

Ask HN: What would you do with $700 Billion? - DanielBMarkham

This is basically the title on CNN's site right now, and I thought what a great question to ask you guys.<p>Me? It's got to be a lunar base. Always wanted one.
======
whacked_new
Create an alternative, multi-tiered research funding organization and proceed
to turn the education system upside down.

In fact, $700b is more than enough to do this several times over, so the
surplus will probably go to funding a century of other programs related to
exploration, bioengineering, green technology, and other sustainable
development projects.

Seriously, what _could_ it be other than this?

~~~
potatolicious
Agreed. I would establish an organization that will essentially usurp the
position of the NSF. It will be non-partisan, be free from political
influence, and non-ideologically driven. It will be available to all academics
everywhere.

My brother is a researcher in evolutionary biology. I have seen how the Bush
administration has been sabotaging funding into this area over the last few
years. Science should be a free for all of ideas, not influenced by politics,
religion, or anything else except good hard science.

~~~
jrockway
_It will be non-partisan, be free from political influence, and non-
ideologically driven._

How much of the $700b will be left over after you've developed the sentient
robots needed to staff this place? ;)

------
jm4
Two chicks at the same time.

Seriously, I have no idea what I'd do with that amount of money. If I was
completely selfish maybe I'd buy an island somewhere. I sure as hell wouldn't
use it to bail out a bunch of failed businesses whose executives have been
giving themselves multi-million dollar bonuses.

~~~
samwise
hehe

I would invest it. I would buy most of wall street and wait for it to bounce
back. Turn that 700b to 10 trillion.

~~~
run4yourlives
And then what?

~~~
yters
A person can do a lot for the world with 10 trillion.

~~~
dhotson
Could you give an example? :)

I think it would actually be pretty hard to find ways to spend that much
money. 10 trillion is an awful lot.

~~~
yters
Supposedly eliminate poverty worldwide:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=315521>

~~~
dhotson
I'm not convinced that we can solve the worlds big problems like poverty just
by spending money.

I don't claim to have the answers.. but I think it will take a lot more than
money to solve these problems. That's assuming they can even be solved at all.

~~~
yters
That's probably true, there are always evil people around.

------
froo
700B dollars... Well given the odds of me obtaining that amount of money is
just shy of being pure fantasy, I figure the only real answer to this would be
in the realm of fantasy too.

So, 700B - here's my shopping list.

    
    
      Create Jurassic Park
      Army of Super Oompa Loompas - perhaps with bionic implants
      Moon based Laser "Defense" system
      Universal Optional Breast Enhancement Surgery
      Giant Robot of Doom
      Another Giant Robot (so the first one never feels lonely)
      Build an even bigger supercollider, just to scare the bejeezus out of the irrational people
      Terraform Mars
      Create a religion based around the works of Bruce Campbell
    

I figure I'd get some change out of that list, so I'd buy a few people a
couple beers.

Next stupid question please!

~~~
DanielBMarkham
Can I administer the breast enhancement program?

------
rsheridan6
I'd buy a sovereign country and break it up into city-states, and allow them
to compete with each other as an experiment to see which policies and forms of
government are the most effective. It would be kind of like Pokemon for social
science geeks. You could have libertaritopia, commietopia, fascistopia, etc,
and you'd get to see what happens. For motivational purposes, after 50 years I
would have barbarian hordes burn and pillage the unsuccessful ones.

If I couldn't find somebody to sell me a country I would build large offshore
platforms or rafts that would fulfill the same function.

~~~
boredguy8
Don't we already have a bunch of states competing with each other as an
experiment to see what form is the most effective?

~~~
DLWormwood
I know you're trying to be cute, but our current situation has too many
confounding variables: cultural makeup, history, terrain advantages, economic
baggage... We'd need a more laboratory like situation where the city-states
are more alike, save for the variables we want to test.

------
kamme
I think I would buy an uninhabited island and make it a research facility
where top scientists can work together and find a way to optimize solar power
and batteries.

If I have those I will start a production company that makes those inventions
and sells them at the price (or below) it costs to make the goods so everyone
can use them. I would also invest in agriculture in dry area's (africa for
example). What I would NOT do is waste it on politics, that's why I want the
uninhabited island. If you build a facility/production company with that goal
there will be government regulations about it and as most of us know, they
tend to screw things up and only care for their wallet.

Also a part of that money will go to education and proper sports centers. I'm
a bit overweight myself and I want people to know better then always go to
McDonalds and have the option to do any sport they like, as it should be.

