Ask Lemmy

I would do so those things we said we would do as children i.e feed people. But, also go after all these fools destroying our world.

I'd quit my job and pursue my interests and happiness. I'd give back to the community in meaningful ways, like distributing food and clothing. I like helping people.

Increase the infrastructure and speed of public railways in the US. Trains needs to be atleast (1/3) as fast as airliners.

Bring back public broadcasting on both a federal and state/city level.

Fund the aggressive development of walkable greenspace, boost public transit and put measures in place to keep it un-gentrified.

Set up a public fund for trans folks of all ages to get appropriate gender-affirming care (medical, clothing, etc) and cover legal fees.

Make sure no kid ever has to pay for a decent school meal ever again.

And once those and any other QoL ideas I get are done; game and bake like nobody’s business lol. And set up a full blown home lab, and pick up VR again.

Fuck it I deserve to treat myself to a few congresspeople and media companies

Hire product designers and artists to go to every high school art classroom and ask kids "If you could invent anything in the world, what would it be?" and then draw it for them. So they can get a taste of that feeling that they too have something to contribute to the world. Put the ideas up on a site like kickstarter, with the profits going towards their college education. Nvm, fuck that. I'd pay for college for everybody.

I'd also travel while I could before the planet gets much hotter.

I feel like these are small goals left over from when I was younger bc I can't properly conceive of what a world without scarcity for me and everyone else looks like. I'd start with the housing problem though, bc that's what I'm facing rn.

Large scale: create or take over companies and make them align with my values (good employment conditions & good products basically). Then delegate that work.
I would try to earn money so i dont have to care about my investor/s and ensure i dont crash the economy too much.
After taking enough economy control pressure politics and other firms to follow my values.

Low scale: currently i hyperfocus on custom keyboards (absolute noob btw) and thought about creating my own with sliders on the side and knobs and F keys that go beyond 12 and more fancy things

I feel like a lot of people are missing the “with your life” part of this. While I’m sure I’d love to magically fix the world’s problems, to answer the actual question:

I’ve always pictured a house built into the side of a cliff face that’s right next to a road. The rock pulls away to reveal the garage whenever I’m nearby. I’d have just a few rooms, nothing too crazy. I’ve always loved the idea of an underground house. I’d also have a decent-sized workshop/garage for the many projects I’m always working on.

I’d also try starting my own business for the first time and I’d be curious to see how my skillset applies. I can’t bring myself to do it in today’s current situation.

That and a Lamborghini. Because why the hell not? That’s what fantasy is for.

All this comes with the disclaimer that I don’t have any kids.

Open source hardware. Like, fully working enterprise grade that also scales down to Chromebook-budget.

I'd start an international big-ass lobby bureau for education, consummer's rights and environment protection.

If I must be selfish: Really really big telescopes/particle colliders and space exploration both sound very nice.

Beat the world record for most inflated currency. And femboy hooters

I will fund biology/gene manipulation until I can become a dog. Woof.

Draw all the things instead of worrying about shit. Make my city's public transport free, y'know, like the Waynes did. Lobby to ban cars from the inner city. Donate a bunch to whoever has the power to shrink the waiting list for autism assessment to a few weeks at most. Also donate a bunch to research on ME/CFS and lipoedema (volunteer as tribute). Donate to research in general.

Well if the money is in paper currency I would burn it to boil water to spin a turbine to generate infinite electricity.

I would do so those things we said we would do as children i.e feed people. But, also go after all these fools destroying our world.

Obviously all the usual stuff like solving hunger, curing disease, ending inequality, fixing climate crisis, etc.

But if we're talking about something just for me... DJing.

Having the time and space to practice mixing vinyl, plus the resources to buy all the records, and better quality equipment.

Having the freedom to do it as a hobby without the pressure of it ever being a job.

Also, I'd buy my football ⚽ team, and run them the way I think they should be run.

Reinvent academia and make quality learning accessible to all at all times with free infrastructure. Not only it would be the most fun challenge to solve but it also would keep me occupied for years. Also probably L the biggest positive impact one person could have.

Some real good suggestions.

Im going to add

• space elevator
• space hooks around the solar system
• Dyson sphere

Look for a cure for Alzheimer’s/dementia. Once it’s found give the directions to make the cure away to the world for free.

To find it I’d just keep hiring researchers to look for the cure. A world wide research project.

Pursue a career in culinary, burn myself out in commercial kitchens, then become a home cook and cook for family and friends holding BBQ and potluck block parties every week.

I realize during covid that I wasnt feeling fulfilled with my office job, and did odd jobs in between. One of it was helping a mutual friend's small eatery as a cook. And felt fulfilled in he short 3 months I worked there before they were forced to shut down because of continuing lock down and a flood, than the up to that point 7 years of office work.

I don't have savings to just cut off not working, took too many debt and got scammed out of a simple fraud credit card spending scam call. And my mental health was spiraling down to suicide ideation. Silver lining at that office was that we were contracted with a hospital to set up a mental health triage system so I got help from there. Bad thing was 2 years ago that team just left the company wholesale and even advised me not to go anywhere. Now I feel trapped that the meager amounts of searching for other work, not knowing how to whore myself out to companies for better pay because idk what the fuck I've done to whore out, just to fight inflation as the world is going to hell in a hand basket.

