And came home from a long voyage with the equivalent to five times the GNP of your country, in some form of true wealth, in the holds of your ships?

You would have to find a delicate balancing act between making changes and not scaring your goverment. As Forrest Gump would say, "That's a bad thing."

One of the first things I would do would be to make sure the only K through 12 class sizes in the United States larger than twenty students were those of very popular teachers.

Health care. Don't know enough about it to improve it. I'd hire C. Everett Koop and let him do it. That would be fun to watch.

Tell George Lucas about it, then go with Spielberg to make the movie, because of the Han Solo shooting first issue. And that the special effect was cheesey and obvious. Seeing as Greedo was going to sell Han to a person who feeds women to animals for amusement I didn't see a problem with Han shooting first. Still don't. Somebody help me here. Did this have anything to do with California gun policies?

Go with Von Braun's idea of a luner mission. Sent a big fifty man vehicle, assembled in orbit, that drops two twenty man teams in detachable chunks that become bases and keeps ten men in orbit. With those small Air Force nuke plants they use in the polar regions (sent ahead of time) for everybody. Because with that much money, you could.

Help Bill Gates eradicate malaria.

Find out why, in this age of digital signal storage and processing you still see the stub ends of old commercials in with the whole commercials. Seeing as valuble as airtime is you would think that would be long gone. When I was a kid in the sixties the excuse was that's how the film was spliced on the reel they broadcast. They haven't changed since then?

Have a dirt clod war with Canada. Supplimented with folded newspapers, used as bludgeons, and rubberband guns. That's how we settled things when I was a kid. Winner gets to decide how to pronounce "garage". Second round decides "decal".

Well, thats all I can think up the moment.

Other than my respect for Drake as a man-of-arms increased dramatically when I heard he once fought off two Spainards armed with halberds and a swordsman, by himself. Killed one and put the other two to flight. Now that's an acid test of one's martial prowess. You how difficult it is to defend yourself from a long stick with a hook on it? Much less two in concert?

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In your rush to call everyone "entrenched" or closed-minded or "limited" you fail to note that the "limit" here has a very natural boundary: that point at which the evidence stops. - JayUtah

Science fiction was never meant to be an educational tool. - Editor Amazing Tales

I like most of your ideas. I'd add in reviving the SSC and a whole lot of other scientific research besides.

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Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.

I'd like to know what's in the hold of my ships.



Seriously though, that's such an enormous supply of money that one can't even think of what to do with it. Think of the inflation...

Anywho, all in good fun:

--Pay off the national debt.
--Go full tilt into as many clean energy sources as possible.
--Ditto for unmanned spaceflight and exoplanet research--heck, for big scopes in general.
--Ditto again for SSC.
--Advanced propulsion technology.
--Gosh...massive urban renewal projects and school reforms...I could really go on and on.

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"Call me old-fashioned, but I think fire is magic. And it scares me a lot."

--The State

Five times the GDP of the United States is 65 trillion dollars. That's equal to the current world GDP. Invest it and increase the GDP of the earth by 10% after a slight period of adjustment. Distrubute the revenue from your investments among the world's 6.6 billion people and you give everyone an yearly income of roughly $10,000 a year, eliminating poverty. The 65 trillion is enough money to stabilize climate change (say $7 trillion), eliminate malaria (say 20 billion), hunger (say a trillion) and poverty.

I've never seen this, but I have seen the local cable company's commercials overlap the national channel's with a bit shown of it at the beginning or end.

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"What you think you thought you saw you did not see." Agent J, MiB - Manhatten Bureau

What did Drake do with all the money? What was the before then and what was the after effects?

But, but, there are groups that might get upset with me if I did that. I'd be accused of allowing the "Undermensch" of breeding out of all control!

(I'm thinking of those showtunes from "The Producers" at the moment. The original one with Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder)

Of course, I'd already be the biggest target on the planet.

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In your rush to call everyone "entrenched" or closed-minded or "limited" you fail to note that the "limit" here has a very natural boundary: that point at which the evidence stops. - JayUtah

Science fiction was never meant to be an educational tool. - Editor Amazing Tales

Hmmm..
Advanced Propulsion Concepts? Check.
Environmentally Friendly Energy? Check.
Vastly Increase Private Space Presence? Check.
Private spacecraft and space station? Check.
Medical Research? Check.
Exo planet research? Check.
Working on turning theoretical research practical? Check.
All expenses paid trip to the moon for prominent moon hoaxers? Check!
Make it a one way trip? Che.. nah, meaner to let them live.

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While in the short term there might be an increase in population, investing that amount of money should hasten the demographic transition in developing countries and reduce the overall population of the world in the medium to long term. Mind you, racist loonies aren't likely to listen to reason.

