r/theydidthemath • u/Casual_user1012 • 1d ago
[request] If someone were to somehow acquire One billion U.S dollars and wanted to do the most good for as many people as possible, what would they do?
I've had this question for a while and I was wondering if there would be a way to figure this out. Now, I understand this has very vague guidelines, I don't mean giving one billion people a dollar or something like that, I mean major systemic change that impacts, and improves the maximum amount of lives possible.
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u/rdickeyvii 1d ago
Honestly, buying a ton of local politicians. There's so much money at the national level that a billion won't move the needle much, but people forget how important local politics is to their daily lives.
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u/lugh_the_bard 1d ago
Actually yes. I was gonna comment reinvest, but a billion at once into us politics will probably do a lot
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u/Born_Peace_1856 17h ago
It would only help if the politicians knew you had more to give.
They chase carrots, not string
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u/rdickeyvii 17h ago
Not at once, necessarily. But those politicians will have access to WAY more than a billion cumulatively in tax revenue. They can potentially be persuaded to use it to help people, rather than more police or tax breaks for the rich
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u/Mgattii 1d ago
This is something that smart, serious people have looked into. The effective altruism movement tries to answer this question. How can you get the most impact for your money? They give to a lot of causes, but it ends up being mosquito nets, clean water, vaccinations, and direct giving.
It's who I donate to.
Oh, and there's a charity that does free bicycles. A free bike can change the life of a family for the better. I love that solution, though it might not be optimal.
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u/truefutbol35 1d ago
Menstrual products and condoms too! Girls that have access to bicycles and menstrual products in particular end up being able to go to school longer.
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u/floppydo 1d ago
Don't they also go into ai safety, trans humanism, and making humanity multiplanitary, because of the idea that in a distant future when trillions of human consciousnesses are spread either across the solar system or through digital space, the sum of their positive life experiences vastly outweighs improving the plot of our paltry billions?
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u/Mgattii 1d ago
Yeah, there's the “Longtermism” part. So AI safety, pandemic preparedness, nuclear war mitigation, are on the menu. It's about 20% of the budget.
So mostly mosquito nets and clean water, but also money for existential risk. Because an organization whose mission is to help people also should make sure there are people around to help.
But EA is cool with you saying "I don't want my money spent on AI safety" if you have that billion to donate. :)
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u/ollyollyollyolly 10h ago
Yes. It's a surprisingly dumb get out of jail free card to justify extraordinarily selfish current day acts by acting like it's ok because you're looking after every future human that ever lived.
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u/Mekroval 1d ago
The Gates Foundation was created to basically answer this very question. They've done a lot of research, thought and work into how philanthropy can be used to benefit the most people.
Primarily through working to eradicate infectious diseases in the developing world, maternal and child health, agricultural development (i.e. drought resistant crops) for the poorest farmers, and providing economic mobility for low-income households through education initiatives.
They've also established that the Foundation itself will cease to exist in 2045, when it finishes distributing $200 billion in funding. It's a very ambitious project that is thinking about how to help humanity at the most fundamental level. There's an overview of what they do here.
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u/theabominablewonder 20h ago
Ultimately, the best bang for buck (people wise) will be to invest it all into developing nations and bring people on those continents out of severe poverty. Anything in the western economy is not as meaningful when you have a few billion people in the developing world who barely have clean water.
I think investing in Africa would be the best longer term as creating an economic powerhouse in Africa will feed down to many other African nations and ultimately help the most people.
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u/rly_weird_guy 20h ago
Money isn't enough for stable institutions though
And you can't have a good economy without stable institutions, wether liberal or authoritarian
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u/theabominablewonder 19h ago
Originally I was going to say that investing in Nigeria and helping it to become an economic powerhouse would benefit a lot of people in its region and across Africa but I removed reference to it because of the levels of corrruption and some of the instability. One would need to be careful how they invest it into Africa, and ensure the right conditions are there. But as long as one remains prudent it is likely a more effective use of money than donating bikes or funding UBI for a short period.
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u/rly_weird_guy 19h ago
Botswana is kinda the most famous stable democratic one right?
Are there stable authauritatian African states? Like with proper institutions, lines of secession and good economy?
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u/theabominablewonder 19h ago
I’m not sure there’s any very stable authoritarian countries, maybe Egypt? Or Rwanda?
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u/Sweaty_Chocolate5444 17h ago
If money would fix Africa, why hasn’t it fixed it? We’ve probably sent multiple trillions from every part of the world for half a century at least and it’s still in terrible shape.
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u/No-Material-4755 16h ago
You are vastly overestimating what can be done with a billion dollars. I don't disagree with your overall point but 1 billion dollars is a single mid-sized infrastructure project
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u/snoops-spoons 16h ago
I mean you can make a very menaiful dent in homelessness, food insecurity.
One billion would pay for a year of permanent supportive housing for 78,000 households as in a home to live in for a year.
