11
Hire a LOT of hitmen
Take power everywhere i could and force permanent wealth equality.
Then redistribute the rest.
Wholesale murder of my fellow billionaires
Great idea! But what happens then? There'd be some fear, but more importantly, a certain vacuum of power. How could you make sure another power-hungry, sociopathic populist wouldn't rise? Or, again more importantly, make sure people cannot fall into these traps again, which only happens due to a lack of ideology, generalized ignorance and a belief in 'moral relativism' (among other issues)?
Btw, Frank Herbert explored this in Dune... it requires a virtually immortal prophet! 😅
People who seek power being more scared that being exploitative has consequences, so they limit exploitation.
It took hundreds of years of revolts to get from absolute monarchies to representative systems in most European countries. You could argue the French revolution failed because it was succeeded by Napoleon. You could also understand it as an important step forward.
Take another example in Europe. Initial plans were to create an US style capitalism in Western Germany after WW2. However it was understood this would create a large class of disenfranchised and poor people. This would have given communism a chance to become the dominating ideology in Europe. So instead capitalism had to be coated with social security, access to opportunities by education, access to home ownership... Structures that were subsequently damaged and destroyed after the collapse of the Soviet Union as now the ruling class thought themselves to be able to exploit people with impunity. Something that will fail eventually, but get much worse until then.
It is like brushing your teeth. Yes they will get dirty again. But not having the perfect solution to keep them clean forever cannot dissuade you from brushing them regularly. On the contrary it makes it all the more important to keep brushing them.
People who seek power being more scared that being exploitative has consequences, so they limit exploitation.
Or you just bias the power vacuum to be filled with even more paranoid and ruthless nutjobs, because the more sensible psychopaths choose to avoid the consequences you are proposing. We see this fairly consistently when authoritarian governments get coup'd - the person most likely to take the place of a bloodthirsty dictator who knows he could get assassinated at any moment is an even more bloodthirsty future dictator.
When authoritarian governments get coup'd and there is external influence seeking to further destabilize. Also every authoritarian dictator needs a class of people loyal to the regime, who fall into the category of people wanting power but also staying alive.
We also see many dictators that got more paranoid over time as they ruled too long, because there was no opposition to keep them in check until things exploded fully.
Great idea! But what happens then?
Not my problem because I would have to die too.
[ Removed by Reddit ]
Develop High yield and sophisticated lab controlled food production facilities that could run all year without fear of climate instability to rev the throttle on sustainable long term food production.
I'm going to build a shit ton of housing.
Use every last dollar to fund a revolution.
Buy the US House and Senate.
$5 B / 435 = 11,494,252 per person. Sounds do-able. Shit, Bob Menendez sold out for $480,000. 11 mil. would go a LOOONG way.
Best that I can think of would be to create an endowed institute of political scientists, psychologists, neuroscientists, linguists, et cetera, dedicated to studying and developing ways to counter right-wing populism, and de-program people who fall under its sway.
Let's congratulate you for being the only poster that did not want to go on a killing spree. If you want to change the world, you can do that by killing people. If you want to improve the world and start that with killing people you will never succeed. Thanks for that.
Leftist fascism killing people is not better than right wing fascism killing people. In the end everybody is dead and nothing is better. People after the second world war understood that. We have forgotten that and start looking for blood again, just to learn that expensive and painful lesson again.
Establish non profit in country that is not part of international patent sytem and move there.
Invest in university(ies) in that country and start close cooperation.
Start making hardware / manufacturing device specifications and publish them as opensource.
Establish something like github but for hardware + manufacturing. Establish open factory / manufacturing project.
Publish free books about building houses / vehicles / electronics / manufacturing.
Invest in alternative opensource software to Autodesk / Solidworks / Catia.
Start open medicine project that shows how medicines are producded from herbs and plants.
One million dollars per assassin until one of them eventually gets through to Trump, then Vance, than Musk, Than the Republican Supreme Court. After that, a 50,000 dollar bounty on any sitting member of Trump's Cabinet and any sitting member of the GOP.
Even if it takes every penny to finish that list and I end up right back where I started. I'll still consider it money well spent.
Anything less than a full Nuremberg level cleanse of nazi's in America is just not going to be sufficient.
Kill them all.
And I'm not being even the least bit facetious.
I would start a non profit foundation that develops and maintains cost effective, autonomous boats to clean up the great garbage patch.
I am envisioning something like a small fleet of autonomous boats that dock with large motherships dump their cargo of garbage and head out again The motherships can also work with manned crafts that can handle heavier e
The motherships should be nuclear powered, have water treatment plant so the garbage can be dryed and brought to land .
I would fund community-led projects that align with my values such as:
- mutual aid collectives
- community-run gardens, libraries, and clinics
- labor and tenant unions / cooperatives
- intentional communities
- food pantries / soup kitchens
- parks and other 3rd spaces
- art collectives
- sustainability initiatives (rooftop solar, heat pumps, microgrids, rewilding, permaculture / indigenous farming practices, etc.)
- public multimodal transportation infrastructure
My focus would be on empowering people to help each other even after the money runs out.
You get to keep only enough to maintain a very modest lifestyle in a low-cost-of-living area
Am I allowed to still be employed to earn an income for my own lifestyle?
