A billion pounds?

[ciphergoth]

babysimon: "You could do a lot of good with £1bn"

How would you spend a billion pounds in order to do good? You can't spend it on yourself or your friends.

Comments

[andrewducker]

If you'd asked me a few years ago I'd have spent a chunk of it on making a Watchmen TV series - but now there's an actual movie in production that seems a tad pointless :->

I think I'd put half of it into a massive advertising campaign pointing out the huge loss of life/quality of life caused because we subsidise agriculture. And the other half into providing clean water in Africa. Those two things together would massively improve life for some of the poorest people in the world.

[wildeabandon.livejournal.com]

I think I'd put half of it into a massive advertising campaign pointing out the huge loss of life/quality of life caused because we subsidise agriculture.

I like this idea a lot too.

[figg.livejournal.com]

Burn it.

I think this question perpetuates the myth that everything can be fixed with a sufficient amount of money.

[figg.livejournal.com]

Or maybe I've just been listening to too much KLF.

I don't understand the intent of this question - is it what project do you wish had more funding?

I don't think I'm at all qualified to decide how to spend that much money, and I doubt that in the end it would do as much good as changes to the law without money. For example:

You could buy drug patents, but it would be better not to have them in the first place.

Maybe I would go and get a couple of geostationary satelites and wireless kit to try and build a free global mesh network. Until it got blown up by the us military.

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

I'd fund immunisation and sexual health projects.

[aster13.livejournal.com]

I'm afraid my brain falls over when confronted with that many noughts.

Some of the sorts of things might be:

Investing in a public transport and cycle transport infrastructure which is sustainable and efficient
Investing in a more integrated healthcare system so that inexpensive, but more personal methods of improving health were a standard part of the system (such as massage, pleasant multisensory outdoor spaces in hospitals/hospices, mentoring, supporters, doulas, pets in hospital schemes etc
Investing in decentralised, sustainable, eco-friendly methods of energy production, conservation and transmission, particularly for those who can least afford it

These just happen to be things at the top of my head atm

There's probably about a million more, and a different day i'd pick different things. I've also just done things for the UK.

[lolliepopp.livejournal.com]

cancer research, homes for people who need them, more cancer research, old peoples homes.

[skx.livejournal.com]

How much do we spend on cancer research already? Would increasing that result in a "cure" more quickly?

("Cure" because there are multiple types of cancer, and not a single one.)

[redcountess]

I'd give it to UNFPA, I've just calculated it's about US$4,000,000 short of the funding the Bush administration has withheld for the last six years.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

I like this suggestion, but the figures don't seem right: according to this

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americans_for_UNFPA

they're owed only $200M, so you could pay them that and still have about 90% of the money left...

[reddragdiva]

$10 million over five years to the Wikimedia Foundation, another $50 million to start an endowment fund for them. That leaves $940 million to go ... hmm. Similar sorts of arrangements for other small charities of my acquaintance, I suspect - enough money for them, not so much they don't quite know what to do with it.

[wildeabandon.livejournal.com]

I'd give a chunk to the singularity institute, and use the rest towards treatment/prevention of disesase and provision of sustainable food and water in the poorest parts of the world.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

Surprised - I would have thought the SIAI's position and goals incompatible with a belief in either souls or a final judgement, enlighten me?

[andrewducker]

Ooooh. I wonder how much it costs to start up a national newpaper, staff it, and keep it running for a couple of years...

TV is expensive, but newspapers might be doable.

[figg.livejournal.com]

You could follow in the footsteps of schnews.

[skx.livejournal.com]

Buy up a lot of blocks of flats, and rent them to students for peanuts.

Possible to the unemployed / other good causes. But primarily students.

[hughe.livejournal.com]

recording studio and equipment available to the public on a limited basis, with a large amount invested with the intrest and dividends above inflation could pay for staff, bills and maintainence.
and other projects on a similar basis.

a bit like what was done with the roundhouse, but avaiable to the over 25s too.....

[ladycat.livejournal.com]

I'd purchase and open a one stop shop violence against women crisis service in London.

I'd also develop an a research section. They would develop accredited training courses on a range of VAW issues which could be offered to voluntary and statutory agencies. Money from the course would support the running of the centre in future and the research would evaluate the model and offer evidence for future funding proposals and rolling out the model across the UK.

Not sure 1 million would stretch more than a year!

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

That's a plausible use for a million - but you've got a thousand times that much to spend!

[ludy]

mosquito nets for malarial areas and other basic prevenative health measures for developing/underdeveloped countrues.
And for here some kind of joined up mental helth/learning disabilities/autitstic spectrum crisis cntres and long term joined up support (including resaesrch on the atipical pyschartic-drug reactions that are actully typical for spectrum people and loking at h links between "personality disorders" and developmntal disorders/differences and providing actualy helpful help) - too many people fall through the gaps right now

[nickys.livejournal.com]

""The money required to provide adequate food, water, education, health and housing for everyone in the world has been estimated at $17 billion a year."

... so, with the current exchange rate, around 8 of us could agree too pool our billions and solve just about every serious problem there is.


