Ask HN: How would I send 1 dollar to everyone on Earth?
Let's assume that:
* I am a billionaire with 8 billion dollars on my bank account
* There are 8 billion humans on Earth
* Around 6 billion of those humans have a bank account
* I would like to send 1 dollar to every human on Earth
Some challenges that I believe I'd face:
1. Getting the bank account numbers of the people who already have a bank account
2. Getting 1 dollar to people who don't have a bank account
3. Verifying that I'm not sending 1 dollar to the same person several times
4. Building or finding some kind of service that makes sure I don't have to do 8 billion manual transfers
5. Making sure I don't break any international laws in the process
6. How do we handle children?
1. Create a website where I promise to send money if you send me your bank account -- doesn't sound shady at all.
2. Use the same website to also allow people to send their address instead of a bank account number, and then simply send 1 dollar through regular mail? How would postal services in poor or corrupt countries deal with this, once they know there are millions of dollars being sent through the mail?
3. No idea.
4. Would a simple script that iterates over 8 billion rows and sends Stripe commands do the trick?
5. Am I allowed to send money to North Korea? What happens if I send money to a known terrorist? No idea.
6. No idea.
105 comments
[ 4.3 ms ] story [ 185 ms ] threadOr, if you want to distribute it as regressive as possible: burn all your money. This will lower inflation and people will benefit in proportion to their spending.
It may not be as regressive as it appears at first blush: the impoverished hold cash as a greater proportion of their net worth than many of the wealthy.
Make a disposable $8,000,000,000.
(maybe you can even do that cheaper than 8b.)
Strange for an American perhaps, not for an European, i give and receive payments to my bank account routinely thanks to my IBAN; and it's safe.
p.s.: can you send money?
Reducing 8 billion problems to 195 problems.
Additionally, some further improvements are possible. Eg. Redirecting to the EU, instead of associated countries.
Either way, some of that money will always end with different people ( banks or persons).
25% overhead fee would be the extreme minimum due to the small amount per person.
There probably isn't a systematic way to get a dollar to everyone on earth. A mechanism which which works in the US won't necessarily work in India, Western Sahara, or the Netherlands. The best way to find a mechanism suited to local conditions is to get people with local knowledge to select it.
I'd be interested to see the proposal for North Sentinel Island.
Send an physical envelope with 1$ for every address in the countries that are not banned in your jurisdiction, assuming x people per household.
Not everybody has an address, and other errors (how many people per address, cost of postage) but I think this would have less errors, would be cheaper and less prone to abuse than any alternative I can imagine.
Another option is providing the value for that money to everybody by doing something with it, and saving in all the logistics.
One last option, that requires government cooperation. Give 1$ to everybody after they vote.
Note that it was months ago, now it's probably even worse with all scams being exposed and general downturn of the pyramid schemes.
If you are willing to miss some people this is likely the best solution possible. Establish a very large NGO with offices in every country in the world. You'll need enough people to cover the entire planet at the same time - and then setup desks where everyone can come in, get their dollar, and get their left hand stamped with an ink that cannot be washed off in less than a day. This is what countries do to prevent duplicate votes.
And this won't get everyone, but it should prevent most duplications.
This reminded me of what the non profit Stellar Development Foundation (SDF) is trying to do with Anchors around the world.
https://stellar.org/blog/stellar-anchor-basics-webinar-recap
You'd also run into the opposite problem in some countries like the US; I don't know if I could be arsed to walk down the block for a dollar. Maybe if it was a cool limited-edition dollar coin or something.
https://www.dvidshub.net/image/3237/elections-iraqi-man-prou...
I think the lowest overhead way would be to set up a couple thousand booths around the world simultaneously where people could come to get their dollar in exchange for staining their fingers with “election ink”. Would make it pretty difficult though not impossible to double dip.
Edit0: Also, I just realised, many poor people do not have means to exchange dollar into their local currency. So sending them 1 dollar through post is going to be a waste.
Edit1: Most countries will not allow this due to hawala which creates black money.
Even if you had $30 billion, and your goal was to guarantee the distribution of only $1 to everyone, it still wouldnt occur with all the excess.
When you factor in corruption, fraud, inadequate infrastructure, and vague defining of the parameters.
Just think of the edge cases to understand why this couldnt be achieved:
1. A subset of the population will ACTIVELY reject your attempt to give them $1, as they will consider it spam, anti-god, conspiracy or one of hundreds of other reasons (look at recent world events to see that there is always a % of the pop on the other side)
2. A subset of the population will ACTIVELY attempt to fraud you for extra money. Claim multiple times, or claim on behalf of other people (their dead grandmother)
3. A subset of the population will ACTIVELY use corruption for extra money. Consider state actors such as North Korera, or third world countries with poor controls
I could go on - but those 3 reasons alone are enough edge cases to start with.
(Or getting a buck into the hands of every Sentinelese)
I mean, that's probably fairly easy but whoever does it better be really committed to this project.
For example, North Korea. The government would insist on running the distribution itself, and because they are always in dire need of foreign cash, most or all of it would be diverted to some other purpose.
How can I get 1 dollar to as many people as possible, while spending the least amount of money on transactional costs or fighting fraud/corruption?
I think all of the edge cases you named above can be dealt with given this new requirement. Some fraud and corruption will happen for sure, just like with any financial transaction anywhere in the world. I would say that fighting fraud/corruption is only worth it, if the cost of fighting it is less than what you'd lose to it if left unchecked. A dead grandma will be too expensive to disprove, but someone making thousands of fake personas must be detectable somehow, such as re-using the same bank account or adress a thousand times.
So by sending money to everyone in the world you would create problems for a huge population of immigrant workers.
Also once you achieve your goal, global chaos will ensue.