How would you spend $10M altruistically?

[nitsuj]

You could endow one or two university professorships. Or a few hundred grad school fellowships. But $10M is a drop in the bucket - less than 0.02% of US annual nondefense R&D.

Small world I suppose

 

[nitsuj]

Perhaps I should clarify. When people talk about giving altruistically, most of the ideas discussed involved some form of charity donation (like the example you gave of a $2 cholera vaccine). As someone who works within the health care field as a biostatistician, I am well aware of how vaccines can save lives, and I fully acknowledge that saving lives have "real world impact".

My point (such as it is), is my belief in how such vaccines (or any other discovery) is made. My interest is in basic science, which is the bedrock of all other scientific and technological developments, including those that could directly benefit all of humanity. The primary source of funding for basic science comes primarily from governments -- and many governments across the world have been under pressure to reduce such funding as part of overall fiscal pressures on to keep control of their budget, or have cut them to fulfill a political agenda (most recent example, the tax bill that has passed the US Senate).

To me, if I had somehow won a large amount of money, say, through a lottery, I would want to create or fund an alternative source for basic scientific research that is accessible to all scientists. But $10 million is simply not enough to do so (as @Vanadium 50 has already indicated here on this thread). An order of magnitude of $10 billion might be more meaningful.

Odd that to be an altruistic action you'd need to abstain from it's benefits lol

 

[kyphysics]

Just $10M?

Man . . . I was hoping for more! So much good needs to be done that requires money that it's hard to know where to even begin.

I'd say, for me, a few areas of passion are:

1.) Getting money out of politics in the U.S.A.
2.) Climate change
3.) Child hunger and nutrition

I'd maybe do a 33.33333% split amongst those three causes. But that'd mean only $3.3 million for each cause, which feels like not much at all to even create a dent into the problem.

I wish you'd given us an imaginary $1B to work with!

 

[Stephen Tashi]

I'd consider founding and funding some non-profit organizations to do various useful things - basic research in the phenomena of addiction, an online site to provide clear documentation of repair procedures for cars and appliances.