I would establish bleeding-edge start-ups in the fields of renewables, genomics, software development, mathematics, social behaviour, economics, emergent systems and similar topics.

The coming world will be shaped by the future Richard Feynmans & Bill Gates out there.

We need to push the grasping, scheming, low IQ politicians and civil servants to one side.

The bankers etc are a little harder to deal with. We need money for economies to work out ... but the financial people should not have the God given right to snaffle a percentage of each & every dollar that passes their desks.

I don't think many people understand the econophysics origins of income disparity, let alone the intersection this has with personal satisfaction.
Yakovenko is one of the leading researchers on this topic:
"Statistical mechanics approach to the probability distribution of money"
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1007.5074
Yakovenko quotes Pink Floyd “Money, it’s a gas.”

Income disparity is not like maintaining a heartbeat, where there is a somewhat narrow range of allowable rates. A population can sustain a wide range of incomes because those are all allowed states of behavior. Does it even matter that there are multi-billionaires? Does it matter that there are super-giant oil reservoirs? This is all how entropy plays out.

I know this is not the campfire question, but I consider this angle much more interesting to ponder.

Nitpick: Reins, not reigns.

One thought I have is relative to the estate tax system. If I were a billionaire, I would seek to change our estate tax law that seeks to turn over large parts of wealth to the state upon death. I would strike it down because the future need will not be for the government to capture our assets and break down the fiefdoms of the wealthy, it will be for us to develop a society that does not depend on growth and thus will depend on maintenance of a family’s wealth. One way that a future society could avoid the need for each new generation to seek growth would be for the new generation to be provided with the assets of the past generation. In this manner, the father could pass the family business to the kids and the kids in turn would care for the father.

In other words, return the society to the family based social system where each generation would only expect to have the assets that were owned by the family when they were born. Since this would in effect mean the destruction of the mobility between classes, a new form of achievement would have to be realized where a family would succeed because they did more with what they have rather than they acquired more.

Since politics is the art of the possible, it should be within the ability of todays wealthy to construct the framework for a future that does not depend on growth. No more would a family have 10 – 12 children simply to enrich the family and provide for the parent’s old age pension. In an era of no growth, families will repopulate themselves, and not having to earn enough to mitigate the government’s estate tax would be a good start towards eliminating the need for each generation to grow itself into enough wealth to take care of their needs.

No more would an entrepreneur seek to enrich him/her self with the proceeds of invention and determination. These admirable aspects of our current economy would need to change because of the severe need to access large amounts of scarce resources. Of course some invention should survive where it returns more resources than it uses up. A society based on non-growth should still seek better solar panels and improved recycling, and should reward these industries appropriately. Things such as moving towards a society based on electrification rather than diesel for shipment and agriculture would be rewarded. But this all starts with the principle that once wealth is accumulated, it should stay with the family that originally did the accumulation.

I'm not sure if Dick Smith is a billionaire but he is not short of a quid.I think he is one of the few of the wealthy who "gets it" to some extent.
In case you don't know Dick is Australian and he probably has a Wiki page so look him up.

As a billionaire would I invest in new real capital assets in stable democracies with a long track record of rule by law and respect for private property and especially those that already has an agenda for handling resource issues.

I would look for buisiness areas that are productive and has a strong political support or are underdeveloped. For Sweden are good candidates all kinds of electricity production, forest biomass refining and production of goods that needs lots of electricity and support from a stable and advanced society. An example of a business area that could be developed further is building and construction of houses and infrastructure where the competition is low.

And there are also opportunities when old businesses change and leaves old know-how, workforces and plants ready for new uses. I know of one such opportunity in a neighbouring town where a nearly completed idea for energy production could come to fruitation and yield a long term export business that will be productive during a long post peak oil era.

It is also easy to move to Sweden to invest or work here, our borders are open for entrepreneurs and ordinary workers.

If I were a billionaire, I would buy all of Berkshire County and all of adjacent Franklin County in Massachusetts, and retrofit the entire area as a network of small peak oil-prepared towns.

http://www.bostonpersonalinjurylawyerblog.com/Massachusetts%20counties.gif

What's that?

Aw ... the alarm clock.

Of course Richard Rainwater, worth about $2.5 billion in 2005 according to Fortune Magazine, felt compelled to warn anyone who would listen in this 2005 interview:

The Rainwater Prophecy:

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2005/12/26/8364646/

His instincts tell him that another enormous moneymaking opportunity is about to present itself, what he calls a "slow pitch down the middle." But, at 61, wealthier and happier than ever before, Rainwater finds himself reacting differently this time. He's focused more on staying rich than on getting richer. But there's something else too: a sort of billionaire-style civic duty he feels to get a conversation started. Why couldn't energy prices skyrocket, with grave repercussions, not just economic but political? As industry analysts debate whether the world's oil production is destined to decline, the prospect makes him itchy.

"This is a nonrecurring event," he says. "The 100-year flood in Houston real estate was one, the ability to buy oil and gas really cheap was another, and now there's the opportunity to do something based on a shortage of natural resources. Can you make money? Well, yeah. One way is to just stay long domestic oil. But there may be something more important than making money. This is the first scenario I've seen where I question the survivability of mankind. I don't want the world to wake up one day and say, 'How come some doofus billionaire in Texas made all this money by being aware of this, and why didn't someone tell us?'"

You're asking me? Well, I'm an old lady with not much of a future... and not one of the intellectual giants here ... hmm, I'd set up a sole proprietorship to build as much alternative infrastructure as possible in advance of petrochemical failure, -- energy conservation, passive solar, structural retrofit, white roofs, decentralized grids for solar thermal, solar parking lots, roads, and rights-of-way, wind, wave, tide, and geothermal, localized labor-intensive agriculture, electrified transport with an emphasis on rail-and-sail. All profits to be plowed back into R&D. Working around the constipation known as politics to the extent possible. Reserve about ten thousand for each of the grandkids, just to say I did, and not to over-capitalize their expectations in life. And then keep doing what I'm doing now. See under localized labor-intensive agriculture (I don't know anyone happier than I am as it is).

