I have this dream of building my own little socialist company town. where like, instead of people scraping by, we all get universal healthcare and walkable, tree-lined streets.
Basically spend it all making militant resistance cells around the United States, enable them to operate independently via sourcing cnc machines, 3D printers, and hobbyist electronics, then provide financial incentives to targeting other billionaires' assets or persons and/or hate groups and right wing think tanks.
This will continue until I'm arrested, run out of funds, or succeed.
99M in a trust fund for me, my immediate family, extended family and friends. We would live relatively modest and give generously.
901M would go to a wide assortment of charities and causes:
Fund my local foodbank for the next 50 years. Perhaps even a dynasty trust.
Tackle youth unemployment and unmet community needs through investing in non-market solutions. E.g. build greenhouses with raised beds in urban brownfield and greenfield property, hire local people to grow resilient local foods and donate them throughout the community. Some local old age homes had some complaints about food quality and budget and they wanted things like fresh ripe tomatoes. I'd given them 3 seasons worth for free and pay for the equipment, labour, insurance out of pocket. Local youth could get high school credits, jobs not just gardening, but designing and improve closed ag systems, plumbing, deep winter greenhouse design and engineering, logistics, everything. Good experience and spending money. Maybe turn into a market career for some.
Build a few multiplexes as high quality PassiveHousePlus and operate as self funded charity built and operated using only local labour for womans & homeless shelters
I have a few friends in social services and I guarenfuckentee a shitload of orphans and foster kids and poor kids supervised by children services would get new toys, clothes, shoes, bedding, pillows, christmas presents from a bad ass santa, art supplies, comic books, tuition, books, enrichment activity fees and more. Some have this through foster parents and public systems. Way too many don't.
I can't help everyone and even this money won't last long, but Imma go out swinging hard.
Buy up all the media outlets, especially Fox, and ACTUALLY turn them into progressive propaganda outlets.
Once actual progressives are in power, Lobby for government with the teeth to break up my big media empire monopoly and prevent a new one from forming.
Make a trust in each state to have local news outlets with good journalists.
Fund something to help find and stomp out propaganda bot/slave centers in other countries.
Lobby to regulate the fuck out of AI to stop its use as a programmable propaganda slop machine.
Next, I would love to upgrade and spoil the homeless shelter behind my work. I always fantasize about being able to afford food, socks and blankets to distribute.
Maybe, but at least other countries prosecute their rich and powerful when said rich and powerful person rapes kids/steals classified documents. Also, every other developed country is able to ensure their government is funded while giving every person health insurance.
First thing? Probably panic. Second thing? Probably try to wake myself up. Third thing? Probably try to find some rational way that I just got isekai’ed as a billionaire.
After it finally sank in, I’d probably consider lobbying for things before I lose touch with where I used to be. Right to repair, universal healthcare, UBI, etc…
You'd be fighting against other billionaires with established lobbying connections. I feel like you'd blow your billions and have nothing to show for it.
Maybe pay 500 musicians (generally my choice of music) x $20/hr x 3000 hours (about 1.5 person-years) (= $30 million) to write and record anything they want, but it has to be original and released into the public domain.
Exceptions could be made for derivatives of music already in the public domain.
Occasionally I might check on them for if they are composing, or composing and recording; and originality.
I might pay for novelty songs such as hard rock and heavy metal on horns; Suicide's Ghost Rider but replace synths with tuba and harmonica; nonagenarian socialist to do Kid Rock's Bawitdaba; Trump and Epstein look-a-likes do Nugent's Little Miss Dangerous; etc.
With a billion dollars?! I'm crying sad tears and laughing at the same time.
2 billion dollars of PAC money was spent in the 2024 presidential election.
That's a single year. One election cycle.
In order to overturn Citizen's United, you would need at least a couple of Supreme Court justices, too. So you need enough money to elect uncorrupted politicians to Congress, so that they can approve judges who are also not corrupt.
I think people HUGELY underestimate how much money flows into politics now that PACs are legal. Why the fuck else would Trump suddenly get interested in politics at his late stage in life?
1010 mountain bikes, 1000 to give away; a canoe; a little propeller-driven Cessna airplane; and a good non-Telsa non-Chinese electric car without the electronic-digital-internet-AI-bullshit frills might bring more and better satisfaction.
I'd quit my job, buy a small house for my partner and I and give enough to my family that they wouldn't have to worry about money again.
With the rest, I'd set up a trust that donates 1% per year in microgrants to free software maintainers who apply to it. Similar to NLnet, but with no strings attached beyond continuing to maintain the project.
