can share and learn; health is an important part too of course. Once you have these base factors then education is the best thing to fill ones time with, as opposed to letting someone's mind go stagnant or worse yet get sucked into boredom; if you can get them also productive with agriculture or other productive activities, great - however those have a larger initial capital investment (equipment and natural resources). It's more complex than this of course.

Buy/Build a hell of a lot of houses, and rent them to students very cheaply. My future job would be "landlord", and I'd be doing good by making university a little more affordable.

- Machine superintelligence as a scientific research aid.

- Consciousness transfer to machine substrate research.

- Other life extension research.

Invest enough in some businesses to ensure the pot is renewed yearly.

I'd first seek the advice of wealthy industrialists like Elon Musk, Richard Branson, and Bill Gates. Gates especially would be helpful in having effective ways to spend money for the benefit of humanity.

Then (depending on the advice given by others) I'd probably fund NASA, SpaceX, various clean energy companies, disease eradication programs, and development projects for poor countries.

I would add Peter Singer to the list of advisors.

I would find the poorest billion people and give them $1000 each.

Taking the question literally (having to spend the money in a year) that seems one of the best things one can do (one could even argue that is not spending, if half those getting the money put it in the bank), as it could lift many out of poverty.

Give me a decade and, maybe, some really useful projects might surface. Ten years of time and a trillion dollars might be enough to go to or maybe even start a colony on Mars, for instance (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_mission_to_Mars#Challen...), or to get rid of malaria.

A lot of possibilities, but... this one for example.

To find a real way to erradicate zebra mussel and other invasive species, thus releasing about 120 billions currently billed to citizens in damages each year. The initial investment returned (saved) in the next 9 years plus 80 billions of cash, and 120 billions extra created from thin air each year to spend in caprices since there and forever.

Is not a simple task at all of course, but the reward is big.

I'd build lots of houses and apartments, hopefully creating a massive worldwide drop in real estate.

There are massive cities out there that are basically uninhabited, mostly in China: http://realtybiznews.com/3516/9873516/ (estimated 64-70 million homes).

All you would have to do is convince people to live there (difficult).

Right outside San Francisco, or London for example, close to where the work is.

I've always found the thought of using a skyscraper as "one house" to be very appealing. To have like 10 floors removed to have a high ceiling and other cool stuff :D

I'd spend it all on medical and biological research.

I'd buy a 1992 Ferrari F40, and keep enough to maintain it. The rest would go to NASA/SpaceX, and my university's CS department.

I'd distribute it between SpaceX, NASA, and other space agencies and let them decide what's the best way to spend it :D

Reply on news.ycombinator.com