Ask HN: What would you do with a Billion dollars?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7544299

by dzink • 12 years ago

24 25 12 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I love this question. For several years now I've been asking strangers what would they do with a Billion dollars if they had it. I keep asking it because I've discovered several instant friends along the way. It turns brief interactions where you get little time to get to know the other person into high-quality conversations that surface interests and passions you might have never known about. Some of my favorite ones:

- "If it was a million, I'd have fun with it, but a Billion is a job - a responsibility." - "I'd build a way for researchers to store negative outcome experiments and make those public and easily searchable - it would save tremendous time for the scientific community."

What would you do?

sirdogealot• 12 years ago

Put 100% of it into education in the most economical way possible.

I believe that all problems in this world are caused by a simple lack of education.

Xcelerate• 12 years ago

I would create a scientific research group composed of the best physicists to work on 1) a functional quantum computer and 2) practical room temperature superconductivity. Both of these would have a huge impact on the world. Solving (1) would also increase the chances of solving (2) since a quantum computer would allow polynomial time quantum simulations that would assist in ascertaining which kind of materials might be superconducting at room temperature.

3) I would found a cancer research group. I think everyone is immensely sick of this disease and the fact that it hasn't been cured yet. It wouldn't hurt to direct even more research toward it.

4) I would buy 10 boxes of raspberries from the grocery store and eat them all in one sitting. Those things are freaking expensive, but they're delicious.

waps3• 12 years ago

How about sponsoring some alternative fusion research ? Aside from ITER, nothing seems to have even basic sponsorship, and ITER makes no business sense (price/reward). Same thing with battery research. Or try to find a better Fisher-Tropsch process (that would solve global warming, energy storage and energy transport without requiring us to change cars or power plants. It would literally make a 30-year old beater green, so it wouldn't require punishing all the poor by either taking their cars away like all other green initiatives do)

If you're going to do high-risk high-reward research, you should probably be prepared to spend tens of millions on it though.

letstryagain3• 12 years ago

Or try to find a better Fisher-Tropsch process

One major use of the Fischer-Tropsch process is converting coal (via gasification) into hydrocarbons and eventually fuel/petrol. This is a disaster for global warming because we have very large amounts of easily accessible coal available to turn into petrol. If you make FT easier you'll do more harm than good.

dhughes• 12 years ago

It's hard to say it would be a battle between immediate versus long-term. And by that of course I mean I would have to share it with poor around the word I think most people would.

Water, food, vaccines, education all important but water is probably the most needed.

But if invested smartly a smaller amount over a longer time but time is the enemy, do I help more people right now and fewer later or a few people over a longer time period?

I don't think I want a billion dollars it's too much responsibility and I'm not even very good at managing my own life.

dkural• 12 years ago

I would create a semantic wiki with domain specific ways of easily inputting information, spend enough cash to incentivize folks, to store all biological knowledge in a way machines can reason about. We're all studying a giant elephant. No one is putting it all together in a crowd-generated, semantic, computable way.

jeffclark• 12 years ago

I'll tell you what I'd do, man: two chicks at the same time, man.

krapp• 12 years ago

Pay off my debts, give some to my family, then basically whatever I wanted.

dzink• 12 years ago

I can't edit the question anymore, but if I could, I'd add a sub-question for the founders who have already created things worth a Billion: "Did your answer to this question change between the time you were starting and the time you had the money?"

ericb• 12 years ago

Wow, last thing I figured is my answer would be given by someone else. I love the negative results answer.

I'd also:

Endow a non-partisan original-reporting only, no-pr, news site with no sponsors to bias results, ever. Now that all news is corporate sponsored in various ways, we need alternatives.

Use part to endow a rationalist organization dedicated entirely to the spreading of rationality as determined by the results of research on how to most effectively spread rationality.

Create a cost-effective ethically acceptable platform for testing drugs and theories on a human-ish system. Basically this would be an attempt to strap a rocket to modern day testing and drug discovery by making it as effortless as it would be if you could put humans in various conditions without ethics or harm considerations.

See if there's a way to use my money to undo the corrupting supreme court Citizens United decisions and decisions about Super PACs.

syncerr2• 12 years ago

Unfortunately, if you wanted your new "liberal" news network to affect a larger audience you'd need a think-tank to help "propagandize", else you'd be discredited by other motivated interests.

gregcohn• 12 years ago

I'm extremely curious to know exactly what about the comment you're replying to sparked the "liberal" label. I don't want to create a political discussion here, but it seemed like the reply was taking pains to suggest it would be neutral.

a3voices• 12 years ago

I'd buy lots of land near Boston and build a giant pyramid out of granite.

iterationx• 12 years ago

I'd give it to the Dimond Brothers.

malandrew• 12 years ago

Found an international organization that should be doing the work the NSA should be doing: making the world more secure by actively helping secure all hardware and software regardless of origin. Basically help close all the holes the NSA is actively exploiting. Once it is humming along nicely and being productive, I would solicit donations from all the nations that see value in the work being done.

Found another international organization that incubates decentralized technologies that put users in control of their data with the goal of competing with all the centralized walled gardens out there. The world needs more technologies like bittorrent.

With both organizations, I don't think it would make sense to have just one location, I would probably found two larger offices in San Francisco and Berlin first, but then open up additional small offices in other regions where there are a dozen or so capable hackers that want to work together on this kind of stuff full-time.

Next, I would put money into open-source hardware for those areas which are still closed-source threats - CPUs, GPUs and the networking stack. By now the world really should have an entire stack from GUI all the way to every piece of hardware that is open-source and auditable.

Lastly, I would secretly buy up all the parking lots in San Francisco. Once I control most of the market for parking lots in the city, I would shut them all down simultaneously and turn half into public parks and convert the rest into whatever type of development that they are zoned for. It wouldn't be an anti-trust issue because I'd be liquidating my market share. i.e. if I owned 90% of the market and shut down 100% of my stock, I now own 0% of the market. My goal would be to decimate the convenience of driving in the city overnight so that people are forced to consider alternative means of transportation like buses and bicycling.

In fact, with the exception of turning some of the land into public parks, I reckon this last idea could form a very decent investment strategy with some smart hedging, such as buying stock in the companies likely to benefit the most from increased spending on public transportation (city bus manufacturers, subway car manufacturers, etc.). I'm certain there is some investment thesis out there that works when you shut down all the private infrastructure that supports selfish city drivers.

stephenboyd• 12 years ago

I'd start a foundation that gives grants to journalists, especially investigative and explanatory journalists. I like to know more about what's going on in the world than what's included in press releases.

billconan• 12 years ago

fund research. like space tech, cancer treatment, digital brain preservation after death.

gesman• 12 years ago

Promote advanced personal development and cancer treatment approaches based on helping people to eliminate fear from their body/mind systems.

anywherenotes• 12 years ago

I think Ocean research should be boosted significantly, and some very rich and smart people are already dedicating themselves to space. I'd probably donate some money to Ocean research, and open a museum of dinosaurs (and others from that time period) in a new place somewhere, or perhaps few smaller museums and keep interchanging exhibits between them.

stevekemp• 12 years ago

Build and manage large sets of apartments, flats, or condos (depending on location) for students. Rented very cheaply, but available only to people who didn't drop out, or fail their courses.

Student accommodation in the UK is frequently nasty, expensive, and hard to find.

Beyond that a new camera, and probably a new house for myself. But nothing too insane.

Ask HN: What would you do with a Billion dollars?

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