------
ivankirigin
Build a space elevator and start mining the asteroids. This involves a robot
army that would need to be built as well. No, I'm not joking

~~~
gambling8nt
$700 b is not nearly enough to make a space elevator with existing technology;
you're off by about a factor of 1000.

Of course, if you're willing to wait ten years for the cost to produce carbon
nanotubes to drop...

~~~
ivankirigin
Actually my brother and a good friend recently attended a conference on the
subject, and I'm not pulling numbers out of the air. Clearly there is room for
dispute, but between 10B and 1000B is a most reasonable range. I also disagree
in principle that anything could cost $700T dollars. Are you telling me that
the whole of the US working for 50 years couldn't build it? Because US GDP is
~$14T.

Also, you don't launch a company and next year make an elevator. There is a
lot of tech to develop. You don't just sit on that tech. Materials made cheap
enough to build a earth bound tether would have plenty of other applications.
As would the automated or teleoperated construction robots.

Also, the first elevator on the moon wouldn't require much innovation in
materials at all.

But I do have a very armchair understanding of the topic.

~~~
gambling8nt
In spring of 2005 I did a back of the envelope calculation on the total cost
to produce the mass of carbon nanotubes needed for an elevator with cross-
section of 1 cm^2 using the methods available then and got a result of about
1.25 quadrillion dollars--a sum truly large enough to be meaningless. It
appears there have been several significant advances since then, including the
revision of the intended cross-sectional area downward, and improvements in
the production costs.

And my estimate on costs was precisely in the vein of "next year make an
elevator"--I do not doubt that there will be a space elevator long before the
next 50 years pass, I merely doubt that $700b is sufficient that a feasible
short term effort could be made.

A lunar elevator, while a nice proof of concept for a terrestrial space
elevator, has two major problems: (1) There isn't really a point; the moon's
gravity well is too weak for it to be worth it to construct an elevator any
time soon. (2) Getting the material there without an existing terrestrial
space elevator (and possibly even with one) is a prohibitively expensive
exercise.

Research into the construction of a space elevator is a worthwhile pursuit
likely to result in many useful technological advances. But $700b is not
enough to construct one in the short term from existing technology, and is too
much to be usefully applied to further research.

~~~
ivankirigin
I think you're thinking like NASA. I'm thinking like a startup founder.

    
    
      construction of a space elevator is a worthwhile pursuit likely to result in many useful technological advance

Exactly! Monetize that shit, and feed it back into the pool. I think we're on
the same page that getting it out in a year is ridiculous.

Also, a lunar elevator might not be the best choice. Perhaps a mass driver or
sky hook on the moon would be better. I would still start on the moon before
constructing the first inch of tether around earth.

------
steveplace
Remember, 700B pays for around 400 space shuttles.

Just to give a sense of scale.

~~~
qwph
400 space shuttles would be _awesome_ :)

~~~
timtrueman
I can see it now, synchronized space shuttles in the space olympics
([http://www.hulu.com/watch/34464/saturday-night-live-
digital-...](http://www.hulu.com/watch/34464/saturday-night-live-digital-
short-space-olympics))

------
lallysingh
Hookers and RAM.

When I've got a good rate with a few of the girls, and my DIMM banks are
filled, I'd probably start building a loyal robot army to help fight the evil
ones that come with the inevitable robot apocalypse.

Each of which, incidentally, will require RAM.

------
mhb
Hire 70 trillion people to draw me a $700 billion bill.

~~~
apollo
Damn that's some fine resolution. Unfortunately if you want to hire unique
people you'll have to wait for the earth's population to increase about 12,000
times its current size.

------
no_body
I would bootstrap the asteroid mining economy, invest in micro-terraforming
and nano-technology so that each asteroid could become it's own self
sufficient republic. Yay Anarchy !

~~~
ph0rque
>...each asteroid could become it's own self sufficient republic. Yay Anarchy!

That's not anarchy, since each republic would presumably have its own
government.

~~~
steveplace
A "Federation" if you will.

------
davidw
If you'll settle for Zimbabwe dollars, that shouldn't be too hard to arrange.

------
ars
It's fun to read these, but I feel compelled to point out that the 700 Billion
is not going to be spent, but rather it's the amount the US is on the hook
for.

The last time the US did this they not only got all the money back, they even
made a small profit.

To join along: if I had the money I'd spend all of it on as many nuclear
reactors, to generate electricity, as I could. I'd standardize the design to
keep the costs as low as possible.

------
phr
Hire a mercenary army to conquer some third world sh*t hole, then give it a
modern infrastructure, education system, etc., and turn it into a
capitalist/libertarian utopia.

With some of the profits, I'd pick another country and iterate.

------
noodle
i'd probably take one or two billion and buy myself a giant island to live on
and forever take care of my personal needs. and fly into space a few times,
too.

after that, i'd take the half of the remaining and invest it in technology and
fields that i'd like to see improved (i.e. space travel, science, alternative
energy, etc etc)

i'd take the other half and invest/give it to more charitable devices (poverty
relief & research, disease research, land preservation funds, etc etc)

basically, try and make the world a better place.

