>Bill Gates did something very similar, and we were similarly skeptical then. I like to think that once you're the world's richest man, your priorities might shift in a way that's difficult to imagine from the midst of the rat race.
Indeed.
If I was independently wealthy and only had 1 million extra, I can immediately think of a ton of stuff I'd start doing with it that would not directly benefit me. If I had tens of billions that I did not need to survive I would absolutely do something like develop my own rocket. I wouldn't stop there either.
Mars 2020 has a 2.5 billion dollar price tag, if I had Bezos-money I would absolutely try and send a lander/rover pair to both Mars and the Moon except I wouldn't have a bunch of science equipment on it, I'd purely be going to record the best VIDEO and photos that I could on both purely to get people interested.
Even if I couldn't get a government to let me do a lander, simply sending orbiters that could capture 1080p video of the approach and several times around Mars and the Moon, and then taking days, weeks, months to transmit it all back, just throwing that up on YouTube would be worth the spend to me just to see it, and the amount of people that would likely inspire to be interested in things bigger than just them, bigger than politics of this or that country, bigger than Earth could be truly profound.
I'd open source the designs of the equipment too and creative commons the video for general use and allow entities to obtain commercial use on a sliding scale depending on their intended use. If a student wants it for something, give me 10$ and a producer credit, if some big studio wants it, still be very fair but obviously charge more.
Would upvote that twice if I could. I feel the same thing. If I were free to get a space mission implemented right now, I'd opt for a proper camera of at least full HD quality to get a video of a Moon or Mars landing, to be released for free to just get people interested.
And then the same thing for Jupiter, or the rings of Saturn.
I'd love nothing more than to be able to go over to my friend's house, pop on his Vive and sit down and just look at a high resolution panorama of Mars either stitched together from photos or from video capture.
I think if we ever do send a manned mission, someone needs to be sent specifically to act as a videographer and that with what we learn from JPL Mars Helicopter Scout we need to make a bunch of drones to go with the manned mission too purely for video collection for licensing for video games, VR experiences, movie. You could recover all of the cost of the video equipment plus a good deal more just licensing that video out at fair rates because people like you and me would LOVE to see that.
It's always chapped me that we've never had good high resolution photos or video. I get why, tax payers don't care about space and it's a hard enough sell as is so space agencies want to get as much scientific data as they can but argh, even some 720p of the Moon would be amazing.
Not OP, who's already answered, but I was idly thinking about this earlier today.
I'd fund a side concern that grew trees to couple-of year-mature sapling level, for planting either commercially or for CO2 absorption. The former hopefully funding the latter.
it's come up a lot in the news recently - the whole 'plant trees, save the planet' thing - but it's genuinely something I've wanted to do for years. Here in urban UK we cut down trees way more than we put them back up again.
If I didn't have to spend it immediately, I'd use the 3% SWR rate on it and spend 30k a year until I died or it ran out. In this case I would probably support a lot of indie art/film projects on crowdfunding, I'd scan new projects daily for something that catches my eye and set a calendar reminder to check them out halfway through their campaign and if they weren't close at that point I'd contribute what I felt was a good amount if I thought they might reach funding. I'd also keep an eye out for people in my social circles that might be down on their luck for whatever reason and see how I might assist them without directly handing them money (fix their car, good clothes for interviews, etc).
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If I had to spend 1 million at once... I'd probably fund a pilot of an idea I have for an alternative way of applying philanthropy while simultaneously helping individuals not only get good CV experience but also cover part of their educational experiences, I'd rather not say more than that because I'm actively trying to find someone to back the pilot. There's 1 trillion pledged through the Giving Pledge and if even 1 billion of that was used this way, we could create more than 200 million hours of service and help 50k people pay for most of a 4-year degree while providing good CV experience and directly helping in potentially thousands of communities.
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If I had to spend it all at once, on multiple projects...
- I would find 20 students to give 5k each towards tuition
- I would set aside 500k to attempt to create manufacturing trade training, to some degree, digitally on a monthly subscription model (something cheap, 10-20$ a month) and build community tools on this platform. People could learn a lot of the basics and theory and then try and find people in need of apprentices. Hobbyists could also use it to improve their knowledge base. Eventually I'd try to leverage this to partner with one or more major manufacturers to create virtual versions of their machines so people could practice on a perfect simulation of real equipment in a virtual environment (either VR or just on a monitor) not unlike flight simulators so they can develop good habbits without damaging expensive tool heads or ruining materials learning. Also building in some sort of gamification could help encourage people to learn these skills and would hopefully create a good base of new people to apprentice with real equipment for these trades.
- The remainder, I'm not sure. Some would probably go to some of my favorite YT creators like LGR, Gaming Historian, Townsends, etc.
I really... dislike... that a lot of philanthropic people take their money and throw it at hiring academics to sit around and think about problems - or worse - fund charities they control and then pay those people to largely evaluate other philanthropic endeavors to then hand grants off to.
I have a GED, non-profits and NGOs won't touch me with a ten foot pole becuase I don't have at least a Masters and a bevy of accolades. If I had a good idea or project they also wouldn't fund me because, on paper I've not made some great accomplishment(s) and don't have a string of letters after my name and social swagger and as a white male I don't even fit the mission of some philanthropic persons because I'm not a woman or I'm not a person of color or I'm not fro an economically depressed area. I'm not saying it's wrong to champion those types of people and attempt to help them I'm just saying... I don't like it.
If I was independently wealthy (I need a million or less, sadly I'll work til the day I die though based on my current net worth after 16 years of full time employment) I would spend my free time not chasing more wealth, I'd spend it doing stuff to better an individual, better my community and/or better the species.
Instead, I worry about if I'm going to be able to pay my bills most months and spending 5 minutes here and 10 minutes there looking at what the wealthiest people of the world are doing and more oft than not just shaking my head.
Bezos, I like Bezos, he's got a vision and he's chasing it with large cash infusions from his own pockets. Sam Altman, much lower net worth but same thing... he seeded Y Combinator Research out of his own money and now he's throwing himself full time at Open AI, Sam believes in that and can put his sole focus on it while not needing to worry about income or a future career path. Some of these people though, they have tens of millions of dollars (or tens of billions of dollars) and they still run companies, still heavily invest via VC funds/firms, still have this podcast and sit on these 3 boards and own these 12 companies all trying to make more more more money, and then are like "yeah, yeah I'll write a letter pledging I'll eventually give up half of my money".
Indeed.
If I was independently wealthy and only had 1 million extra, I can immediately think of a ton of stuff I'd start doing with it that would not directly benefit me. If I had tens of billions that I did not need to survive I would absolutely do something like develop my own rocket. I wouldn't stop there either.
Mars 2020 has a 2.5 billion dollar price tag, if I had Bezos-money I would absolutely try and send a lander/rover pair to both Mars and the Moon except I wouldn't have a bunch of science equipment on it, I'd purely be going to record the best VIDEO and photos that I could on both purely to get people interested.
Even if I couldn't get a government to let me do a lander, simply sending orbiters that could capture 1080p video of the approach and several times around Mars and the Moon, and then taking days, weeks, months to transmit it all back, just throwing that up on YouTube would be worth the spend to me just to see it, and the amount of people that would likely inspire to be interested in things bigger than just them, bigger than politics of this or that country, bigger than Earth could be truly profound.
I'd open source the designs of the equipment too and creative commons the video for general use and allow entities to obtain commercial use on a sliding scale depending on their intended use. If a student wants it for something, give me 10$ and a producer credit, if some big studio wants it, still be very fair but obviously charge more.