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If you can’t usefully spend arbitrarily large amounts of money, it’s a creativity problem. Sure, if your only interests are eating and watching TV then a billio
by wyager 9y ago
If you can’t usefully spend arbitrarily large amounts of money, it’s a creativity problem. Sure, if your only interests are eating and watching TV then a billion dollars isn’t going to do much for you.
The easy way to productively spend $X billion is to invest it in space/physics/medical research or development. If you need to blow a few hundred billion, you could launch an asteroid mining venture with a reasonable chance of turning that money into a few trillion and making space development vastly more affordable for the rest of humanity.
- trendia 9y agoThat reminds me of an old joke: Q: How do you make $1 million in aerospace? A: Start with $1 billion
- cwyers 9y agoI mean, the most effective contribution they could make to society is to stop lobbying Congress so effectively to protect their sales of Oxy, but sure, let's talk about how those profits could be rolled over into speculative investments in aerospace. EDIT: And of course, the response to that line in the movie is "The future, Mr. Gittes."
- appleflaxen 9y agoCan you elaborate on your point? In your example, it seems like you are saying "there is more happiness in mining asteroids than in being able to live very comfortably, indefinitely, without having to work to support yourself". Except for a very narrow portion of humanity, this seems implausible. Would mining asteroids really bring fulfillment to a person who has experienced ennui when climbing a mountain, scuba diving the barrier reef, yachting the Mediterranean, or designing their own home? Failure of imagination, sure, but I think you're going to be disappointed if you think that a billion is going to be deeply fulfilling relative to 20 million.
- astura 9y agoYou're confusing "spending money" with "starting a business."