If I was a billionaire, I would want to communicate openly about what appears to be obvious. Perhaps one day soon enough the scientific community will overcome the power of a deafening silence that has kept certain evidence of human population dynamics hidden from us for nearly a decade.

Many top-rank experts have been kind enough to make Russell Hopfenberg's and David Pimentel's work on human population dynamics available on their websites, but this science does not receive the attention it deserves, I believe. The research is presented without comment and treated as if it is not worthy of consideration. Here we are nearing the end of the year 2010 and no discussions, either inside or outside science, adequately focus upon recent research of human population dynamics. This scientific evidence appears to have profound implications for the future of life on Earth because it makes visible the proverbial 'elephant in the living room' of the planetary home we inhabit.

Who is carefully examining and sensibly reporting findings on the taboo subject of human population dynamics now here? Where are the discussions of this topic to be found? In professional societies dedicated to the science of human population numbers? In first rate specialty journals regarding population biology, human ecology and demography? Can you or any other person on this email kindly point to examples where human population dynamics has been discussed? How on Earth do we address and overcome human-driven challenges, the nature and existence of which we refuse to acknowledge as well as willfully deny?

If I Were a Billionaire:

If I were a billionaire
I'd spend it the mornin'
I'd spend it in the evenin'
All over this land
I'd spend it on derivatives
I'd spend it on seeedeeohs
I'd spend it on lying to
My Brothers and my Sisters
Aaaaall over this ..............

....sorry, Nate....someone said campfire.

Good to have you back. Thanks!

Nate, eloquent, punctuated, insightful and thought provoking. How to respond? One observation is that you do not as yet have any Sasquatch cubs, I have 2, and one came home from university out of the blue this weekend, which was nice, bearing two movies. The first was Michael Moore's "Capitalism: a love story" - i don't really like his style, but one point he made was changes that Reagan made to US system, mimicked by Thatcher over here - and I wonder how these link to the change in gradient in your first chart where the relationship between work and debt diverge? As already said i don't really like Michael Moore - so don't waste your money on this.

The second movie was an art house classic I'd never heard of called "The Tree with wooden Clogs". Apparently al Pacino's favorite movie. This is a 3+ hours masterpiece that die hard Oil Drum / Camp Fire readers should love (Italian with english sub-titles). There are so many thought provoking angles to this movie I don't know where to begin.

And so to get back on topic before I get banned:-)

I'll skip over question 1 since if I were a billionaire I'd feel tempted to go live on an island;-) (but not Britain:-( Question 2 is more interesting.

Philanthropy is one of the traditional outlets of the super wealthy, so what causes should the super wealthy support? I'm relatively sure that supporting strategies to sustain or increase global population are a bad idea long term - though they may win short term popular support. I'm rather pre-occupied right now with a concept I've developed called wrong thinking (maybe someone else has already developed this concept) where global population and governments seem to be carried along on a course of action based upon a groundswell of evidence for which actual evidence is lacking in the scientific literature if it is read critically. Increasingly, in the UK at least, government funded research programs are top down - somewhat contravening academic freedoms. So if I were a billionaire I'd be funding research in universities, still subject to peer review, that by passed the potential biases that now seem to exist in university research funding.

But of course any billionaire who waved $50 million at a university would likely immediately corrupt it.

Solution 2 is to genetically engineer greed out of the human race.

If I were a billionaire, I'd buy the Presidency, and a majority of seats in the Senate and House, nationalize the banks, and take the ship of state in a whole new direction. Is a billion enough?

I would use it to form an underground insurgency to chip away at the predatory capitalism system that is enslaving billions, starving billions more and destroying the biosphere.

I think I will call it "The Base".

Oh! Wait a minute...didn't someone already do that?

Just kidding. I'm sure we can prosper our way to a better world.

Cheers!

Nate, I forgot the second strand of my thinking which was history. When I was at skool, i thought history was a waste of time - boring. But in fact it has much to teach us. From the Norman conquests of England, the French revolution, the Highland Clearances of Scotland, the settling and conquest of the new world, the Second world war, the first Iraq war and the list goes on - what were the underlying causes? How were billions made and lost? And in Europe, which conspicuous billionaires managed to hold on to their spoils and how?

If I were a billionaire?

I'd be implementing the plan I've outlined. See: Question Everything. Of course if any billionaires are reading this they are invited to contribute!

1) what would you do if you were a billionaire?

Is this a paper billionare or actual owner of means of production in place that translate to a billion of otherwise ill-liquid 'things'?

Ritter chocolate group or the carpet maker in the film "The Corporation" are examples of what I'd hope to do.

The other variant of hope would be grow crops that at one time lacked Monsanto DNA in them then, when they had the precious IP of Monsanto I'll ask them to remove it and return the seeds so I can plant 'em. (Bust the idea that one can patent life is what I'd be shooting for.) I'm sure there are others chops who could be busted...just for a laugh. What they gonna do? Outspend me? As the Pledge says the end - Liberty and Justice for all who can afford it.

2) what would you recommend current billionaires do?

Go close to ground and hope that if this thing gets as bad as I fear that when the mobs come looking, you are either not there or considered 'one of the boys' and the mob won't wanna kill ya.

Make sure your family (extended) has everything paid off and is energy self sufficent and could be food self sufficent on the land holdings they have. Pay for the education of the kids of said family - Medicine, Law, Engineering et la...set a few up as Congress-kritters if you can. Make sure holdings in other nations are set up in case one place sucks bad.

Lets build a sand pile.

We can put more and more sand on the pile until it reaches its angle of repose.

Then if we add just a little more sand we have s sudden slide.

The finding of oil is has allowed us to build the biggest pile of top predators this planet ever seen.

If I were a billionaire I would be a top top predator. This would consume my attention.

Thank you, Mr. Hagens, for a smart and timely post. I certainly agree with your premise 1) – I think some signs are showing already. For example, the local agriculture group that I meet with, last week broke into a discussion about the large number of farmland transactions that have occurred in Minnesota this year. They are concerned that out-of-state investors will gain a too-large share of land ownership. Owning the land you live on might be an example of “real capital”.

