If you had a spare $10 billion over the next four years, how would you spend it to achieve the most for humanity?
His essay is thought-provoking; I hadn't realized how little we stand to achieve by spending massively on reducing carbon output. (Lomborg says the evidence that humans are changing global climate is indisputable, but that money we spend on carbon reductions would be far more wisely spent on researching and developing non-carbon sources of energy).
The question he asks is harder to answer than you might think. Well, at least for me. I know how I would be inclined to spend that $10 billion with no parameters put on it, but he asks us to think about benefiting all humanity. That being the case, I would put a lot of it into projects to do little things for the Third World poor -- vaccines, clean water projects -- that could make a big difference. I would also pour a big chunk of that money into building refuge communities in various countries -- especially in the Third World, but also in our country -- where abused women and children could live permanently in safety.
I would also spend heavily on an array of Benedict Option pilot projects -- providing land and seed money for various experiments in traditional, religious, self-sustaining communal life, to see what works and what doesn't in a modern context. The idea would be to pioneer ways of preserving the best of our religious, cultural and agricultural traditions, and handing them down to the next generations.
Also: building a network of classical boarding schools that give scholarships to provide room, board and education to needy children ("needy" being defined not just as financial need).
And: investing in planting monasteries. See "Benedict Option communities" above.
Those are my ideas, off the top of my head. Yours?
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"dark side
Design a way, probably via bio-warfare that children cannot be carried to term without expensive intervention target number being $10000-25000 each."
That is atrocious. Have you not seen "Children of Men?"
Give it to Burt Rutan to colonise Mars with. Maybe we'll do better somewhere else ...
Great question.
I would promote "jobism" -- an altruistic free market 'profit' making organization set up to reward managers who hire more workers.
The 'bottom line' net profit would tend to be 0, there would be a push to increase top line revenue, and the non-wage costs would be minimized, while the wage costs would be split between managers (including CEO) and non-managers.
The manager's wage would be almost purely dependent on the number of total workers at the firm (including self).
The idea is to maximize "jobs". There's plenty of work to do in the world, what poor people need are jobs -- an organization that agrees to pay them to do some work.
Capitalism has, so far, provided more such jobs than any other system. Jobism might do a bit better, but only because of the capitalist foundation.
It's not the greed of the owners (a la Rand) which is the Fountainhead of successful capitalism, it is the peaceful, voluntary agreement between worker and employer, PLUS the single metric 'profit' that the manager/ decision makers are trying to maximize.
When revenue exceeds costs -- the manager can hire more workers, and WILL, because he gets paid more with more workers.
Jobism part 2: recruit managers/ entrepreneurs with business plans
that need at least 10 workers, with the managers willing to work at some salaray formula which includes a #of workers component.
Example: avg worker wage is 80% avg of country.
Manager makes avg worker wage * (150%+sqrt(#workers)/10 ) = (150%+30%)
when there are 9 workers, 150%+40% with 16 workers, 150%+100% when there are 100 workers.
Look for the formulas which create organizations with the most workers.
Such 'profit=0' orgs will be self-sustaining, once they get started.
The $10b will allow starting LOTS of them.
Much can include both basic capital and loan capital (to be repaid).
If I was given 10 billion dollars to invest in the betterment of human kind....You could spend it to help the mass of people affected everyday by a variety of conditions from lack of fresh water to daily abuse. You could also spend it developing new ways to harvest energy and help our degrading environment. There are millions of problems in the world which effect humans on a day to day basis and many that effect us globally, but it would be like putting a bandaide on an infection. In the same way Albert Nobel invented dynamite. I would spend it in developing methods to change how the average person understands, views, and chooses to act in the world. If we could influence the minds of the human race then could truly make lasting and beneficial changes to the world. Take the problem of recycling for a start. Even when some people have the opportunity to recycle they will not because they simply do not see passed their bottom line. If it is not immediatly affecting their life or their near future in their mind then it is not a concern. It doesn't stop there though That is a simple example of a complex problem though. You can feed people but that will not change that they will still only see their bottom line. The problem is in our minds and manifest itself through our actions. The environment is in the condition it is in for a variety of reasons but not knowing what we were doing is not one of them. We have know for a long time that the pollution we are creating is affecting the environment but that will not stop the majority of people from continuing this course of action. If you can change the way humans think then it will manifest itself to truly change our world in every way imaginable. Companies develop ways of doing this on small scales by instituting programs to increase motivation by changing how we see working for them. I am going to end this here because you could write a book on this subject and it is very complex in nature but simply put our actions good or bad are made from our mind so to change our actions you change our minds.
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