-- it would be good for other people, too. Not just me.
I've mentioned before on this blog that if I were suddenly to receive $18 billion somehow, it would be good for me. And I believe that. I know, I've heard the horror stories about people who've won the Powerball jackpot, and 3 years later they're broke and more miserable than ever. But I think I could handle huge sudden wealth.
If I suddenly received $18 billion somehow, I would be a nice guy -- let me re-phrase that: I am a nice guy, and I don't think sudden immense wealth would change that.
Paying for 100% of the cost of converting 1000 houses to solar power would barely put a dent into $18 billion. That'd be like a couple days' worth of dividends. But if each one of those 1000 houses was owned and resided in by low-income people, so low that they might be at risk of losing the house, switching to solar could make a huge difference to them. Several hundred dollars a month is a huge difference to some people.
In addition to converting those 1000 houses, I could easily afford to buy a lot of advertising space to publicize what I was doing, and to challenge other billionaires to try to top it. I think maybe some billionaires have a sense of competition and don't like to be out-done by other billionaires, so maybe a few of them would take up my challenge, and transform the lives of many more low-income people.
(Also, it would result in cleaner air and fewer greenhouse gasses.)
I could point out in those advertisements that what I did, converting 1000 houses, cost much less than funding an America's Cup racing yacht for one year.
Some of the billionaires would probably cheat because, c'mon -- they're billionaires -- and do things like put huge solar arrays onto properties which they themselves own, as opposed to the homes of people in danger of losing their homes. And then they'd claim that they had outdone me because they'd installed more electrical capacity than I had. Which in one respect would be bullshit. But in another respect, a billionaire would have paid for a lot of solar installation, so from the climate's perspective it would still be a win.
I could also give huge contributions to other forms of sustainable power and environmentally-minded projects, and to education, and the arts, and education, and education.
Education is important, and lately, in the US, it's been getting shafted. One of the reasons for that is because the current President loves stupid people, because you have to be stupid to support the current President.
And I could have my own AM radio station, a news station with a heavy emphasis on news about the climate and things to do about it, and another heavy emphasis on politics. Have you listened to AM radio lately? Do you realize how easy it would be to out-shine most of my competition?
I'm just saying, this is not just all about me and my greed for $18 billion.
Showing posts with label $18 billion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label $18 billion. Show all posts
Friday, May 4, 2018
Wednesday, March 23, 2016
It Sure Would Be Nice If I Suddenly Received $18 Billion Somehow
I'm not sure exactly how to make this happen. I honestly don't know if I could do it all by myself. I think I would need help.
Maybe that sounds un-American to you. Maybe all the people who've said that there are some self-made millionaires but no self-made billionaires, and not even actually very many self-made millionaires, that we're mostly talking about rich kids here -- maybe they all sound un-American to you.
If a very beautiful, very nice and extremely wealthy woman fell madly in love with me, and I with her, and she insisted on marrying me without a pre-nup and that we share everything, and she had a net worth of $36 billion, then, bam, I think I'd be done, and it'd be all like, "Okay, now I HAVE $18 billion. Now what? What do I DO with it?!" What if I was actually too in love to even care about all those wheelbarrows and trucks full of cash -- wouldn't that be ironic?
If Larry King and Oprah and Rachel Maddow and Harold Bloom and Thomas Pynchon and Quentin Tarantino and Jennifer Lawrence and Neil deGrasse Tyson and Martin Scorsese and Adele and David Letterman and Salman Rushdie and Stephen Hawking all starting following me on Twitter and re-tweeting all my links to my blog posts and speaking and writing about how awesome my blog is, that would be awesome. That would very likely lead to some very lucrative book deals. But $18 billion worth of lucrative? I don't know. Don't get me wrong: if all of those people, plus Pamela Anderson and Conan O'Brien and Barack and Michelle Obama and Hillary and Bill Clinton and Alec Baldwin and Chris Matthews and every single living Nobel Literature laureate and Kanye West and Bob Dylan and Ringo Starr and T Bone Burnett and Sir Anthony Hopkins all started talking me up in a very big way all at once, that would be very nice. That would be a very great encouragement.
How big of a gold nugget would I have to find in order for it to be worth $18 billion? About 500 tons, if I'm figuring accurately. How big is the biggest gold nugget ever found so far? A little over 150 pounds, it seems, if you measure only the gold content.
Hmm. How about the biggest platinum nugget? Seems that platinum nuggets as large as 1/4 ounce are extremely rare. On the other hand, it's often found alloyed with other valuable metals, and that is nice.
On the other hand, I don't own a mine of any kind.
This isn't exactly easy!
On the subject of gold and platinum: as far as I know, the heaviest wristwatch made is the Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Offshore, 18k gold case and band, just about exactly one pound. Platinum is heavier than gold, but that 18k Audemars Piguet is the heaviest wristwatch I've been able to find. The heaviest watch of any kind I've ever heard of -- and believe me, I've done a bit of web-surfing on the subject -- is the Patek Philippe Calibre 89, released in 1989, an enormous pocket watch, 89 millimeters in diameter (it's been described as hockey-puck-sized) made in both gold and platinum, which weighs 1100 grams, around 2 1/2 pounds. But they only made 4 of them, and I'm not surely that any of those 4 is what you'd call for sale. Maybe for around $6 million. Or maybe not. (A newer pocket watch, the Vacheron Constantin Reference 57260, has surpassed the Calibre 89 as the world's most complicated watch, but it barely breaks the 2-pound mark. Pheh!)
