Obviously this is for both, men and women, you know, the song “if I was a rich man” and i saw the meme with…
sigh just answer the question
Buy a place in Montreal. Try to do random acts of kindness on randos where I can. You can’t generally change the world, but you can make personal impact.
Oh darling, if I had real money, I would use it to sow chaos and undermine the world’s financial markets.
But most of all, if I have to live in this bullsh!t cyberpunk reality, we might as well have shadowrunners/Edgerunners/mercs. So I’d recruit as many paramilitary mercenaries as I could find and set them on the task of sabotaging critical corporate infrastructure, kidnapping any oligarchs we could find vulnerabilities for, and doing brazen, overt terrorism kind of stuff.
The idea being if I can cause enough chaos perhaps the people of the world might finally have enough and force change for the ultra wealthy.
Hobbies. I like making lots of different things and giving them away. I would fix all sorts of things and give them to the needy. I’d love to fix up crappy houses and cars and everything broken and give it back. I hate throwing things away and love repairing them. I think the world would be a better place if we did that a lot more, so I want to be the change I want to see.
I would calculate the amount of money I would need to keep in investments and in my bank account in order to generate, in interest/returns,etc, the amount I would need to live comfortably for the rest of my life. I would then donate the rest to various charities.
Learn to fly a helicopter Build a simpit Fund a research expedition somewhere
I would buy up as many apartments as possible and lower the rent below market value, this driving other landlords to compete. Since they could not maintain a “sustainable” business model with their profit driven mindset, they would sell and I would buy. I would still seek a modest profit, which would be rolled into further acquisitions to further infect the market with sanity. It would be a McDonald’s or Walmart approach to housing, positive effect by volume and low margins, but actually provide an undeniably good product.
I would also work with local businesses to offer discounts to residents of the apartments and employees of other businesses that also wish to partner, with the end goal of creating incentive to shop local and increase foot traffic, and therefore profits for those small businesses.
I would find residents who would be interested in starting a business, startup costs covered by my organization, and outcompetes with businesses who do not wish to be our partner. I would endeavor to provide free childcare and animal daycare/boarding. Ideally a pseudo private and free school system could be established to further promote the ideals of the community. Ideally provide free therapy. Ideally offer scholarships to traditional higher education or trade schools. Ideally create a system to help homeless people get back on their feet.
Overall the end goal would be to keep as much money within the local economy and maintain businesses that embody the values which create a healthy local economy, lower the costs of living, and restore the community to a healthy social state.
Or maybe I’ll just start a sex cult in the woods.
I think the housing market plan doesn’t seem likely to work. The real issue is not that current landlords are exceptionally greedy (the rules of capitalism assume and encourage everyone to be as greedy as possible), it’s that there isn’t enough housing stock to give everyone who wants one a unit. In economics, housing is more or less a commodity like everything else and thus follows the usual rule of supply and demand, i.e. insufficient supply drives up price until demand tapers down to meet it. If you buy up the city’s housing supply and then price them below the equilibrium price, the result will just be that far more people want a place than you will ever have supply for, since you are not actually creating any new housing supply, just buying existing supply from other people.
I would think you’d have more success getting into the property development and construction business, buying up vacant or derelict lots in the city, building them into blocks of flats, and then letting them out on the cheap. You’d also have to hire lobbyists to prod the council to change zoning laws to allow for this development and obtain planning permission. It takes a lot of political maneuvering to make a housing project successful, not only because of legal restrictions, but also because you’ll need amenities for your new development. Parking is a big one in the US unless you build a dense mixed-use development which is bureaucratically difficult to get planning permission for, but there’s also considerations like whether the nearby bus line can handle the influx of passengers, whether the neighbourhood school can handle a hundred more pupils, whether there’s a grocery store nearby, whether the area “feels safe”, and so on.
Kind of the reason why State-run public housing schemes are so successful is because they are a government agency that has the power to brute-force the solutions to these problems. Zoning codes? Overruled. Public transit? Ordered. Schools? Built. Private developers don’t have the power to do these things and have to beg the council for them instead.
it’s that there isn’t enough housing stock to give everyone who wants one a unit
There are >27 empty homes in the US for every homeless person.