~~~
yan
Taking an entire giant island for one person would make the world a better
place?

~~~
noodle
would you like me to say "i'd give it all up to charity"? i'd be lying if i
said that, and so would anyone else.

i've always wanted to live on an island, thanks for shitting on my dreams in a
hypothetical thread :*-(

~~~
yan
I was just sitting on my hypothetical high horse and giving you a hard time.

Friends?

~~~
noodle
sure, no hard feelings :)

------
sfamiliar
give $11,000 to each of the 62 million households in the u.s. making under
$50,000. watch the ensuing chaos with glee.

~~~
potatolicious
... Give $11,000 to each household making under $50,000, and you're in essence
paying all of that towards households making over $50,000.

Some people are poor because they're honestly down on their luck, and need a
helping hand. The majority on the other hand are simply unemployable, or
horrible with their finances. Give them a handout and the money will simply
end up in richer people's hands. That's not helping them.

~~~
Retric
Hey, I was working with a college degree for 3 years before I broke 50k. At
the time I was investing 8% of my income and I was still eating out all the
time etc.

I think the bar for _poor_ needs to be a little lower than 50k/year.

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
How many kids were you trying to support?

~~~
gambling8nt
Family size for $50k to qualify under the federally mandated definition of
poverty is 12.

In fact, $50k is approximately the median household income (for 2007), with
mean household sizes in that income bracket at about 2.6.

------
UandIblog
I'd get a crew of volunteers together and torch the The World Bank & The
International Monetary Fund.. just burn it to the ground. That might cost a
couple hundred grand tops. With them out of the way it would be easy to
implement a true Meritocracy in all governments. Presidents will get a
paycheck on a sliding scale, the more wealth they are responsible for creating
for their people, the better off they will do personally. I'd then use
crowdsourcing to dictate what investments were made with the remaining 699 1/2
billion. We would then use the interest created by the these investments to
fund all of the projects previously mentioned by the HackerNews Community.

 _edit_ I'd make sure all of the employee's were out of the buildings, of
course...

------
fallentimes
World's biggest gravity bong; it'd take the place of Ohio.

~~~
tdavis
I can't imagine the logistics of such a thing, but it's intriguing enough that
I'd visit home to try it!

------
Retric
Invest 50 billion and spend each years profit trying to build a real working
fusion power plant, (~1 new ITER style plant design per year pick the best one
and build it every 5.) when that's working invest the 50billion in power
plants and keep growing till all the worlds energy needs are met. I expect 20
- 30 years till first one works and then massive ramp up.

50 billion 3rd world sweat shops to jump start the worlds economy.

100 billion, retro fit a lane on all US highway's with electric grids /
contacts so there is no need for battery systems and we can go electric now. I
would start by targeting the commercial trucking industry and then move to
cars.

1billion fun money for me.

And I don't know about the rest.

------
danw
Try and fix poverty, hunger, clean drinking water in a sustainable way.

~~~
felipe
A few years ago I attended a talk by Prof. Jeffrey Sachs, professor at
Columbia University who was commissioned by the UN to develop a program to end
worldwide poverty with sustainable, long-term initiatives -- Note this is not
the standard aid, but stuff like microcredit and micro-entrepreneurship.

He traveled the world and came back with the price tag: $1 trillion. That is
not to relief, but to _END_ poverty worldwide.

~~~
yters
What kind of guarantee did that have?

~~~
whatusername
Probably a better one than anything that Paulson is giving!

------
Jasber
Nation-wide high-speed wireless. Computers for schools. Spend the rest on
paying down our debt.

~~~
jotto
if the 700b came from debt like it is in this situation, you're only delaying
the problem

~~~
Jasber
Good point. Paying down debt with more debt seems strangely counter
productive. In this case, paying down debt means not spending the money
period.

------
run4yourlives
I wouldn't do anything. You would, because I will own you.