Seems vaguely plausible that everyone on the planet could have clean, safe water for around £1 billion, so I'd go for that.

[wildeabandon.livejournal.com]

Where does that statistic come from?

$17bn a year is different from $17bn capital, but it's still less than 1% of UK GDP. I can't understand how it could be that cheap and not be done yet.

[damerell.livejournal.com]

Take out a hit on Dick Cheney.

[hukuma.livejournal.com]

It's funny, 1 billion seems so impossibly huge on a personal scale, yet so insignificant on a global scale. I mean, the Gates foundation has a larger budget than that, and while they do a lot of good, they're barely scratching the surface of the problems they're targeting.

[fizzyboot.livejournal.com]

Indeed. A billion quid is 16p for everyone on the planet, which is clearly not enough to fix all the world's problems.

The most important thing -- assuming you actually want to make a difference to the world and not just make yourself feel good -- is to spend it in the most effective ways. So the first thing I'd do is assemble a group of experts -- economists, technologists, etc -- to evaluate different proposals and their effectiveness.

What sort of things might be most effective? One example is digital content: it only needs to be created once, then can be infinitely replicated for free. So creating open source software and open content works might be useful.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_lj_sucks_/]

Well, for starters I'd use the same scam as the rich guys: I'd put the billion into a foundation, use it as capital to loan to other people, collect interest from them, and then spend the interest. Assuming 10% return, that'd give me £100m a year to give away indefinitely.

Then I'd carve up the annual funds and give regular donations to a bunch of worthy causes. Oxfam, Habitat for Humanity, ACLU, and so on. I don't have a list off the top of my head, but I'm sure it would be no problem to pull up the most cost-effective charities from Charity Navigator and assemble one.

I'd use some money for research and angel investing too. Reading SciAm and PopSci, every month or two there's some worthy development that needs seed capital or research funds.

I'd also donate computers and textbooks to schools, on the condition that the computers run Linux and the biology textbooks teach evolution without disclaimers.

And I'd tell the Cambridge Computer Lab to get lost for selling out their credibility to Microsoft. Or maybe offer to double Bill's donation if they remove his name and Microsoft's from everything.

I'd keep back a small amount just for "frivolous" stuff. Like when I read a newspaper story about someone being screwed out of $20,000 by some corporation because he can't afford legal representation.

A more plausible dream is what I'd do with about $2m, the answer being "Retire, and spend my time on free and open source software projects, either coding, managing the project, or writing documentation."

Can't I spend it on Eeeevil?

[meico.livejournal.com]

I promise not to spend it on myself or my friends...

[zz]

from an ignoring the people suffering right now longer term perspective:
- buy some politicians to be anti corporate power, mass surveillance, etc.
- fund energy research/implementation - cold fusion, efficient renewables, whatever. abundant (clean) energy makes solving all other problems easier.
- possibly arrange a nuclear accident in israel, so that *no-one* can have it, and we can all get on with our lives.

[skibbley.livejournal.com]

Clean water for more people is my first reaction.

[zwol.livejournal.com]

I like a lot of the options posted above, but here's another one: I'd buy up check-cashing and payday-loan chains and force them to stop gouging money out of poor people.

(I don't know if this is a problem in the UK. It's endemic here on the left side of the pond.)

[lovingboth]

They exist, but I'm not sure how much of a problem they are.

[lovingboth]

Someone I know is friends with a handful of people who do have a billion quid. The basic lesson is that when you have that sort of money, you don't actually need to spend much of it for people to do what you want.

It's a bit like the joke about if you owe the bank £300 you don't have, it's your problem, but if you owe them £300 million you don't have, it's their problem. Various people become so eager to please you that they'll do stuff for peanuts.

You could buy a large chunk of the UK educational system, for example, by being the sponsor of 'academies'. You don't spend much, the state still pays 95+% of the capital costs, plus all of the running costs, and you get a peerage thrown in.

[random-redhead.livejournal.com]

I would get a tazer and start feeling invincible on a daily basis. personally taking on shoplifters, bad behaviour on buses, smacking people round the head when they need it. try and regain some of the responsibilities that people don't seem to respect anymore.
excluding all violent school pupils, lock them up in a safari park and use them as an example to others. Don't act like an animal or I'll treat you like one. Or deport them to the third world, an exchange program, along side helping people in the third world and war torn areas move to safe and environmentally sustainable areas.
I am not a nice person or a bright person. I am not politically liberal on the issues of personal violence. I don't know enough about how the world works to make this money work effectively but i know enough to know that it wouldn't make a difference and that the other people with the billions would get together and cheat me out of it. its not a conspiracy theory, its grinding reality.

[henry_the_cow]

Could I start by demolishing the Appleton Tower?

I thought briefly about the proposed UK high-speed train line, but £1bn could only fund 1/33 of it, so that's a non-starter.

I'd like to act as a business angel for hi-tech start ups in Central Scotland.

But to really do good, I think the money would be best spent in research and campaigning to mitigate the causes and effects of global warming. Other problems can be dealt with later, but if we don't deal with that one now, we'll be toast.