Anyhow, probably fund lab-grown egg and meat (lab grown dairy already exists) and deal with the red tape and political obstacles it is facing.
Move to an undisclosed remote location and start posting massive crypto bounties on the heads of the shittiest people in the world. Like, $100M a pop. Pay a digital sweatshop to spam social media with AI generated posts and memes about it until the whole world is aware. Then wait. See if anyone is able to collect.
Kick them in the nuts (or the stomach, in case they don't have nuts), because relying on individuals with money to solve our problems is one of our fucking problems.
Invest the money, and use the after-inflation income to do the work.
That way, you have a constant and near-permanent resource stream with which to do the work. It’s only if the markets crash as a whole that you need to worry, and nothing says you cannot build additional revenue streams along side that wealth.
I would start with the most pressing issues for Canada - housing, and the homeless crisis that arises from shitty wages combined with exploding costs. Buy large tracts of land within each city, then economically force the cities to approve large arcologies that blend residential with business spaces. Make it super-attractive for even the wealthy to want to rent homes there, but turn around and then make assisted living units available in those same areas to low-income families and homeless people who want to get off the street. Have those communities to be tightly integrated across all social strata, so everyone benefits. Plus, actual social support that helps those traumatized by homelessness to get their lives together and return to being contributing members of society.
Exactly what I would do. Build tiny house communities for low income housing that sustain themselves.
They would have some community features like a tool library and food garden and a dog area, and individual indoor and outdoor spaces for everyone.
A portion of either the rent or sale price would be set aside for each person for financial advice or mental health support annually.
Ideally built by a combination of master craftspeople and trainees from at risk youth.
Find out the best application of money to buy companies and turn them into worker coops.
Pay for drone strikes on all the world's dictators.
Set up a global ~~bounty~~ GoFundMe that anyone can contribute to anonymously.
It keeps an up-to-date ranking of everyone worth over 1 billion, and pays out to anyone who removes someone from the list.
I always wanted to see if I could 'fix' the Berkley Pit mine. It's a superfund site with some of the most acidic water in the world. It was a cooper mine for decade that went bust. When the owners walked away, it started filling up with rain water. But, because of the way mines work, that water became VERY acidic. So now there's this lake of acid out in Montana that no one wants to deal with.
Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley_Pit
Inter-mountain Histories: https://www.intermountainhistories.org/items/show/376
ChemAnalyst News - Pit might have rare earth minerals: https://www.chemanalyst.com/NewsAndDeals/NewsDetails/montana-toxic-legacy-could-become-america-rare-earth-savior-36626
In the US, so free health insurance for those making under 100k for 6 months (or likely less - whenever the money runs out). Maybe that would give enough people a taste of universal healthcare that they would start voting for policies that get us closer to that.
5 billion is a lot, but it's not quite change the world money.
I'm not looking to go on a murder spree, even if there are people out there who might deserve it. Not to mention that going after other billionaires is basically the one thing that billions of dollars can't insulate you from.
I'd probably find an underserved region of the world, start up a hospital and health clinic, pay for good doctors, and treat patients for free for as long as we still have money.
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I would set up a program where the teachers in Philadelphia public schools would have their school supplies highly subsidized by myself.
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The local food banks would receive five figure donations directly from myself.
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I would look into water retention and distribution in drought stricken parts of Mexico. If I could help I would leverage my money effectively to make sure humans have access to safe drinking water in the region. If acting directly would cause harm I would fund researchers until an appropriate solution could be found.
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Create an app that teaches the indigenous languages of the Americas while hiring native speakers for accuracy.
Edit:
- Donate to an owl sanctuary.
I like your very targeted responses!
With money in the billions, I agree that I couldn't not help fellow humans first.
Your proposals also have some fairly immediate benefits to a number of different groups of underserved people.
And then you even came back in the end to include some of the critters as well!
I like your style.
If I got billions of dollars at this point how could I not throw a little at the owls. I would feel guilty everyday I open my subscriptions.
Invest it, assuming 5% return, spend the interest money of 250 million per year on feeding the hungry, educating kids, and helping animals. Somewhere along the way, buy a couple of beers for myself.
Assassins
I like where your mind is at, truly the best decision.
Hire assassins to take care of the 1%
I'd create a new city from scratch, sort of kick-starter style with like-minded residents and businesses. It would be built up with good public transit from the beginning and solid anti-NIMBY policies. Something radical like not being able to own your property. Instead the city would be owned collectively and you could have shares. But you would never have an incentive to deny development to increase your own home's value.
There'd be participatory planning and cutting edge democracy: participatory, deliberative, representative.
Build my own village with affordable rent and live in a mansion in the middle and be like a lord of my own little village. Maybe also build a good school there. Evict people if they do anti social behaviour. Then when someone has paid enough rent to pay off the mortgage, surprise them by just giving them the house, or maybe after a time offer them to buy it with a reduced price because of the rent paid. So someone could probably live there and raise a family until they can afford a house, then buy their own house back.
Also arrange loads of community events, get people out and involved. Just make a wholesome and affordable community for others to live in. Maybe get businesses to move in to offer jobs as well.
this post was submitted on 24 May 2025
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