I was watching one of Jonathan Pie's on-the-button monologues about a certain trilliionaire and the line that hit home (not that it needed to for the overall sentiment ) was "if you had that much money wouldn't you wake up and think 'how can I help?'".
Since being a kid and being aware of global warming/climate change, I had an innocent vision of the world running on renewable energy and deforestation just stopping. Obviously that was naive and there are reasons why that panacea won't be realised in my lifetime.
So if I had $1tn I would be trying to buy up or take stewardship of land on the cusp of desertification, where a climate still exists to sustain life, and look to reforest/rewild as much as possible using renewable powered desalination plants to sustain the water supply required. Along with generally creating a massive capacity of renewable energy in general and selling it to rich countries to subsidise clean energy to poorer countries. With all kinds of knock-on benefits of clean industry jobs, livelihoods, homes etc.
If you can build space rockets for fun, this has to be easy and who wouldn't be impressed (of people who's opinion is to be valued).
spend it all on crisps and swim in them like scrooge mc duck
"if you had that much money wouldn't you wake up and think 'how can I help?'".
Thing is, if you think like that you're not the competitive, exploitative sociopath who ends up a trillionaire. Something about 'god gives money to bad people as a punishment'?
I'm tempted to say the last round of massively wealthy but also decent people were the 'revenge of the nerds' era - Bill Gates, Steve Wozniak, the guy founded Blackberry and sold out just before the Iphone. The app founders and Musk are a different type, I think.
Anyway, it's not for Musk to fix. He's a symptom of a fked up set of priorities in western society. What would really help wouldn't be popular with all of us - our lifestyles are what's screwing the world and homelessness, aid to the 3rd world, rewilding and protecting the Amazon etc, it all that pales when the world will be unliveable within a lifetime and we'll be paying £20 a litre for water. An average European (us) is within the richest 10% globally and it's our consumption that is the problem.
We all need to change and no-one will accept that, not beyond swapping to electric cars and recycling and other token gestures. Until we face up to that, all the do-good ideas seem like moot points to me. /doom
No idea, globally redistribute it?
Pay off one third of the uk national debt? Yes, we owe that much, but 1/12th of government spending is servicing this overdraft.
New bike. Buy Mars and put an Elon proof fence up. But yeah you could actually do A LOT for the benefit of the planet/mankind but people would just keep on doing bad stuff around you. So even that that dort of cash you couldn't cure the ills of the world just locally mitigate them a bit.
Potable water supplies for all (or as many as possible).
There was a Euro Millions draw once that was giving a top prize of £64 Million (OK, a bit short of a Billion) and I was surprised when my son asked me what I would do if I won and without hesitation I said
"Buy a house on the Sandbanks peninsula (poole) with sea on both sides (the narrow bit for those not in the know) and completely refurbish it into two self contained flats full of medical equipment. Buy things like beach friendly wheelchairs, a glass bottomed boat etc. Hire NHS trained nurses at a 20% uplift on their existing salary and hire my mate who is highly talented 5 start trained chef (but can and does fit drinks vending as it pays better). Then house a terminally ill child and their family for the 'last family holiday'. It will kill me emotionally, but thats what I would do....
A Billion? I cant get that far in my imagination, but the house would be the start and would buy me some time to think.
Thing is, he doesn't literally have a trillion dollars, he holds shares that have a paper value of a trillion dollars. If he tried to sell them, they would actually fetch a fraction of their paper value because that value is based on expectations about future performance that assumes that Musk will be running things.
However, if I in that position, I would push for technological and economic development in poor countries. Support for education and vocational training, building infrastructure, establishment of local businesses, and integration into the global economy. If you look at countries like Korea or Taiwan, you can see what is possible within a single lifetime - they've gone from low wage economies making cheap manufactured goods to wealthy countries that are world leaders in technology.
I know it's not a reality on many levels, but it's what I dream of.
Humans still be humans.
I know he doesn't have the cash sitting in the bank.
I'd be like Dougal from Craggy Island. Buy a nice pen, perhaps a used Santa Cruz, and then I would run out of imagination.