Drake and many of his crew became extremely rich, however, the black death, fire of London and wars seemed to have much larger economic effects than Drake returning with a hold full of booty. This makes me think he didn't actually have 5 times England's GDP. When you consider that the population was around three million, and the average Englishperson might engage in a pound's worth of economic transactions a year, 5 years GDP might be around 15 million pounds of silver, or about 7 million metric tons. I doubt he had 7 million metric tons of silver. With an exchange rate at the time of roughly 20.8 pounds of silver to a pound of gold that would be over 300,000 tons of gold. The Golden Hind had a displacement of about 300 tons.

Education, of course. A lot of very good education for as many people as I can provide it to.

And yeah, end malaria--and polio; there's been a vaccine for that for fifty years, for heaven's sake.

I'm not sure I'd give all control of what should be done in medicine to the esteemed Dr. Koop. He and I have at least one fundamental disagreement, though I don't know much more about him than that--and that he was pretty uncowed by the Reagan administration on the subject of AIDS. How 'bout a panel?

Climate change; that's a good one. And, of course, lots of space exploration.

And let's see about taking medical research out of the hands of the pharmaceutical industry.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

Well, I'd have to dedicate just a little bit of it to buying an airship yacht for myself. I've always wanted one. Sure, call me greedy, but c'mon, how cool would that be?

Me: "Hm. Looks like another wonderful day... in the sky!"

I mean, with that much cash, I can splurge a little before I go save the world, right?

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Quaeso quousque humi defixa tua mens erit? Nonne aspicis, quae in templa veneris?

I would develop neuroscience to the point where I could enhance my brain, make myself super-smart, then I'd solve most of the big problems.

I'd build space elevators and move most of the big cities into space because there's just no point in having them on Earth. I'd try to get as many people off of Earth as I could.

I'd be able to afford to pay lots of child support so I'd make sure my genetic material was thoroughly mixed into the human genome (probably assuring the future fall of mankind... ).

I would turn Mars into a robot reservation. No humans allowed. You can drop all the robots onto the planet that you'd like but they'll have to survive on their own.

I would build interstellar slow-boats filled with every imaginable bacteria in pods that could be launched at any planet encountered along the way to pollute the interstellar neighborhood with life just in case humans self-destruct.

I would take a vacation and read Wikipedia from front to back.

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The only way of finding the limits of the possible is by going beyond them into the impossible.

Arthur C. Clarke

The Brain Science Podcast

First thing i would do is buy Cheyenne Mountain, because with that kind of wealth, that would be the only safe place to live!

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Any day you wake up on "the right side of the dirt" is a good day.

T. Anderson

I would buy an airship yacht and race The Supreme Canuck.

Fund a drilling submarine mission to Europa.

Get the finest film-makers in the world to do a moon hoax just to show how hard it is to do as convincingly as the real thing.

Buy a Wii, a cactus and some new shoes. (What's wrong with being easily pleased?)

Get the finest film-makers in the world to film some SF books properly - e.g. the Harlan Ellison version of Asimov's I, Robot rather than the filth that we got.

Play a really expensive practical joke on an old school friend of mine that's only marginally funnier than a practical joke that would have cost less than £3.80.

Some of the worthwhile things that people have already mentioned.

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Nothing beautiful was ever made from gravel.

Starship Troopers!!!

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The only way of finding the limits of the possible is by going beyond them into the impossible.

Arthur C. Clarke

The Brain Science Podcast

Find a plot of land no one wants and start my own country.

(Human nature being what it is, as soon as my flag goes up whoever had it before will probably declare it part of their "ancestral homeland" start a holy war to get it back. Sigh.)

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"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
"The Mayan symbol for "book" looks a lot like a triple hamburger, but I've never seen them claiming it as proof the Mayans had Big Macs." - KaiYeves
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

Snow Crash. It would be awesome.

And Contra. You know, the video game? It would be like Rambo, only with aliens. And then the heros would come in, wielding guns powerful enough to tear their arms out of their sockets if fired in real life, and kill everything. It would be an unapoligetic B movie, a mindless action flick done with the best old school special effects. No CGI. Everything from alien troopers to man faced muts would be done with the fines animatronics that money can buy.

Yeah, that's how we did it too, 'cept this time of year, up here, it has to be snowballs only, because the bludgeons hurt when they're frozen, and the rubberbands break.

Now, several people from Maine to California seemed to think I pronounced "about" in a funny way (the opinion of the lady in Tennessee, however, doesn't matter, 'cuz the other Americans told me they all speak funny in that state). Anyway, we need to settle that one too.

[QUOTE=Gillianren;1173463]Education, of course. A lot of very good education for as many people as I can provide it to.

