Entrust 8 million people with solving the problem locally for their 1,000. Expect fraud.
Ask HN: How would I send 1 dollar to everyone on Earth?
21–30 of 106 posts
Re: Ask HN: How would I send 1 dollar to everyone on Earth?
#22Worldcoin (cofounded by Sam Altman) is trying to do this. They plan to have contractors do eyeball scanning of everyone as identification.
Re: Ask HN: How would I send 1 dollar to everyone on Earth?
#23This cannot be done for anywhere near your $8b. You need many times that amount of money just to handle some of the problems.
If you are willing to miss some people this is likely the best solution possible. Establish a very large NGO with offices in every country in the world. You'll need enough people to cover the entire planet at the same time - and then setup desks where everyone can come in, get their dollar, and get their left hand stamped with an ink that cannot be washed off in less than a day. This is what countries do to prevent duplicate votes.
And this won't get everyone, but it should prevent most duplications.
Re: Ask HN: How would I send 1 dollar to everyone on Earth?
#24I think the overhead of proving individuals don’t get more than a dollar would wind up costing more than the money itself.
I think the lowest overhead way would be to set up a couple thousand booths around the world simultaneously where people could come to get their dollar in exchange for staining their fingers with “election ink”. Would make it pretty difficult though not impossible to double dip.
Re: Ask HN: How would I send 1 dollar to everyone on Earth?
#25In many developed and developing countries, you could likely work with the state and build it into their taxation schemes.
Re: Ask HN: How would I send 1 dollar to everyone on Earth?
#26You also need to account for exchange rate and processing fees. Some recipients may not receive 1 dollar.
Edit0: Also, I just realised, many poor people do not have means to exchange dollar into their local currency. So sending them 1 dollar through post is going to be a waste.
Edit1: Most countries will not allow this due to hawala which creates black money.
Re: Ask HN: How would I send 1 dollar to everyone on Earth?
#27How many $1 bills are even in circulation?
Re: Ask HN: How would I send 1 dollar to everyone on Earth?
#28At the risk of been downvoted: you cant. It is impossible.
Even if you had $30 billion, and your goal was to guarantee the distribution of only $1 to everyone, it still wouldnt occur with all the excess.
When you factor in corruption, fraud, inadequate infrastructure, and vague defining of the parameters.
Just think of the edge cases to understand why this couldnt be achieved:
1. A subset of the population will ACTIVELY reject your attempt to give them $1, as they will consider it spam, anti-god, conspiracy or one of hundreds of other reasons (look at recent world events to see that there is always a % of the pop on the other side)
2. A subset of the population will ACTIVELY attempt to fraud you for extra money. Claim multiple times, or claim on behalf of other people (their dead grandmother)
3. A subset of the population will ACTIVELY use corruption for extra money. Consider state actors such as North Korera, or third world countries with poor controls
I could go on - but those 3 reasons alone are enough edge cases to start with.
Re: Ask HN: How would I send 1 dollar to everyone on Earth?
#29Remove $8B worth of carbon from the atmosphere.
Re: Ask HN: How would I send 1 dollar to everyone on Earth?
#30You enter into a contract with each national government. It obviously won't be perfect, but I doubt any other method will be better.
Nice one!
Reducing 8 billion problems to 195 problems.
Additionally, some further improvements are possible. Eg. Redirecting to the EU, instead of associated countries.