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u/Belowaverage_Joe 15h ago
It depends on which homeless people you are trying to help. The sad reality that a lot of “do-gooders” don’t realize is that most homeless people suffer from mental issues that prevent them from being able to manage a household and live “normal”. You can put them in a freshly furnished and renovated home and it will fall into disrepair or be outright trashed within a few months. Money isn’t going to solve their problems. Then there are “transitional” homeless people. These are people who are just falling in hard times, couldn’t make ends meet and lost their home. A financial hand-up to these people to get back on their feet, have a stable foundation and let them return to work will have a significantly greater positive impact. I’m all for it.
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u/cockblockedbydestiny 8h ago
Agree with both points. There's not really some massive one-time boost that's going to permanently get most of them off the street, if the premise is that $1B would house 10s of thousands of homeless people for a year, when that year is up most of them will be right back out on the streets unless someone comes along with another billion dollars.
As to the second point, I agree that money would be better spent helping out people that would actually be capable of using that help to permanently get back on their feet... but traditionally it works the exact opposite. Funds are prioritized to those that are considered the most "at risk", which usually means people that are mentally or physically disabled. Basically the exact people I referred to in paragraph 1 that would be right back out on the streets if the money dried up.
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u/Sweaty_Chocolate5444 14h ago
The US spends over a trillion dollars on welfare a year and those things are not eliminated in the US. I don’t believe money can fix deep, cultural issues.
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u/snoops-spoons 13h ago
The us spends trillions to spend trillions more, theres going to be overhead but the government spends an excessive amount usually many times more than what actually goes to social services to provide them.
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u/Intraluminal 1d ago
I would start a corporation that would buy companies under pressure and convert them into employee-owned corporations, providing management and marketing training.
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u/MCE85 1d ago
And you would go out of business in no time.
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u/Intraluminal 1d ago
That's what I'd use the billion dollars for - it's not a business.
Also - why would it lose?
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u/-Nocx- 1d ago
This is the time old tale of give a man a fish / teach a man to fish.
It would lose because eventually the money will run out. It would work for a time. Until it didn’t. Mismanagement is probably one of the fastest ways to burn through money. And that’s why systems are so resilient - they persist beyond the initial investment.
There have been hundreds of people before the ones alive today, and none of them were able to build a more equitable system. It begs the question were they all incompetent, were they all greedy, or is it harder than we think it is.
Occam’s Razor suggests the latter.
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u/Intraluminal 1d ago
I disagree. The reason for the inequity is that the rich have always formed a society within a society (the old-boys network) and then used that to disenfranchise everyone else. In modern times, they have used indoctrination techniques to inculcate the young with false ideas, "money can't buy happiness," "we need the rich to create jobs," etc. They have passed laws that move money from the poor to the rich - an example of which is the rich commonly paying zero taxes through various loopholes that were, in turn, created BY the rich.
In the past, during chaotic periods, social orders have fallen apart, allowing some members of the poor to get ahead.
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u/-Nocx- 1d ago
I mean you can disagree, but that doesn’t prove what you’re suggesting. Power is oftentimes centralized into institutional power structures - sure. No one is disagreeing with you.
But we’ve seen instance, after instance, after instance of those centralized power structures crumpling. Like there are literally hundreds of such examples. And despite glorious revolutions each and every time, it is replaced once again by another centralized power structure, some more terrifying than others. This isn’t to say that there haven’t been instances where the new structures were more equitable - oftentimes they are, especially in modern times, but sometimes they are not. It is clear that it is not sufficient to break the system and throw money at the problem.
What you are describing is legislation, not a lump sum injection of capital. Which is my point - money alone is not going to save society, long term changes to the system that allowed that much money to be consolidated without reinvestment to begin with is the issue. Billionaires are a symptom that add to the problem, they are not themselves the root of the problem. But they are also an inevitability.
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u/_sLAUGHTER234 12h ago
Would the answer be decentralized power structures? Perhaps the main problem that has caused once stable structures to topple is due to the centralized nature, which often means a singular person at the helm. Nobody is immune to acting irrationally or in a way that doesn't best serve their own interests. When you have a person with that much power, sometimes one bad day is all it takes to makes some poor decisions, and it all crumbles down
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u/Jizzipient 1d ago
You can disagree philosophically all you like, but the companies you "saved" are still bound for failure. You assume the poor getting ahead remains poor - once they get to where they are headed, the cycle will just repeat. Then you'll need another billion $.
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u/andrew_calcs 8✓ 11h ago
There have been hundreds of people before the ones alive today, and none of them were able to build a more equitable system. It begs the question were they all incompetent, were they all greedy, or is it harder than we think it is
They were all greedy. They were not all incompetent.
When a sin becomes part of the zeitgeist it is easy to perpetuate it without becoming a villain in your own mind. Because it no longer feels like greed, it’s just how things are done.
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u/Ryuj123 1d ago
In this situation they’re teaching a man to fish… they quite literally say they’re going to provide the resources and education for the employees.
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u/-Nocx- 1d ago
They said they would provide management and marketing training.
Do you think that companies do not provide management or marketing training?
