

Ask HN: What would you build if you would be a multi-billionare? - zeynalov

What would you build to change the world if you would be a multi-billionare? Like Elon Musk trys spaceships, elektro car, Honda trys humanoid robots, arab sheikhs build super tall buildings. What would you do if you someday would have enough money?
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patio11
Attempt to make money very efficiently, in any way reasonably practical and
moral, particularly ways which are hard to duplicate absent having a billion
dollars in your back pocket.

Give it to someone who had demonstrated ability to turn money into positive
charitable outcomes, in preference to giving it to the government or typical
NGOs, who mostly have demonstrated ability to turn it into sinecures. Better
yet, give it to many such someones in parallel, because portfolio theory
exists.

Continue maximizing on my comparative advantage in wealth generation as
opposed to being comparatively ineffective but personally involved with
charity, for the purpose of impressing people in cocktail conversation.
Charity is, like heart surgery for my children, something I value highly
enough to leave to very expensive dedicated professionals.

~~~
ahh
> Better yet, give it to many such someones in parallel, because portfolio
> theory exists.

This is a bit of a controversial topic among many people I know--not settled
by any means--but portfolio theory doesn't really say what you think it does
here. In particular, portfolio theory suggests diversification because it
reduces variance, generally at the cost of some (small) amount of return.
_Since your utility from money is concave_, variance reduction improves
expected utility.

Your utility from lives saved in the third world is (or should be), I think,
linear. (Perhaps even convex, though that's a much more complicated argument.)
While if I were a doctor, the 100th life I saved would seem a lot less
interesting than the first, I don't think it has any less moral impact.
Conclusion: variance reduction has little to no value, and if you think
charity X is (in expected value) any measurable amount more efficient at $goal
than Y, you should reallocate all donations from Y to X up to the limit of
what X can efficiently spend.

~~~
cjbprime
Just to back you up, the idea that risk aversion is not applicable to
charitable giving and that you should optimally give to only one charity is
fairly uncontroversial amongst the Effective Altruism movement, and has been
talked about since before that movement had a name:

[http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/everyday_economics/1997/0...](http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/everyday_economics/1997/01/giving_your_all.html)

~~~
maxbrown
It's an interesting article, but I'm not sure I buy it. Boiled down, it sounds
like the author is arguing for philanthropists to have only one cause. But
maybe I care equally about helping this generation with hunger and future
generations with saving the rainforest. I get that I could help hunger more by
redirecting my rainforest money, but why is it logically the case that I
should?

Also, I find it interesting that the article discusses multiple causes, but
not multiple organizations within one cause. There are hundreds if not
thousands of organizations focused on cancer - to which do I give my donation?
Only one?

~~~
cjbprime
> But maybe I care equally about helping this generation with hunger and
> future generations with saving the rainforest.

This is exactly the "delusion of grandeur" being argued against in the
article, though:

"[people donate] as if they were thinking, "OK, I think I've pretty much
wrapped up the problem of heart disease; now let's see what I can do about
cancer."

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hellified
A modular, standardized system for building houses where you buy X external
walls, Y internal walls, window type A, skylight C, flooring sections, etc
.... Walls would be come wired for electricity with snap together connections,
roof sections with pre-wired solar panels. Allow people to order parts and put
together their own home, or do so with friends like an old fashioned barn
raising.

Tornado damaged your house? Order those parts again, disconnect the damaged
ones, snap in the new stuff. Baby on the way? Disconnect an external wall, add
a few more panels and you've another room, no need to move. Use recyclable
materials (melt down one of the 'airplane graveyards' and use the steel and
aluminum for a start).

The goals would be to reduce the waste involved in constructing houses as well
as achieve economies of scale through mass production that would allow buying
a home to be no more of a commitment than buying a car. No more 30 year
mortgages, no more being 'house poor'.

Young and just starting out in life? Buy enough for just a kitchen, bath, and
bedroom ... add more as you can afford it.

Open the standard for wall, floor, roof, etc... connections so vendors can
offer 'after-market' parts for your home if you want something special or more
individualized.

~~~
FiatLuxDave
I like this answer, because you have put some thought into this. I would add
to your idea these things: a) all components are "man-portable", so that they
can be put together by people without the use of cranes or heavy lifting
equipment (this is a big deal in construction), b) have external mounting
points so that they can be attached firmly to a building skeleton, allowing
for building out a skyscraper using only manpower once the skeleton and
elevators have been put up.

I will say that here in the South, we have a similar product which is located
in "trailer parks". It is worth looking at the failures of the existing
trailer parks when looking at ways to make cheaper housing.

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tptacek
I'd try to fund a network of after-school/summer activity centers for the west
and south sides of Chicago.

~~~
kasey_junk
Great idea. You could start smaller though. I particularly like Blackstone
Bicycle Works & The Chicago Jesuit Academy.

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Someone1234
I'd buy up two chunks of radio spectrum (from the FCC), one medium range and
one long range ("to the horizon"). I'd then set out some ground rules (e.g.
digital only, packet header uIDs are registered/allocated centrally, your app
must be able to ignore other user's incoming traffic, some broad rate limit,
etc).

Then I'd licence the two channels to "anyone" who wanted access at fairly
inexpensive rates (e.g. free for development, few cents for production, small
fines if you exceed the rate limit). Then I'd let people use this spectrum for
more or less whatever they want.

Want me make an inter-car communications system? Want to make a "smart-home"
system? Want to control your Christmas tree lights from a wireless switch?
Licence my spectrum.

The current lack of freely usable spectrum is a huge bottleneck to lots of
innovation. You often see WiFi get abused since it is the closest thing we
have to a "use for anything" spectrum, BlueTooth and NFC both have too many
inherent limitations.

