Imagine you have infinite dollars backing you. What's the thing you'd want to pursue just because it's something you'd like to do with your life?

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Infinite money gives you as many nuclear reactors as you want, then you can make arbitrary amounts of rocket fuel by electrolys of water.

It'd still probably be better to shine LEDs at lots of kelp in bits of the sea where there's not enough natural light for kelp, burn the kelp into charcoal, and bury the charcoal, though.

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If you have enough trains, and enough track for them to go past each other, you can have direct trains that go faster and don't stop.

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Worldwide free schools, free Healthcare, free shelters and free educations for all who need it

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And once they are done tackle cancer next pls; F*ck cancer

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I live in an area where 50 years ago the population was bordeline autonomous.

The main activities were centered around sheep, wine, a little on open grazing cattle, some cereal production and orchards.

With no money issues, I would start by buying all abandoned and empty buildings and launch a massive rebuilding and renewing campaign. This town has several centuries of history and preserving and returning people to it would be my top priority.

In tandem, I would force a massive reforestation program in the surrounding area. It is technically a national park but it is almost barren.

Paired with this, techonlogy and infrastructure would need to be developed and implemented. A small datacenter would be created deep underneath the city, cooled with waste waters. For this, a completely new and top of the line waste water management plant would be built and every available human built surface would be covered in solar panels.

Reflorestation efforts would be paired with development of forest fire detection, prevention and extinction technology.

City renovation would be planned around low density population areas, with building topping at six individual dwellings, with built in commercial areas for small local shops. Parking would be concentrated on the outskirts of the town, in purpose built buildings, leaving the core areas for walking and human powered means of transportation.

In terms of job creation, I'd start cooperatives for wine, fruit, cereals, produce and cattle, to stimulate small and medium producers to settle and develop their activities and relaunch the wool and cloth industry of the city, using the wool from locally raised sheep. As a by-product, a specialized lanolin extraction shop would be created. I'd leave traditional cheese making for small producers (the local cheese can go for crazy high prices but not for the people that have the work making it) but support creating a guild to negotiate prices.

Orchards would have support from a locally established industry to transform the lower grade fruit into jams, juices and other related products. Always coops.

There would be more to plan and but at some point I would be too busy going to court daily being accused to trampling every other interest, so I would have to have an army of people supporting my megalomaniac plan.

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I want to build garbage burning power plants in the US like in Scandinavia. It would remove methane emissions from landfills and you can do some carbon capture with scrubbers on the plants as they operate. Also, your fuel is free and the garbage companies can even charge less as they don’t have to maintain a landfill.

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If you could put in like ten minutes a day planning how to stop the Trisolarian invasion, we’d appreciate it.

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I'd quit my job and pursue my interests and happiness. I'd give back to the community in meaningful ways, like distributing food and clothing. I like helping people.

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Setup an organization with the sole purpose of fighting censorship. Plus I'd want to setup artistic grants and music festivals.

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Gather a group of people, including seasoned mechanics, manufacturing workers, sales people, and engineers of different types. Go full r&d to come up with meaningful solutions to transportation, then build them.

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I would move to the moon so my back pain doesn't bother me as much.

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Create smattering of small communities around the world that are sustainable, independent and contain all the scientific knowledge and capabilities to rebuild civilization.

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I'd start an international big-ass lobby bureau for education, consummer's rights and environment protection.

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Easy. Artificial gravity orbital space station.

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I mean, first I would have an awesome fucking party.

Then I would buy a series of properties in all the different places I want to live. I'd hire personal assistants, trainers, chefs, etc to take care of all the annoying details in my life. I'd also hire experts in various fields to teach me how to improve myself.

And then, before I got too far ahead of myself, I'd hire a team of economists to advise me, because the infinite money hack pretty much always leads to runaway inflation and economic collapse. So let's not do that.

From there, I would pick a city - probably the one I currently live in - and would start buying up land. Pretty much all land for sale within 50 miles of the city outside the city center, I would buy and hold, halting the progress of outward sprawl. Plots could be leased by vetted permaculturalist farmers, but otherwise the land would be allowed to fallow, becoming a vast nature preserve, held by hundreds of shell corporations.

Next I would tackle auto-oriented infrastructure. I would hire teams of people to stand outside local middle and high schools and give out free e-bikes. (Each e-bike would also come with a friendly, sex-positive information booklet about having sex in a fun, safe, and consent-focused way, plus a box of condoms). Soon, every kid in the city would be flying around the city recklessly. Even if the city passed laws against it, there is no way they could actually effectively enforce the laws against tens of thousands of teenagers. Simultaneously, I would hire teams of guerilla infrastructure workers and properly equip them. Illegal raised pedestrian crossings would soon be sprouting up around the city on a nightly basis, while traffic signals and stop signs are getting clearcut. A game of cat and mouse would ensue, as the city tried to stop the guerilla infrastructure, but facing political pressure from concerned parents of e-biking teens, any infrastructure we built would be left in place.

