Thoughts XX - big money

 

Big money. Want to get rich?  Invent a biodegradable ink.  With such chemistry, errant youths could have all the tattoos they desire, and not suffer their whole lives with visible proof of temporary insanity.

Bigger money.  You see Facebook ,Twitter, Instagram, and the like as social apps.   It seems that modernity has an unlimited appetite for such apps.  These transcend the now ancient letter, morning coffee, and telephone conversation by miles, even light years.  Create a new such app.  Easy to say, difficult to do,but the rewards are extravagant. 

Really big money. We know the national debt (in 2015) is about 19 trillion dollars.  A lot of money this is.  But what does it mean?  We are crossing scales or orders of magnitude, and this is difficult for almost all people.  Suppose I said that a lifetime is about two billion seconds. (Actually, 2.2 billion seconds.) This is a magnitude of such a value to make it incomprehensible by any measure.  But when I say a life is about 70 years, this we understand well – too well for some of us.  Yet, in terms of dollars the national debt spans four orders of magnitude more. Spanning scales is not easy. The brain doesn't do well, but we try to bring such magnitudes within the scope of understanding.  Case-in-point?  Money and the national debt.  What can be purchased with the $19T?  Tough? Yes.  Let’s go easier and ask what can be purchased with just a measly $1T.   This has been the subject of many articles and examples.  Here are some others.

 With one trillion dollars, I could cover the costs of everything I have dreamed of for myself, my family and my friends and additionally

• Funding the costs of educating all American K-12 students for one year.
• A cash award of $3,400 for everyone in the USA.
• The US government discretionary spending for one year.
• Funding the interest on the US national debt for four years.
• Funding US Social Security for about one year.
• Purchasing  a new $100K home for about 10 million people, or a $250,000 home for every single person in the greater Houston area.
• Purchasing about 2.5 million “fully equipped” Roll Royce’s  or about 22 million “loaded” Ford Expeditions.
• Everything sold by Wal-Mart for two years.

Philosophy.  On a philosophical note, it is orders of magnitude that makes the heap paradox so very interesting. We have examined above the nature of understanding the national debt as a dollar-by-dollar event, but could not.  Here's another simple example:  We want to measure in seconds when a person becomes old. We agree that everyone at the age of 80 (or 2.5 billion seconds), is old. Others may consider 60 or 70 years as old. Now at the age of one second, you are not old, and so for two seconds, and three seconds, four seconds, and so on.  Continue this question second-by-second until "old age" is reached. You cannot give an consensus answer.  Partly, this is because the term "old" is vague.  That is, when you examine a vague term such as "old," and use precise mico-terms such as seconds to describe it, the brain breaks down.  It will not suffer such considerations.

In the same way, understanding the national debt, by the dollar, is virtually impossible.