Asklemmy

44362 readers

1414 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
!lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

Would you trust yourself with infinite wealth? (lemmy.zip)

submitted 1 day ago by atotayo@lemmy.zip to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

98 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Let's say that you have an opportunity to gain billions to fix the society from the top. Do you think that you would keep your integrity and use your money for the greater good, or that you would be corrupted by your power?

If so, would you still accept the offer knowing that you would just make the situation worse?

And if you believe in yourself, how would you try to convince an hypotetical entity to give you this wealth?

To avoid regrets let's say that if you decline the offer your memory about the deal gets erased.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] apotheotic@beehaw.org 1 points 5 hours ago

I think I would be fine. I already have limited wealth and I'm directing a significant portion of it to the betterment of the world around me. If my wealth/income increased tenfold (as an example) I don't think I'd be able to find a use for more than, idk, 15-20% of the additional money? So I'd just heavily ramp up the funds going to charities and local causes.

Extending this out to the infinite wealth scenario, I'd be able to help more causes so I'd need to find out which charities are actually putting money to use for what they say they are, extend my mindset beyond local causes and to the whole globe. Almost certainly drop some fat stacks into buying out basically every fossil fuel corp and start the process of getting that shit phased out. Sure I make some terrible people rich(er) in the short term with the buyouts but fuck it, the environment needs to be prioritized.

How I'd convince this hypothetical entity? Idk, probably just explain all of the above and I guess show some hard data on my track record for this. If the entity is determined to put the money in the hands of someone who is going to do good, either I'll be good enough or I won't.

If its not infinite and "just" billions then I'm probably going to funnel about half of it into local (national) causes and the other half into affecting what positive change I can worldwide. Process for convincing the entity remains the same.