I'd count it, just to be sure.
I'd give as many people living in poverty as possible cash, say 10 grand, to do with whatever they liked. It's that whole thing of trusting people to do the thing that would have the biggest impact on their life. Pay off debts, retrain, house improvements etc no conditions, leave it up to them. I'd keep a couple of million for myself so I could work part time for the people I like for nothing and do some volunteering.
You would need more money than Musk has if you gave away 10k to everyone in poverty. Best keep it in a high interest account, and dish out 10% each year. You would still have 900,000,000,000 left for a nice holiday now and then.
I haven't crunched the numbers because my calculator doesn't go up to a trillion! So don't know how many people you could help but the principle is just to give people cash so they can help themselves. Maybe ten grand or five grand per household, I don't know.
First I'd ringfence £1m somehow so it's paying me roughly £50k a year interest... That's my money to live on...
Then quite simply, I'd spend every single penny past this solving as many problems in the world caused by inequality, capitalism and fascism as I could...
Rainforests...? Yeah, I'd be buying land up anywhere and everywhere to let them return back to how nature intended.
Hunger...? I'd be making sure as many needy mouths had food, and provisions for the continuation of this, as I could.
Education... Most of the worlds problems are caused by lack of education, or deliberately misleading education... I'd be working hard now to establish free education where possible for those who really need it, creating grants for those going into truly meaningful further education (Doctors, Nurses, Teachers etc.)... Most of the world's problems can be solved by better education, so start now, as it's going to take a generation or two to be fruitful, and the later you start, the longer it will take to have an effect!
Debt... I'd employ the services of Michael Sheen, and get him to carry on the good work he was doing with his own money and give him a LOT more resources to carry on his good work, changing the lives of those who've been trapped by debt.
Energy... I'd work with companies providing green energy solutions to heavily subsidise green energy projects, to move the world away from burning dead dinosaurs to create power, removing the cost argument against green energy solutions wherever it may still exist...
Healthcare... I'd work with governments to help them to understand the benefits of truly universal healthcare for all (appreciate this is more a US problem more than anywhere else), and work to remove barriers against its provision.
There would be other things too... Can't think of them all right now, but wherever I could make a positive, sustainable difference (not simply throwing cash at a problem that will come back the moment that the money supply dries up), that's what I'd be focussing all my energy on... Make it my full time job to make real, meaningful change in the world, and to engage and involve others on the path to a better future too...
Because the alternative is being a miserable, loner, dried up hollow c of a man with no friends, no joy, and no passion other than to F things up for everyone else... And I'm the kind of person that would rather end my own life than risk that happening to me!
It's all moot anyway. If Mrs Muddy got wind of it, there's no chance I'd be solving world poverty. It'd all get hidden from me, and she would ferret it away in rainy day accounts. I'd not even get the Cruz - 26" Carrera if I'm lucky. Ah well, it was a nice dream whilst it lasted.
Help Scotland as much as i could. A fund for helping those on a low income. Can't just give people money willynilly, because you then become their primary source of income and that is never going to help them.
But money for start ups. Grass roots type companies that help the community.
More places for the homeless, better run with more caring staff, not basically sitting going through the motions.
A proper program for people on drugs dependency
Invest in other community based projects that help people with mental health issue to find work or later take up a grant from my start up fund.
House in the Highlands, with a big underground facility, like something out a Bond film.
And the Palmer Johnson yacht DB9 or something akin to it.
Nothing, and tell no one. No interest on current accounts so it wouldn't appear on our joint tax declaration, so I'd just open a current account and leave it there. I like my life just as it is.
I wouldn't give people cash, a lot would just waste and end up in the same situation as before. A previous colleagues mum won 10k in her works prize draw so she quit her job. I'm not sure how I'd square the wealth redistribution / equalisation circle.
Along with the above green energy, education and training, I think I'd improve sanitation for those without, set up a means of protecting the uncontacted people's.
Fund mountain rescue so it could be as professional as it wants to be.
I'd buy Elon Musk and shoot him into the sun.
What has the sun done to make you hate it so much?
