Ask HN: How would I send 1 dollar to everyone on Earth?

What kind of ink can’t be washed off? I haven’t ever heard of this method before.

Avoid the banks, governments and middlemen and use bitcoin. You'll save a ton of time and money by avoiding transaction fees and bureaucracy. Every person with a cellphone can accept the donation.

Travel to New Dehli and take a car ride around the city imagine what it would take to distribute dollars in a slum. Imagine the emotional turmoil caused by a billionaire tickling themselves by "using" people for an exercise in amusement. It is practically an act of domination.

There aren't just legal barriers, but language barriers and human locating barriers. Imagine trying to get people to distribute dollars which is an action that has no practical purpose other than amusement. How would you motivate people to participate?

There are islands on this planet that have no concept of international law because their inhabitants kill almost anyone that tries to get on their island. AFAIK international law says attempts to communicate with these people are illegal. Furthermore, we don't know what their concept of value is, nor would they have any understanding of what a dollar is. There is no exchange rate. To these people a dollar is a piece of paper.

That ignores that dollar distribution is poorly defined. Old people die and new people are born constantly. This makes the problem poorly defined since the act of sending is not and cannot be instantaneous.

I would take some of that money and travel to get perspective. If you've traveled for understanding rather than self amusement this question is a non starter.

> Avoid the banks, governments and middlemen and use bitcoin

Somewhat tangential. Some years ago, I was in a meeting where we were trying to solve a really thorny business issue. It was quite a small group but included some of the most knowledgeable people, in the company, on the problem at hand. We couldn't find a solution, even in theory.

As we were breaking up, one of the participants said that, although we hadn't found a solution, it was alright because the new system being built would solve it. The only identifying feature of that system at that time was that it was written in Python. Around the group there were a number of sage nods as they departed the conference room.

Statements like the Bitcoin one, remind me of that meeting. There's pretty much nothing about the nature of Bitcoin that helps this problem. In fact, one of its defining features (pseudo-anonymity) makes it worse than useless at trying to ensure everyone gets their allocation and just their allocation. And yet, with all seriousness, it can be proposed as a "solution". As if it has some kind of magic property that allows it to solve unsolvable problems. Like Python.

Do you not recall the first post-Saddam elections in Iraq?

https://www.dvidshub.net/image/3237/elections-iraqi-man-prou...