------
trapper
Buy microsoft and open source it. Buy google and open source it. Buy apple and
open source it. Spend the rest on hookers and beer for all programmers.

------
maxklein
A monocle, a cape and a vizier. Then I'll do whatever he tells me to do with
it.

------
tdavis
Use it to somehow dismantle all organized religion, probably. Likely the
quickest way to save the world.

~~~
gambling8nt
$700b is almost certainly insufficient to do this; the Catholic church has
around 4 times this amount by itself (most of it is illiquid, though--a large
fraction is in real estate).

~~~
fallentimes
Whoa - are you serious? Are these documents public? I want to see them. What
about the Deferred Liability on their balance sheet for "Child Molestation"?

~~~
gambling8nt
The problem with estimating the net worth of the Catholic church is that an
overwhelmingly large fraction of its wealth is in buildings (the many churches
it owns throughout the world), real estate (the land those churches are built
on, plus the Vatican), and art. That said, this article
(<http://www.zenit.org/article-1900?l=english>) gives some indication of the
magnitude of their income/expenditures.

Note: Most of the figures in the attached article are in lire, with a
conversion rate of 2000 lire to 1$US--the annual in and outflow of the
Catholic church is on the order of hundreds of millions of $US; it is only
their total assets that are on the order of trillions.

------
pavelludiq
I would start my own aircraft company, all my planes would have lisp based
auto pilot AI's.

------
bwag
Build the world's largest super computer. Then ask it what the meaning of life
is.

~~~
alex_c
You should ask it:

"Will mankind one day without the net expenditure of energy be able to restore
the sun to its full youthfulness even after it had died of old age?"

Long-term, that would be the most useful possible way to spend the money.

(Source: <http://www.multivax.com/last_question.html>)

------
elai
I would create a commercially viable, extremely useful version (versus just
plastic doodads) of the self-replicating fabricator ( <http://reprap.org> ),
design a decent computer & solar cell that could be easily manufactured by
this fabricator and is easy to make into a cluster system (and have semi
decent performance). And create some fabrication programs that can manufacture
buildings, farming equipment and other such essentials.

Then I would fund a bunch of funding into cures for third world evils like
malaria and such.

------
gtani
I would hire a team of 87,000 competent developers to develop better
documentation for java, C#, javascript, python and ruby. Oh yeah, erlang,
OCaml, F#, a few others.

~~~
corentin
Buy a copy of "The mythical man-month" before.

------
neilk
It would be pretty easy to knock off all water-borne diseases. Distribute
existing technology to clean water where it's needed, or use that newfangled
thing that Dean Kamen has.

Bribe all genociding warmongers (e.g. in Sudan) into retirement. Pay for
relocation and land redistribution of affected ethnic groups.

Immunize all children in the USA.

Then, with the other 600 billion, I guess you could throw an awesome party.

------
semblance2
Since it seems like defaulting mortgages are the cause of the situation, why
not use the money to pay off those mortgages?. If it took $50,000 on average
to save an individual mortgage, then you could rescue 14 million mortgages.
Some would say that presents a moral hazard, but it seems like that cat is way
out of the bag already.

------
beaudeal
probably something like this:
[http://www.boston.com/news/nation/gallery/251007war_costs?pg...](http://www.boston.com/news/nation/gallery/251007war_costs?pg=9)

i mean, no more poverty and educating every child on earth for 7 years seems
like a good idea...

------
dshfnc
I would buy massive amounts of gold and start a anonymous, secure digital
currency backed by gold :)

------
sdurkin
Build nuclear power plants, and fund fusion research. Permanently end our
addiction to oil.

------
raheemm
build my own university - maybe university on a ship, no a university on a
ship with its own navy, wait - a university on a ship with its own navy, its
own private islands and a jet plane and a space shuttle. Damn, it got crazy so
quickly!

------
vaksel
Build a huge space station...something that can be seen with bare eyes during
daylight.

~~~
dfranke
The present one can.

~~~
vaksel
I mean something the size of the moon

~~~
vaksel
and to beat you to the punch: "thats no moon, thats a battlestation"

------
thomasmallen
You know what I would do if I had seven hundred million dollars? I would
invest half of it in low risk mutual funds, and then take the other half over
to my friend Asadura who works over in Securities...

------
nazgulnarsil
money doesn't solve problems, smart people do. money is just a way of freeing
smart people of distractions. and i think 70 billion in todays dollars is a
lot more realistic than 700 billion. that said:

10 billion for space elevator research

10 billion for terraforming mars research

10 billion in scholarships available to anyone in the world as well as the
money needed to pull strings to get the smartest kids into the best colleges.