Then, with all my free time, I'd also work on free software.
Dude right wouldn't it be wild if instead of taking as many nickels dimes and pennies as humanly and economically possible for any and every single purchase you just took like, still an insane life changing amount that would make you rich and were able to provide for your entire family on and put everyone else out of business?
"Turns out instead of taking 80% profit margins I got 30% instead and that's how I put Amazon out of business" meanwhile you're still able to be stinking rich with more than any human could possibly ever spend in 100 lifetimes.
Cutting off Israel will hurt the genociders even more.
If you're American, maybe run for President in 2028 on a "No to Israel" platform; put $100 million into it. Don't scare fellow Americans with extremist stuff, but feel free to insult your rivals. Maybe insult MAGAts as dumb fucks who'd take a bullet for Trump and get nothing.
Lots of perfectly valid answers here about decent humane things to do with the money and power, and I certainly hope I would do things like end homelessness or otherwise meaningfully improve the world.
That said.
I'd build a full-scale, 1:1 replica of the USS Enterprise, NCC 1701-D, from The Next Generation. I'd run it like the Biltmore; technically it would be a private residence, but I'd charge people to take tours. But any time I wanted, I could close it down for a few days and just hang out on the bridge or in main engineering and vibe out to the THRUM THRUM THRUM of the warp core.
I'd shut the fuck up. Pay off my house and maybe add an addition to where I'm at. Same with some relatives. Fix my Subaru the way I want it, buy a catterham.
Start buying people's debt for pennies on the dollar and cancelling it.
I would invest it. Every year, I would withdraw the profits, so that my net worth stayed approximately the same.
I would throw an event in a different city each year.
I would get that money ("earned" from doing nothing more than investing it) IN CASH.
All the cash would be loaded up in a plane and dropped in a public place. It would be a spectacle. No advertising needed, word of mouth and social media would be more than enough.
At each event, I would remind people that the money dropping from the sky is merely the crumbs from a single billionaire. Money that I did not earn. Money that was taken from the fruits of their labor and added to my stock portfolio.
I would ask them to imagine how much more money billionaires are hoarding. I would then bid them a fond farewell until next year.
Oh, and also, maybe a nice condo in southeast Asia. Thailand, maybe. Somewhere chill and fairly inexpensive. Not because I deserve a nicer place, but because fuckyouallI'mrichbitchstillnotatotaldickheadthough.
Well firstly there's no europe-wide standard. There's long scale and short scale, the US and many other countries use short scale (billion is 1000 millions). It usually goes by language, but there are exceptions: Spanish and Mexican Spanish are both long scale while USAn Spanish is short scale.
Short scale goes: million, billion, trillion
Long scale goes: million, milliard, billion, billiard, trillion, trilliard... etc.
Then in my language it goes: million, milliard, trillion, quadrillion. We use short scale but replace billion with milliard (miljard actually for the local spelling)
There are also other systems. Once you get to 10^5, India has names for every second power of ten rather than every third power. lakh is 1,00,000, crore is 1,00,00,000, etc. It's funny writing it out with double zeroes instead of triple lol
go find where Musk is and beat the ever living fuck out of him, I'll be able to access him easier with my billion dollars, after that just do shit to help my local community.
You know I think about this all the time. A lot of those rich fucks are on the hook for meetings and bulshit all the time. If I had to wake up at 430 am every morning to get ready for meetings would it even be worth it to be rich?
We'll.... Yes, probably lol but still it makes me feel better about it. At least I can kind of choose myown schedule with my current job. Not rich but I do get to sleep in sometimes.
And sometimes, every once in a while, that is priceless.
I'd probably put an entire university worth of professors on payroll, along with an army of neurodivergence specialists to make it so I could actually make use of them. If I had functionally infinite money I could become so fucking gigabrain. The saving the world stuff should go without saying since we are all ensouled beings unlike the ghoulish husks who actually have billions of dollars.
cancel my benefits. tell my wife. I mean I would start trying to figure out my money but if a surface look indicated I was going to be set for life no matter what I do and if all the financials had some setup im sure we would definately take an extended vacay of no planning. Just go and do what we want and indulge. After a bit would start figuring out how to do something useful outside of be hedonistic and figure out where we want to live and such.
Besides paying off my debt and repairing my house as well as installing a geothermal heat pump, set up investments, basically all the normal shit one would do if they suddenly got a large windfall?
Buy up land to turn into forests, figure out a way to set it up in trusts or something such that nobody will have the right to do a full clear cut for timber any time soon, but maintenance cuts are fine.