In conclusion: no man is an island.
Maybe that sounds un-American to you. Maybe all the people who've said that there are some self-made millionaires but no self-made billionaires, and not even actually very many self-made millionaires, that we're mostly talking about rich kids here -- maybe they all sound un-American to you.
If a very beautiful, very nice and extremely wealthy woman fell madly in love with me, and I with her, and she insisted on marrying me without a pre-nup and that we share everything, and she had a net worth of $36 billion, then, bam, I think I'd be done, and it'd be all like, "Okay, now I HAVE $18 billion. Now what? What do I DO with it?!" What if I was actually too in love to even care about all those wheelbarrows and trucks full of cash -- wouldn't that be ironic?
If Larry King and Oprah and Rachel Maddow and Harold Bloom and Thomas Pynchon and Quentin Tarantino and Jennifer Lawrence and Neil deGrasse Tyson and Martin Scorsese and Adele and David Letterman and Salman Rushdie and Stephen Hawking all starting following me on Twitter and re-tweeting all my links to my blog posts and speaking and writing about how awesome my blog is, that would be awesome. That would very likely lead to some very lucrative book deals. But $18 billion worth of lucrative? I don't know. Don't get me wrong: if all of those people, plus Pamela Anderson and Conan O'Brien and Barack and Michelle Obama and Hillary and Bill Clinton and Alec Baldwin and Chris Matthews and every single living Nobel Literature laureate and Kanye West and Bob Dylan and Ringo Starr and T Bone Burnett and Sir Anthony Hopkins all started talking me up in a very big way all at once, that would be very nice. That would be a very great encouragement.
How big of a gold nugget would I have to find in order for it to be worth $18 billion? About 500 tons, if I'm figuring accurately. How big is the biggest gold nugget ever found so far? A little over 150 pounds, it seems, if you measure only the gold content.
Hmm. How about the biggest platinum nugget? Seems that platinum nuggets as large as 1/4 ounce are extremely rare. On the other hand, it's often found alloyed with other valuable metals, and that is nice.
On the other hand, I don't own a mine of any kind.
This isn't exactly easy!
On the subject of gold and platinum: as far as I know, the heaviest wristwatch made is the Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Offshore, 18k gold case and band, just about exactly one pound. Platinum is heavier than gold, but that 18k Audemars Piguet is the heaviest wristwatch I've been able to find. The heaviest watch of any kind I've ever heard of -- and believe me, I've done a bit of web-surfing on the subject -- is the Patek Philippe Calibre 89, released in 1989, an enormous pocket watch, 89 millimeters in diameter (it's been described as hockey-puck-sized) made in both gold and platinum, which weighs 1100 grams, around 2 1/2 pounds. But they only made 4 of them, and I'm not surely that any of those 4 is what you'd call for sale. Maybe for around $6 million. Or maybe not. (A newer pocket watch, the Vacheron Constantin Reference 57260, has surpassed the Calibre 89 as the world's most complicated watch, but it barely breaks the 2-pound mark. Pheh!)
In conclusion: no man is an island.
Saturday, December 26, 2015
"Knock knock!"
"Who's there?!" I called back to the voice outside my door.
"A big crate filled with $18 billion in $100 bills, all for you!"
This is great! I thought to myself as I walked to the door. Now that I have $18 billion, all of my financial worries are over. I can live quite comfortably on $18 billion, and have some money left over to help other people!
But when I opened the front door, I saw no big crate, and no money anywhere. Someone had played a cruel practical joke on me, making me think that suddenly I was worth $18 billion!
But then I said to myself, Wait a minute! $18 billion in $100 bills?! That would weigh almost 200 tons! And stacked neatly, it would be 15 feet long, 20 feet long and 20 feet high, give or take!
Pffft, yeah! I'd like to see a crate THAT big! I'd like to see the truck that could carry a crate that weighs 200 tons! Yeah, whoever it was, that joker really fooled me, making me think there was a crate with $18 billion in it, right outside my door! Good one, joker!
And, hey, next time, don't try: "It's a somewhat smaller crate filled with $18 billion in large-denomination US bearer bonds!" either, because I happen to know that there are only about $100 million in US bearer bonds still outstanding!
"A big crate filled with $18 billion in $100 bills, all for you!"
This is great! I thought to myself as I walked to the door. Now that I have $18 billion, all of my financial worries are over. I can live quite comfortably on $18 billion, and have some money left over to help other people!
But when I opened the front door, I saw no big crate, and no money anywhere. Someone had played a cruel practical joke on me, making me think that suddenly I was worth $18 billion!
But then I said to myself, Wait a minute! $18 billion in $100 bills?! That would weigh almost 200 tons! And stacked neatly, it would be 15 feet long, 20 feet long and 20 feet high, give or take!
Pffft, yeah! I'd like to see a crate THAT big! I'd like to see the truck that could carry a crate that weighs 200 tons! Yeah, whoever it was, that joker really fooled me, making me think there was a crate with $18 billion in it, right outside my door! Good one, joker!
And, hey, next time, don't try: "It's a somewhat smaller crate filled with $18 billion in large-denomination US bearer bonds!" either, because I happen to know that there are only about $100 million in US bearer bonds still outstanding!
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