ACTUAL SERIOUS QUESTION: what should a friend of mine do with several million dollars?

I'd keep a million or so and live a simple life.

not coincidentally, I know the perfect website already and we have a plan. and it wouldn't take more than a tiny fraction of his "millions," either.

g--ff, email me at expresso2222@gmail.com

If I had several million dollars, I know exactly what I would do with it but it wouldn't help your friend so I will not share. I think he should go on holiday and then invest the rest.

come to los angeles and take me to a bunch of laker games.

If you're balking at the idea of recommending he throw a bunch of money at someone he's never heard sing, he now has enough money to fly to Boston and check out one of my wife's shows. Or he could make a donation to an artistic group, or create a spot for an up-and-coming singer at some opera house.

A program set up with the Auburn U. architecture school, students live and work in Hale County, Alabama (cf. Walker Evans and James Agee's _Let Us Now Praise Famous Men_, one of the poorest counties in America) designing and building sustainable, low-cost architecture for people. Houses, community centers, chapels, baseball parks. A smallish donation (given the context you're talking about) could do some incredible things in Hale County.

Most of all, I'd beg him not to give it to Moveon or any type of Soros-esque political activity. That has its place, but a much greater good can be done helping people in need. College scholarships for at-risk/low-income teens, every night shelter on Earth could use more funding, helping fund music and arts education in nearby urban communities, etc.

For example, there is a lot of physical suffering in the third world that could be alleviated with a million dollars' worth of vaccinations or clean water. But he needs to think through whether the 'real' root of that suffering is overpopulation, undereducation, undercapitalization, environmental degradation or something else. The trick is to find the fulcrum point where his money can exert the most leverage.

But if he just wants to give away money and feel good, that's ridiculously easy.

I'm fairly convinced that an effective media is essential to a healthy democracy-- which is essential to a healthy society. Without a media that actually investigates and educates, democracy is for shit. It's amazing what people don't know.

Here, we just started up an LPFM community radio station. It's all volunteer run and dedicated to giving voice to those ideas and sounds not usually heard, to creating healthy dialogue, to educate and entertain, and to get people involved in the process of their own media.

I just imagine what could be done with a few well placed radio stations. Air America is one thing, but there's so many other good opportunities out there.

But, really, what does he feel are the most pressing issues. What are the leverage points? How would/could his money help? Money is handy, but disappears far to easily. What application really presses for fundamental change?

Okay, seriously, I agree more or less with what aimless said. Your friend should decide what he wants to do and why without thinking of what he "ought" to do or anything else. Donating to a charity or setting up an organization is probably not the most efficient way of doing it, whatever it is, though.

There are limits to this approach though. If he wants to use it to set up an amorphous international network of terrorist cells, say, I'd rein him in.

Of course now I am grown up and I can't even afford to buy a lot for a tiny house in the ghettos where I rent/teach. :(

(obv. I say put it towards education, by very specific measures.)

http://www.tjpappasschool.org/donations.html