Ask Lemmy

Invest it, assuming 5% return, spend the interest money of 250 million per year on feeding the hungry, educating kids, and helping animals. Somewhere along the way, buy a couple of beers for myself.

A 100 bed (or so, idk what number it would actually come out to) hostel / shelter / halfway house for chronically institutionalized people who don't know how to function in normal transitional housing. Instead of a larger number of beds they might also be split into multiple smaller buildings.

Each unit would have one small room with

• a twin bed
• a closet with a storage compartment on the bottom that takes a standard lock
• a desk
• a few of those bars on the wall you can slide posters and papers into to hang
• a single-unit sink-toilet-shower stall with groutless faux tile that can be hosed down easily
• an electric kettle
• WiFi

Public facilities include:

• cafeteria that provides 3 hot meals as well as a set number of reconstitutable MRE style meals that can be made with hot water
• laundry
• library / public access computers
• meeting rooms that are reservable but also host supportive and educational group therapies
• a large public chalkboard wall with 7 sections that are wiped down one at a time in sequence throughout the week with additional discretion of the staff to erase hatespeech
• a non-denominational / non-religion-specific "chapel" that any religious leader may rent for one hour a week in exchange for some minimum monetary donation. They also receive a updatable placard posted just outside or near the entrance on the inside listing their contributions publicly in addition to being listed on the monthly accounting posting.

They do pay rent but it's only enough to keep the facility running and the accounting books are publicly available on a monthly basis. It is designed so that vestments can be interchangeably hung and they may also rent a closet to store them in.

They can get a discount by performing tasks to run, clean, and maintain the facilities including both the public areas and turning over rooms between residents or maintaining the rooms of disabled residents (while those residents are elsewhere for the day). Their names are not listed on the public books, just the number of people contributing in this manner. Any money they make for tasks performed outside the facility is theirs to keep.

There are no drug tests but no drugs (or weapons) are allowed on the premises.

The floors are sex segregated with the exception of one floor (or a smaller proportion) that is co-ed and allows persons of any gender presentation provided they have no history of sex or gender targeted charges.

If I think of anything else I'll add it, but these are my thoughts having worked with this population and wishing there were more services focused on helping them reenter society.

Idk, whatever I can come up with would probably have massive unintended negative consequences.

Buy the US House and Senate.

$5 B / 435 = 11,494,252 per person. Sounds do-able. Shit, Bob Menendez sold out for $480,000. 11 mil. would go a LOOONG way.

Expand food banks and shelters. Then donate water to places that need it.

Move to an undisclosed remote location and start posting massive crypto bounties on the heads of the shittiest people in the world. Like, $100M a pop. Pay a digital sweatshop to spam social media with AI generated posts and memes about it until the whole world is aware. Then wait. See if anyone is able to collect.

I would donate the vast majority to education in the rest of homelessness

Best that I can think of would be to create an endowed institute of political scientists, psychologists, neuroscientists, linguists, et cetera, dedicated to studying and developing ways to counter right-wing populism, and de-program people who fall under its sway.

Wholesale murder of my fellow billionaires

distribute guillotines

I set up a for profit corporation whose stated goal is to make the world a better play. I donate all the money to that corporation.

As the sole owner, I now have 5 billion dollars so I change the mission to something else because I don't have time to deal with the poors who did work as hard as me to become this successful.

Change it into British pounds, set up a political party or movement.

$5b wouldn't do much in the grand scheme of things but it would make me the wealthiest person in my city 10x over. I'd fund progressive campaigns across the board to stack the legislate with like-minded people and then work on building my local community and hope that it has leeching effects on the surrounding area, state(s), country.

5 billion is a lot, but it's not quite change the world money.

I'm not looking to go on a murder spree, even if there are people out there who might deserve it. Not to mention that going after other billionaires is basically the one thing that billions of dollars can't insulate you from.

I'd probably find an underserved region of the world, start up a hospital and health clinic, pay for good doctors, and treat patients for free for as long as we still have money.

Take a page out of the Republican playbook and start buying judges so I can own the courts in 30 to 40 years

If the Big, Beautiful Bill in the US gets passed in the Senate with the provision requiring plaintiffs to put up a bond to sue the government over these illegal actions then I'd be bankrolling every citizen and group that is interested in suing to fight them, including putting up a bond.

1. I would set up a program where the teachers in Philadelphia public schools would have their school supplies highly subsidized by myself.

2. The local food banks would receive five figure donations directly from myself.

3. I would look into water retention and distribution in drought stricken parts of Mexico. If I could help I would leverage my money effectively to make sure humans have access to safe drinking water in the region. If acting directly would cause harm I would fund researchers until an appropriate solution could be found.

4. Create an app that teaches the indigenous languages of the Americas while hiring native speakers for accuracy.

Edit:

5. Donate to an owl sanctuary.

Heal the sick, teach the young, power the future.

I'd create a new city from scratch, sort of kick-starter style with like-minded residents and businesses. It would be built up with good public transit from the beginning and solid anti-NIMBY policies. Something radical like not being able to own your property. Instead the city would be owned collectively and you could have shares. But you would never have an incentive to deny development to increase your own home's value.

There'd be participatory planning and cutting edge democracy: participatory, deliberative, representative.

Bribe politicians to add a constitutional amendment for a mandatory 30% minimum tax to gross income over $1M and assets/holdings over $1B.

I wouldn’t even know where to begin. I’d rather just opt out and keep living my current lifestyle than dedicate the rest of my life to something I’m not an expert in - and honestly, don’t even find particularly interesting.

Found a for-profit (to circumnavigate laws about non-profit having to be apolitical) with the goal of lifting people in poverty from poverty by providing jobs, education and zero interest loans

Use it to hire most of the best minds to be found with the sole purpose of creating an expansive infrastructure to provide regular people the means to organize as one.

The undertaking would be staggering. Reviewing all the known history of man, considering all the languages, cultures, failures and successes.

Researching and combining all known technologies.

All to set the groundwork for a global union of human kind to be able to collectively counteract the disease that is the upper most classes.

After much daydreaming on the subject. I think this is the way of long term existential survival for the human race.

TL;DR: Basically, the Star Trek federation.

I would build housing for the homeless. Simple rule, no muss no fuss: need a place to live? Get a place to live. Live there for free until you can get clean and/or find a job and get back on your feet. Maybe throw in some job training too, or some kind of work-study program where they can get (paid, ofc) experience while they learn a new trade to help cover gaps in their work history and such. I'm imagining apartment complexes built around some kind of combination trade school/recovery program that teaches people to be plumbers, welders, electricians, etc while helping to get and keep them clean, offer group support for reintegrating into society, the full package.

I could help a lot of people that way with $5 billion. I'd show up in places like NY/LA with large homeless populations with a greyhound bus that said 'free apartment and a good job this way' on the side or something too, and just bus 'em in as new housing became available.

Free mental health care for those struggling the most plus housing subsidies for those struggling to stay off the street due to mental illness.