What to Do With a Trillion Dollars
A short-short story
I never cared much about buying stuff but always liked the idea of making money. When I was just 12, I asked my dad if he needed someone to work in his office. He said no, but a friend of his who owned a fruit stand, hired me (yeah, in violation of child labor laws) to sell on Saturdays. Everyone thought it was cute. That was before computerized scales, so I had to figure how much, say 2.3 pounds of grapefruit at 49 cents a pound should cost. The boss was sure I needed a calculator but I could do that sort of stuff in my head. It’s easy, actually — You just, in this case, multiply 50 times 2.3, which is $1.15 and then subtract a few cents. I always subtracted a few extra cents to be safe and to satisfy customers that I wasn’t ripping them off, that in fact, they were getting a bit of a discount.
I hated school, so I didn’t go to college but on my own, I studied things I was interested in, mainly computer science and statistics. I learn by applying my learning to a practical situation, so when I heard about arbitraging, I wrote a program that could automatically buy dollars at the lowest price on a world exchange when I could make a profit by selling that dollar on a different exchange. Of course, the amount I’d make on one trade was trivial, especially because, for starters, I only had $1,000 to trade, but each time was a guaranteed win.
My goal was to make a trillion dollars in ten years. I did it in 8 1/2.
But I had no desire for a materialistic lifestyle — materialism is a shackle. Indeed, when I saw my account pass the trillion mark, I decided to continue living in my cottage in an iffy area, drive my old Prius, and keep just a bit for emergencies or whatever, and give away the full trillion.
But to what? The Gates Foundation is considered so good at giving away money that Warren Buffett gave it $4 billion, and when he dies, another $30 billion. But Gates has admitted that giving away money well is hard. And when I looked at the effects of the Gates Foundation’s mammoth largesse, I could be wrong but it doesn’t seem as though he’s getting sufficient bang for the zillion bucks.
What other options did I have?
I tried giving to individuals. I placed ads in major publications in which I offered $1,000-$10,000 to individuals that would use the money to ripple effect: to yield benefit beyond themselves. I got only a few requests — To give away my trillion that way, I’d have to live a thousand years.
Should I invest the trillion in companies that attract the best and brightest, like Alphabet, Amgen, or Amazon? I decided no. Even my trillion wouldn’t make it that more likely they’d develop products that would increase Gross Flourishing Product, my criterion for what matters most.
Then I came up with a contrarian idea that I thought was pretty smart: I’d give the trillion to the federal government to balance its budget. After all, its deficit is an existential risk and the federal government has so much power and its mission is to help the public. I had only one requirement: that, in future years, they’d keep the budget balanced. They could spend only as much as what they take in in taxes. The feds refused saying, “We need the option to go into deficit when we think we should.” My reaction was that government has gone into massive deficit not for shoulds but often, for pork.
I ended up deciding to give half the trillion to a well-run organization that’s attempting to improve on the already worthy Planned Parenthood. I believe the world is best when people have babies only when they’re wanted. And my half-trillion is to expand their services worldwide.
I’m giving the other half to three research teams studying the biological basis of altruism. Only a small percentage of people are very altruistic and a small percentage are downright evil. Most human characteristics are a blend of genes and environment, and if my half trillion could help more people be altruistic, my money would be well spent. Of course, the research would likely take a long time to bear fruit but that’s why it’s worth my funding it. Traditional government and foundation funding expects results sooner whereas I can afford to invest in what, in the long-term, will make the biggest improvements in Gross World Flourishing.
What am I going to do next? One of those research teams has asked me to try to develop an algorithm for determining which method of single-cell genomic analysis is the wisest for a given objective. I’m excited. And they’re going to pay me a middle-class salary so I don’t have to dip into the small emergency fund I left myself.
I’ll never be a super-happy guy — It’s not in my DNA. But I believe I’m living a life well-led. That’s good enough…probably.
I read this aloud on YouTube.
Marty Nemko tries to be altruistic. To that end, he is offering a free career coaching session to five people who believe they deserve one. You can reach Marty at mnemko@comcast.net