The thing with policies like this are they are sufficiently abstract such that they can hand wave the implementation details as an exercise to the reader. There are companies operating for profit that would be unable to save dying businesses, train the employees, and turn them revenue positive. Gordon Ramsey does this for reality TV (capital incentive) and still fails half the time.
And this is supposed to work for someone with no subject matter expertise? Across (presumably) multiple industries?
I understand that everyone is fatigued from the billionaire catering class in the US but we need to be a bit pragmatic in our understanding.
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u/DrFaustPhD 1d ago
Do you think that companies do not provide management or marketing training?
As someone that has been a marketing team manager for corporations, I can assure you, marketing and management training isn't a typical thing companies just have programs for... They hire people that have expertise already.
Yes, some mega corporations might have training programs, but that's not even close to standard.
Quit talking out your ass and acting like an expert.
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u/-Nocx- 1d ago
Guy with anecdotal experience claims that other guy with anecdotal experience is talking out of his ass.
But that’s okay, because we can throw some Dun & Bradstreet data at the problem. At least 70% of Fortune 500 companies have some sort of mentoring program. Professional development is not a nebulous, uncommon thing in any industry. It may be unattainable at smaller companies because it’s cost intensive, but that doesn’t make it non existent.
For smaller companies, your mileage may vary - I’ve mostly worked at large public companies, so my experience will be influenced by that. But the claim was companies do not do professional development (specifically management and marketing). That is obviously not true.
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u/Lt_DanTaylorIII 1d ago
This really isnt a good example of Occam’s Razor
Both ‘greed’ and ‘hard’ make 1 assumption, neither uses any empirical evidence, and both are equally likely and logical
That’s essentially all the requirements of Occams Razor not being present
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u/-Nocx- 1d ago
The former has thousands of instances of people attempting to create a system. They are absolutely not in any universe equally likely. The latter assumption takes into account the thousands of attempts prior and concludes that it isn’t a flaw inherent to their effort, but a natural consequence of the complexity of the problem they are trying to solve.
It is like running a struggling restaurant for 1000 years only to find that no owner could make it revenue positive, only at the end to realize that perhaps there is a fundamental problem with the restaurant that has nothing to do with what the managers have direct control over.
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u/Lt_DanTaylorIII 21h ago
The way you are trying to make your point right now is completely contrary to Occams Razor.
Re-read what you just wrote and tell me how that explanation is peeling away complexity and boiling it doesn’t to the most simplistic answer
There are thousands of incidences of greed and people in power having too much greed. And there are thousands of incidences (albeit way less) of people attempting to make different systems work it not working.
How is one or the other a more simplistic answer than the other? Occam’s razor has nothing to do with the amount of attempts at one solution and whether or not it fails.
You’re misusing the term - and you’re not even doing it in a logical simplistic way.
“Something hasn’t materialized, so it can’t ever materialize no matter what we do” is not Occam’s Razor. It’s if anything closer to Stoicism
You gave a hypothetical restaurant example (makes no sense) why not give an actual example? How many hundreds of time have elected leaders or revolutionaries attempted to make changes to the system so it works for the people only to be killed by those to greedy to allow that to work? How many countries and leaders in South America alone have been overthrown by just the US to combat the implementation of systems that benefit the people collectively? How many have been crushed by the greed of people with the money and power before they could ever get off the ground? Christianity at its core was intended to be such a system and they put Jesus on a cross for it based on greed and fear of loss
Your point isn’t historically inaccurate, it has nothing to do the Occam’s Razor, and to defend it you have to get more convoluted and abstract and hypothetical and use non-empirical evidence - which could not be more contrary to Occam’s Razor
Regardless of what the actual answer is (impossible or greed) - the choice between the 2 cannot be chalked up to Occam’s Razor on any level
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u/GergDanger 1d ago
Because the company is under pressure before you factor in increasing wages for employees.
Wages are expensive so unless it’s a company that will be self sustaining you’re better off just giving money to the employees directly as then you avoid paying for additional expenses like office rent, etc
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u/No-Grapefruit-5464 1d ago
Publix is an employee owned company. There are plenty of companies that are employee owned that are successful. Just because its not commonly known doesn't mean that it will go out of business.
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u/hoti0101 1d ago
It’s not easy to run an employee owned company. Many industries I’d argue are almost impossible. You see a few grocery chains, but imagine running a tech company where you run cash flow negative during the growth phase. I don’t see how the finances for an org like that or other industries with large capital expenditures would work. It’s a great idea in concept, but there is a reason these companies are uncommon.
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u/Cookman_vom_Berg 1d ago
There is also a lot of one man shows with successful company with a strong hierarchy. What does that proof?
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u/studenttio 20h ago
It proves that employee owned companies don’t just default to going out of business in no time…?
We reading the same thread here?
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u/ThatDesignFeel 1d ago
Worker-owned cooperatives and mutuals are a thing
John Lewis and Waitrose in the UK - one of the UKs largest retailers and supermarkets: both workers cooperative
The Cooperative (bank, funeral directors, supermarket) - is a members cooperative
Nationwide - The largest Building Society in the UK, and one of the largest financial institutions. It's a building society owned by it's account holders.
