Disney buys LucasFilm and all anybody can talk about is what will happen with the Star Wars franchise, as though there's anywhere it can go but up.*
Rather more interesting:** George Lucas owned LucasFilm outright. So he now has $4.05 billion burning a hole in his pocket. Forbes put him at $3.3 billion as of September 2012; I guess that goes up a bit now. What do you do if you suddenly have $4.05 billion in liquid assets instead of owning a company valued in the billions?
Forbes notes he recently gave $33k to Obama's victory fund; I'm guessing political contributions aren't high on his agenda. He also gave $175m to U Southern California in 2006. So we might expect a bit of action in the education philanthropy space.
I've no clue what Lucas will do with his now more liquid portfolio. But I know what I'd do: Take half of it and make a big bet on Seasteading. I'd reconcile myself to being really likely to lose the money; that isn't the point. But imagine taking $2 billion, building a half dozen Seastead hubs, getting open-source plans up for anybody else who wanted to do the same, and then sell barge-houses that could dock modularly to any of the hubs. The Seasteading Institute figures it would cost just a bit over $110m to build a Seastead. Double that and you still have change left over for building a half dozen. Worst-case, you only have $2 billion to play with afterwards. Best case, you've entrenched a model that can revolutionise governance.
Not having $4.05 billion, I'll stick to my Octopus-level support.
* Seriously, watch the RedLetterMedia critiques. Anakin gets a cryptic warning that Padme will die in childbirth, and instead of taking her to a med droid for a check-up, he joins Palpatine and kills all the younglings? I swear the script had a section [Fill in reason for joining Dark Side here] and they just left it blank 'till 5 minutes before filming.
** Another fun thought-experiment: do we in 2072 get a 1977 copyright fixed point for Steamboat Wookie?