However, I do not agree with 2). I would argue that social status is limited by and to the social group with whom you interact. Perhaps applicable to today’s problems, my parents’ generation (farmers) had a saying from the depression era about how to tell who was failing financially, “First the money, then the clothes.” They were sharp observers of their local world, but knew much less about other social norms.

In a much larger sense, when humans congregate and compete for locally limited resources, on a country scale, a financial disaster from whatever cause normally results in a reset of the total wealth of the country that suffers the disaster, relative to some external marker, but relative distribution within the citizenry varies little as a result. All members go back to work and begin again to build wealth, but those less financially prior to the collapse do not gain advantage as a result.

Summarily, wealth does not convey the ability to accumulate wealth; wealth is the result of the ability to accumulate wealth, whether relative or absolute.

It is my belief that the kind and gentle nature of the society in which we live is enabled only by the conditions that allow economic growth. These conditions include the obvious, such as increasing EROI and increasing efficiencies of energy production or conversion, transportation, communication, etc., and of course there are numerous other complicating factors. If those conditions change such that growth can occur no more, or growth becomes decline, our kind and gentle society will likely become less so. It is not a stretch to compare the billionaires of today to the robber barons of the past. If I was a billionaire today, I would be using all tactics to ensure that the relative size of my slice of the pie did not shrink. It just doesn’t seem likely that if Wall Street collapsed, and the local billionaires suffered as a result, that I would gain or they would lose, relative social standing in my community.

If I were a billionaire right now, I'd be liquidating everything and pouring it into arable farmland, or those swathes of useless housing estates. Water access essential. I wouldn't give a jot for the houses and end up pushing them down or stockpiling the salvaged building material for more modest residences for my new influx of manual laborers. If society is going to start back sliding away from energy intensive activities, you can bet that beasts of burden (traditionally, that's you and me) will never have the capital to buy the place we work no matter what a dollar is worth.

I can see two old forms of power / status re-emerging in most communities: wealthy landowners and trade guilds. Human physical power and skill are very different things to manage in a society where economic growth, credit and cheap energy are not available.

The other thing I'd invest in would be rail for the short term and bullocks in the long term. Nothing beats a bullock team for shifting massive loads over huge distances, but can run on grass. You need land to breed bullocks. Old road trains can be adapted to bullock power while the trees (slowly) grow back.

If I were not a billionaire and currently lived in a city, I would seriously think about uprooting NOW and moving to a much smaller community. It takes time to build social roots in a small community and you need to be ahead of the curve by 10 years or so to make them into a workable social network of like minded folk.

If I were a billionaire, I would acquire controlling interest in an oil field, an energy company or some other non-renewabe resource company. Then for every, yes every unit of energy recovered and sold I would use the revenues to create ventures, that would create equal unit of energy from renewable resources, or create real transition living systems like the ruralization visualized by Folke Gunther, decentralized food production production systems for the future and so on.

What better mission for a billionaire and his corporate partners, his, er....... her family, tribe, community? a mission with a view towards the future.

RCH

CHARGE TO THE COMMITTEE
Ladies and gentlemen, I am sure you know that you few have been chosen for your demonstrated wisdom and foresight over long and difficult lives. And you have been chosen for your skills and insights as well, not only in science and all of its branches, , but in all of the arts and activities that constitute our human condition.

Your task is immense, but you will have whatever time and support you feel needed to complete it. The target date is a year, but you collectively will decide what constitutes a completion, and a proper publication, containing your conclusions, as well as assenting and dissenting remarks from any of you who wish to do so.

Your funding will be, within very large limits, what you feel is necessary to complete your task, by whatever means you decide, including studies and experiments by yourselves or those you appoint.

Your report will contain at least the following, as well as anything else you decide should be included:
present state of humanity and the world
desired state of humanity and the world in near future
means to move from present to future
costs and benefits of doing so
models showing probable results of differing procedures.
probabilities of the various outcomes
persuasions effective to gain goals stated.

You have been chosen because each of you has demonstrated beyond doubt your ability to overcome the apparently impossibly high barriers presented by politics, religion, preconception, lack of foresight and all other human-constructed obstacles, and to achieve your goals despite them all. Your task is here the same, to construct an achievable vision and path to the best near future, overcoming all in your way.

This is your task. We wish you wisdom in your work. What support we can give, you shall have.

1) what would you do if you were a billionaire?

At the time of this article, a billion is still a lot of money. About $21 a minute for a lifetime, if you live to be 90, for example. There are probably some islands one could buy for that, but I'd be inclined to invest in some of the philanthropies mentioned above -- supporting real science in higher education, perhaps. For about 15% or 20% of it.

Getting integrated into a locally oriented community seems like a good idea too, Rainwater-style.

But knowing what I know now, I'd also be inclined to put as much as possible into launching genuinely EROEI-positive alternative energy industries, focusing on solar photovoltaics. Set up silicon reduction plants near existing wind farms, and crank out panels as fast as can reasonably be managed -- kind of like the ideas of Matt Simmons and Stranded Wind, but for silicon. There could be some other niche forms of concentrated energy from an enterprise like that as well, for example sodium borohydride as a portable source of hydrogen, although that one is a little more speculative -- sodium borohydride is quite expensive to make, energywise.

2) what would you recommend current billionaires do?
Study and emulate the Rainwater plan. Think small, very small. And sustainable.

Nate, do a lot of billionaires read The Oil Drum or Campfire? If not, since you've met about a dozen of them, I hope you know of some more reliable ways to get these ideas to them ...

If I was a billionaire, I would be a greedy, lying, ruthless bastard who stepped on millions (billions?) of others to accumulate my wealth.