Set up about a gigawatt worth of wind power generation in my country if the billions are multiple rather than exactly a billion euros or dollars or whatever. Our power usage peaks at around 1.6 gigawatts in the winter. Wind's unpredictable and I don't expect it to completely fill all demand, but rather make electricity so cheap that the fossil plants wouldn't turn a profit most of the time. Solar would be nice too, but it's borderline useless for about 2-4 months a year, I've forgotten the exact numbers.
Can't change the world with a few billion, but could noticeably improve one particular corner of it - and one that has a particularly dirty power grid at that. Driving an EV is STILL as bad as an ICE here because in the winter our electricity comes not from something as beautifully clean as coal or gas, but fucking shale rock...
Bonus, not only would I improve the availability of cheap green power, our government is currently partially funding heating system conversions from SFHs in cities and small towns, to replace solid fuel furnaces with heat pumps (ideally) or at least newer, cleaner burning furnaces, with the goal of improving air quality. Meaning the government would essentially be helping people make the most of the cheaper and greener electricity.
Triple-check that's it's real, make sure to secure it in multiple ways, then research charities so I can give most of it away. A couple of million € would already afford me all the luxuries that I could care about.
Not even sure what I'd actually spend money on that would improve my life. I seem to be accumulating medical issues that are difficult to diagnose, let alone treat; not sure that even a billion dollars would actually help much with that (we do have a somewhat sensible healthcare system in my country). I'd probably look into hiring some kind of personal assistant/caretaker/chauffeur, to improve my odds of actually making it to important appointments (or just having them do it for me, if it doesn't require that I personally show up).
Host an anonymous scholarship program for 800 million to throw the money away while giving education opportunities to people in poverty, donate 100 mil to open source projects I use. invest 90 mil to have a steady income throughout the rest of my life.
I can live a satisfying life just with 10 mil, and the income generated from investments would be a good safety net, but I'm not really a high end luxury seeker.
Buy a house and car for every one of my family members. After that I'd set aside a few million to live off the interest and spend the rest on actually fixing problems billionaires and the government refuse to do. Make a robust food distribution system that drastically reduces hunger in the world, build cheap affordable housing in rich people's neighborhoods, buy out land for the express purpose of installing a proper rail system across the state of California, that sort of thing.
Buy land, start a building company and build apartments. Then I would turn each building into a cooperative so that only those who live in it are in control.
And I would sponsor Deutschlandtickets for low income people.
From what's left I'd buy a big house and invite my queer and trans friends from mainly the US and UK to live with me.
The premise is like... magic or something, dude. The premise is not that you are a philosophical zombie and gain billions of dollars through actual capitalism only to one day suddenly gain sentience.
OK how about this actually... All the money came from deleting the existing billionaires from reality.
Alternate premise would be "What if everyone in the world would give you anything or do any service for you for free, feel good about it, and be enriched by it in whatever way needed for it not to be exploitative"
Think really really hard if I'm going to work or not. I'd probably go just for the pleasure of being there with a smile and the biggest "I don't give a fuck" attitude ever.
Hey now, it's only a billion dollars. Lets not get crazy and plan on buying expensive things. It'd probably be cheaper to just buy the moon than to buy good health insurance.
Call a fiduciary firm in LA and have them start The Sovereign Fund for Humanity's Poor, and promptly deposit all but $10,000,000 into that. I would hire 5 people to run it. Three fiduciary's and two data analysts. The fiduciary's must be from different financial centers, the data analysts must be from Oxfam. The purpose of the fund will be to use the ROI to create trusts for the poorest people in the world first. I'd basically be privatizing UBI in about 500 years.
I have no idea how much retirement would cost (with buffer for needing care in advanced age since we have no children), so I pulled a number out of my ass with a lot of buffer
If invested and it grows, that's just more I can give away later. Again with the childless thing, anything we had left would go to charitable causes
50 mil is 5% of a billion dollars so ~95% of what I got would be moved to decent causes from the get-go
Perfect is the enemy of good and I never claimed to have some moral highground to begin with. Doing (at least in my opinion) good things with 95% of the money given to me certainly is better than 0% of it.
help SO many people. I'd build homeless shelters etc. I always had the dream of building a whole shitload of apartments, and offering them on a sliding scale, or free if homeless. Hell, I'd be a billionaire. I'd probably just offer thme free anyway
start a gameshow that has three contestants that have to run while five people hunt them down. the whole time they're running from the hunters people on the streets can turn them in for a reward.
when they're finally caught, we kill them live on air.