I'm a gullible motherfucker 🥹

you have infinite dollars

Spend infinite dollars in a short time until the dollar is worthless.

Then, live a simple life somewhere in the Mediterranean.

Run a dog sanctuary, just me and a big piece of land with tons of dogs. Animals are better than people, give unconditional love, and don't drain my batteries like other people do

Probably some FOSS projects. There's a few things bugging me and I have a custom DSL/programming language idea I've been dreaming about for the last ~2-3 years that's like if Ansible, Terraform, Kubernetes and Nix had a baby together. It's 2025, how come is it that I can't just "one Lemmy instance at lemmy.max-p.me please" and get a worldwide multi-cloud multi-million user capacity instance in 10 minutes.

Next on my list would be a filesystem, because for some reason I find myself wanting something that's LVM, ZFS, Ceph and PostgreSQL all in one. It's 2025, how come I can't just be "here's all my drives, and the drives on my NAS, and the drives on my remote server, figure out some nice unified filesystem for all of this shit".

I’d love to pursue iOS development.

Yeah the other commentors have a point, but after all the lord's work is said and done, I'm fucking making video games and nobody can stop me.

I would move to the moon so my back pain doesn't bother me as much.

Gather a group of people, including seasoned mechanics, manufacturing workers, sales people, and engineers of different types. Go full r&d to come up with meaningful solutions to transportation, then build them.

I want to build garbage burning power plants in the US like in Scandinavia. It would remove methane emissions from landfills and you can do some carbon capture with scrubbers on the plants as they operate. Also, your fuel is free and the garbage companies can even charge less as they don’t have to maintain a landfill.

Mmm...

First thought, and admittedly half baked and very Neil Breen-ish but I just wanted to play along: maybe go semi-Ozymandias and invest in the largest PMC ever, having even aircraft carriers and ICBMs, backed by technological giants like Microsoft and Space X, but chip them all with some sort of kill switch (that immediately explodes if you try taking it out), and slowly but surely destroy Western/imperialistic military forces around the world, starting with their involvement in the global South. They'd be extremely well compensated, so the mercenaries from opposing militaries would join too. Eventually, take this force to the mainland and, after giving them a period of grace for them to come clean and accept their incarceration/fines willingly, take out all the bankers, corrupt politicians, immoral heads of businesses and shareholders, etc etc (including, of course, Microsoft and SpaceX, lol). The police force, stupid defenders of our slavers, would also be given a warning and asked to stay home or join, before getting rolled over by the chipped PMC. After the military forces of the enemies of humanity are depleted, and the people once again feel like they have their destinies in their hands, establish a new era of unironic God-fearing commie love and peace, without the moral relativism, consumerism and hedonism of yesterday. And, foundationally for these new societies, abolish interest. Finally, move this PMC to some remote island and establish a community there (PTSD is a bitch and I don't want veterans going "First Blood" everywhere), one that is materially comfortable and allows them to have some semblance of normality after shedding so much blood (necessary, but still traumatizing).

Second idea: buy all media and news companies and change their entire modus operandi by reporting only facts, with narratives based on morality, and flood minds with the right ideas (Solomonic post-nihilism [seriously, read Ecclesiastes], Jesus' love for others instead of self, Qur'anic verses, but also the forgotten Western wisdoms like Socratic and Humian epistemology, Kantian morality, Wittgenstein... to ease those who have been hurt/disappointed by organized religion and are beasts of propaganda and entertainment into good thoughts [you can't just go 0-100 the same way an alcoholic cannot go from a daily bottle of vodka to nothing]).

I think my second idea is better but I feel I'd just get taken out before making any major change, lol.

Producing Broadway shows. The whole process of workshopping a theatrical production just seems like such an interesting - and communal - art form.

Pay off the debts of all countries in the world thus ushering in an era of peace and co-operation. Also, cocaine and hookers.

I have a multi-point plan to eliminate homelessness but it would take a few billion to get it going.

1. Establish and fully staff a medical facility, including psychiatric and addiction treatment, including facilities for long term/permanent care where necessary.

2. Establish and fully staff a facility for job seekers, including full skill training, resume assistance, interview assistance, transportation, wardrobe/cleaning, address/mailbox, identification, email/phone access, etc.

#2 also needs specialized staff on hand for those with criminal records.

3. Establish and fully staff a facility for housing assistance, applications, deposit assistance, food assistance, etc. As with #2, there needs to be specialized staff for those with criminal records.

4. Funding for public defenders, courts, and prisons. This is actually a huge problem right now, a lack of public defenders for people who cannot afford representation.

https://www.uscourts.gov/data-news/judiciary-news/2025/07/15/funding-crisis-leaves-defense-lawyers-working-without-pay

Then you sweep the streets, collect everyone up and figure out where they go.

Medical treatment for those who need it, housing assistance for those employed but homeless, employment assistance for those fit to work but aren't, and the legal system for everyone with outstanding warrants or other criminal behavior.

Ideally you move someone from #1 to #2 to #3 and completely avoid #4.

For the minority who are fit, able, and homeless by choice, because "I AINT PART OF YOUR SYSTEM, MAAAAAN!" Offer them a place to live in return for cleaning up homeless camps and wilderness areas damaged by homeless camps.

https://portlandtribune.com/2021/02/03/regional-natural-areas-damaged-by-homeless-camping/

Mansions for the homeless. Horses and capes for everyone else. No dog left behind.