First I would corrupt government with my money. I would pay government to pass laws that suppress my competition and give my business favor. Having secured my monopoly I would deregulate the media allowing me to control the information delivered to entire regions. I would dumb down the educational system to produce graduates who are more susceptible to my programming. In addition to turning them into docile consumer bots, I would program them as zombies supporting my corporate and political values. I would force my governmental puppets to support globalization allowing me to set up factories in China using slave labor and bypassing environmental regulation. I would expand the market for my products to the world and drive down the wages in the Western countries to maximize my profits. I would create a boogieman to keep the patriots and military preoccupied and excuse the dismantling of civil liberties allowing me to accumulate even more power.

If I encounter a few snags along the way, such as oil price shocks, shortages and financial meltdowns, I would compel my political puppets to tap into tax revenue to save my ass with corporate welfare. I would make my political puppets take the fall as I collect my big fat bonus. I would keep my programed peasants distracted fuming over trivial ideology and believing in fairy tales while I dip my hand into their pockets. I would demonize intellectuals because they are a threat to my devices.

When the time is ripe, I would send my brainwashed peasants, puppets and patriots to cleanse the cities and countryside of those who resist being dumbed down and who defy my designs by developing sustainable communities. My private army will protect me. In the wreckage of a once prosperous country the disheveled, desperate, depopulated peasants will emerge to work for me in my new, shiny, deregulated factories for pennies as virtual slaves.

I would be a greedy, lying, ruthless billionaire who rules the world from behind a curtain on the falling edge of peak resources and population.

As for recommendations for current billionaires, I suggest they split their companies into small localized business, give them away to competent employees, go postal on their family members, confess their crimes and report to the nearest federal penitentiary.

Maybe .... fund grants for equipment and training of groups such as search&rescue, sheriff's auxiliaries, volunteer fire departments, neighborhood watches and maybe certain militias. Encourage schools to shooting teams, biathlon training. A diagonal economy of fractal scale needs robust localized security. A dimension left out of many localization discussions.

Hey hey Nate,

Good questions.

2) I would advise my billionaire friend that investments in infrastructure are nice, but that they eventually wear out, break down, and need to be maintained, repaired, or replaced. The capacity to maintain, repair and replace things is where the important difference can be made.

Then I would argue that institutions and social norms are important drivers of a society's overall capacity to accomplish goals. I would point out the legacy of colonialism; observing that countries with favorable climates were settled by Europeans who brought their institutions and norms with them and those countries have above average levels of democracy, equality, freedom, and prosperity but countries with climates hostile to Europeans were not settled. Instead they were managed as extractive plantations setting up unequal, hierarchical, corrupt, and repressive norms and institutions that persist to the present day. Map of per capital GDP

Then I would suggest that my wealthy friend spend some time thinking about what individual and social characteristics he/she thinks are important or beneficial. Then spend more time thinking about the types of institutions and organizations that would engender those characteristics. I would probably suggest something along the lines the boy scouts, but modeled after John Micheal Greer's green wizards, the green scouts. Or an academy that groomed people for political office, but that only recruited new members from the peace corps. Or a peer review/social networking media for journalism that only rewards for integrity.

I assume that my billionaire friend only became wealthy through some talent or insight and that he/she is more than capable of thinking up with a good way to accomplish this task.

1) If it were me... I would start a few dozen worker owned businesses and cooperatives in the same region. The businesses would be vertically integrated in a few diverse sectors that I think will be important. Some would be ordinary enterprises like grocery stores or utilities and others specializing in areas likely only to be useful or viable post peak. Then I would spend down my fortune paying these cooperatives to do what they do. If, for example, I think that Zeppelins are going to become economical after fuel becomes scarce. Then I would start a cooperative to build Zeppelins. I would buy the Zeppelins and deploy them in a cooperative running scenic tours or first class fare along commuter routes like Sydney to Melbourne.

Here is what I would hope to get for my billions. A large group of people that know how to work together to get a job done with skills and equipment at their disposal. A long term social norm in the region of collective approaches to solving problems. The vertical integration of cooperatives would hopefully lead to putting long term relationships before short term profits. The cooperative structure would hopefully lead to placing a premium on the equitable distribution of income, democracy, and transparency.

I would find two or three countries that are unlikely to be ravaged by any future wars, resource or otherwise, and focus my efforts in one region of the country. Iceland, Ireland, Hawaii, the Falklands, Tasmania, Madagascar, and New Zealand are good examples of places that are out of the way and unlikely to be invaded or do and invading. The model is roughly akin to monks saving knowledge in monasteries after the fall of Rome, but here social capital and positive norms and institutions are preserved through the energy descent.

Almost 30 years ago while on a roof top looking out over the city, I gazed at all the wasted space. No solar panels, no worries about where the world was going. So I wrote another story about another rich guy who did something about it. My problem was that I had been imagining what a rich person would do in the first person as an escape type of fiction from an early age. The stories I have written since then have guys who are trillionaires, not just billionaires.

Everytime someone hears about someone else getting millions, you start to think what you would do with the wealth if that was you. Maybe it is a game only poor people play, or maybe everyone plays it. But I have been thinking about the subject for so long, everytime I see a news headline, I rewrite it, as if I had the money to help the people in it, be it floods, to homes getting blown away, or this current financial mess we are in.

If I really today had a billion dollars, what would I have been doing or what would I now do? Guessing you just handed me the money, transfered it from your Swiss Bank account into my state side one, You'd have to have given me enough to still ahve a billion after taxes took their share.

I'd call my brother up and tell him, He has a job again. I'd form the company Future Tech, and the company BioWebScape Designs. Future Tech would push for space based and earth based designs to get us back into space, not just earth orbit but to the moon and research in other than 0 g, or 1 g gravity living. As we do not know what it would be like on the human body to live long term on the moon, nor if it is even possible to live long term on mars. We kinda know how to do some things, but not even enough to get ourselves off this rock for long periods of time. There needs to be work done in that side of spcae research before we even get ready to go to Mars.

BioWebScape Designs is my newest project, that combines food and housing issues into one lump. We live on a planet where 100's of thousands of plants can be eaten, yet our diets are usually limited to maybe a few dozen plants. Most places on earth could grow hundreds if not thousands of food plants incorporated into a food forest type of ecosystem. We never had to strip the land bare and plant row crops, we just did that because we were short sighted.

