Today we will discuss a long-standing question that has troubled the great armchair philosophers of the internet for years.
Would you rather have 30 million dollars, or 30 million loyal friends?
Let me start by saying that this question is incredibly dumb. Research has indicated that most individuals can sustain around 150 friendships. The magnitude of “30 million loyal friends” compared to 150 is so vast that it becomes abstract and meaningless.
As a result, there is no 'correct' way to interpret this question. This leads to individuals interpreting this question in various ways, leading to significant disagreements. Making this question --aside from stupid-- also ideal for sparking vicious debates on Reddit and various other forums.
That being said, while there may not be a right answer, there definitely are wrong answers.
Let's examine this commonly given response:
I just ask each of my friends to give me $2. Boom, 60 million dollars.
In essence, this statement implies that a friend is more valuable than a dollar because it can provide greater financial value, implying that friends are only valuable for monetary gain. But despite the evident moral issues, I believe this approach is valid.
To illustrate this, let's consider this unrelated dilemma.
Imagine you had the magic power to turn oranges into apple, at the price of two oranges for each apple. Given that, would you rather receive six apples or a thousand oranges?
Oranges are significantly more delicious than apples (yes, this is a fact and not open for discussion). So one might argue that the oranges, because it is the way more enjoyable fruit, are intrinsically more valuable. The apples will go to waste, but the oranges will bring me happiness. But this doesn't change the fact that we are comparing apples with oranges.
Despite the vastly intrinsic value difference between apples and oranges in this example (and in general), if we pick the option with a thousand oranges, we can turn this into five hundred apples. This is more than the six apples we would have obtained by choosing the alternative. Thus, choosing a thousand oranges is the superior choice, even when I have no intention of converting them into apples. Irrespective of personal fruit preferences, this method of comparison works. If you like oranges, you keep the oranges. If you like apples, you convert them to apples. Choosing the oranges is better irregardless.
In the same vein, the validity of "ask every friend for $2" remains the same, regardless of the importance placed on friends or money. It doesn't say that money is better than friends. It just says that, no matter if you care about friends or money, the second option will always provide you with more of what you want.
Many people oppose this argument by presenting the following counterargument.
Imagine I had to call every person to ask them for $2. Even if each phonecall only took a second, this would cost me over a year of non-stop calling people.
The first thing I want to know is whether this person is aware of the existence of a group chat. It's 2020. If I invite 20 people to a party, I won't make individual phone calls to each of them. Why the hell would I call 30 million people one by one?
However, this argument is a manifestation of a more profound problem with this dilemma. To make this point clearer, let's focus on the money aspect.
If I had only $0.98, I would likely have it as a collection of coins. If I had an additional $100, coins would weigh more, prompting me to exchange them for banknotes. It's even more difficult to keep $10,000 in cash; it's better to deposit it into a bank account. And if you have millions of dollars, you don't put it in a back account, you put it in an investment portfolio.
When this issue is debated, no one assumes the 30 million dollars will be provided as 30 thousand wheelbarrows packed with pennies. The assumption is that it will be deposited into your bank account. And they ignore all the problems there too. If your account suddenly receives 30 million dollars, the bank will likely suspect it as an error or an act of malice, resulting in either a reversal of the transaction or the freezing of your account. But we don't talk about these issues. We assume the money is provided to us in a convenient way.
We can make the same argument for the friends. If you only have two friends, you can call them directly. If you have over 50, you probably have all of them in one or more group chats. It's impossible to have many more friends than that, as previously mentioned, but individuals with parasocial relationships may have thousands of followers on their preferred social media platform.
Yet somehow we assume that the friends will be delivered to us in an inconvenient way.
This is the crux of the issue. For some reason, this answer is considered valid:
I'll just take the money, I'll don't have time to maintain millions of friendships.
However, this answer is not perceived in that manner:
I simply don't have the time to organize a warehouse filled with wheelbarrows of pennies. I'll choose the YouTube channel that has amassed thirty million followers.
Even tho the latter makes the same amount of stupid assumptions, just in the other direction.
The reason for this double standard is obvious. People can easily make outrageous assumptions about having 30 million friends because it's not something that can happen in real life. Having to call them one by one seems like a reasonable assumption. But the moment we make those same assumptions about having 30 million dollars, people do notice. Nobody expects the money to be delivered in truckloads of coins. This allows people to sneak in unreasonable downsides without anyone noticing, making it easier to argue in favour of money.
TLDR: friends are better than money, and anyone who claims otherwise is arguing in bad faith.