10 billion for a clean water research

30 billion in free contraception/medical for every country.

------
boredguy8
Invest in the stock market.

------
natch
Solar electric for, back of the envelope, maybe 1/3rd of the US total
electricity supply. I'm not an electric power expert - maybe someone with
actual expertise will correct me.

------
thebigshane
Find the 299 most influential people in the world and pay them 10m a year for
twenty years to do my bidding. Hold on the last 2 billion for reserves in case
they turn on me.

~~~
thebigshane
I'm surprised no one has mentioned buying Microsoft or Apple and "open
source"-ing them. That would be $300b if you buy them at market cap value.

------
MaysonL
Replace the US auto fleet with Better Place cars <http://www.betterplace.com/>
.

------
dangoldin
I don't see how this is different than any of the other "Non Hacker News"
stories yet this one gets approval. What's up?

~~~
cstejerean
this is not a story, this is a legitimate question.

~~~
graywh
Legitimate? That's debatable.

~~~
run4yourlives
It would be debatable if they weren't ready to put someone in this exact
position.

------
michaelneale
Free renewable energy. Probably geothermal. About 100bn on research to develop
the system, the rest to roll it out.

------
iamdave
Probably keep enough to retire on, and give the rest to my alma mater and have
a football stadium named after me :)

------
gills
Energy development (fusion and solar).

Compact self-contained hydroponic gardens (think shipping container).

------
tptacek
700 billion is 1400 times the operating budget of Harvard Medical. So I might
do that a couple times.

------
earle
Short the dollar into capitulation :)

------
rms
Cure cancer

Cure HIV

Eliminate hunger

Eliminate thirst

Take over Equatorial Guinea

~~~
gambling8nt
The only one of these you could afford for $700b is Equatorial Guinea... :P

~~~
rms
1B is enough to take over Equatorial Guinea... the failed 2004 coup attempt
was financed with a pathetic 20M. This says that the military budget of EG is
150M/year (<http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/spending.htm>) and I
suspect that is a very high estimate.

It would be easy to invest in modern pharmaceutical manufacturing plants in
African nations with generous IP laws and then start making modern HIV
medications available for practically nothing.

Curing cancer is more of a crapshoot, but throwing several hundred billion at
the problem would be a good start, if nothing else.

Proper distribution of the money remaining could go a long way towards
eliminating extreme poverty.

------
einarvollset
I would sponsor a manned mission to Mars. It's roughly the same amount of
money.

------
kolokonokos
Death Star.

------
schtog
surfing-equipment + house on hawaii ~ 6million$

baller-life-style-money: 10$million.

my own scientific/tech projects, 1billion.

rest i would donate to various scientifc rpoject sand charity.

~~~
zitterbewegung
Maybe you should also invest in a spell checker...

------
zitterbewegung
Create a new space station and possibly try to go to mars.

------
rainface
I would use it to pay back the loan from which it came.

------
zandorg
Longevity. Hook me up with some new organs.

------
rokhayakebe
Release the hundreds of drugs some people will not approve because that will
hurt their financial interest.

------
mtw
research in space travel, terraform Mars, build cheaper space shuttles

------
timtrueman
Microsoft just bought back stock with its cash. How about a down-payment on
our national debt?

------
jcapote
Super Crack Party.

------
yaj
Shift 3rd/4th world countries to 1st/2nd world.

------
jmtame
probably start 700 seed fund firms

~~~
dfranke
That's ridiculous. You'd never come close to finding enough entrepreneurs to
give the money to.

------
jah
Rest

------
floozyspeak
Go to war with IRAQ!

------
geuis
A very large truck of cigarettes, enough to last my family for the rest of our
lives. Then scream "I'm rich biatch!" and honk my truck's horn a couple times.

------
qqq
100 billion goes to speeding up immortality and cryonics research a lot. i
don't want to die, and i'd rather you didn't die either. 10 million (or
whatever) pays for aubrey de grey, and anyone he recommends, to be my advisors
for using the 100 billion effectively.

------
kingkongrevenge
Buy off the government. Mostly dismantle it.

~~~
gills
What will you do with the rest? If they pass this bill, apparently it costs
less than $700B to buy them out...

------
drhowarddrfine
Put it in the bank.

~~~
natch
A non-failing bank, I hope.

~~~
gambling8nt
With a $700b loan, it wouldn't exactly be failing any more...that's sort of
the point of this whole exercise.