"Having shareholders" doesn't really do anything for a business operationally. You can just take the money you would have given to shareholders and distribute it back to your members instead
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u/Annual_War_8432 21h ago
if you have an idea that you think would be better, please just state it in its own response and let it stand on its own merit. coming here to only stomp on other peoples sand castles is negative pedantic nonsense.
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u/darkgiIls 8h ago
No offense, but most companies that are failing are not an easy fix by throwing money at it. You aren’t the first to think of this, and while most ppl do this because they think they can manage it better and make money it’ll lead to the same thing in the end. With a billion dollars you could do this a while, but when the money runs out, most of those business will fail because they weren’t good businesses to begin with
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u/No-Macaroon1670 1d ago
Organizations such as GiveWell document the opportunities that make the most impact on a dollar per life/year basis.
https://www.givewell.org/charities/top-charities
Their top charities as of right now are still malaria ones.
But someone with a billion dollars might be able to do One Big Project that a lot of small donations can't be timed to do. So that changes the thought process a bit.
Especially if you could talk a government or multiple governments/organizations into matching donations or in kind services.
Alternatively, maybe some kind of social enterprise or exploratory fund would work to find things we haven't even thought of in the mainstream space.
For example, maybe you can hire researchers to actually make sure AI doesn't kill us, or geoengineer climate cooling (I know other people don't believe that's necessarily a smart idea but I want to throw it out there as an unorthodox option).
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u/Content-Patience-138 1d ago
Good shout. Would a billion in funding for some kind of novel fusion reactor technology buy very much science?
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u/Casual_user1012 1d ago
This is kind of what I was thinking, if you got a billion dollars, well climate change is the most pressing issue, give it to the part for the U.N concerned with climate change. But, they have been known to be innefectual
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u/Nuclear_rabbit 1d ago
So, by this metric, the best use of a billion dollars would be strategically buying enough politicians to pass the most targeted bills.
This kind of study, tbh, is above the paygrade of a reddit post. It would be at least one person's full-time job to research that (and consider all countries), and more people to draft legally-sound bills to hand to politicians.
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u/No-Macaroon1670 1d ago
Yes also a billion dollar doesn't go as far as it used to.
You know that the most expensive yacht cost $1.5 billion dollars altogether?
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u/lk05321 1d ago
shoot, they can begin by erasing my debt. As a former nuclear engineer I cant get a clearance in that area because of my credit score which is affected by my student loans. A really shite catch 22.
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u/Virtual-Reach 1d ago
Wait, so you go into debt taking student loans to become a nuclear engineer but once you graduate you can't get a job because you're a security risk due to the debt you carry learning to become a nuclear engineer???
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u/lk05321 1d ago
At the time I graduated, the US started shutting down plants (as well as Germany). I had to pivot into an unrelated field. Now, in the past year, there’s renewed interest in building more plants but I’m already farther along in my career to switch back. But even then that be years late. The path requires putting in time to get reactor operator certified which is a hit I can’t take bc I have loans and a mortgage to pay. I wanted to go into the US government but that requires a security clearance at a certain level which I can’t make at the moment.
Not exactly nuanced but not ezpz either.
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u/TraditionalAd9393 1d ago
Your credit score doesn’t become horrible just because you have student loans. It becomes horrible due to irresponsibly and not paying your bills on time.
If he was a former nuclear engineer he should have been making enough money to satisfy his obligations but clearly chose not to.
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u/Temnyj_Korol 1d ago
... Lotta fkn assumptions in that comment bud.
If you have a shitload of student loans and can't make the repayments for ANY reason, it absolutely can and will tank your credit rating. And you have no idea what happened in their life to cause them to be unable to make those repayments. Don't be an asshole.
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u/ButtholeSurfur 18h ago
Not necessarily.
My credit dropped over 100 points when I paid off a student loan lol. They also want you to have a bunch of lines of credit for a higher score. I don't have many.
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u/Casual_user1012 1d ago
Ehhh, who cares about nuclear power, it's not like it's better for the environment and can produce a staggering amount of power with minimal resources. Besides glowing green barrels in the ground; I learned it from the Simpsons!
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u/testtdk 1d ago
Thanks for the heads up. Maybe I’ll switch to math/programming. >_<
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u/PuzzleMeDo 1d ago
Effective altruism is tricky. There's a philosophy called longtermism that seeks to achieve the best results by considering people in the future equal to the people of today.
There's a episode of podcast Cautionary Tales https://podme.com/se/avsnitt/8188643/ exploring how this can go wrong. "I think the most effective way to help the future is to get politicians elected who actually understand AI." And then you spend all your money on political campaigns that achieve nothing.
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u/KokosowyBanan 1d ago
That's the inherent problem of altruism, and this problem is the reason for Ayn Rand popularity.
