[ExI] What would you do if you won the billion dollar plus MegaMillions Lottery, and are lotteries a bad thing?

Tue Oct 23 15:05:42 UTC 2018

From: extropy-chat <extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org> On Behalf Of Dave Sill
Subject: Re: [ExI] What would you do if you won the billion dollar plus MegaMillions Lottery, and are lotteries a bad thing?

On Tue, Oct 23, 2018 at 9:25 AM William Flynn Wallace <foozler83 at gmail.com <mailto:foozler83 at gmail.com> > wrote:

>>…I don't know how I would spend even one million dollars.  Two  people in a giant mansion with servants everywhere?  Limousines?  Nah.  So I would hire people to investigate charities and give most of it away… BillW

>…I'd ensure that my family was taken care of first--not to the level of opulence, but to the point of not having to worry about food/clothing/shelter/medical/etc. After that I'd use it advocating for changes I'd like to see…  Dave Sill

This exchange reminded me of a concept they explained to us in psychology.  BillW is likely already an expert in this: Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.  

In retrospect I think BillW meant billion dollars rather than a million.  A million dollars isn’t a lot of money.  I have worked on projects with a million dollar a year budget: you need to watch your pennies on that small an effort, know exactly what you need to do, get er dun, get off the charge number as soon as you can, don’t camp out on that number (as we space guys used to say.)

With a windfall billion, Dave is describing making sure all the comfort and safety stuff is taken care of, for himself and his family but doesn’t mention the status or self-actualization.  I would conclude he is already good up there at the top.  BillW talks about giving it away, which is aimed at self-actualization, which tells me he is already good in the comfort and safety part of the ladder.

Every society has people everywhere on the ladder, from those struggling with self-actualization down to those struggling with getting sufficient food and clothing, never mind shelter.  These latter are seen camping along the freeways everywhere right around here.  

As society gets more prosperous, the bulk of the wealth is created by those up near the top of that ladder (ah jeez, I think I just lit John Clark’s fuse with that comment (Johnny, we know already, me lad, we know.))  So the society which still has people at the bottom has all these people pumping more and more money into climbing near the top of that ladder.  Those lower rungs are a lot cheaper, but there is a lot less money down there.

spike

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