Pay my taxes and not rape children.
Yeah, yah, that's what they ALL say.
This should be the bare minimum response from everyone. If you can't even clear this bar...you should not be allowed to participate.
A low bar to be sure,but it could be worse.
It's apparently one a lot of billionaires struggle with too.
Whoa, look at this communist, socialist person here! I bet they hate fascists too!
Ah, I see you are not an American billionaire.
Look at goody two-shoes over here!
Turn myself in to a millionaire
technically if you woke up with $1 billion you can spend $1 and no longer be a billionaire, with $999 million
I have this dream of building my own little socialist company town. where like, instead of people scraping by, we all get universal healthcare and walkable, tree-lined streets.
I have had the exact same dream. I shall note your username in case any of my crazy ideas is ever profitable enough to start a company lol
I mean you could just disregard their username. It's disregardable.
Take notes from Bioshock and don't build it underwater... And skip the whole genetic modification thing too, ig.
Is a man not entitled to the sweat on his brow?
Or you could just move to Sweden and save yourself some money?
Basically spend it all making militant resistance cells around the United States, enable them to operate independently via sourcing cnc machines, 3D printers, and hobbyist electronics, then provide financial incentives to targeting other billionaires' assets or persons and/or hate groups and right wing think tanks.
This will continue until I'm arrested, run out of funds, or succeed.
....then I'd buy a sammich.
What kind of sammich?
Roast bitch ass billionaire.
But fr, probably a pastrami..... Like a REALLY good pastrami.
Yes! “Make 2500 Luigis” is the best answer.
Huh? Luigi didn't shoot that guy...
What I do would be redacted here, but when I am done there would be no more billionaires.
It's fine, this isn't Reddit.
Just a heads-up: Everything on the fediverse is 100% public, forever.
Even though it feels like a super-secret conspiratory club sometimes.
No, it's not. Posts encouraging violence (or mentioning that they will kill X) is against the community guidelines..
Source:
But does that still result in a ban or just a warning?
From my experience, the comment is just removed. Nothing else.
This is the way
He'd probably wonder why I was in his house
"Good morning! I'm here to talk to you about UBI!"
Hit snooze.
I'd put him back to sleep 💁♀️
Permanently?
99M in a trust fund for me, my immediate family, extended family and friends. We would live relatively modest and give generously.
901M would go to a wide assortment of charities and causes:
Build a few multiplexes as high quality PassiveHousePlus and operate as self funded charity built and operated using only local labour for womans & homeless shelters
I have a few friends in social services and I guarenfuckentee a shitload of orphans and foster kids and poor kids supervised by children services would get new toys, clothes, shoes, bedding, pillows, christmas presents from a bad ass santa, art supplies, comic books, tuition, books, enrichment activity fees and more. Some have this through foster parents and public systems. Way too many don't.
I can't help everyone and even this money won't last long, but Imma go out swinging hard.
It depends on which billionaire I’m supposedly waking up. Sounds like a shitty job though.
Buy up all the media outlets, especially Fox, and ACTUALLY turn them into progressive propaganda outlets.
Once actual progressives are in power, Lobby for government with the teeth to break up my big media empire monopoly and prevent a new one from forming.
Make a trust in each state to have local news outlets with good journalists.
Fund something to help find and stomp out propaganda bot/slave centers in other countries.
Lobby to regulate the fuck out of AI to stop its use as a programmable propaganda slop machine.
Probably fuck some kids to blend in
/s
Hire people to clean the house. White house.
First thing?
Probably buy my wife something nice.
Next, I would love to upgrade and spoil the homeless shelter behind my work. I always fantasize about being able to afford food, socks and blankets to distribute.
First selfish thing? Build a new computer.
I'd take my family and leave behind the shithole that is the United States. God, I hate it here because of Republicans.
Unfortunately, there are assholes everywhere.
Maybe, but at least other countries prosecute their rich and powerful when said rich and powerful person rapes kids/steals classified documents. Also, every other developed country is able to ensure their government is funded while giving every person health insurance.
They're rapidly defunding the social safety nets and privacy protection in the countries you mean.
Two thousand girls at the same time.
Fuckin' A.
Same as I do every morning. A big mug of coffee and a big shit.
No amount of money would change that.
You could afford a bigger mug though.
And a warm Japanese toilet, with lights and music.
Yeah, but I'm not gonna go mug shopping until I've had my coffee
First thing? Probably panic. Second thing? Probably try to wake myself up. Third thing? Probably try to find some rational way that I just got isekai’ed as a billionaire.