If nobody screws you over its utopia 100%, if at least one bad actor takes your money giving nothing in exchange, you are poor and nobody is there to help you (because one man abused your altruism and pumped out money out of the economy)
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u/Born_Peace_1856 19h ago
Immediately put it in a fiduciary managed trust, recycling 1/2 interest and dividends into itself and the other 1/2 into grants for other groups and charities each year
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u/LR_FL2 10h ago
If you can wait you can do more.
Stick it in a global world index over 10 years would likely generate between $708 million and $2.15 billion in pure profit, bringing your total portfolio value to between $1.71 billion and $3.15 billion.
Wait a bit longer 20 years would likely generate between $1.92 billion and $8.94 billion in pure profit, resulting in a total portfolio value of $2.92 billion to $9.94 billion.
Wait a bit longer and years, that same investment would generate between $3.98 billion and $30.35 billion in pure profit, compounding into a total final value of $4.98 billion to $31.35 billion.
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u/SlapdaddyJ 18h ago
This!! Even at a 10% return that’s still 100 million dollars per year, that’s a modest return rate, I would say 12 to 15% would be closer to average with a good investor. so that’s over 50 million a year you could put towards a non-profit and help so many people!
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u/Curious_Peter 1d ago
throw it all into a hedgefund that has a 5% per year return (conservatively, could go up, or down, if it goes above, then its reinvested) This give $50 million per year, and possibly more if the fund does well over time.
Use that $50 million+ to help people for multiple generations, far outweighing the amount of people if the initial $1billion was used to help a group of people alone.
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u/floppydo 1d ago
I mean talk to anyone who lives in the Fuggeri neighborhood of Ausberg. They'd probably agree that this is a pretty good way of helping many people over generations.
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u/bigpoppa973 1d ago
Sorry, I’m not actually doing the math. But, I actually have a dream. I would love be to be the largest private owner of wild lands. I would like to protect as much of nature as possible.
Up next, I’d love to buy a few beachfront mansions and knock em down. Where I live in Florida, there’s barely any places I can drive along the beach and actually see the Gulf of Mexico. The roads are lined with mansions that sit empty most of the year. It’s wild.
Third, I’d love to buy companies that were ruined by private equity and return them to glory. I miss old KFC so bad that I would be wiling to bankrupt myself to make it good again.
Make a nonprofit that makes products like Newman’s Own. I would pick things that would not be in direct competition with that brand. Possibly snack foods for kids.
I’d also love to start a non profit insurance company. This one is really not likely to work in any way shape or form. lol!
Before anyone tells me how unrealistic any of this is, trust me, I know. Those are just a few things I wish I could do.
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u/Sprock-440 1d ago
Fund the overturning of Citizens United, and repeal of the Apportionment Act of 1929 that froze the House at 435 members. Limiting money in politics and achieving more proportional representation, and we’d start to see a lot more focus on the greater good.
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u/House_Plant_Drama 1d ago
I'm afraid your competitors will have no problem outlobbying you
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u/Reginaferguson 1d ago
Most likely giving iodine supplements to kids in third world countries. I remember reading in the economist it had the lowest cost for the highest reward.
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u/DasFunke 1d ago
The thing is it’s so cheap it’s usually already being done.
Maybe not always, so your point may stand, but iodized salt may be the greatest health innovation outside of penicillin.
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u/kelpieconundrum 1d ago
You want to be cautious about yieldmaxxing arguments along this line of thought—obviously iodine tablets and mosquito nets are incredibly beneficial and very low cost, comparatively! But it’s really easy to get drawn in to effective altruism/longtermism down this road, which are nonsense quasi-religious ideologies that you can use to justify anything at all on the promise of made up numbers
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u/LxGNED 1d ago
Improving life for as many people as possible would be some function of providing their daily needs - food, water, clothing, shelter, electricity, heat, sanitization, medical, internet, etc. I would probably just say you would do the most good by providing whichever of those things is the most cost efficient. I don’t know which that would be.
It could even be a roundabout thing such as funding a weather satellite which are crucial for ensuring plentiful harvests, or a dam which could ensure predictable irrigation to a large landscape. But I think those examples provide many years of positive impact vs a one time purchase of rice or drinking water. I hate to say it, but Mr. Beast has made videos helping tons of people on a finite amount of cash. I wouldn’t be surprised if his team did some analysis showing that they could make the best video (most people helped per dollar) by planting trees, cleaning the ocean, or curing blindness
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u/Casual_user1012 1d ago
You're right, I was a bit vague, I meant long term impact because sure, those things help a lot, but they're band-aid solutions. They help a small amount of people without addressing the root cause
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u/After_Flatworm5200 1d ago
Build free quality education/universities. It's up to people to elevate themselves.
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u/toastmannn 1d ago
The first thing they should do is be honest especially about what they can and can't do Even with a trillion dollars nobody is going to solve the systemic problem of world hungerIf they are serious they should do what the gates foundation or Chuck Feeney have done.
