Ask HN: What would you do if your income was taken care of?

50 points by samcgraw ↗ HN

81 comments

[ 6.7 ms ] story [ 202 ms ] thread
(comment deleted)
Besides two chicks at the same time?
For a few months: Relax, watch netflix, eat out alot, do a few holidays. Then after that do a Phd.

Are you offering?

Exactly what I'm doing right now. Money doesn't change anything.
My kids would have two full time parents.

Once they're at school or similar I'd likely return to school myself "just because." I cannot answer more fully without understanding what my income situation really looked like (e.g. how secure, static vs. inflation adjusted, etc).

I ski a lot and work very lightly on things that interest me. I would like to have kids as well.
I'd focus more on my music, fine art, and try to make a hand-drawn animated film.

I'd spend more time growing my own food, tending to the garden, and raising animals.

I do all of this in my spare time anyway, it'd be nice to dedicate more time to it though. Alas.

Computational biology, protein simulation specifically.
Yes! Protein folding could unlock huge areas of human progress
Finish my book. Change the world.
Play Starcraft for the rest of my life. Never do anything resembling work again.
I would spend more of my daytime outside in the sun. Also more impromptu travel. Those are probably my two least favorite things about having a day job: I’m inside for the best part of the day and I have to plan my travel far in advance around crowded and expensive holidays rather than taking random midweek trips when things are cheap and empty.

I’d probably keep programming, because some programming is fun. And I’d spend more time working at my theater even though they don’t pay me because I care about it in a way I will never care about my day job.

But also define “taken care of”. Currently I make more money than my parents combined yet I can still barely afford a one bedroom apartment in San Francisco. Any nationally reasonable level of universal basic income wouldn’t be nearly enough to get by with a comfortable life in the city. So maybe I would have to move? Not the worst thing in the world, but something to think about when people propose universal basic income, what’s the definition of universal?

love my girl, and travel with her for the rest of life
I have multiple projects I would like to do. Not sure it would be feasible to do them all at once, but if there was extra money (interpreting 'taken care of' loosely) suppose I could hire people to help me with some of them etc.

I have a lot of specific ideas for sustainable affordable housing, artificial muscles, AGI, a 3d programmable libretro frontend (already started), a skid-steer hotrod, and a new type of restaurant.

Right now the Bitcoin trading startup takes most of my time though.

Research and development on something likely to improve lives or benefit society. Non-profitable pharmaceuticals, renewable energy, environmental restoration etc.
Just enough? Work on mobile app gaming, mostly things people haven't touched. Converting TVTropes into a story generator. Gamifying productivity apps. Minimalizing popular PC games like X-Com, roguelikes and Transport Tycoon into something that can be comfortably played on mobile without squinting.

If I had more money, I'd love to do an accelerator to invest in marginal ideas. These dumb ideas that have no intention of going past $1M. The kind of things that regularly appear on Indie Hackers, like Ghost. They may not be growth oriented, they can have single founders, they can be done part time and more importantly, without an expensive team. No pressure to become a unicorn. I think it's an untapped market that also doesn't have to worry about competing with Silicon Valley.

That's a good idea! An accelerator for side-jobs or single-founder companies that aren't looking for more than a monthly salary and want to be their own bosses. They'll be getting an investment of a minimum yearly salary to just get by for 20% of their company. Nice.
I've been thinking along these exact lines lately too! Giving a boost to solopreneurs who can churn out 6-10 MVPs a year and then accelerating the projects that survive into a growth stage. Do you know of anyone already doing anything similar?
Travel and write more

Improve data literacy / education

Play music professionally, contribute to Ansible or Chef in the downtime.
I'd try to contribute to something like formal verification and denotational semantics. I don't believe everyone's software needs to be as terrible as it is, but I don't see much investment in working on the problem or openings without a graduate degree.

Also more Dwarf Fortress.

That's about to happen to me, I'm about to retire on a defined pension. I'll pick up some easy contract work to make an additional $10k a year to spend on travel. I'd like to develop some simple small businesses but I'd be wasting a lot of my time battling Australian Govt. red tape. There is an opportunity to set up co-working spaces in small regional towns and affordable quality aged-care facilities but, again, the Govt. regulatory overreach would not make it much fun.
Use the extra money to fund a scholarship