Information about our world is all around us, lots of it is online (half of the Web part of the name, the other half of it is the Web of life) We could use what we know and share it with others better than we do now.

There was an old saying about land, " they aren't making anymore of it, so it's a great investment." But that is not true, just looks that way. Land is being formed and destroyed all the time, volcanoes at sea form new land; rivers pile silt up into sandbars; ocean waves move sand and coastlines; rivers and rain erode land. Just to name a few that are visible on a daily basis. But land that humans can live on, is one thing that has been the american dream for a while.

A chunk of land, to live on and pass on to another generation. We could have done so much better these past few decades. Better building practices, more passive solar houses, better planned expansion of cities. Only a handful of designers have changed how we live and work for the better. Not nearly enough given that we now are going on 7 billion people on earth and most of them worry about the roofs over their heads, if they even have them. Almost everyone wonders about their next meal. Just look at the 43 million Americans that do, living off of food stamps, is not something they would have expected 20 years ago, at least not all of them.

We need Air to breath, water to drink, food to eat, and a place to sleep safely. Everything else is just gravey.

If I was a billionaire, I'd be making some of that a better reality, for more than just a few people that I could do now.

I have a lot more real wealth than cash money in the bank. I have skills, loads of tools, and tons of ideas on how things could be better. Somewhere along the way people forgot that keeping bees was about making use of honey and watching bees do wonderful jobs. We thought it was about making money and getting a brand new car, or living in style. Forgetting that you could live in style on a nice piece of land, living closer to where your food came from.

I see places like China, moving off the land, into huge cities, forgetting how to farm, forgetting where their water comes from, forgetting everything but social wealth and stasis. We have done it here in the USA as well.

Maybe we have gotten too big for our own good, too many people, not enough understanding of the world around us, a disconnect that is going to doom us to a crash, and money won't save us, only learning how to live without it will.

I see a future where money is a tool, you change it for services or things, but you don't exspect to make a profit on the moving of it through your system. No interest made on money transfers. A steady state of money supply, where it is goods and services that are the true wealth. People sharing more of their time and energy, of their knowledge and how to have fun. We have it in us to live in harmony. We can at least imagine it, so if we can imagine it, we can live it. We just have to work harder at balancing our desires with those of others around us.

Charles,
BioWebScape Designs for a better fed and housed world.

Interesting post. If I was a billionaire then the world is to messed up. By this I mean I'm not so sure that the world should have problems with solutions that result in someone being worth a billion dollars. And most say 100 million. That I could see. More than that and its a signal that the world is fundamentally flawed.

In a world with a few 100 millionaires their purchasing power from some things would be equal to todays billionaires not all but some. In such a world they would not flaunt their money but also they would obviously have the nicest houses mansions to rival many of those today.
In general the wealthiest or ones with the most stuff if you will would have it from many generations of family money. Although no one person would be super wealthy the family in aggregate would accumulate durable goods not unlike todays billionaires.

Thats not to say some projects would not be done in such a world where billionaires play to day but it would take several thousand of these 100 millionaires to give a portion of their capitol to the project. And obviously it would have to be a well thought out investment to proceed. A world where raising capitol was much much harder and it might take decades to get something done that we do in a year today.

What would I do in my alternate world if I was a 100 millionaire ?
Probably not to much really most of my money would be allocated towards staid standard industries providing a steady return. Some of course would be allocated to science and the arts but as a patron even most of this would be fairy fixed stuff. I'm sure I'd be able to skew the allocations just a bit to match up with my desires but I suspect not to much.
The "family" and history would probably make it difficult to do much with most of it.

This would leave me with a lot less that I really control say about 10 million dollars. I'd not be hugely different from some other poorer rich people. The newly rich would have more freedom but also unlike me could easily lose most of their wealth. I'd be hard pressed to lose more than 10% of mine. The society and indeed laws probably would simply not allow it.

But I think I'd be like all the other people with a bit of money I'd take my 10 million and try and invest it in what I believed in. Not to make more money because in such a world I'd be at the upper end of allowed personal wealth already. So more money would not be a factor. I could of course lose it but also thats not huge perhaps I'd be forced to wait a few years to regain the money from my fixed investments. Being forced on the sidelines from a bad bet would probably be my biggest social fear. But on the same hand doing nothing or simply partying would also not be desirable at least for me.

So depending on how big my dreams where I'd be out raising money or figuring out how to bootstrap and operation with little money.

I'd imagine that in such a world what we consider research they would often consider production. Instead of billion dollar silicon fabs that are impossible to raise money for.
Much smaller "R&D" fabs that are easier to fund would actually be numerous and in production. Each on perhaps adding its own twist or perhaps building some sort of standard product. Perhaps such a world would not enjoy the economies of scale we have but I'd argue flexibility and rapid innovation would beat our system. Instead of Intel and a few other chip makers you would have thousands scattered all over the world. Each one keen to try any innovation.

In my world what we think requires a billion dollars would be the norm and done with a lot less money. Obviously profit margins would be a lot lower labor cost substantially higher but few would be looking for huge profits. But it would also be impossible to have huge losses. One has to imagine that innovative people would be rewarded probably not to the point of becoming worth 100 million in a single lifetime but certainly tens of millions and as I said such individuals would have far less allocated to the infrastructure economy.

Eventually if family fortunes continued to look good they too would join ranks with the other top families have effectively carved out a new industry or innovation that allowed them to expand in a very static world.

So finally in such a world it seems that your really simply dealing with even the top having access to only about 10 million or so of play money. Perhaps the wealthier can make more risky investments but still its not a huge number. Indeed if you give it some thought its about the biggest number that a single individual could invest wisely. Any more and your deeply dependent on others to invest for you for better or worse.

And that gets down to the real heart of the matter because this is what I think is important not a billion dollars but how much money can be invested with the most thought and consideration possible. 10 million seems to be this number to me. Indirect investment based on the advice of others would probably be only 1 million even for the wealthiest.
Even then it would be watched closely.