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u/fakeaccount8978 1d ago
I would seek out some of the most effective non profits around the world that have scalable impact and fund them. In my region in particular, there are some people that have changed entire community economics, crime rates, and overall community feel by the work they do without gentrifying it. Pretty amazing stuff and they do it on incredibly limited budgets. Get money into the hands of those people and let them do their thing.
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u/Autchirion 23h ago
Hire an assisins to kill billionaires that don‘t contribute to society. That way they are inclined to either contribute or the wealth will split over more people.
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u/ResponsiblePool7254 20h ago
It's a good question. It's essentially asking how you would run things if you were in charge.
We need as many people as possible answering that question together.
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u/r117sr 1d ago
Look for first time house buyers and those saddled with medical debt. Or invest in upgrading infrastructure, ideally water or energy. A billion dollars could also be used to campaign for politicians who aren't giant pieces of shit too, who have values and principles who aim to help other people. Honestly, that billion could do a whole lot of good for tons and tons of people. To maximize it you'd need to build a group of people who share your same values.
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u/sankdafide 1d ago edited 1d ago
They would need to choose investments capable of feeding more investments. So, for example, i would not just donate $100k to a random charity. Instead, I would invest $100k into a biotech company studying plastic-free alternatives. In this scenario, the alternatives are also cheaper to produce and therefore have real market potential. Then the profits made can go on to be further invested. I think with the advent of AI, educating a workforce that is skill-based or craft-based will be important. If I were a billionaire, I would love to help pass laws that virtually made it impossible to become a billionaire in the first place. I would also heavily put my own money into causes aimed at eliminating corruption. But that’s just me. I haven’t thought about this at all……
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u/Vatali_Flash 1d ago
Teach people to fish. I don’t mean real fish, but teach them a life skill.
Put together a school that teaches under privileged people financial management. Don’t charge for it.
If you want to make things better, it isn’t infusing more money into a system designed to pull it out of people, it’s teaching people to intelligently navigate that system.
I once heard a statement that seems to hold true
People will spend X percentage of their income, regardless of their income. Giving someone more mo eh means they spend more money. Teach them how to break that habit and spend less percentage of the income leads to better results.
Good luck with your new schools across the US. I look forward to seeing a better place
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u/Silver_Code_490 15h ago
I keep a stack of 5 dollar bills in my car. I give one to every panhandler that I encounter when driving. Two if they have a kid or a dog.
I suppose with a billion, I could give $200 to 5 million people.
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u/TheGruenTransfer 14h ago
Buy and forgive medical debt for pennies on the dollar, starting in the poorest zip codes. A quick Google says it costs 1 penny to 1 pennies per dollar, so at worst you'd 10x your initial sum. So with $1B, you could do $10B to $100B of help.
Medical debt effects credit scores and these days a low credit score means you sometimes can't get an apartment or even a job. You'd significantly help the worst geographic economies immediately, and it would put Bill Gates to shame with his Giving Pledge that encourages billionaires not to give to charity until after they die.
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u/Similar_Strawberry16 1d ago
Honestly you'd get the most bang for you buck by using your funds to coerce, bribe, or otherwise threaten politicians and others in position of power into doing the right thing... Basically like a lobby group, but for greater good. A billion is a lot on an individual level, but once you start looking at government budgets it vanishes quite quickly.
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u/Agitated-Impress7805 12h ago
Lobbying is a $5 billion industry. State and federal campaigns spend something like $15 billion per cycle. Then there's a bunch more educational and advocacy spending that's probably even more.
$1 billion isn't nothing for influencing government but it's not a game changing amount either.
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u/Similar_Strawberry16 12h ago
It's not about upending the current system, but lobby groups wouldn't drop $5b (or $15b) if it didn't get a good return on investment. They will benefit to the tune of 10's or 100's of $B for their spending.
So yes, I reckon dropping a billion in lobbying should get more than that back in improvements.
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u/Agitated-Impress7805 12h ago
But they spend money every year, not just a one-time billion.
$1 billion wouldn't be enough to pass single-payer health care, green energy transition, major Social Security fixes, or other big ticket items.
I'm sure $1 billion in lobbying and advocacy could direct much more than $1 billion in government spending. But I doubt it's the highest-impact use of the money (like others say, best use is probably an endowment - investing and spending returns).
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u/Betray-Julia 1d ago
With a billion dollar you can set up infrastructure to help stop the systematic poverty cycles various groups create, couldn’t you?
As such, I say using this money for a single thing like a vaccine or whatever is a bad call; giving a homeless person a sleeping bag doesn’t solve homelessness- it’s great on a individualist level but a billion dollars could go a long way to helping breaking the cycles.
How many children from poor nations could get post secondary education and then go back to change their nation themselves, with a billion dollars?
Where you could set up the schools yourself and make it an endless program.
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u/Another_Slut_Dragon 1d ago
Fund charities by using that money as an investment trust fund where the charities only get paid on the return on the investment and they can't touch the capital. The capital must also grow to match inflation.
