[NNagain] if you had a billion dollars

[H Kazemi]

The grand approach is to immediately use the whole billion to advance one
or more important matters.

The opposite approach would be to treat it as an endowment, and only spend
from the annual gains. A 5% return means $50 million per year.

There are countless middle positions as well, if one needs more bootstrap
capital for something important and is simultaneously willing to reduce the
potential annual endowment returns. The midpoint scenario is to use $500
million for critical bootstrapping efforts, and leave the remaining $500
million to produce $25 million annual returns.

Some things to consider:

1.) Which efforts will others want to be partners in? Partnerships can
extend how far seed capital will go. But diverging interests might
complicate things later, taking things in unintended directions.

2.) Which efforts are important to do but aren't attracting enough interest
and funding today, but have the potential of being self-sustaining if they
reach a critical mass? This might include funding certain technology or
approaches that have mostly been pushed to the wayside.

Examples: Repairable/reusable/upgradable/modular hardware comes to mind.
Framework laptops are step in this direction. Closed non-upgradeable
hardware, non-repurposable hardware goes in the opposite direction.
Contrast the medium to long term reuse prospects for a Framework laptop vs
a MacBook Air. Or a WiFi router (maybe RPi based) that is OpenWRT
compatible vs fully proprietary. How about other electronics? How about
fully open source hardware and open source software solutions available for
each kind of electronics? Offering polished solutions matters; breaking or
losing existing functionality needs to be strongly avoided. To replace the
status quo, the new alternative must do an overall better job.

Or to step away from electronics...how about expanding the availability and
use of modular building systems? One system, called Gridbeam, uses
perforated square wooden or metal sticks, hardware, accessories, parts, and
tooling. It uses reusable parts and can be assembled with basic tools. Some
wooden Ikea furniture already is physically quite close to what can be
created using the Gridbeam system.
https://wiki.opensourceecology.org/wiki/Gridbeam

3.) Are there efforts that are worth doing on an entirely altruistic basis,
because they're important to do for societal advancement and continuity
reasons, regardless of the financials?

Examples: Freeing up certain patents. Open sourcing certain technology.
Maybe reforming the patent, copyright, and right to repair laws. Addressing
policy problems (including NN) and other roadblocks that hurt creativity,
innovation, and prevent us from doing what is actually technically possible
today but is being blocked by other factors. Libraries and knowledge
sharing comes to mind. Making science, including communicating how we got
to where we are now, accessible to all also matters. Sufficiently advanced
technology doesn't run on magic.



On Thu, Oct 12, 2023, 23:44 Dave Taht via Nnagain <
nnagain at lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:

> in trying to initiate some out of the box thinking here...
>
> What would *you* do with a billion dollars?
>
> ...
>
> I wrote this in 2015. I would not change much:
>
> http://the-edge.taht.net/post/billion/
>
> --
> Oct 30:
> https://netdevconf.info/0x17/news/the-maestro-and-the-music-bof.html
> Dave Täht CSO, LibreQos
> _______________________________________________
> Nnagain mailing list
> Nnagain at lists.bufferbloat.net
> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/nnagain
>
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