Thus a billionaire turns out to be useless indeed worse than useless as their poor decisions can wealth simply distort the market. My world has a much more level playing field. But also I think its even more dynamic as I pointed out what we call research today would be considered a profitable product.

If I Were a Billionaire...

I would live like Tiger Woods!!!
..and give up my job in the oil patch.

This Wile E Coyote moment - the collective realization that there are more digits owned and promised than can or will ever be paid back will likely result in 80%, 90%, or even 100% of financial assets of all kinds to go poof. In my estimation this is a strong possibility in the coming decade and even potentially within five years.

Keynes had a more technical description to this sort of event: a rapid reduction of money velocity; it's fancier but it means the same. It where these Coyote moments that produced the XIX century 10 years cycles and what was 1929.

More than anyone else Keynes understood what was at the root of this, though most folk today don't perceive it that way. With constrained money supply these Coyote events are inevitable in an industrial society where physical growth far out paces monetary mass growth. Keynes dedicated the last years of his of life to enact abstract currencies, whose dynamic supply could be used to frame velocity. The Bancor was his ultimate attempt to avoid Gold becoming again the de facto world currency.

What is wrong with your thesis in my view is the claim that impeding debt cannot be repaid. Oh yes it can, but at the expense of a big jump in monetary velocity, in which case all that digital wealth goes overboard anyway. The end result would be the same, but through a rather different process. It is in my view far more painful a Coyote moment where digital wealth moves only towards more liquidity than one when it may move towards less liquidity.

If I where a billionaire I'd buy a small city and would start a Re-ruralization or Transition process. Not a brain dead green eco-village, but a small society living from science-based, fossil-fuel-free agriculture, that would strive with or without economic growth at the macro scale.

In a low velocity scenario it'll be very hard to convince a billionaire to something of the like...

Part #1: Since I considered I was somehow responsible for making "my" $1B, It then becomes my job to decide how the bulk is to be used and oversee its distribution.

Who else's responsibility is it? No separate committee or Board Of HiredManagers or holier-than-thou stuffed-shirts or sycophants or banksters made "my" fortune, so it is only fitting that the responsibility to disburse the funds is also mine. Otherwise, I couldn't believe that "my" fortune was really mine, could I?

At about 40+ years old, I'd set aside a few $Million to richly suppport my remaining life. Then I work full-time deciding how to responsibly spend the bulk. And I spend it and take responsibility for the results.

I like free and able spirits, so for my choice of projects, I would create ways to truly enhance peoples comprehension and evaluation abilities so that they free themselves from authoritarian pretenders and faux-masters who only want to control them.

Establish free courses and teach the correct and complete use of dictionaries. Teach the use of personal demonstration and practical test to confidently evaluate any datum...as opposed to believing "experts" or father-figures or "authorities" or Herr Doctor Professors.

Sepatately, I'd select and subsidize students to become medical practitioners to staff free-clinics for general health needs. Get other sponsors involved. Break the monopoly of for-profit healthcare "business" by guaranteeing the practitioners attractive incomes. There are very many who want to practice, but cannot afford the training.

Part #2: See Part #1 and decide for yourself what to do with "your" excess money.

Do not be lazy or irresponsible by giving it to someone else to decide. Anyone else is just a hired manager, or sycophant, whose real job is maximize his personal "take"...just like you did. How else can you make $1B?

If you cop-out and give it to a "charity" group, you and "your" money are both frauds.

[Hat-tip to Andrew Carnegie for his thoughts on this very topic.]

This week I have a job interview to join a small solar PV retail/installer company. The UK has just introduced a very large feed in tariff for grid connect PV, and business is booming.

Of course, given the financial conditions, it is only a matter of time before the plug gets pulled on this subsidy.

I would be taking a substantial pay cut, losing my cheap pension deal, life insurance, and leaving a financially secure employer.

If I get two years before the financial plug is pulled, I hope I will will have a foot-hold in a second career that will see my family through until my children are grown. I will also have a discount price PV system installed!

It is a no-brainer.

A few months ago I got a phone call from my brother, and the next day a letter from a lawyer. Aparently I had - just like in the movies - an unknown uncle, who died without a family. And with loads of cash. Since my father is dead I have an 1/8 share of the money. Wich means that 50 000+ Eurous is heading my way.

I grew up poor. I have a divorced mother with 3 children, and during my childhood she had a low skilled part time work. Also since this was the eighties there was a gender salary discrimination thing going on at the company. We had what we needed, but nothing more. The most luxry item in the home was the TV.

So when the kid who used to be poor meets (in relative terms) Big Money, what does he do? Some people would party away the money, but I am programmed to use any resource wisely. So that did not happen. What did happen though, chocked me. I became a greedy person. Sudenly I just cred about myself, and my own economical wealth. 50 K Euros may not seem alot to you, but in the curency we use in Sweden it is half a million. I am half way to beeing a millionare. Money wealth is just a number after all. And as stated in the article above; once you are above a base line of necesary supply, it is the relative wealth that matters.

It ended up with that I seriously considered giving away 9/10 of the money so that I could remain myself. I later decided against it, I will instead use the money to buy a house.

Summary; money does make you greedy, even if you do not believe you have it inside you.

As for what I would advise a billionaire, a few questions revolving around "What do you want ?"

- What is your mix of altruism, enlightened self interest and selfishness ?

- What time horizon before you see tangible results ?

- What scale do you want to see results in ? Small and intense or larger and more diffuse ?

- How enduring ? A generation past your own lifetime, multi-centuries or multi-millennium ?

- Related to above, how do you feel about social investments/positive changes vs. tangible physical investments/positive changes ?

- What are your values of humans compared to the rest of reality ?

- How diversified do you want to be ? All in one big deal, or multiple smaller efforts on a variety of fronts ?

- How engaged, on a personal level, do you want to be ? A new life's work or just "write a check" ?