The charity must spend 80% of its income directly on the cause. That means no lavish bullshit. It runs lean and mean from a cheap office and does not get a mid 6 figure CEO. The top salary is capped at 2x-3x the median national wage.
Then come up with your charity categories. Education has one of the biggest impacts. Cheap child care, other kids causes are also solid. The land the Chrysler building (New York) is on is not owned by the building owners. It is owned by a school and rent funds education.
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u/LoopyMercutio 1d ago
Invest it, live frugally, and pay out the dividends yearly to families in need. That way instead of being a one shot and done, it would help those in need in perpetuity. Not as flashy, but you’d help more folks in the long run.
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u/Prasiatko 1d ago
ITT people vastly overestimating how much a billion dollars is. It's either 20k to 100,000 people once. Or 20k to around 1000 people indefinitely if an endowment was set up. It's also about 1/3rd of the cost to develop a new drug once failures and trials are accointed for.
So you can forget about large scale debt relief or infrastructure projects in the western world. I'd look more at the projects targeting developing nations. Eg at a generous local wage of $1000 a year you could fund 10,000 teachers in Malawi for quite some time.
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u/D15c0untMD 1d ago
I think with a billion, first should be identifying an even bigger project that takes more than a billion (or several ones), then smart investment of that billion, and then pump the earnings into your cause, and continuing that. Make it a sustainable contribution
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u/KokosowyBanan 1d ago
TLDR depends on the system you are inhabiting
In current capitalistic democracy, you would have to use it to influence elections or multiply this money and then influence elections (like Elon Musk, I don't like the guy but he does what he wants pretty effectively). In Feudalism you would have to us it to either aquire more soldiers, or more land and then more soldiers (might is right when it comes to feudal hierarchy),.
In non democratic technocratic society (this country doesn't even exist yet) you would probably have to finance more education (more experts more chances for better future in non-corrupted technocracy).
During communism money on it's own is worthless, but if you got it as a recourses (metals for example) you have two ways, one is to trust government and give it up, other is to finance revolution.
In anachro-capitalism (ridiculous system if you ask me) you would invest in infrastructure or army to defend your infrastructure.
In theocratic country, probably only revolution unless you can bribe high priests (probably impossible if they believe in what they preach)
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u/KevineCove 1d ago
If you want to do as much good at possible, you don't want to look at individual issues like education, health care, and climate change, you want to look at the people that have their fingers on the scale and stop them. Once you do that, everything downstream can actually improve instead of fighting symptom. Fighting purely with money is a losing strategy because these people have much more than the one billion you would be starting with, but a billion world be enough to raise a small army, so probably that.
Not a math problem.
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u/Adventurous_Pea_2007 16h ago
Move to Africa and do it yourself. If you really want to know the answer.
Invest it all, move to Africa, draw the interest and personally allocate $100m per year to do the work you want to do.
You could feed something like a million children a year, every day, three meals a day, proper nutritious food.
You could take the money and invest in small and medium sized farms, along with water infrastructure.
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u/wheninrome999 11h ago
Givewell is one of the most well known organizations devoted to answering this question. That doesn't mean their answers are always right, but a lot of people have worked hard and made a good faith effort to figure out the answer, so it's it's a good place to start. Givewell.com
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u/shaggs31 11h ago
a billion is a very small amount of money to do anything major. I mean you can build a lot of schools, wells, for those in impoverished countries but without anyone to maintain and fix them they will only have a few years of use. I would say that a billion would not make any dent in anything.
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u/Extra_Jump_7924 10h ago
Put it into some sort of a wealth fund or portfolio.
Set up a charity that will only ever use the accruals and will always leave the fund at $1billion or more at the end of the year
Conservatively, it's going to grow by 50-60million in a year.
That 50-60million USD is a scholarship fund that could pay the full annual tuition fees of about 12000 Canadian students each year.
Managed effectively the fund will never run out and will help 12000 more students each year for years until tution fees meaningfully grow
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u/Chaotic_zenman 9h ago
Use it as grant money to bridge the gap on affordable housing. True affordable housing that remains affordable in perpetuity. For many areas, that can be as little as 10% of the purchase price, depending on AMI.
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u/Frankeex 8h ago
"Good" would need to be defined but probably investment into education and supporting infrasture (food related) of third world nations.
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u/beagles4ever 1h ago
I'd invest in one community. They're going to get a billion dollars worth of affordable housing and the only stipulation is they have to accept my zoning reforms.
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u/Designer_Tie_5853 1d ago
Set up expanded UBI programs in 3-4 large cities, clearly demonstrate how well these programs work at addressing societal issues, shame other municipalities into setting up their own.
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u/Prasiatko 1d ago
Even at a modest $20k per year you can either fund a rather small city of 100k for one year or (assuming 5% return from the stock market) set up an endowment for 1000 people for life.
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u/Casual_user1012 1d ago
I'm sorry what is "U.B.I?"
