If I Had a Billion Dollars

A billion dollars. That is if you take a million dollars and multiply it by a thousand. A thousand million dollars.

A million dollars doesn’t cut it anymore as far as extravagant wealth goes. Yeah, you can buy a decent house and a car, but you won’t have life altering money left over unless you invest it properly. It can go SUPER fast.

There are over 3000 billionaires worldwide. If you were gifted one million dollars from each one, you’d have 3 billion dollars.

All of those 3000 people wield immense power. Power than can rival anything else that comes from the universe. It can solve starvation, it can rebuild lives hindered by natural disasters, it can give a voice to the voiceless - among infinitely many other things.

A while back, Gary Vaynerchuk said that a new trend for celebrities was to go to a high school dance or a wedding with some random person. I know for a fact Taylor Swift has attended functions at the invitation of a completely non-famous person and it has a visceral effect on said famous person’s brand. By going deep on the micro, it creates a positive macro effect for their brand. Imagine going to a wedding, and seeing a rando sitting with Taylor Swift at a table at the reception? Of course, this was when she wasn’t the global colossus she is now (she’d get mobbed before she’d ever enter the wedding venue), but she was still famous enough to have all the other attendees marvel over such a mindboggling scenario, posting about it from all different angles, from all different phones of all different wedding guests. And she has a billion dollar net worth now.

What would I do if I had a billion dollars? Simple. I would take the same concept, and randomly cruise gofundme. Pay requests off in their entirety (or way over the top) anonymously.

“But what if the gofundme you pay for is a sham and you get taken advantage of?”

It doesn’t matter. I’d still do it. I know that the number of people who have a real life crisis to where they had to ask strangers for help - that is still enough where it doesn’t matter. And I would pick very random dates and times to do it to keep it unpredictable. What would be in it for me is knowing I caused earth-shattering relief to those asking for it. You can’t do that with a million dollars, because it would run out fast. But those worth 10 billion or more dollars can do it without any inconvenience to their lifestyle (maybe those worth just 1 billion, but I don’t know. It’s out of my realm of comprehension).

“You sound like a commie or a broke liberal trying to take money that isn’t yours and give it to those who aren’t willing to work for it. Take your marxism elsewhere.”

There are several highly regarded historical figures that (to this day) have major influence over the current population due to their benevolence. It isn’t hard to know who I am talking about. Those who hold the above philosophy most likely highly regard at least one of those historical figures.

Sure, billionaires have always have methods of giving back. Like endowments, grants, high-level philanthropy like having the lion house at the zoo named after you, or the gym at the nearby Division II college. But that’s all on the macro. At least not the micro-est micro you can go, short of handing an unhoused person a big check. Besides, the high-level philanthropy involves middlemen that have a take. Going direct to the platforms where people are asking for help - that eliminates a lot of the middlemen, but not all.

But just imagine what the recipient of the paid off gofundme would feel? They probably are losing hope, all probably seems bleak. And then somehow someone pays it off. How do you make them feel a motherfucking Mt. Everest sized amount of gratitude? If the donation pays the gofundme off 2x beyond the fundraising goal. Or 10x. Hell, at that point, no one would care if they go on a youtube-televised gofundme paying-off spree. If this newsletter makes it to the eyes of a billionaire, and they’re able to do this but they don’t want their identity revealed, wear a Mexican wrestling mask while you do it. Or find a creative way to do it. Or maybe said hypothetical billionaire is okay not donning a mask and donates to various gofundmes an astronomical amount of money in an hour, thus boosting their brand to cosmic levels.

Could it eat away at our ever present greed culture we live in? I don’t know. Why don’t we find out? Here is an example:

Imagine the forever overflowing gratitude this family would forever carry if they got say…$100,000. Their faith in humanity would be ironclad, their friends and family would spread news of that level of kindness and gratitude to the ends of the earth. Do we not need people like that among us? I mean, if our insurance industry in the US is based on ultimately capitalism, why not? Quelling human suffering is greater than capitalism. This would be a real event that would cause a positive change in a human being.

My uncle once said that if someone asks your for money on the street, it’s better to give them money, even if you have a hunch that they may already be well off, use it for drugs, or not need it at all. But it is not our call, and we don’t know if they’ll use it towards food or another necessity. We just don’t know, and if they use it for anything that you didn’t hope it was used for, that’s not on you. That’s on them. You at least provided a means with which to momentarily make their existence suck less.

My dad once used his frequent flyer miles he would amass from his work trips to South America so the family of a little girl in a poverty-stricken part of Mexico undergoing cancer treatment could be flown to Chicago to receive better care. My dad didn’t have to do it, but he did anyway, and the whole family was received at the Ronald McDonald house in Chicago. It doesn’t take that much to change someone’s faith in humanity.

Back to gofundmes and immense ways of giving back on the micro - how do we normalize this type of “fad” among the billionaire class? How do we make it the status quo among the billionaires? I don’t know. I may need your help on this. Know any billionaires we can try and convince? How do we make this go viral with them? Let’s hear your ideas!