- Do you want to attract others to make comparable investments, thus multiplying the effect but at a personal cost to you ? (i.e publicity & promotion)

- What probability of success are you willing to invest in for whatever goals you have ? (I would assume that you would want a very high probability of enough food to eat, comfortable housing and decent medical care to a very old age, but that can be managed with a fraction of the total $).

- Just how many billions do you have ? The options for $50 billion are greater than $1 billion.

My initial thoughts,

Alan

I would buy up all the empty lots around here, including the ones that have auto sales companies occupying them, and put farms on them. I've had my eye on 14 acres along the river, 3 miles from downtown. Currently being used to park taxis. I pray it doesn't go condo.

Edit : there's a difference, though, in having a billion dollars in hard cash, and having a net worth on paper of a billion dollars, especially if you are in illiquid (or toxic) assets ;)

I'm assuming a billion dollars in hard currency.

In Zimbabwe trillionaires are dime a dozen.
My fear is that I may become a billionaire thanks to all the money printing done by Bernanke. I hope it doesn't come to that.

Some specific projects I am already involved in but a couple billion $ would help. IMHO, all "high leverage" projects.

- Reforest Iceland. Over a year of global carbon emissions can be absorbed by replanting Iceland a 1,000 years after deforestation. Some specific projects in mind (Heklaskogur, etc.). Long term, a new sustainable resource as well. Swiss stone pines add a new edible crop 40 to 50 years after planting.

- Freight into New York City and Long Island. 97% of the food for 15 million people is trucked in and there is no adequate rail alternative. IMHO, a strategic weakness in an area otherwise reasonable well prepared for evolving post-Peak Oil. (Superb potable water, already low oil & energy use/capita that can go much lower, good water transportation).

Best Phase 1 solution is expand one of the two proposed #7 subway tunnels to New Jersey to allow night and weekend use by freight rail, heading either to Hunts Valley or via LIRR to Long Island. ATM, the marginal cost for a larger diameter on one of the two tunnels and adits at either end to freight lines (West Side Manhattan freight & LIRR at Penn Station for example) are <$1 billion. An offer of private $ (say $70 million) would alter the evaluation landscape.

- Prepare "Urban Rail Saturated" plans for a variety of urban areas. Have viable practical plans available (and publicized) for when panic hits.

And the Big One.

- Evaluate a variety of US national policy options for their medium and long term effects on GDP, Greenhouse Gases, Oil Consumption and Employment/Income Patterns with a "major NGO". Find what effects the different policy options have, alone and in combination. Rationally evaluate "What are our best choices" ?

The use of the "Four E's" (Economy, Energy, Environment and Employment) will allow the creation of coalitions with differing priorities and POVs around common policy options.

Repeat every few years and apply to other nations with more $.

Best Hopes,

Alan

Quite a few hundred million $ left :-)

My adolescent answer to what I would do with a billion dollars:

1) 50% would go to buying up endangered habitat in various biodiversity hot spots around the planet

2) 25% would go to a fund for education about the danger of over population

3) 25% would go into research and development of an anthrax type pathogen with no known vaccine. The existence of this pathogen would be announced to all world governments via the united nations and a warning would be given that the pathogen would be released in 50 years to all major cities if humanity failed to succeed in implementing policies that demonstrate a sharp reduction in population and consumption. This pathogen would be held in a trust and administered by a panel (some oil drum posters may receive an invitation to join shortly).

This way the responsibility falls not on a crazed individual to release this pathogen (of playing god) but on the ability of our modern civilization to collectively mitigate overshoot. The release of the pathogen depends on the response of our collective species.

I wanna be a billionaire, SO freakin' bad! If I was a billionaire, I'd learn to ski because I'm awesome.

OK, so I have just recieved a cool short Billion. What to do with it. Well, first and most obvious, pay off all the family debts. Then, some combination of the following:

• fund construction of electrified light rail between three local population centres (50km, using mostly existing road ROW), as well as take over a disused heavy rail line (10-20km) and convert it to light rail.
• buy the property up in the local hills that I've had my eye on that has spring-fed creek, good soils, and reasonable isolation, but still good access to towns. Heck, probably buy the entire plateau. Install grid-connect CSP.
• lease commercial rooftop space and install CSP or PV
• fund CSP installations in remote towns, so that they can eliminate diesel useage (for generators). Investigate grid-connections so the community can make a little money on the side. Employ and train locals to maintain equipment, with a view to eventual ownership of the installation by the community
• would have bought 1/6th of the QR float, and used my voting influence to electrify everything possible, and shut down the coal lines.
• construct a TOD on some vacant commercial land locally (currently used as a overflow car park). I calculate some 30 100m2 apartments per floor (allowing for balconies, access etc). 1 floor retail, 1 floor offices, 3 floors residential.

Though "Joe Six Pack" can effect little change, that demographic WILL need to be on board with any billionare's plans. The pentagon is working with scientists such as Dr.Orr as our government is recognizing climate change as a pressing threat to national security. Joe always pays attention to initiatives built on national security issues. I'll put up a billion to fund a propaganda campaign to make a sustainable economy easy to understand, easy to support and as American as apple pie and the very six-pack in Joe's thick fingers. (Insert billion-dollar slogan here.)

I'd spend $100M on good farmland in an area that will be least impacted by climate change and $100M on gold coins. I would quietly sit on these assets until the community was ready and willing to accept help from my lifeboat.

I would place the $800M balance in a fund to be used for mitigation initiatives. I'd invite Jason Bradford, Nate Hagens, Nicole Foss, John Michael Greer, Stewart Brand, and David MacKay to sit on the board to help decide how to spend the funds.