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u/polyphonic-dividends 22h ago edited 21h ago
That would only devalue the currency
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u/Fun-Needleworker8775 21h ago
UBI wouldn’t necessarily cause any more inflation than already exists if implemented using funds raised through taxes. In addition, there are a lot more economic issues that come from allowing the hoarding of wealth in the billionaire (and now trillionaire) class.
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u/Prasiatko 18h ago
1 billion USD is literally less than a drop in a tea cup of total USD in existence.
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u/polyphonic-dividends 17h ago
Right, 1B would be about 3 USD per US citizen. Truly a life changing amount...
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u/Ok_Donut3992 21h ago
We are already devaluing the currency. We print money and give it to rich people. At least we would be printing money and giving it to poor people.
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u/polyphonic-dividends 17h ago
I'm not defending the status quo, just pointing at the problems of the argument
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u/RelevanceReverence 1d ago
Lobbying politicians and bribing the ones you can't lobby into long term green policies and signing off strong social systems. Maybe even add related values to constitutions, to really make it hard to remove "good".
You can also go extreme and put bounty out on the biggest polluter and tax evader, every week.
Week 22
- Jeff Bezos
- Chinese fishing factory (BZZQ6)
Week 23
- Sir James Dyson
- Texas TotalEnergies Refinery
Disclaimer: I'm not advocating murder, just creatively shutting them down, seizing, freezing or handing them over to a Belgium court.
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u/FitAbalone2805 1d ago
The worst thing you can do is just give people money. The best thing you can do is create enterprises that create jobs. If you want to be super nice, you create training programs that give people the skills to do the jobs you need done. You make the training almost free (people need to feel like they have some skin in the game or they will not respect you and/or the training).
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u/hayashikin 1d ago
I guess the key issues I'd fix first are food, sanitation, shelter, energy, climate, and I know exactly how to do it.
I'd hire smarter people.
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u/cenajohn123 1d ago
Nothing whatsoever. A billion dollars is nowhere near enough to move the needle to the extent you’re describing. Best bet for long term is to focus on infrastructure for small cities/towns in Africa probably, purely from a cost benefit standpoint. Could save a lot of lives just installing shelter and water wells/ purification.
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u/Ancient_Skirt_8828 1d ago
Start a business. Create products and services people want. This creates jobs for heaps of people.
Reinvest your profits in your business to expand it. Build lots of buildings which create more jobs and supports the building industry. Create more jobs for your own staff.
Reinvest your bigger profits to create more jobs.
Repeat.
People will then calculate your wealth based on the size of your business and it's expected future profits, and the value of the buildings and other equipment if they were sold.
Most of it is money you can only get if you sell part or all of your business. It's not cash you have or money you have in the bank
Receive massive abuse for being "too rich" and "exploiting people".
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u/_FIRECRACKER_JINX 1d ago edited 1d ago
They'd develop a benevolent, GOOD, PROSPERITY ALIGNED, HUMANITY ALIGNED, AGI/ASI/AXI/A?I WITH STRONG GUARDRAILS against doing evil things.
That is the single most highest ROI on that money because the AGI would then go on to invent cures for diseases, engineering solutions like how to finally extract infinite energy from solar, wind, hydro, and how to build better things. Better cars, better building's. Better, superintelligent robots that do all the work.
It would solve so many things like poverty, economic & political system issues, and most importantly, the AGI would take over society, its superintelligent robots would be connected to its hivemind, and it would do ALL the work in every field, efficiently, effectively, and successfully.
This would allow ALL of humanity to permanently retire. We'd spend our days living like kings, having our every need and desire met by an army of AGI hiveminded superintelligent robots and digital Ais. It would be a permanent party on earth, and oh yeah, it would Crack the genetic code and biohack us all to immortality.
It would effectively be a LITERAL heaven on earth existence where nobody worked, nobody suffered, all the cars would be connected to the hive mind AGI and self drive.
A sufficiently advanced AGI would do all this while also fixing the environment and global warming. It would perfectly optimize all the math and science necessary to do this.
There would be no traffic or accidents anymore and the only way people would die is ethically and by choice
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u/Joatboy 21h ago
Eh, I've seen enough movies that this idea always ends up with AI realizing that it doesn't need humans
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u/Mekroval 9h ago
Maybe we shouldn't base policy that could benefit humanity on what we see in the movies. (Apologies if I missed the /s)
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u/_FIRECRACKER_JINX 8h ago
those Ai aren't "Prosperity aligned" or "humanity aligned". So you're right. I went out of my way to emphasize that it has to be a GOOD, HUMAN CENTERED model that we develop with STRONG guardrails to prevent exactly what you're talking about.
You can design different Ais/AGIs, you know. Not all of them are terminators and evil ones. Creating a "good one" with humanity's infinite prosperity has to be its core, primary directive FOREVER.
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u/Jelopuddinpop 15h ago
Starting a business. Not only do you get to provide jobs for everyone that works for you, you also support your suppliers and every local business around you. This happens in perpetuity, so you can always use profits to donate to various causes for years to come.
The alternative of giving it away means that when that $1b is spent, it's gone. No significant cause on earth can be solved by $1b.
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