Earlier today, Sean Parker, the founder of Napster and one of Facebook’s earliest partners, as well as a partner in Spotify, tweeted “You guys are really attacking me for being the 1%? I was broke and couch surfing just a few years ago. […] I have a whole new set of problems to deal with now: security, extortion attempts, kidnapping threats, death threats, etc. Life better b4?”
Mr. Parker is worth somewhere in the neighborhood of $2.1 billion. That got me thinking: why can’t we help relieve this nation’s billionaires of the terrible burden of their wealth, while helping ordinary Americans make their dreams come true?
See, for as wealthy as Mr. Parker may be, he’s nowhere even close to as wealthy as the wealthiest people in America. I figured I’d shoot straight for the top, and go after the billionaire tech titans. Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Sergei Brin, Larry Page, Michael Dell, and Steve Ballmer. Combined net worth: $190.9 Billion. Now, let’s knock off a billion dollars each and give it back to our generous benefactors, so they have enough to feed their families and whatnot. That leaves us with $182.9 Billion to do something with.
My proposal is this: let’s take that $182.9 billion and divvy it up into 18.29 million $10,000 chunks. Now, let’s invite all 300 million Americans to apply for one of those $10,000 chunks. The best 18.29 million ideas or reasons for getting $10,000 just handed to you get the money. To borrow from Seinfeld, we’ll call it “The Human Fund”, and the slogan will be “Money for people.”
To borrow from Justin Timberlake’s Sean Parker in The Social Network; you know what’s cool? A billion dollars. You know what’s even cooler? Giving away a billion dollars to help a hundred thousand perfect strangers because you can.
So, what would your Human Fund Grant be for?
