Ask HN: What would you do with $700 Billion? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: What would you do with $700 Billion?

#131

Post by gambling8nt » Thu, Sep 25, 2008, 10:03 PM UTC

HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #44

Retric wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey, I was working with a college degree for 3 years before I broke 50k. At the time I was investing 8% of my income and I was still eating out all the time etc. I think the bar for poor needs to be a little lower than 50k/year.

How many kids were you trying to support?

Family size for $50k to qualify under the federally mandated definition of poverty is 12.

In fact, $50k is approximately the median household income (for 2007), with mean household sizes in that income bracket at about 2.6.

Re: Ask HN: What would you do with $700 Billion?

#132

Post by metachor » Thu, Sep 25, 2008, 10:06 PM UTC

gambling8nt wrote: post #126

run4yourlives wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spoiler Alert: Fascism wins unless they are lead by a retard.

Spoiler Alert: If you wait long enough, all fascist countries are eventually run by retards.

protip: It takes one to be led by one.

Re: Ask HN: What would you do with $700 Billion?

#133

Post by fallentimes » Thu, Sep 25, 2008, 10:26 PM UTC

gambling8nt wrote: post #128

tdavis wrote: post #99

Use it to somehow dismantle all organized religion, probably. Likely the quickest way to save the world.

$700b is almost certainly insufficient to do this; the Catholic church has around 4 times this amount by itself (most of it is illiquid, though--a large fraction is in real estate).

Whoa - are you serious? Are these documents public? I want to see them. What about the Deferred Liability on their balance sheet for "Child Molestation"?

Re: Ask HN: What would you do with $700 Billion?

#134

Post by gambling8nt » Thu, Sep 25, 2008, 10:39 PM UTC

fallentimes wrote: post #133

gambling8nt wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$700b is almost certainly insufficient to do this; the Catholic church has around 4 times this amount by itself (most of it is illiquid, though--a large fraction is in real estate).

Whoa - are you serious? Are these documents public? I want to see them. What about the Deferred Liability on their balance sheet for "Child Molestation"?

The problem with estimating the net worth of the Catholic church is that an overwhelmingly large fraction of its wealth is in buildings (the many churches it owns throughout the world), real estate (the land those churches are built on, plus the Vatican), and art. That said, this article (http://www.zenit.org/article-1900?l=english) gives some indication of the magnitude of their income/expenditures.

Note: Most of the figures in the attached article are in lire, with a conversion rate of 2000 lire to 1$US--the annual in and outflow of the Catholic church is on the order of hundreds of millions of $US; it is only their total assets that are on the order of trillions.

Re: Ask HN: What would you do with $700 Billion?

#135

Post by phr » Thu, Sep 25, 2008, 10:40 PM UTC

potatolicious wrote: post #22

whacked_new wrote: post #12

Create an alternative, multi-tiered research funding organization and proceed to turn the education system upside down. In fact, $700b is more than enough to do this several times over, so the surplus will probably go to funding a century of other programs related to exploration, bioengineering, green technology, and other sustainable development projects. Seriously, what could it be other than this?

Agreed. I would establish an organization that will essentially usurp the position of the NSF. It will be non-partisan, be free from political influence, and non-ideologically driven. It will be available to all academics everywhere. My brother is a researcher in evolutionary biology. I have seen how the Bush administration has been sabotaging funding into this area over the last few years. Science should be a free f…

It's nice to talk about being non-partisan, non-political, non-ideological, etc., but it's a lot easier said than done. One way might be to fund a series of huge prizes for the company that first achieves one of your goals.

I'd start with a couple billion to the first company to achieve sustainable low-cost access to low Earth orbit.

I'd also hand out lesser amounts to p+B11 fusion projects (EMC2 and there's another one I can't remember right now), to fund their research, with maybe $5B to the first to get a 1GW commercial plant on-line.

Re: Ask HN: What would you do with $700 Billion?

#136

Post by gambling8nt » Thu, Sep 25, 2008, 10:43 PM UTC

metachor wrote: post #132

gambling8nt wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spoiler Alert: If you wait long enough, all fascist countries are eventually run by retards.

protip: It takes one to be led by one.

On the contrary; an incompetent leader is easier to manipulate, and therefore more likely to be favored by whatever secondary powers arise as the fascist nation stagnates.

Re: Ask HN: What would you do with $700 Billion?

#137

Post by felipe » Thu, Sep 25, 2008, 10:44 PM UTC

danw wrote: post #102

Try and fix poverty, hunger, clean drinking water in a sustainable way.

A few years ago I attended a talk by Prof. Jeffrey Sachs, professor at Columbia University who was commissioned by the UN to develop a program to end worldwide poverty with sustainable, long-term initiatives -- Note this is not the standard aid, but stuff like microcredit and micro-entrepreneurship.

He traveled the world and came back with the price tag: $1 trillion. That is not to relief, but to END poverty worldwide.

Re: Ask HN: What would you do with $700 Billion?

#138

Post by nazgulnarsil » Thu, Sep 25, 2008, 10:49 PM UTC

jm4 wrote: post #43

Two chicks at the same time. Seriously, I have no idea what I'd do with that amount of money. If I was completely selfish maybe I'd buy an island somewhere. I sure as hell wouldn't use it to bail out a bunch of failed businesses whose executives have been giving themselves multi-million dollar bonuses.

the correct answer is 70 million chicks at the same time. and that represents the majority of attractive women alive today.

Re: Ask HN: What would you do with $700 Billion?

#139

Post by phr » Thu, Sep 25, 2008, 10:51 PM UTC

Hire a mercenary army to conquer some third world sh*t hole, then give it a modern infrastructure, education system, etc., and turn it into a capitalist/libertarian utopia.

With some of the profits, I'd pick another country and iterate.

Re: Ask HN: What would you do with $700 Billion?

#140

Post by staticshock » Thu, Sep 25, 2008, 10:56 PM UTC

potatolicious wrote: post #22

whacked_new wrote: post #12

Create an alternative, multi-tiered research funding organization and proceed to turn the education system upside down. In fact, $700b is more than enough to do this several times over, so the surplus will probably go to funding a century of other programs related to exploration, bioengineering, green technology, and other sustainable development projects. Seriously, what could it be other than this?

Agreed. I would establish an organization that will essentially usurp the position of the NSF. It will be non-partisan, be free from political influence, and non-ideologically driven. It will be available to all academics everywhere. My brother is a researcher in evolutionary biology. I have seen how the Bush administration has been sabotaging funding into this area over the last few years. Science should be a free f…

It will be non-partisan, be free from political influence, and non-ideologically driven.

Really? No bias? How about this: you'd be a sucker. People apply for grant money and are rejected because the grants are often terrible. Sure, sometimes good grants get rejected, but, overall, the review system is pretty functional. I don't know much about NSF in particular, but if they reviewed grant proposals and then gave out money without passing judgement on quality, they'd be wasting a whole lot of money. And you'd really have to remove all judgement if you wanted a system where all academics are equal. So, judgement is back. Now, tell me this: now that we're judging, can we really keep ideological bias out?

You have to remember that grant money can pay salaries. If you give it out to anyone, people will abuse it.

You make a valid point about the Bush administration, though.