In the Tuesday Open Thread, BaldwinP started a conversation about a South by Southwest publicity stunt, where homeless people were hired to wear a t-shirt proclaiming “I’m a wireless hotspot!” The participants were paid $20 a day, plus they kept all monies paid by wireless hotspot users.
Predictably, Crasstalkers had opinions about this event. Although the operation seemed beneficent on the surface, some commenters opined that the setup ended up dehumanizing the homeless people who participated.
The purpose of today’s question is not to rehash that argument, but instead to harness your imagination, dear reader. Assume a perfect world (ha) and also assume you’ve won a large cash prize in the lottery of your choosing. Let’s say your take home prize is two hundred fifty million US dollars. After buying one of J-Lo’s old Miami mansions, getting some plastic surgery, buying new clothes, some cars, doing some traveling, you’ve knocked that sum down to two hundred thousand million dollars.
Quite the lump of cash, no?
Let’s say you set aside fifty million dollars to pay for your living expenses for the rest of your natural life. Now you’ve got one hundred fifty million dollars just sitting there, and a charitable impulse hits you. What do you do?
Would you buy all the houses in one of those Arizona ghost towns and create a place where anyone who needs a home can have one? Would you open up a chain of women’s shelters? Would you hire a thousand workers to rebuild Haiti? The possibilities are yours, just dream them up and put them in the comments.
