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"It's when you have the freedom to do things that you wouldn't have felt comfortable doing when you were worried about paying your personal bills each month lik

by fsloth 8y ago

"It's when you have the freedom to do things that you wouldn't have felt comfortable doing when you were worried about paying your personal bills each month like me, like my fellow peasants." I completely agree, but we have no way to know what the best way for him would be to use his new freedom for self -actualization. There are lots of other interesting things to do in life as well. "That's quite a bit higher than middle-class income." Sure, but it's not still an insane amount of money. Before one gets the hang of finances it's better to think in purely middle-class (or upper middle class) financial terms. There are lots of ways to spend 8M fairly quickly.

ryanmercer 8y ago
>There are lots of ways to spend 8M fairly quickly. There's a lot of ways to spend 8 billion fairly quickly. That doesn't mean that either isn't an obscene amount of money to many people (it's 250x~ my gross income). Sure, he could go buy a jet and a manse and be broke in a week, but I could legitimately burn through 8 billion dollars fairly sensibly in several months throwing it at serious projects. Hell, I could burn through 8 trillion in probably 3-5 years pursuing society-changing projects. It may not be a lot of money to tech/bay area types but to the rest of the world it's more money than the vast majority will see in multiple lifetimes.
- fsloth 8y ago
  This is getting very off topic, but.. Um... what would you actually spend 2 trillion a year on for four years on to implement a change in society? I mean sure, it's roughly the size of the oil market so theoretically you could buy all the oil in the world for 4 years and just not use it, thus forcing everyone on a massive pace to post-oil economy. But there's a huge hysteresis in how the society works, at such a massive scale, it's not sufficient to have the capital available, you also likely need a competent and willing organization to fulfill your goals, political co-operation from the major global players and most of all, for any of it to matter at all, you need to create a change that a) lasts b) changes things for the better For example of moonshot ideas, I presume you could buy Space X and bankroll an entire series of Mars expeditions, but if you failed to create a sustainable economy and culture around your project it would ultimately be forgotten once the money runs out. Of course, if you dump thousands of peoples on Mars, maybe other financial operators would take over. I don't know if ending oil economy or colonizing Mars were the projects you had in mind, though. Seriosly, if someone gave you 8 trillion... what would you do?
  - scarejunba 8y ago
    8 trillion is nothing on the scale of the Earth, right? I don’t know if I could fix Sierra Leone with 8 trillion but I could try. I imagine setting up a new safe free land in Africa that can take advantage of all its natural resources and people so they can be successful. Replicate it to the rest of the continent. Maybe a moon base but that’s not cash-limited above a few hundred billion, I think. I might run out of rocket scientists and habitat specialists before running out of money.
    - saagarjha 8y ago
      That’s about enough to fund Sierra Leone’s foreign aid for a couple of millennia.
      - scarejunba 8y ago
        But that keeps them at where they are now. Imagine making them a Japan. What would that take?
        fsloth 8y ago
        "What would that take?" The quality of primary education in sub-saharan Africa is abysmal compared to the developed world, Sierra Leone included. I don't know what else is wrong, but not having an educated population is an obvious hindrance towards japanization. To fix that, you'd probably need to: * Create a system for teacher education * Instill a sense of vocational pride in teachers The most critical part in educational outcomes is often the fact how much the surrounding culture values education. To support the improved infrastructure and operators in primary education an education positive sentiment should be instilled using various public education campaigns, including advertising and using popular media such as TV shows to proactively affect public opinion. Soap operas (or equivalent popular entertainment) are a really powerful tool to instill cultural shift if you can get all stakeholders to co-operate. After education is fixed someone should probably invest capital in some industry that can create jobs and wealth. I don't know Sierra Leone so I don't know what that is. If they have lots of natural resources then a land reform where the ownership is divided among many smallholders often is a great way to distribute and create national wealth. It can also backfire badly if you don't know what you are doing (like in Zimbabwe).

by fsloth 8y ago

ryanmercer 8y ago

>There are lots of ways to spend 8M fairly quickly. There's a lot of ways to spend 8 billion fairly quickly. That doesn't mean that either isn't an obscene amount of money to many people (it's 250x~ my gross income). Sure, he could go buy a jet and a manse and be broke in a week, but I could legitimately burn through 8 billion dollars fairly sensibly in several months throwing it at serious projects. Hell, I could burn through 8 trillion in probably 3-5 years pursuing society-changing projects. It may not be a lot of money to tech/bay area types but to the rest of the world it's more money than the vast majority will see in multiple lifetimes.

fsloth 8y ago
This is getting very off topic, but.. Um... what would you actually spend 2 trillion a year on for four years on to implement a change in society? I mean sure, it's roughly the size of the oil market so theoretically you could buy all the oil in the world for 4 years and just not use it, thus forcing everyone on a massive pace to post-oil economy. But there's a huge hysteresis in how the society works, at such a massive scale, it's not sufficient to have the capital available, you also likely need a competent and willing organization to fulfill your goals, political co-operation from the major global players and most of all, for any of it to matter at all, you need to create a change that a) lasts b) changes things for the better For example of moonshot ideas, I presume you could buy Space X and bankroll an entire series of Mars expeditions, but if you failed to create a sustainable economy and culture around your project it would ultimately be forgotten once the money runs out. Of course, if you dump thousands of peoples on Mars, maybe other financial operators would take over. I don't know if ending oil economy or colonizing Mars were the projects you had in mind, though. Seriosly, if someone gave you 8 trillion... what would you do?
- scarejunba 8y ago
  8 trillion is nothing on the scale of the Earth, right? I don’t know if I could fix Sierra Leone with 8 trillion but I could try. I imagine setting up a new safe free land in Africa that can take advantage of all its natural resources and people so they can be successful. Replicate it to the rest of the continent. Maybe a moon base but that’s not cash-limited above a few hundred billion, I think. I might run out of rocket scientists and habitat specialists before running out of money.
  - saagarjha 8y ago
    That’s about enough to fund Sierra Leone’s foreign aid for a couple of millennia.
    - scarejunba 8y ago
      But that keeps them at where they are now. Imagine making them a Japan. What would that take?
      - fsloth 8y ago
        "What would that take?" The quality of primary education in sub-saharan Africa is abysmal compared to the developed world, Sierra Leone included. I don't know what else is wrong, but not having an educated population is an obvious hindrance towards japanization. To fix that, you'd probably need to: * Create a system for teacher education * Instill a sense of vocational pride in teachers The most critical part in educational outcomes is often the fact how much the surrounding culture values education. To support the improved infrastructure and operators in primary education an education positive sentiment should be instilled using various public education campaigns, including advertising and using popular media such as TV shows to proactively affect public opinion. Soap operas (or equivalent popular entertainment) are a really powerful tool to instill cultural shift if you can get all stakeholders to co-operate. After education is fixed someone should probably invest capital in some industry that can create jobs and wealth. I don't know Sierra Leone so I don't know what that is. If they have lots of natural resources then a land reform where the ownership is divided among many smallholders often is a great way to distribute and create national wealth. It can also backfire badly if you don't know what you are doing (like in Zimbabwe).