If someone won $500,000,000 in the lottery, what would be the most effective way to spend it to change the political situation in America?
Edit: Asking for a friend. Also; as much as I appreciate the violent suggestions, I’m thinking more positively focused.
You can’t. That’s not enough money.
Make the lives of your community better instead.
I think some of y’all are really overestimating how much politicians cost. I don’t have a photogenic memory but I remember a few years ago on an article like this politicians were being paid like $70k.
photogenic memory
I can’t decide if this is intentional boneappletea or not, but either way I love you.
Relentless advertising the week before the election. Any sooner than that and you’re wasting money. The electorate has the collective memory of a goldfish so wait until the few days, and especially the weekend, before the election and dump it all into an overwhelming advertising campaign. Every other commercial that comes on TV should be one of your attack ads listing everything horrible the candidate you oppose has ever done wrong.
Buying politicians won’t work, that kind of money will either buy one for a few years or many for a few months. But $500m is less than a million dollars a year for just the house of representatives and when that money dries up their normal donors will be there with big fat checks ready to change policies back to the way they were before.
In order to enact real change you’ll need to actually replace the people in power. And even then the major sticking point is making sure that the candidates you endorse actually make the changes that would limit future corruption.Considering the small amounts of money we do know about in corruption, I would day you massively overestimate how much someone costs.
They’re not all Lauren Boebert, but there’s a lot more money than half a billion being thrown around in politics. If half a billion were enough to just buy all the politicians Musk would have done it a long time ago, that’s about 1/400th of his net worth when he keeps his mouth shut.
In total, yes, maybe more. But over, likely, thousands of people and, mostly, for minor things here and there.
Also, just throwing money at people is not somehow a failsafe way to get something. Not everyone can be corrupted and not everyone seeing the corruption is going to be quiet about it.
Michael Bloomberg spent $1 billion to run a distraction campaign, taking headlines from Bernie Sanders’ repeated wins in the early 2020 Democratic primary. Bloomberg spent $500M the first week to flood the internet with influencers and meme makers being absolutely distracted by the low torrent of low effort shit post memes about Bloomberg. It was so obviously an astroturf campaign built on fake sentiment that everyone forgot Bernie won 5 states in a row and was crushing Biden. By the end of the month, Elisabeth Warren also bowed out and took her progressive voters to Biden.
So for $500 Million you can ruin a grassroots campaign! Buy bad memes and pay influencers to distract people.
change the political situation in America?
Change for the better or for the worse?
(hint: the latter comes cheaper)Which one involves a giant fuckin nuke?
Both.
You could do what Mike Bloomberg did in 2020 and try and buy your way into an election. Then again when he spent $500,000,000 on his campaign that got him no where.
Be fair, he also spent a couple hundred million dollars buying seats for the Dems so they’d push his favorite policy of disarming the plebs. He slipped up and said it and there should still be a YouTube video up with that exact moment recorded for posterity, though I know YouTube has taken down a lot of them.
You’d be competing against multi-billionaires and huge corporations. It wouldn’t be enough, even though it’s a ridiculous amount of money for one person.
Changing the US would probably be impossible. Maybe changing your state would be possible. Changing your local community would be much more realistic.
Helping people get homes and food would likely help reduce crime.
Helping people get educations would help some people escape certain situations.
If you’re fixed on changing the US political situation and you think there’s a party that can change the situation, you can go with political donations. I believe whichever party spends the most money on their campaign is the one that wins more often than not.
Having multiple billions and dumping half a billion at once are two very different things.
The multi-billionaire would probably already know how to more efficiently use the money though, making their millions of political spending stretch much further.
Could probably buy enough congressmen to pass a few laws. Not sure what the best ones would be.
Except scum recognizes scum and only does deals with each other. That’s why you hear the prices are so cheap, it’s practically a formality.
This is absolutely true about corrupt people seeking each other out.
A disembodied force of pure evil exists in this world, and its minions are working together.
$500 Million? How long can you rent a Supreme Court Justice for that much? That might be your best chance at positive change.
Now, if we’re looking for Quantity of change over quality of change, you could actually cause the MOST CHANGE by putting that money towards a drone strike on the Capital while Congress is in session.
Just hypothetical answers to a hypothetical question. I’m not advocating anything. No need to put me on any more lists.
Don’t bother. Enrich the lives of those around you. Feed homeless. Help friends start small businesses. Fix single mother’s cars. Ensure your own stability first, though.
I really like the idea of testing alternative business and corporate structures and definitely not developing a model library for medical devices to print.
I think the best thing you could do with that amount of money would be to start a community organizing non-profit. Things like registering voters, tenant advocacy, helping people gain access to benefits, etc. etc. Basically, just organizing and connecting people to the system.
If you’re restricting things to just electoral politics, though, I’d say focus on close elections at the state level. A half billion dollars isn’t much in the context of a modern presidential election but it’s an absurd amount for state legislature elections. You’re probably not going to turn Mississippi blue or Massachusetts red (or whatever your goal is) but control of a swingy state like Virginia usually comes down to a handful of close elections. You could probably make a meaningful difference in 20 states just with get out the vote funding.
Since there no other comments yet, I’ve always had the idea to pick anyone running across any race in the US under the democratic socialist party and donate the max amount to each of them individually. I think all the max values are under $2,500 per individual but so many races are in small towns and whatnot where that could go a long way. I mean folk like Bernie Sanders would also get the max value per individual but it will go further for the downstream races. I have zero background or knowledge in this area so maybe that is just super naive.
It could probably make a big difference in key areas.
You probably couldn’t effect enough small towns to turn Texas blue, but if you could saturate some rural PA counties and shift them slightly less red, it could lock down a swing state when it really counts.
Well, playing the same game as rich guys will result in you losing. But it’s important to remember the October revolution was funded with much less…
Buy citizenship out of the US and build a better country abroad with your foreign investment. Not much to do with the way things are going, but you can make Ireland or Monténégro a better place.
Nuke the entire landmass. Enjoy not having to worry about what stupid shit the US political dumpster fire will regurgitate and manipulate this week. Be loved by almost every country on the planet for doing it. Gals and guys alike will be tripping over each other to suck you. Police stop being penis-waving fucks and start obeying the law, NK shits themselves and rejoins SK, Putin has a heart attack, and everyone starts buying electric cars because you threaten to do it again if not. World peace out of sheer terror. Rainbows and unicorns spawn randomly. And as a gargantuan meteor is about to crash into earth and kill all remaining sentient life, you are deemed the one true god.
Hello fbi, late today aren’t you?
(just let me know before you do this, I have some things I need to pack first)
Edit: basically End of Ze World but updated a bit
