Ask Lemmy

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.

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 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.

You get to keep enough to maintain a very modest lifestyle in a low-cost-of-living area

Don't know why I must move to a cheap area... no, I would probably decide to stay here at least for half of each year. My lifestyle remains modest as well, but I would actually rebuild some parts of this old house.

the rest of it has to go towards improving the world in some way.

There's only a small part of the world that I could actually influence so far in my life.

With the billions, I would try to expand this radius of course, but only slowly, only reluctantly, trying to stay wise. I would focus at first on the ones that are closer to me, and mitigate their needs. You did not require me to improve the whole world after all.

Step 1) Pay my rent for the next 10 years. Freaking out about it month to month is shredding years off of my life span. Also buy a new hard drive because I ran out of space for memes earlier today...

Step 2) Go to the grocery store and get a shitload of groceries, distilled water and cat food so that isn't a concern for a long time. I can not eat. The cat? Not so much.

Step 3) At the grocery store, buy every single gift card they have. I mean all of them, not just the ones on the shelves. I'd go to the manager and say to get someone for me and me alone. Open a till and go through every box of every gift card, activate them all and sell all of them to me. ALL OF THEM.

Step 4) Go to every food bank in my city and give them every gift card as well as a massive cash donation. Some of the gift cards are for the staff. Otherwise 30% goes to various purchases that will help if they wanna keep the cash for a while. The other 70% gets put in with stuff that people pick up.

Step 5) Find every charity in my local area and pay them out. Reach their goals and then some.

Step 6) Make an agreement with the city to fund an ENTIRE overhaul of the transit system. My city isn't very big but the transit here is horrific. City won't make moves on it because cost of shifting it around will mess with the budget. So, I pay for it and over the course of a very long time, I take an incredibly small amount of any money gained from transit over the amount they made prior to overhaul. That money does not go to me but instead back into those local charities.

Step 7) Open my own vet clinic that has pricing based off of income. It'd be about the same prices as any other vets in the area overall, but if you make below a certain amount then the price drops. Keeps dropping based on how much you make. So much so that if you are homeless (as I used to be) with no income at all, you can have your furry friend treated at no charge. Hire someone who is exceptionally good at destroying competition and have them do absolutely everything in their power to obliterate any other vet clinics in the area. Absolutely fucking destroy them until they can no longer function because they simply do not have enough patients. Only those with no other option than to go to them because of travel distance. When they are utterly desperate and about to be foreclosed on, give them a generous payout as well as a hiring offer. Convert their location into another branch of my own with the same low income stipulations. No one deserves to be worried about their friend simply because they cannot afford it.

Step 8) Hire a bunch of Star Trek actors to come to Newfoundland for the biggest Trek convention ever, ideally by having the Star Trek cruise set off from there after a big blowout. Brings in a ton of tourism from nerds with disposable income and as we have some pretty exceptional views you don't get anywhere else, we can cross over the tourism WITH the Trek. Make a big festival saying it's a new planet or something. This is 100% just personal love but it can help the island too so why not?

Step 9) Invest in small-scale renewables and set up programs to help lower-income people lower their electricity costs (heating in my area is all electric so the prices are fucking absurd in winter). Have solar panels or whatever else hooked up with peoples homes and have the programs set to help mantain them at a minimal cost, ideally at least 30% lower than current electricity costs. That's about $400 a year saved.

Step 10) Make some deal with the provincial government to get the moose fences set up faster. It's a local thing.

Step 11) ALL REMAINING MONEY is to be invested in trains on the island. Absolutely none exist at the moment. We shut down the railway in Newfoundland in the 80s or 90s. First off, I'm autistic and love trains. Second, trains would make travel around this island insanely fucking easy. Requires more upkeep with the weather but as it stands the road system is awful, it takes too long to transport anything anywhere and we only have one bus route that crosses the island. It sucks and is a miserable experience. Set up a train hub at Port-Aux-Basques with spidering networks that go out to the various hotspots on the island.

Edit: Lmao the downvotes are hysterical

I honestly don't know.

My first thought was hiring PMCs/wet work specialists to take care of some particular people (but what if they get a counteroffer and they change their minds? Even the 5 billion might be nothing compared to what these people could offer and it's not like the people doing this kind of job have a moral compass and care about the great good on average, lol) and put some fear in their hearts. I guess if they don't fear God, they'll certainly fear for their lives (you can't be a hedonist if you're dead after all). But would that work? Would the ones remaining take care of spinning this in a way that brings the proles even closer to them? Trump and his team have been able to do it after all. But this is a necessary step to control public discourse and create enough fear that those at the top fear for their lives, act a little bit better and cannibalize each other at the top in the chaos.

The second step would require/involve making people fear God (believe you'll be judged for your actions by the Merciful, the Gracious after death so you work good deeds and avoid evil). I don't think that's possible, at least not for me. After all, every sort of moral teaching and parable has already been made and it's out there, for free. Maybe if they understood that Voltaire was right, and we'd have to invent God if He didn't exist FOR OUR OWN COLLECTIVE GOOD IN THIS WORLD, maybe that would be enough. But how? Voltaire was right, but I don't have to invent Him, I'd just have to remind people of Him enough (but I'd need a literate populace and that's a dying breed)... Maybe the PMCs should focus on big people in the media and spin but wouldn't someone else just fill their shoes? Anyway, in the end, I don't know, lol. I don't know how to make an impact in the world to make it better in the long term to such a magnitude, not with 5 billion. Maybe 500, and then I'd have some chats with the Chinese to take care of the PMCs before they get out of control or something (they get to showcase/try out their toys, the rest of the world gets rid of an actual/extremely possible danger of military dictatorship).

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

I'd immediately invest most of it in stable, developed economies where the far-right doesn't seem close to taking power—so somewhere like Finland or Singapore—and invest the rest in Syria because God knows they need it. This way I'll have a permanent stream of change-the-world money that I can use to support pro-democracy and worker organization efforts in the third world and in countries such as Turkey where there are serious efforts to democratize. With whatever remains from that I'd then go around funding relief efforts in Africa and the like.

I guess I'd better hire someone to help educate me about fundraising, tax and other applicable laws, because establishing a (pre?)k-12 private school with above-standard education, three nutritiously sound meals/day, built-in well/sick/before/after school care, extracurricular activities and free clinic with it's own free pharmacy, both to be offered to low-income community that will last generations is going to be expensive. Plus I'd imagine a team of attorneys on retainer being necessary is foreseeable, if capitalism is still a thing.

Build my own village with affordable rent and live in a mansion in the middle and be like a lord of my own little village. Maybe also build a good school there. Evict people if they do anti social behaviour. Then when someone has paid enough rent to pay off the mortgage, surprise them by just giving them the house, or maybe after a time offer them to buy it with a reduced price because of the rent paid. So someone could probably live there and raise a family until they can afford a house, then buy their own house back.

Also arrange loads of community events, get people out and involved. Just make a wholesome and affordable community for others to live in. Maybe get businesses to move in to offer jobs as well.