How would you use money to influence society?

[Felix]

I'd clean up the earth, clean the water and buy up all the rain forests and let it sit there. I'd go to desertified lands and rebuild soil and plant tons of trees. Politically, I'd work to ban advertising and lobbying. And support research on the viability of a basic income.

[anomie]

With $50 billion I would buy my own third-world country in a temperate clime. Or all the land in a county in a decent clime of the US; maybe Arizona? New Mexico? some where nice but affordable.

And then hire Felix to run it for me.

Or if I were younger I might respond thusly:
"2 Chicks at the same time"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A939QRRSNV4

(Apologies for any perceived chauvinistic intent there. )

[Felix]

I'll only do it for 5 years, then retire to my small farm, though.

[jennypenny]

I'll only do it for 5 years, then retire to my small farm, though.

Running the property or the two chicks??

[Felix]

Depends on what anomie hires me for.

[jacob]

This is a hard question. Unfortunately, I don't have a clever answer I'm thinking the biggest bang for the buck equals finding someone who is already influencing society and then supporting them. E.g. imagine if ERE or MMM or similar got full page ads in the New York Times...

[theanimal]

Full page ad for NYT- $139,000

I'd probably do something similar to those above. Either something like buying a ton of land and restoring/preserving it or finding a way to ban/reduce advertising.

[jacob]

A'la The Last American Man
http://www.amazon.com/Last-American-Man ... 0142002836

[Ego]

The Idiot's Guide to Smart People (and the Smart People's Guide to Rich People)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R72atCX ... e=youtu.be

[riparian]

I've been trying to change the world for a little bit now and based on my narrow, limited experience I'm gonna say journalism. All the emails and calls in the world made zero difference to politicians here, but as soon as we had a press conference they wrote (completely ineffective) legislation.

[JamesR]

What has the biggest impact? Go after things that have huge long-term indirect impact on the world and people.

Education.
* Make this way more accessible, use new ways of learning to make it faster & easier, remove arbitrary bottlenecks, make it free.

Science/Empiricism.
* Remove bias in academia, corporate influence, and strings attached to funding. Improve education.

Transparency/Truth.
* More transparency/oversight in government, including military. More oversight in corporate influence, where money comes from and goes.

Corporations.
* Deal with issue of corporations getting the rights of an individual, yet acting like sociopaths. Deal with issue of stakeholders not being morally beholden to corporate behavior.