After it finally sank in, I’d probably consider lobbying for things before I lose touch with where I used to be. Right to repair, universal healthcare, UBI, etc…
You'd be fighting against other billionaires with established lobbying connections. I feel like you'd blow your billions and have nothing to show for it.
Maybe pay 500 musicians (generally my choice of music) x $20/hr x 3000 hours (about 1.5 person-years) (= $30 million) to write and record anything they want, but it has to be original and released into the public domain.
Exceptions could be made for derivatives of music already in the public domain.
Occasionally I might check on them for if they are composing, or composing and recording; and originality.
I might pay for novelty songs such as hard rock and heavy metal on horns; Suicide's Ghost Rider but replace synths with tuba and harmonica; nonagenarian socialist to do Kid Rock's Bawitdaba; Trump and Epstein look-a-likes do Nugent's Little Miss Dangerous; etc.
I was thinking this too like "I'd be the lobbyist you would want to be lobbying"
Start strategically: just buy your way into overturning money in politics. Fire with fire baby!!!
With a billion dollars?! I'm crying sad tears and laughing at the same time.
2 billion dollars of PAC money was spent in the 2024 presidential election.
That's a single year. One election cycle.
In order to overturn Citizen's United, you would need at least a couple of Supreme Court justices, too. So you need enough money to elect uncorrupted politicians to Congress, so that they can approve judges who are also not corrupt.
I think people HUGELY underestimate how much money flows into politics now that PACs are legal. Why the fuck else would Trump suddenly get interested in politics at his late stage in life?
Turn my country the fuck around so that public servants represent people and decisions are made to improve the lives of people.
Sorry about your parents...
1010 mountain bikes, 1000 to give away; a canoe; a little propeller-driven Cessna airplane; and a good non-Telsa non-Chinese electric car without the electronic-digital-internet-AI-bullshit frills might bring more and better satisfaction.
Lots of folks would get their debt paid off.
Lots of folks would get fed real good.
Lots of folks would get seed money to make their thing or do their art/thing/whatever
Lots of folks would get to do some sick drugs.
Etc.
I’d just spend it all until I spread the wealth around.
Guillotine myself. I can't let myself be a hypocrite lol
Put out hit contracts on the other billionaires.
Completely squandering the endless possibilities of being the first billionaire with a soul
I'd quit my job, buy a small house for my partner and I and give enough to my family that they wouldn't have to worry about money again.
With the rest, I'd set up a trust that donates 1% per year in microgrants to free software maintainers who apply to it. Similar to NLnet, but with no strings attached beyond continuing to maintain the project.
Then, with all my free time, I'd also work on free software.
Cocaine then a sub to check out Titanic. Pretty standard, really.
Destroy capitalism by out competing everyone.
Dude right wouldn't it be wild if instead of taking as many nickels dimes and pennies as humanly and economically possible for any and every single purchase you just took like, still an insane life changing amount that would make you rich and were able to provide for your entire family on and put everyone else out of business?
"Turns out instead of taking 80% profit margins I got 30% instead and that's how I put Amazon out of business" meanwhile you're still able to be stinking rich with more than any human could possibly ever spend in 100 lifetimes.
These comments prove billionaires are hoarders with a mental illness. Nobody here is looking to make more billions.
True, but none of us have actually been tested. How many of us could taste real power and walk away?
The closest proxy is maybe lottery winners. Some invest, some fall flat on spending orgies. Almost none walk away.
You're just describing symptoms of the disease. The problem is that this "power" exists in the first place.
Pee.
I'd lobby politicians into bombing Israel, I think they need a turn.
Iran's doing that already.
Cutting off Israel will hurt the genociders even more.
If you're American, maybe run for President in 2028 on a "No to Israel" platform; put $100 million into it. Don't scare fellow Americans with extremist stuff, but feel free to insult your rivals. Maybe insult MAGAts as dumb fucks who'd take a bullet for Trump and get nothing.
Lots of perfectly valid answers here about decent humane things to do with the money and power, and I certainly hope I would do things like end homelessness or otherwise meaningfully improve the world.
That said.
I'd build a full-scale, 1:1 replica of the USS Enterprise, NCC 1701-D, from The Next Generation. I'd run it like the Biltmore; technically it would be a private residence, but I'd charge people to take tours. But any time I wanted, I could close it down for a few days and just hang out on the bridge or in main engineering and vibe out to the THRUM THRUM THRUM of the warp core.
But solve homelessness first, of course.
