Why is a Japanese billionaire giving away thousands of dollars to random Twitter followers

It is known that the rich have their own quirks. Most often, wealthy people spend money on their loved ones or invest extra funds in charity. But there are exceptions. Billionaire Yusaku Maezawa, who is among the top 50 richest people in Japan, parts with money easily and very unusually - he gives them to strangers just like that.

It is difficult to call Mr. Maezawa a limited type, spreading money out of vanity. He collects art, buys tickets to the moon from Elon Musk, helps sick children and the homeless. But what if you still have so much money that no matter how much you spend, it doesn't get less.

Yusaku Maezawa decided to share his wealth with ordinary people and chose Twitter for this. On his account, a rich Japanese man published an appeal on January 1, 2020, in which he promises to give out 1 million yen (approximately 560 thousand rubles) a thousand randomly selected subscribers who will retweet his post. At the same time, the rich man does not name any additional conditions for receiving money.

The Japanese explained the meaning of his actions by saying that he wanted to conduct a kind of experiment. He is interested in how the lives of people who have received a relatively large amount of money by accident will change. The action announced by the billionaire on the first day of the new year is not the first. A year ago, Maezawa distributed 100 million yen to one hundred random followers.

Last year, the donor explained his actions by saying that he wanted to test how the theory of unconditional basic income works in practice. This idea is now being studied in many countries — it is believed that if people are given a certain amount that they have not earned, they become happier, more productive and healthier.

This important direction is designed to solve the problem of unemployment in the future, because sooner or later machines will be able to replace a person in many professions, which will cause millions of inhabitants of the planet to be idle. But experts consider the approach of the Japanese billionaire to be wrong, and his experiment to be devoid of the necessary purity.

The fact is that unconditional basic income implies regular disbursement of small amounts. People receive money on a certain day, as wages, and not one large sum that suddenly fell on their heads. It is well known that lottery winners all over the world behave equally impractical and end up parting with money very quickly. Many of them find themselves in an even more difficult financial situation than before the win.