It’s not just the homeless in need of homes. You also have the ⅓ of people aged 18 to 34 still living with their parents, and the people who have to crowd into a 4-bedroom flat with five other people. Granted, this also includes people in school or those who just like living with their parents despite being able to afford their own place, but it still represents tens of millions of Americans.
Trust me, almost nobody purposefully keeps a house empty that they’d be able to let out. If a house is vacant, it’s probably because it’s subject to a legal dispute, derelict and uninhabitable, slated for demolition, for sale, or being used for short-term rentals (which should also be banned but that’s only tangentially related).
Uber Landlord
That was worth reading to the end.
Well played friend. Well played.
I’d fund online counter propaganda campaigns. Drown out the voices of the troll farms attacking our democracies.
You didn’t say how much, from lowest to highest income level:
Retire
Help every homeless person in my city, then my county, my province.
Order or build locally, tiny homes for all the homeless in my city. Expand outwards if I had money left.
Buy the local power corp and run it as a nonprofit.
Obligatory.
All day long, I’d biddy biddy bum
If I were a wealthy man
You wouldn’t have to work hard. You could build a great big house with rooms by the dozen, right in the middle of the town. …if you were a wealthy man.
I’d have one long staircase just going up and one even longer going down.
And one more leading nowhere just for show.
We have this really cool cafe in my city where you can buy buttons when you eat there, like 20 bucks worth, and people who can’t afford to buy food can come take six buttons and use them to get a hot meal. I would subsidize the fuck out of it and hopefully open other locations so we could help as many as possible.
If I had millions I’d buy some land and build a space for artists and musicians to come and hang out and make things.
If I had billions I’d disrupt the appliance industry because I can’t find any decent appliances.
Not go to work and sleep for about a year before I figure out what I really want to do.
If I were a rich man, Ya ha deedle deedle, bubba bubba deedle deedle dum. All day long I’d biddy biddy bum. If I were a wealthy man. I wouldn’t have to work hard. Ya ha deedle deedle, bubba bubba deedle deedle dum. If I were a biddy biddy rich, Yidle-diddle-didle-didle man.
I’d build a big tall house with rooms by the dozen, Right in the middle of the town. A fine tin roof with real wooden floors below. There would be one long staircase just going up, And one even longer coming down, And one more leading nowhere, just for show.
I’d fill my yard with chicks and turkeys and geese and ducks For the town to see and hear. And each loud “cheep” and “swaqwk” and “honk” and “quack” Would land like a trumpet on the ear, As if to say “Here lives a wealthy man.”
If I were a rich man, Ya ha deedle deedle, bubba bubba deedle deedle dum. All day long I’d biddy biddy bum. If I were a wealthy man. I wouldn’t have to work hard. Ya ha deedle deedle, bubba bubba deedle deedle dum. If I were a biddy biddy rich, Yidle-diddle-didle-didle man.
I see my wife, my Golde, looking like a rich man’s wife With a proper double-chin. Supervising meals to her heart’s delight. I see her putting on airs and strutting like a peacock. Oy, what a happy mood she’s in. Screaming at the servants, day and night.
The most important men in town would come to fawn on me! They would ask me to advise them, Like a Solomon the Wise. “If you please, Reb Tevye…” “Pardon me, Reb Tevye…” Posing problems that would cross a rabbi’s eyes! And it won’t make one bit of difference if i answer right or wrong. When you’re rich, they think you really know!
If I were rich, I’d have the time that I lack To sit in the synagogue and pray. And maybe have a seat by the Eastern wall. And I’d discuss the holy books with the learned men, several hours every day. That would be the sweetest thing of all.
If I were a rich man, Ya ha deedle deedle, bubba bubba deedle deedle dum. All day long I’d biddy biddy bum. If I were a wealthy man. I wouldn’t have to work hard. Ya ha deedle deedle, bubba bubba deedle deedle dum. Lord who made the lion and the lamb, You decreed I should be what I am. Would it spoil some vast eternal plan? If I were a wealthy man…
It depends, how rich? Millions? Billions?
I would fix the gym/auditorium at my old high school (the drama club has to share it with all of the sports teams and PE, and all of drama’s stuff gets broken or stolen) so that drama has their own space.