There we go, there's the childlike wonder and whimsy we so desperately need.
Make it so! :D
I'm not a fan of cannibalism, but I guess waking up a billionaire would make for a good breakfast opportunity.
It's not cannibalism; billionaires don't have enough empathy to be considered human
Ouch!
Call a tax lawyer/pay taxes, call a financial planner, and figure out what other calls I'd need to make to set up and fund a couple of charities.
Well if he woke up obviously the first stab didn't kill him so I'd stab him again.
Put him to sleep agai, with a brick.
get up
Get me, my family, and my friends the fuck out of the US
Probably yell WOOHOO.
Next is quit my job.
A new off-grid house. We have a lot of power outages here every winter.
An older used car (I want nothing to do with a new car which are basically rolling spyware).
Start helping the worse off in my area such as the homeless and those living below the poverty line.
You are a billionaire you can custom design a new car with no spyware using reliable parts from other large brands
Very true but that will take time, months at a minimum.
I'd shut the fuck up. Pay off my house and maybe add an addition to where I'm at. Same with some relatives. Fix my Subaru the way I want it, buy a catterham.
Start buying people's debt for pennies on the dollar and cancelling it.
And what about the other 950 million dollar?
Begin process of leaving the USA.
Hire a fukn lawyer D:
I would invest it. Every year, I would withdraw the profits, so that my net worth stayed approximately the same.
I would throw an event in a different city each year.
I would get that money ("earned" from doing nothing more than investing it) IN CASH.
All the cash would be loaded up in a plane and dropped in a public place. It would be a spectacle. No advertising needed, word of mouth and social media would be more than enough.
At each event, I would remind people that the money dropping from the sky is merely the crumbs from a single billionaire. Money that I did not earn. Money that was taken from the fruits of their labor and added to my stock portfolio.
I would ask them to imagine how much more money billionaires are hoarding. I would then bid them a fond farewell until next year.
Oh, and also, maybe a nice condo in southeast Asia. Thailand, maybe. Somewhere chill and fairly inexpensive. Not because I deserve a nicer place, but because fuckyouallI'mrichbitchstillnotatotaldickheadthough.
Take a day off?
If i woke up a billionaire, I would tell him to pay some taxes to avoid the guillotine in a couple years.
American billionaire (1000 millions) or European billionaire (1 million millions)?
I didn't realize there was a difference. What do Europeans call 1,000,000,000?
Well firstly there's no europe-wide standard. There's long scale and short scale, the US and many other countries use short scale (billion is 1000 millions). It usually goes by language, but there are exceptions: Spanish and Mexican Spanish are both long scale while USAn Spanish is short scale.
Short scale goes: million, billion, trillion
Long scale goes: million, milliard, billion, billiard, trillion, trilliard... etc.
Then in my language it goes: million, milliard, trillion, quadrillion. We use short scale but replace billion with milliard (miljard actually for the local spelling)
There are also other systems. Once you get to 10^5, India has names for every second power of ten rather than every third power. lakh is 1,00,000, crore is 1,00,00,000, etc. It's funny writing it out with double zeroes instead of triple lol
Take biggest loan(s) and sell everything I own. Buy big storage space with wall full of leaf blowers and blow the money for the rest of my life.
Build out swathes of affordable housing/mixed use properties in large enough numbers to drive down the prices city wide.
Buy a house far far away and leave this cesspool I currently call home.
Leave the US for a country that hasn't turned into a dictatorship yet.
The problem is that everything I'd want to do would be opposed by other billionaires worth hundreds of billions.
If you were smart with your §1b, you could make it grow and move against the other billionaires.
You'd never live long enough to grow your $1b into enough to worry someone like Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, etc.
That's it? If you had a billion dollars, you'd do two chicks at the same time?
They're making a reference to Office Space.
I know. What I wrote was Pete's follow up.
Ah my bad, I guess it's been longer than I realized since I've last seen the movie.
Get the fuck out of this country
I'd see a tax advisor and then a portfolio manager, and book driving lessons.
Next day I'd pay off my student loans
go find where Musk is and beat the ever living fuck out of him, I'll be able to access him easier with my billion dollars, after that just do shit to help my local community.
Finally sleep in.
Exactly, finally get some sleep
You know I think about this all the time. A lot of those rich fucks are on the hook for meetings and bulshit all the time. If I had to wake up at 430 am every morning to get ready for meetings would it even be worth it to be rich?
We'll.... Yes, probably lol but still it makes me feel better about it. At least I can kind of choose myown schedule with my current job. Not rich but I do get to sleep in sometimes.