And yeah, end malaria--and polio; there's been a vaccine for that for fifty years, for heaven's sake.

Gillianren. BTI is very effective for mosquito control. We put some in a few small plastic pond liners at work when the mosquito larvae began surfacing. Within three days they were all dead. Subsequently torrential rains spilled the contents out into the garden center yard, and across the stoneworks into the abutting swamp...three years ago....haven't seen a single mosquito since....and I mean zero. Birds transport the bacteria on their feet, and people have commented on the mosquito-free environs. Some other insect will fill their niche....but the danger of triple E..(Eastern Equine Encephalitis )..or West Nile virus is nil. A heck of a lot cheaper than mosquito netting...and like smallpox...I'm never going to miss that bioform. see:http://www.ext.colostate.edu/pubs/insect/05556.html
pete

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A third rate theory forbids.
A second rate theory explains after the fact.
A first rate theory predicts.
A. Lomonosov

Good news on malaria. The distribuition of insecticide treated mosquito nets, medicine and indoor spraying has resulted in a 66% drop in child deaths from malaria in Rwanda. Ethiopia has also had a huge drop in malaria.

http://allafrica.com/stories/200802010525.html

It can be beat.

Hey Ron, have you ever seen somebody with that fever malaria gives you? Wow, just wow. I find it amazing anybody lives through it once.

__________________
In your rush to call everyone "entrenched" or closed-minded or "limited" you fail to note that the "limit" here has a very natural boundary: that point at which the evidence stops. - JayUtah

Science fiction was never meant to be an educational tool. - Editor Amazing Tales

I would endorse....

--Advanced Propulsion Concepts
--Environmentally Friendly Energy
--Vastly Increased Private Space Presence
--Build my OWN Private spacecraft and space station!!!
--Medical Research
--Exo planet research
--Legalizing prostitiution, gambling, and marijuana.

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Angel of the Abyss
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"I am Ripper...Tearer...Slasher...Gouger. I am the Teeth in the Darkness, the Talons in the Night. Mine is Strength...and Lust...and Power! I AM BEOWULF!"

No, but my dad had it in New Guinea. Apparently it's not very nice, but at least his wasn't as bad as it could have been. He had access to medical treatment.

Sounds great, but a month after that inflation would be > 1000%

I think it would be a real challenge to spent that amount without wreaking havoc on the world economy.

And the best thing about this low-tech approach is that it doesn't attempt to eliminate the mosquitoes, but to break the cycle of infection. There is a community effect if enough people are using the bed nets:

"Also in 2003, the last of the five big clinical trials of ITNs in Africa provided the firmest evidence yet of the so-called community effect, akin to the herd effect provided by vaccines. People in nearby control villages who weren't sleeping under nets experienced a substantial drop in malaria mortality as well. That's because ITNs, which in the trial were targeted to the entire household and not just vulnerable groups, were reducing the vector population and thus the chances a person would encounter an infected mosquito."

From a news article, (Science 26 October 2007:Vol. 318. no. 5850, pp. 556 - 559)

Really great to be hearing positive news on this topic, but there are still many bed nets to deliver.

I'd blow it all on wiener-dog racing and building a trebuchet big enough to throw a Yugo into orbit.

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The views expressed are the febrile product of an overactive imagination of a person who in shadows sees the gyrating Elvis-like ghost of Leonid Brezhnev.

The OP said real wealth. If the ships just turned up stuffed with 65 trillion dollars worth of 50 dollar bills, that would not be very helpful.

That might not make it easier.

If you suppose some kind of tradable wealth,
there would be huge and sudden capital inflows,
with pretty wild effects on the economy,
both macro and micro.

The Netherlands had this problem (on a very different scale, of course),
when they discovered their North Sea gas fields.
Alberta is starting to have some of these problems now.
(also on a very much smaller and manageable scale)

Just saying that such a vast amount of wealth would create a whole bunch of problems, too.

I did mention there would be a period of adjustment. But the problems of adjustment seem minor to eliminateing poverty, preventable disease, stabilizing climate change and so on. Winning the lottery causes problems, but they are problems that most people are willing to put up with.

I would create a cloned army of jackbooted supersoldiers to conquer the world, and my cruel oppressive regime would become a myth of pure evil after humanity crawled out of the dark age my actions caused.

Not really what I would call an good end, but I do think that I would succumb to the old 'power corrupts' bit. $65 trillion would be alot of power.

sorry about the realism check everybody

Yeah, but then you have to have an army of surrogate mothers, and then an army of caregivers for 18 years to raise them.

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"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
"The Mayan symbol for "book" looks a lot like a triple hamburger, but I've never seen them claiming it as proof the Mayans had Big Macs." - KaiYeves
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort