The What If? blog examines the question of what it would really be like to have "all the money in the world" in a literal sense, rather than in the sense of all the world's cash being available on my debit card to use as I see fit (Firefly returns to TV, Elizabeth Warren and Bill O'Reilly have to get real jobs, NASA sells all of its equipment to somebody who wants to use it, every stupid zombie show is canceled, Donald Trump is removed to a location without any means of communicating with the outside world save postcards...).
The actual result, it seems, would be that the pile of coins making up most of the world's money (a significant portion of which would be United States pennies) would be unstable and collapse, with the resulting tsunami of Lincoln profiles deep enough and fast enough to bury and kill you.
I believe this would be considered an adverse outcome.
Also, if one person LITERALLY had ALL the money in the world, would that not, by definition, mean no one else had any? Therefore, production of things like food and even purification of water would grind to a halt, unless the person with all the money chose to donate some (in advance of their actually buying the product)? In other words, ultimately, death for all, including the one with all the money?
ReplyDeleteOr am I being too literal-minded about this?
Not sure -- if I had it, and someone had something I wanted, then I would begin spending it. If I had and wanted to keep all the money in the world, then I suspect the most likely scenario is that everyone else would develop a substitute and make my money worthless.
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