And sometimes, every once in a while, that is priceless.
I'd probably put an entire university worth of professors on payroll, along with an army of neurodivergence specialists to make it so I could actually make use of them. If I had functionally infinite money I could become so fucking gigabrain. The saving the world stuff should go without saying since we are all ensouled beings unlike the ghoulish husks who actually have billions of dollars.
Call my accountant
Buy politicians.
Trying to figure out how to tax them so I won’t get in trouble.
OR I’ll go to some remote island.
There’s only one island for billionaires
i would start looking for causes to fund. extinction rebellion for example would get quite hefty sum
Start giving lectures about the antichrist, buy a barrel of ketamine, pay women to sleep on a bed of cornflakes.
Buy one more bicycle and then figure out how the money can help me to make my city or at least the neighbourhood car-free.
top of my list would be similar: reclaim as many greenways and creeks in my town as possible
Make sure I'm not still asleep and dreaming.
cancel my benefits. tell my wife. I mean I would start trying to figure out my money but if a surface look indicated I was going to be set for life no matter what I do and if all the financials had some setup im sure we would definately take an extended vacay of no planning. Just go and do what we want and indulge. After a bit would start figuring out how to do something useful outside of be hedonistic and figure out where we want to live and such.
Create a worldwide socialist revolution.
Probably cry from confusion as to how I became a billionaire??
Start trying to figure out the best way to give away most of it.
Besides paying off my debt and repairing my house as well as installing a geothermal heat pump, set up investments, basically all the normal shit one would do if they suddenly got a large windfall?
Buy up land to turn into forests, figure out a way to set it up in trusts or something such that nobody will have the right to do a full clear cut for timber any time soon, but maintenance cuts are fine.
Set up about a gigawatt worth of wind power generation in my country if the billions are multiple rather than exactly a billion euros or dollars or whatever. Our power usage peaks at around 1.6 gigawatts in the winter. Wind's unpredictable and I don't expect it to completely fill all demand, but rather make electricity so cheap that the fossil plants wouldn't turn a profit most of the time. Solar would be nice too, but it's borderline useless for about 2-4 months a year, I've forgotten the exact numbers.
Can't change the world with a few billion, but could noticeably improve one particular corner of it - and one that has a particularly dirty power grid at that. Driving an EV is STILL as bad as an ICE here because in the winter our electricity comes not from something as beautifully clean as coal or gas, but fucking shale rock...
Bonus, not only would I improve the availability of cheap green power, our government is currently partially funding heating system conversions from SFHs in cities and small towns, to replace solid fuel furnaces with heat pumps (ideally) or at least newer, cleaner burning furnaces, with the goal of improving air quality. Meaning the government would essentially be helping people make the most of the cheaper and greener electricity.
Triple-check that's it's real, make sure to secure it in multiple ways, then research charities so I can give most of it away. A couple of million € would already afford me all the luxuries that I could care about.
Not even sure what I'd actually spend money on that would improve my life. I seem to be accumulating medical issues that are difficult to diagnose, let alone treat; not sure that even a billion dollars would actually help much with that (we do have a somewhat sensible healthcare system in my country). I'd probably look into hiring some kind of personal assistant/caretaker/chauffeur, to improve my odds of actually making it to important appointments (or just having them do it for me, if it doesn't require that I personally show up).
Buy back the politicians.
Go back to sleep
Find everyone in my life who has money issues and give them each a million.
Same, but, I would proudly and publicly deny that favor to about 3 people in my orbit. And then, I'd never talk to them again in my life.
Satan’s on the phone, he’s looking for someone to brainstorm with…
Get rid of it, that much money is toxic. I’d throw it at every good cause I could, buy a modest house, and get back to being broke as soon as I could.
Become Batman and use my wealth to hunt my new peers.
Host an anonymous scholarship program for 800 million to throw the money away while giving education opportunities to people in poverty, donate 100 mil to open source projects I use. invest 90 mil to have a steady income throughout the rest of my life.
I can live a satisfying life just with 10 mil, and the income generated from investments would be a good safety net, but I'm not really a high end luxury seeker.
Dunno, maybe hate on poor people?
Buy a house and car for every one of my family members. After that I'd set aside a few million to live off the interest and spend the rest on actually fixing problems billionaires and the government refuse to do. Make a robust food distribution system that drastically reduces hunger in the world, build cheap affordable housing in rich people's neighborhoods, buy out land for the express purpose of installing a proper rail system across the state of California, that sort of thing.
