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I seriously doubt that there is even a million billion dollars in the world so it's hard to say Posts: 1327 | Registered: Aug 2007
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Donate a bunch of it to the Kyle David Miller Foundation and Safe Kids to get car seats into the hands of parents who can't afford them and teach proper use.
Give a bunch more to organizations that feed the hungry (especially those like Heifer Int'l that focus on teaching skills and providing materials to allow families to become self-sufficient and lift communities out of poverty.)
Give a bunch more to Doctors Without Borders, Operation Smile, and several other pet medical causes.
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About a year I had this sudden thought about how, if I won the lottery, I'd use it to open up after-school centers in New Orleans East. Staff it with great people and have sports and different activities. Teach them karate or how to swim, etc. I used to hear horror stories from teachers about security guards getting beaten up by elementary students. It'd be nice to give them a place to go after school just to have fun and learn how to be healthy, happy kids.
Posts: 1733 | Registered: Apr 2005
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...Fear that the world was about to make a massive switch to the barter system, because I had all the money?...
Posts: 3826 | Registered: May 2005
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Hmmmm, the GDP is just an annual measure. It would be like buying a business for its earnings for merely one year. Going further with the analogy, currently businesses have price/earning ratios ranging from between 8 to 18 depending on the expectation of future earnings with lower numbers usually associated with smaller risk.
So theoretically, if you considered the world a company, having 15.5 times the years GDP should let you purchase the world only once or twice.
Posts: 7593 | Registered: Sep 2006
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Of course even this analysis ignores the fact that the USD is essentially just a fiat currency, in other words it has no intrinsic value beyond what the US government has declared. If in fact, that amount of money appeared and the US government magically had no way of removing that money from your hands, you'd promptly have a massive inflationary crisis on your hands.
This is because the rest of the world market, knowing that the supply of USDs suddenly multiplied almost beyond belief would of course immediately devalue the USD massively against their own currencies. This of course would result in massive economic crisis as no one in the US would be able to buy a thing from the outside world and would of course blame it all on you.
Amidst grinding poverty and hatred, you would promptly killed.
You could partially alleviate the problem by switching to a million billion USD's worth of gold. But of course gold is only valuable because it is rare. Such an influx of gold would eventually really have the same problem.
This of course ignores the problem that a million billion worth of gold by my calculations would be roughly 3.06 * 10^10 kgs or 260 CN Towers worth of gold.
In other words, if you were simply given that amount of gold you would probably just be instantly crushed into a thin organic paste, unreachable as the gold would probably then sink a good portion of the way into the ground.
Probably best to just stick with winning the Powerball or something.
Posts: 7593 | Registered: Sep 2006
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I took the question to be hyperbolic, the substance of which was, "If you had enough money to do everything you wanted, what would you do?"
Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
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You know what I would do? I would invest half of it in low risk mutual funds and then take the other half over to my friend Asadulah who works in securities
Posts: 2437 | Registered: Apr 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Shanna: About a year I had this sudden thought about how, if I won the lottery, I'd use it to open up after-school centers in New Orleans East. Staff it with great people and have sports and different activities. Teach them karate or how to swim, etc. I used to hear horror stories from teachers about security guards getting beaten up by elementary students. It'd be nice to give them a place to go after school just to have fun and learn how to be healthy, happy kids.
"Security guards are getting beat up by elementary kids! What's the best way to solve this problem?"
"Teach the kids karate?"
Posts: 2804 | Registered: May 2003
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The neighborhood conversation would go something like, "Three weeks ago, a billion dollars would buy ya two loaves of bread. Now it takes 50billion dollars to buy the same amount." As of Friday, one U.S. dollar was trading at around ZW$25 billion.
Which is ~US$40thousand per million billion Zimbabwe dollars. Too bad it's illegal to trade with Zimbabwe. At four cents a pop, alotta friends would be surprised to find themselves overnight billionaires.
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I'd pay someone money to go door-to-door beating the crap out of everyone who lowers the signal-to-noise ratio of forums I frequent.
Posts: 5462 | Registered: Apr 2005
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erm, who are you buying the sun from, and how are these plants paying?
Mucus: seriously laughed at your post. Oh man.
I'd consult economists about what to do about the inflation I just caused by creating a lot of money that doesn't belong, and afterward, what to do with my money.
Posts: 655 | Registered: May 2005
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I was in REI over the holidays. I was suprized and saddened to realize that anything that they stocked that I really wanted, I already had. I'm afraid that would happen quickly with regard to everything if my funds were near unlimited.
Posts: 1167 | Registered: Oct 2005
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Whenever I go to REI everything I want I look at the pricetag of and say "crap, why are nice things so expensive"
Posts: 655 | Registered: May 2005
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I would purchase Fort Knox, hire a security detail, convert ALL of my wealth into gold coins and other precious metals and gemstones have it all poured in in a massive lake of coinage and sleep in it as a bed.
And fund genetic research into being able to with a single injection turn me into a Ancient Lightning breathing Blue Wyrm.
And then I will spend the rest of eternity sleeping in my bed of wealth waking up only to feed on lamb, virgins, general tao chicken and to terrorize Kentucky.
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More seriously (talking about, say, the "incredible but not completely ridiculous" billion-dollar level), I'd start a publishing house. I'd buy novels, scripts, and music that I thought was cool, even if it didn't necessarily fit market analysts' idea of what was "viable". And I'd buy up all the rights for Firefly/Serenity and give them all back to Joss Whedon to use as he wished.
Posts: 3826 | Registered: May 2005
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