If you were the richest person in the world…

[Supersoakers]

What would you do?

Wouldn’t you want to help people- do stuff like get hospitals named after you and statues built in your honour after your life changing donations, as opposed to you know, arguing with people you don’t know on the internet?

I mean you could literally revolutionise society or start one even.

Bill Gates was the world's richest man for a long time. One of the reasons he is no longer the WRM, is that he set up the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation with his then wife.

Why would you not want to do similar if you were fortunate enough to be able to do so?

but why, how would other civilisations benefit from us?.

We're violent, destructive, fail miserably at living peacefully with our own kind, greedy.

I think humans are the last thing other galaxies need.

I would support countries to develop in a environmentally friendly ways and work towards reducing absolute poverty.

I would fund hundreds of new schools/convert current schools to include a special needs wing in addition to normal state school. This would mean all the kids struggling with mainstream but not disabled enough for special school could get the support they need and switch between the wings as needed. It would stop the struggling kids disrupting classes due to distress, mitigate school refusers due to less pressure and would include things like support with ehcp and diagnosis.

I would pour money into developing more efficient energy storage techniques, better solar panels and turbines, carbon scrubbers to clean the air.

I would pour money into some of the fascinating projects in Africa and and south America that are reclaiming and regreening the desert.

I would buy a large island and make a self sufficient eco town. For my own security but also an experimental community where people would want to come and invent new technology.

I would fund several of the already existing programs that rescue women and girls from forced marriages or whom want to leave countries with Draconian anti-women laws.

I would change the curriculum to include a 'life skills' class that would include information on consent, red flag behaviour, legal information on marriage and property, wills etc. basics of running a car amount other stuff. It would be a daily 10 minute thing at form time or similar and be fun and interactive.

I would lobby the gov to sort out the child maintenence service to have more teeth more along the lines of the American model. I would set a weekly charge for an absentee father regardless of income (children aren't free). Maybe £50 per week and this amount accues over time. If the person wants to be exempt from this then they have to actively prove they are e.g. disabled. They can't become a sahp to second spouses child for example and get off paying because they choose to leave their job.

Hmmm yes, probably the most effective way to do good would be to set up some kind of foundation. Mine would probably concentrate on buying vast tracts of land in sensitive, threatened areas and rewilding them. There's a Danish millionaire (think he founded ASOS) who's doing something similar in Scotland right now- I think he bought 3 adjacent estates and is trying to revive the Caledonian pine forests.

I would also build a few model eco villages with fabulous infrastructure, and fill them with single parent families on low incomes with pets.

And then I'd spend the rest going after the oil companies. They've pumped billions into deliberate misinformation about their carbon emissions and the climate crisis- well, I'd pump billions into holding them to account.

I'd get a Chinese. Hell, I'd even order crispy seaweed (six quid for fucking cabbage???).

...and I'd argue with people I don't know on Mumsnet.

You've got to admit, it is fun.

@jollygreenpea personally castration either chemical or physical but it's something endemic in the world everywhere in every class, society....

I'd use it to get Scottish Independence

Your first point would directly contribute to the country's housing and homelessness crisis.

Weird. Especially as your second point seems to want to solve the health crisis. Which is significantly driven by the housing quality crisis too.

if you’re the richest person on Earth why bother worrying about earth ? Surely you just start making plans to eventually colonise other planets with your offspring and descendants who you will house in some kind of odd commune complex in Texas maybe ??

I'm loving some of the ideas here.

I'm no fan of Musk but he does have a foundation. Grants are made in support of:

• Renewable energy research and advocacy
- Human space exploration research and advocacy
- Pediatric research
- Science and engineering education
- Development of safe artificial intelligence to benefit humanity.

Apparently he ranked second for charitable donations in 2022 behind Bill Gates. I suppose the press likes to report on his 'interesting' tweets, rather than his charitable contribution.

Some of us are still pretty fond of the old planet you know. The Martian landscape doesn't look terribly appealing, and the wildlife spotting opportunities aren't great.

I would want to do something good with my money, because it would make me feel good. Back in the day, philanthropists founded schools and hospitals for the poor, to get them educated and diseases treated so that they could be lifted out of poverty and have better lives.
The amount of desperately poor people who cannot afford their medical bills in India, for example, is heartbreaking (have a look at Ketto, an organisation that raises funds for life-saving treatment and operations). Doubtless it's the same in other countries. EM could help so many with a stroke of the pen.

God it’s depressing that there are so many possibilities.

I would definitely try and find an answer to getting rid of rubbish in a better way.
He doesn’t even seem happy!

Excatly it's to make sure we survive as a whole rather than all the eggs on one planet so to speak

That's due to not knowing the full wonders of the civilisations that are in those galaxies

I 100% agree with you.
I was musing that whatever expensive education Elon Musk has had, it's ultimately been a failure in the sense of giving him no moral compass or any understanding of what humanity really needs in the long term.

I would change the curriculum to include a 'life skills' class that would include information on consent, red flag behaviour, legal information on marriage and property, wills etc. basics of running a car amount other stuff. It would be a daily 10 minute thing at form time or similar and be fun and interactive.

Other than the running a car stuff, this is already be covered in PSHE classes (in England).

I set up endometriosis training centres globally, training top surgeons and then make sure every single women across the world had access to the best surgery, and then I'd invest in genetic research and figure out how to stop the cells forming in the first place,

I'd ensure all hospices are fully funded.

Then id book myself a very very long holiday somewhere beautiful and pay a chef to prepare all of my food forever and rest.

That made me laugh out!! Genius

Please don't take me as defending all Musk's actions or pronouncements.

But if you look at where he has focused, his process is pretty similar to what you are advocating.

He says he looks for the really big civilisational-level problems he can fix, and then goes for them in massive way.

• decarbonisation/electrification via EVs and changing the cost profile of the entire industry.
• colonising Mars to, in his view, diversify humanity's risk and give us a chance of surviving multiple future millennia
• making leading-edge AI non-profit, safe and human centred, avoiding what he sees as an existential threat. He passed up the opportunity to make hundreds of billions of dollars of easy money to do so.

This seems like exactly the sort of approach you want. I'm guessing you might disagree on priorities, but Musk knows there are many others working on malaria, etc (Gates, governments) and has focused where he thinks he can fix an issue others can't.

Your first point would directly contribute to the country's housing and homelessness crisis.

The "housing crisis" is caused by over population. Building more houses just encourages it. and the 'more houses' are horrible little boxes that no animal would want to live in.

Nimbyism is just a word made up by profit driven developers who just want to make money to go with their stacks of existing cash and are not prepared to develop additional infrastructure.

Building more shitty houses in areas that aren't fit for purpose makes life more shit for everyone in every possible way ranging from important (no GP appointments available as too many people per surgery) to utterly trivial (traffic jams through previously quite villages, no parking anywhere). Over intense population results in people on top of each other which just like in a pub that has exceeded its licenced capacity results in irrititability, bashing into one another, little personal space and ultimately violence.

In 2023 alone 1.2 million people migrated into the UK. This is the issue.

You don't get to become that rich (e.g. capitalism Jeff Bezos type rich) by being a helpful and kind person. It's just not in their DNA.

Ah - that's for me to know and you to find out. When the time comes. 😂

<spoiler - you'll like it>