I am so boring I would stick it in my savings account and live off the interest.
OR take a few million and sponsor a Formula 1 team with a made up name and travel with the team for a year.
Buy Argentina.
You’re lucky, buy it in cash and you get Venezuela half off.
Also, we have a great deal on US rust belt states, if you’re interested…
Tell him to go back to sleep before he can start up any more damage
Give most of it away to free software foundation and put couple million to an low yield ethical index fund and start packing for some traveling.
Ask them why they won’t give their money to those in need?
I don’t know. I’m just surprised no one else read this sentence as though they were waking up some billionaire from their slumber.
Get them breakfast?
Buy land, start a building company and build apartments. Then I would turn each building into a cooperative so that only those who live in it are in control.
And I would sponsor Deutschlandtickets for low income people.
From what's left I'd buy a big house and invite my queer and trans friends from mainly the US and UK to live with me.
Good for you man super virtuous and all but that's not the premise
The premise is like... magic or something, dude. The premise is not that you are a philosophical zombie and gain billions of dollars through actual capitalism only to one day suddenly gain sentience.
OK how about this actually... All the money came from deleting the existing billionaires from reality.
Alternate premise would be "What if everyone in the world would give you anything or do any service for you for free, feel good about it, and be enriched by it in whatever way needed for it not to be exploitative"
You're ruining the game!!
Nothing.
Probably wake up.
Think really really hard if I'm going to work or not. I'd probably go just for the pleasure of being there with a smile and the biggest "I don't give a fuck" attitude ever.
Get health insurance, a good one
Hey now, it's only a billion dollars. Lets not get crazy and plan on buying expensive things. It'd probably be cheaper to just buy the moon than to buy good health insurance.
Call a fiduciary firm in LA and have them start The Sovereign Fund for Humanity's Poor, and promptly deposit all but $10,000,000 into that. I would hire 5 people to run it. Three fiduciary's and two data analysts. The fiduciary's must be from different financial centers, the data analysts must be from Oxfam. The purpose of the fund will be to use the ROI to create trusts for the poorest people in the world first. I'd basically be privatizing UBI in about 500 years.
Make friends with Luigi.
Hookers and coke for the win!!
First thing? I'd go and fill the car up. Probably pay for a few other people's petrol while I'm there.
(Public transport is good, delayed government projects to implement it are not, actually fuck it I'll go fund the train line myself )
It cracks me up that people are like "Hoarding a billion dollars is just morally wrong, so I'll hoard $50 million instead and be a good person."
Pick a lane, people. Hoard the wealth or don't hoard the wealth, but stop feeling guilty about an imaginary scenario.
That's two orders of magnitude different. It's like a dollar versus a hundred dollars. That doesn't sound hypocritical at all.
It's not though?
1,000,000,000/50,000,000 = 1:20 ratio
It's like $20 vs. $1
Except it's still not that. Because whether you've got $1 or $20, it's still a negligible amount of money.
$50 million is enough money to easily collect $1,000,000 in interest every year. Use that as income, keep the rest invested and it would still grow.
Generational wealth. The kind of wealth that creates people like Donald Trump. More money than any single person needs.
Again, those are an order of magnitude different.
Yeah...you're going to have to remind me again what point you're trying to make?
An order of magnitude isn't negligible.
A few things:
Quit my job
If I woke up as a billionaire tomorrow I'd probably sleep in.
help SO many people. I'd build homeless shelters etc. I always had the dream of building a whole shitload of apartments, and offering them on a sliding scale, or free if homeless. Hell, I'd be a billionaire. I'd probably just offer thme free anyway
Donate 900 million, give to friends and family 90 million, invest 10 million
The question is: donate to whom?
Good question, it would take some serious research but I would spread it over many different foundations and non profits.
I also wouldn't donate it all at once, I will donate it in donations that are relative to the places' needs over several years.
Build a fuggerei 2.0
Donate 99% as taxes to the city.
What do you guys think I should do?
Debt then financial advisor, only splurge might be a new video card and some ram
start a gameshow that has three contestants that have to run while five people hunt them down. the whole time they're running from the hunters people on the streets can turn them in for a reward.
when they're finally caught, we kill them live on air.
brush my teeth
Buy up every media, news, and politician I could find and put the DSA in charge of them.
Buy and build as many homeless shelters and communal food kitchens I can.
so much lottery tickets!!!!!
give all the money to a homeless charity and then kill myself, same feelings is if i woke up and realized id raped a bunch of kids..
Redevelop my city to be more walkable/bikeable and better Public transport.