Since I don’t have $50/day type money, I would do these things if I had it:
Buy healthy food.
Buy exercise equipment, or a gym membership.
Put enough away until I could hire an accountant/start a business and/or nonprofit / etc, or at least hire people for the parts of my various projects I cannot handle alone or with too low charisma to amass an army of reliable volunteers.
Due to my disability, the amount of independence I have and the amount of money under my control are likely to correlate. I can’t know for sure without being rich, but money would let me travel more freely, hire people who know what they’re doing if ever I need assistance, pay Meta Med to point me toward the most likely cure, and in the meantime, buy all the accessibility gadgets I can’t currently afford/justify asking the government to pay for.
Healthcare! Life insurance! I’m still not completely convinced regarding cryonics, but it’s not like I could afford it even if I was.
Books. Books are orders of magnitude more expensive for me than you, but the same principal applies. I have a good decade worth of books I haven’t been able to read, and if I suddenly had the money to get them...
There’s probably useful training I could buy, I dunno. My communication and charisma need work. Purchasing power means I can shop until I succeed.
And that’s just the list I could make without stopping to draw breath (If I stuck to the identifiers rather than descriptions). I suspect I could come up with more, given a little effort. Even if I don’t move, my trailer could use some serious work, not to mention a security system.
While some of those are luxury type things, most of them are serious health / quality of life-related, and boons to rationality besides (good health and books and access to more people seem like they’d help on that front, at least).
Books. Books are orders of magnitude more expensive for me than you, but the same principal applies. I have a good decade worth of books I haven’t been able to read, and if I suddenly had the money to get them...
Assuming this is a money issue and not a time issue, your local public library can get you almost anything via interlibrary loan.
Assuming this is a money issue and not a time issue, your local public library can get you almost anything via interlibrary loan
And there is this thing called internet where you can get a lot for free—and in some jurisdictions and under certain conditions it is even perfectly legal.
The Amazon Kindle is very cheap ($70-$210 depending on the exact model and features you want; assuming you buy one every 2-5 years, it is a trivial expense for all but the most destitute).
Cheap low end tablets cost around €30. Their parameters and battery life suck, but for indoor reading they are acceptable. And as a bonus you can do more things with them (such as using tap-and-search dictionary if you are often reading in foreign languages).
Cheap e-book readers are a bit more expensive, from €40 up.But they weight less and their battery life is vastly superior.
Still, if your genre preferences are somewhat “traditional”, IMHO public library is the way to go.
Since I don’t have $50/day type money, I would do these things if I had it:
Buy healthy food.
Buy exercise equipment, or a gym membership.
Put enough away until I could hire an accountant/start a business and/or nonprofit / etc, or at least hire people for the parts of my various projects I cannot handle alone or with too low charisma to amass an army of reliable volunteers.
Due to my disability, the amount of independence I have and the amount of money under my control are likely to correlate. I can’t know for sure without being rich, but money would let me travel more freely, hire people who know what they’re doing if ever I need assistance, pay Meta Med to point me toward the most likely cure, and in the meantime, buy all the accessibility gadgets I can’t currently afford/justify asking the government to pay for.
Healthcare! Life insurance! I’m still not completely convinced regarding cryonics, but it’s not like I could afford it even if I was.
Books. Books are orders of magnitude more expensive for me than you, but the same principal applies. I have a good decade worth of books I haven’t been able to read, and if I suddenly had the money to get them...
There’s probably useful training I could buy, I dunno. My communication and charisma need work. Purchasing power means I can shop until I succeed.
And that’s just the list I could make without stopping to draw breath (If I stuck to the identifiers rather than descriptions). I suspect I could come up with more, given a little effort. Even if I don’t move, my trailer could use some serious work, not to mention a security system.
While some of those are luxury type things, most of them are serious health / quality of life-related, and boons to rationality besides (good health and books and access to more people seem like they’d help on that front, at least).
Assuming this is a money issue and not a time issue, your local public library can get you almost anything via interlibrary loan.
And there is this thing called internet where you can get a lot for free—and in some jurisdictions and under certain conditions it is even perfectly legal.
Reading a novel on a computer screen sucks.
The Amazon Kindle is very cheap ($70-$210 depending on the exact model and features you want; assuming you buy one every 2-5 years, it is a trivial expense for all but the most destitute).
Cheap low end tablets cost around €30. Their parameters and battery life suck, but for indoor reading they are acceptable. And as a bonus you can do more things with them (such as using tap-and-search dictionary if you are often reading in foreign languages).
Cheap e-book readers are a bit more expensive, from €40 up.But they weight less and their battery life is vastly superior.
Still, if your genre preferences are somewhat “traditional”, IMHO public library is the way to go.
My mileage strongly disagrees with yours.