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alphagenerator
I think I'd throw more money at those initiatives where they grow meat in
labs. Factory farming is a horror, and cattle do tremendous amounts of damage
to land all over the world.

Veganism is part of a solution to end animal abuse, but it's currently too
hard of a cultural adjustment for people. We need a better, commercially
viable solution.

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partisan
I would fund research into self-reproducing robots. I would then launch them
into space where I would use them to mine the asteroid belt, shooting
materials back towards earth where they would trapped in earth's orbit and
safely dropped into the atmosphere. I would use the profits for philanthropic
causes.

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schmidtc
I would build a new city. Not some attempt at utopia, but a fresh start in a
remote but desirable destination. The town would be seeded with a university
and focused on outdoor recreation, startup (and self-employment) culture, and
diversity. Basic employment would include the university, but also tourism and
startup incubators. Non-basic would initially include something like a brew-
pub and grocery store. Basic amenities would include subsidized internet,
alternative energy grants, public transportation to outdoor recreation and
nearest major airport. The planning of the city would be based on Traditional
Neighborhood Design and include a large buffer zone to prevent sprawl.

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chadkruse
I'd actually be doing exactly what I'm doing now, though admittedly I'd change
out the ramen for a more well balanced diet. We're bootstrapping, but if I was
a billionaire I'd be dogfooding :)

Let me explain...

We discovered investing your money in social causes is incredibly difficult,
so we're building out the Giving Graph to make it easier to be the Bill Gates
of whatever your main social cause is. You shouldn't need to recreate the
infrastructure of the Gates Foundation to be as effective a donor.

[http://kyn.me](http://kyn.me)

[disclosure - I'm the founder of Kyn]

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Gustomaximus
I believe the biggest opportunity for human progress is the development of
some kind of affordable, portable & clean energy system. From 'energy' you can
get most everything else you need. People could pull water form the air in dry
regions. Grow food indoors where the environment is not supportive. Power
computers and mobiles for education and information distribution. Run bug
zappers in malaria prone regions. It really does seem the foundation to
further progress for much of the developed world. I believe once we have this
we will see progress on the scale of the industrial revolution.

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Broken_Hippo
I would try to buy enough land to start building cities or compounds in
various places.

Ultra efficient, lots of solar power and initially strong infrastructure,
health care. I'd fail a time or two and might not be able to do everything at
once, but i*d surely try. Living there would cost a portion of income, but
included would be internet and housing and electricity and health care and
things like that. Possibly healthy food if I can figure that out.

Yeah, definitely a dream :)

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eswat
A game company that offered experiences for mobile that rival those found on
console and PC. I don’t mean in terms of graphical fidelity or gameplay
length, but in richness of how stories are told or really taxing a player
mentally to solve a puzzle. Right now the most famous games for mobile are
ones like Angry Birds, Clash of Clans, etc. which I find pretty sad personally
when the equivalent on other platforms are games like Deus Ex or the Zelda
series.

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jimrandomh
I'd get in touch with Givewell, and make sure that adequate funding goes to
the charities that are very important but too small for me to research myself.

If you have billions of dollars, you can try funding one really big thing,
which might fail - or you can fund a thousand smaller things, some of which
will fail and some of which will succeed. The latter is usually better for the
world.

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septerr
Invest in think tank that will work on figuring out a model of
governance/society that will ensure no one goes hungry, no one lacks
healthcare, everyone has access to education/learning material in their chosen
field, there is little or no income inequality - maybe a society that does
away with money.

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zeynalov
1\. A Space Travel. Would pay Roskosmos or NASA for a travel. 2\. Build a
whole new industry - Flying cars. I know, I know it's very complex story, but
I would invest a billion on this! 3\. Build a competitor to SpaceX and make it
even better. 4\. Find a Foundation to help people those need help, like Bill
Gates does. 5\. There are more... but for now I'll keep them for myself.

~~~
smeyer
>I know it's very complex story, but I would invest a billion on this!

Just for perspective, GM spends something like 7 billion USD a year on R&D.
I'm not saying you can't make progress with a billion dollars on the problem,
but a billion is not a gargantuan sum when it comes to things like cars. Tesla
already spends a few hundred million per year on R&D for a much less ambitious
problem.

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rgovind
1) I would fight with government and fix bad driving and road accidents in
India and China. India is the current world accident capital.

2) Build a quora like website where anonymous government employees explain
about various happenings in the govt and politicans minds. Eventually, I would
make it a real time corruption alert machine.

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pharaohgeek
I believe Scrooge McDuck's Money Bin is the only reasonable answer to this
question. :)

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JoeAltmaier
Chip that assembled carbohydrate molecules. Make fuel, lubricants, food out of
electricity. From thin air. Change the world, circumvent expensive and fragile
economies of farming, drilling, refining and shipping.

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swah
Attempt other models of education - alternatives to universities - so I could
still hang out with younger folks, teaching and learning.

Or flee from my country to a place with Amazon Prime.

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Mankhool
I would pour billions into desalination R&D to chase an efficient, non-
polluting and economical solution to providing clean water to the world.

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JoeAltmaier
Modular safe city - and install around the world in troubled areas to give
people an alternative.

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DanBC
An encyclopedia of pollenating insects, with repositories of all the research
about those insects.

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coppolaemilio
A bot making company to abolish all jobs and probably myself.

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PaulHoule
I'd want to go check out the polar glacier on the moon.

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jordsmi
Money fort.

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anywherenotes
Map the ocean floor.

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hashtag
Atlantis