I became interested in population and resources during the late 50's After joining Population Reference Bureau and other organizations I became familiar with Hugh Moore. He was perhaps the equivalent of a billionaire in inflation adjusted terms. Our chapter of ZPG (Zero Population Growth) distributed material from the Hugh Moore Fund. The following is excerpted from a Wiki entry.
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Hugh Everett Moore (1887–1972) was the president, and founder of the Dixie Cup company.

chairman of the board, Population Reference Bureau;
vice- president, International Planned Parenthood Federation, 1964;
founder in 1944 and president of the Hugh Moore Fund for International Peace, established to fund organizations involved in population control, which also published Moore's pamphlet "The Population Bomb" in 1954;
co-founder of the Population Crisis Committee, 1965;
president of the Association for Voluntary Sterilization 1964-1969.

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From http://www.ejsd.org/public/journal_article/12

"... For example, the expressions “population bomb” and “population explosion” were first introduced in the early 1950s by the businessman and population control activist Hugh Everett Moore (1954) in a twenty-two page pamphlet similarly titled “The Population Bomb!” that by 1967 had gone through thirteen editions and a print run of nearly a million and a half copies (Kasun 1999; Robertson 2005).3 Several individuals borrowed Moore’s title in their own writings. Among the most prominent were the Commissioner of the United States Bureau of Reclamation Michael W. Straus (1955, p. 15) who used it in his book Why Not Survive?; the Stanford professor of chemistry J. Murray Luck (1957, p. 906) who discussed the concept in a presidential address on “Man against his Environment” delivered before the Pacific Division of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1957 that was later published in Science; and the director of the Population Reference Bureau Robert C. Cook (1956) who authored an article with this title in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. The expression “population explosion” was for its part so widely used that it even graced the cover page of a 1960 issue of Time magazine (figure 1).4 Not surprisingly in an age where A- and H-bombs were on everyone’s minds, several authors also referred to the “P-bomb” (Slick 1958; Troebst 1962; Fabre-Luce 1964)."

Edit to add my memory of the 1960 Time magazine cover picture shown in the above link. The text is not included in the link but I am fairly certain that it featured a wealthy South American business man who sired a huge number of children - was it 68? - over a long lifetime. Needless to say he started young and had a succession of wives as well as some twin pregnancies.

If I were a billionare, I would simply stop working, buy a few nice houses, hire people to do stuff for me, spread some money around to a few close relatives of me and my wife, and then travel a lot and do whatever else interests me - mostly learn stuff from experts I think. How to sing, how to play certain sports and so on. But that would have to evolve.

I'm a bit skeptical about all the testimonials about how you guys would build sustainable this-and-that. Would you really? Wouldn't you just let go of the doomerism and the aversion for TPTB and just go with the flow? Anyway, a billion isn't that much, and you can't make a global impact with that little money. Even with Bill Gates money, you'd have to have a lot of luck to make a global impact. He has just some $54 billion and the global GDP is a thousand times that, each year.

1) Party like it's 1999.

2) Billionaires already have their plans. That would be like telling the Federal Reserve what they should do about interest rates. Duh.

Billionaires already know more about PO, population growth, food, monetary systems, budget deficits, etc. than the average person does. They have people for that. It’s absolutely arrogant to sit here thinking the rich haven’t given this any thought. They have given it a lot of thought. Although it might be a little disheartening to comprehend their response and what that says about our predicament and human nature. They have mostly been lying to the media and public, building “retreats” (bunkers), and partying like its 1999.

The rich are not the last ones who are going to figure this out. That would be the public.

Has Boone Pickens been mentioned in this thread? He spent well over $50 million publicizing his Pickens Plan. He remains bullish on natural gas but has partially abandoned wind energy, at least in the Texas Panhandle. There are still quite a few wind turbines to be seen during the landing approach to the Amarillo airport

http://www.startribune.com/business/90167122.html

If a Billionaire decided to share all his money with the world, that would amount to about 14 cents per person --assuming 7 Billion people.

(Of course this does not include cost of postage, envelopes and writing out checks if the money were to be mailed out as such to the 7 Billion people.)

I have several answers. I'll give you one. And, the one I give you is pretty clear to me, and one that I'm confident about. If I were a billionaire at this time I would locate myself in a city of like-minded persons such as Boulder, Portland OR, Austin, Seattle, or Vancouver and I would start a Merchant Bank for local crafts, businesses, and Makers. The bank would grant low-interest micro-loans, and lots of them. I would be very transparent about the source, and the size of the capital. I would also be very clear on the types of business that would be receiving micro-loans. Namely, transport, food, energy, education, resources, clothing, architecture--and exports. You get the idea. I would also disclose that I was worth a billion, and, that I was staking a long-term social commitment to my targeted city. A commitment that would be sustained beyond my death, through a panel of other overseers who would dispense capital per charter, or, trust if you will. (nota bene: choosing a single city/region is key to my chosen solution wrt to scale, scope, and impact). I think this is one example of how a billionaire could finish out their days with a very high quality of life, while still enjoying some social rank. Essentially, an aware billionaire should become a VC of energy transition.

G

If I were a billionaire... As quietly as possible, I'd buy greater and greater numbers of palladium contracts on Comex. I'd begin taking delivery while leveraging with paper contracts and profiting on the rise in price. Within six months or so, I'd have cornered the world market in palladium. The government, at the demand of the financial industry, would step in and allow Comex to default and take back as much of my profit as they could. It would be too late though, I would come out slightly ahead financially although most of my paper profit would be confiscated by Comex.

This profit wasn't my goal however. I'd have exposed the inherent instablity of our leveraged financial system at a crucial time. People would begin to panic and dump fiat currency, realizing that at any moment the palladium default could spread to silver and gold. Soon, exactly that would happen. All major currencies would begin to hyperinflate and only hard assets would hold value. Governments would step in and try to prop up the bank monopoly forcing people back into fiat currency in various draconian ways. Again, too late. Large segments of the population would realize they had been duped by the government and financial establishment. Pandemonium would ensue as establishment's media battled the blogosphere. Eventually the establishment would regain control but their propaganda mechanisms would be severely damaged. The average people would begin to live a little more sustainably and think a little more for themselves. They would see their, and society's inherent vulnerability. I would tell anyone who would listen, precisely why I did what I did - although in general I would be vilified and perhaps punished. In the end, it would be for the best that I forced this event sooner rather than later.