From there, I would buy up local commercial properties, and lease them to small business owners at below market rates, under the condition that they listen to me rant about parking minumums and the glory of a georgist land value tax scheme once per month. This would create a groundswell political movement in favor of reducing or eliminating other, less efficient forms if taxation, and instead using taxation to drive pro-social outcomes in addition to raising government funds.

Additional space that isnt leased to private enterprise would be used for free adult education centers. Offered classes would focus on what would be most immeditately practical - useful skills for getting a job or a higher-paying job, or else everyday skills that could help people save money learning to do their own home repairs or cook their own food. Once the centers established a reputation for improving peoples' lives in this way, offerings could be expanded to help people learn higher order or more ephemeral skills, like personal finance, emotional regulation, communication and community-building, and health and fitness.

Education would then be expanded to offer alternative schooling to children. Teachers, of course, would be highly paid, which would draw all the best teachers out of the public school system and would draw skilled professionals out of their other high paying jobs. The stated aim of these schools would be to create adults worthy to be citizens in a liberal democracy. Education in the early years would be focused almost entirely on emotional regulation, social skills, personal responsibility, and the value of education. Resources would be heavily focused on achieving these standards in each student before that student was taught what most consider the fundamental skills in schooling like reading and math. From there, a student's education would take a two-pronged approach. The first prong would be focused on giving the student the practical skills to be a functioning, independent adult - those things that the adult education centers focused on. This would create a generation of people who could see the collapse of global trade, and still be able to build their own homes and grow their own food if they needed to. As part of this education, students would be offered apprenticeship time at local companies in order to get hands on experience in trades they might consider pursuing. The other prong of their education would focus on creating an understanding of and sense of responsibility for the liberal democracy they lived in, based on enlightenment ideals. They would receive an education in history, government, economics, ecology, the theory of science, and general philosophy. More academic topics, like the much maligned trigonometry, would be elective, left for students who wanted to pursue higher education out of a genuine interest in the careers or subject matter.

Free health care. Enough said.

Meanwhile, I would start funding the creation of open source software initiatives to kneecap the existing social media giants. This software would allow users to scrape data from social media platforms via their user acccounts and interact with it in the form of their choosing. Using facebook as an example - a user could use an alternative interface to log into their facebook account, view friends' posts in chronological order; remove reels, suggested posts, and ads; and message friends. And in addition, this alternative interface would function as a seamless transition off of the facebook platform. For example, messaging between two users on the platform would happen directly between the users, cutting facebook out of the process. Users could choose to make posts on both the new platform and facebook, or to make posts solely on the new platform. A better UX (importantly, not privacy concerns or a dedication to open source) would draw people to the new platform, gradually sucking facebook dry of users and content. Removing algorithms designed to maximize screen time, social media addiction would have a much harder time taking hold. Additional funds would need to be dedicated to obfuscation of contributors to the project, protection of infrastructure from government or corporate interference, and legal defence fees, as under current laws all this would be illegal and would draw the ire of these corporations.

At this point I'll say that, with this much money flowing, we'd also need to have layers and layers of administrative overhead dedicated to ensuring that programs are being implemented in accordance to the spirit of the program, and that funds are not being embezzeled or misappropriated. Anyway...

After about 10 years, we would start seeing some real gains from the programs. Lower housing costs, less auto-dependency, more small businesses, more community involvement, and more hope and optimism. As we saw success and learned lessons, we could start expanding these programs to other cities - or simply watch as other cities created their own versions of them. Meanwhile, the purchase of rural properties would continue, piecing together new swaths of land to create vast wildlife preserves. As nearby cities overcame auto oriented design, intercity rail could be built between them, further reducing auto dependency. Bus lines could be funded to run between the reformed walkable cities and the auto-dependent holdouts, allowing for a swift brain drain of holdout cities as the young, intelligent, and ambitious fled for better quality if life.

As more and more people became independent, educated, and community-focused, political agitation could start propagating to national and international levels. Political and campaign finance reform. National pigouvian tax schemes. Crackdowns on corporate collusion. Ending corporate subsidies. Economic sanctions on nations which failed to protect the environment or human rights.

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Thanks for the reminder that I need to actually watch Three Body Problem (or finish the book) lol

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I always wanted to have a farm and be well off enough that I could take a good portion of the yield and just give it out in my old neighborhood.

Kids there are starving, most of them have never seen an eggplant, it's cheap ultraprocessed food or half moldy apples from the food banks.

I know there's a lot of other stuff too, but I think food education is pretty important, most of the adults I knew didn't know how to cook resulting in everyone eating worse for more money, thinking they couldn't afford to eat any healthier.

Although at this point my old neighborhood has been gentrified and filled with $3000/m studio apartments. I'd probably also buy out the neighborhood and give it back to everyone who lived there 10 years ago.

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Start with dictators

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Buy land

Build houses

House people for free

Profit

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Feed and house the human race, usher my species into the next evolutionary stage of our post scarcity society

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Imagine you have infinite dollars backing you. What's the thing you'd want to pursue just because it's something you'd like to do with your life?