Have you ever met a genie who wasn’t an asshole?
So was I. That’s why I chose “stuff” that would endanger the genie just as much as me.
Oh! That totally went over my head. I assumed the genie would be immune to that sort of thing. Now I see what you did there.
No, but I’ve never met one who was either.
You’re lucky, then. My experience wasn’t as pleasant as yours.
Helium. The world needs that stuff. He3 on sundays. And if the genie delivers it in a way I can not contain it, it will just drift up and away, no harm done.
And on wednesdays, 100 pounds of viable assorted pterosaurs eggs, and on thursdays 100 pounds of assorted living trilobites. Remember Jurassic Park? What could possibly go wrong?
It’s kind of no brainer unless you are incredibly greedy. Just do all your shopping balanced with water. Use the savings to buy big ticket or heavy items you might want. Having it delivered to my home is half the windfall as far as I’m concerned. The most important thing is to keep it on the down low. Altruism needs to be anonymous and limited to a rate that doesn’t bring attention to yourself.
I wouldn’t even try to hide my ability from the world. I’d start my own LLC and market my services to those who wanted to pay. You want 100 pounds of gold? Sure. You want some tritium? Okay. Saffron? That sounds delightful. When it comes to hazardous material, I’d work with the government to ensure I don’t sell anything to anyone who isn’t authorized to handle it.
Like many farmers, I might be in the business of not growing something. Maybe I’m paid $1,000,000 a year not to make gold, diamonds, or something else.
I think the key is not to get greedy. OP tells us “Today you could magic into existence 50 pounds of barbecued ribs and 50 pounds of potato salad.” So if all I want to do is create money for myself, I would do one pound of twenty-dollar bills once a month (or whatever period of time would build up a nice, healthy bank account without attracting unwanted attention) and then do air for the rest of it.
In Pornucopia by Piers Anthony there is a small engine of creation called “the Spire” that can constantly produce any substance you choose, forever. In the book it is found on a mountain of ice cream, which it had been set on the last time it was used. At the end of the book it was set to produce smegma. So if a genie gave me the ability to produce 100 pounds of something every day, I’m thinking: probably not smegma.
Printer’s ink cartridges
Since this genie is likely to be of the asshole variety, what happens if I get sick? Let’s say I end up on a ventilator in intensive care, or maybe in a severe delirium, for over 24 hours? Do I automatically die the next time the clock hits midnight?
I like that idea. I’d make it an open auction process, for the right to specify that 100 pounds of stuff each day, providing it’s totally legal for me to provide it. And if anybody wants to keep me from making something, they better outbid the one who wants me to make it anyway.
Geez people! Imagine what my local food bank could do if just once a week I deliver 100 pounds of canned goods, cereal, flour, cleaning items, etc., every week.
And that’s just Mondays. Tuesdays I could whip up 100 pounds of quarters. That’s right, quarters. Easy to use, easy to take to my bank and deposit, no questions asked. That’s about $2,500 for a weekly allowance.
Wednesdays is eBay day. No one ever seems to ask where new, in-box Star Wars collectibles come from.
Thursdays is for gasoline. 100 lbs of gasoline is roughly 16 gallons. A full tank of gas to drive to the food bank, UPS store to ship my eBay stuff, and bank to deposit my quarters.
Fridays is anything can happen day. Maybe I need more money this week, so I’ll get more quarters. Maybe I’m feeling prankish, so I’ll ask for 100 pounds of perfect reproductions of Rembrandt’s painting Night Watch and flood the art world with them. Maybe I’ll ask for a 100-pound dinosaur skeleton and bury it in my back yard, then dig it up and give it to a museum.
Please, folks, be a little more creative. Nobody wants 100 lbs. of californium.
How about if it is transported to the omelet bar at Mar-A-Lago?
Ponderoid already noted we only need 2.75 kg of the stuff. We don’t want to render all of Florida a dead zone for at least 2.645 years.
I’d only request 100lbs of money once a month, and the rest of the time I’d try to find something useful I can give to charities or non-profits or whatever, like wool or grass seed or woodchips, things that seem ordinary but have practical application, and organic so they don’t cause ecological disaster. All anonymously so I’m not inundated with requests or looked at with suspicion.
I think you’re on the right track - not just with the creativity, but with the advance planning/scheduling.
Unloading 100 lbs of something every single day is potentially problematic (especially if you live on an island, like I do) so I think it pays to have long-term plans in place. Otherwise, you may get yourself into a situation where you can’t think of anything you can manage to add to your immediate environment without creating problems.
Surely the occasional 100 lbs of air would be fine. I have a creek on one side of my house and a river on the other, both of which flow into the ocean less than 1/2 a mile away, so I’m imagining the 100 lbs of water would generally work. If necessary, I could specify the salinity so that I didn’t screw up the local halocline by dumping excessive amounts of fresh water into the ocean.
There also have to be a few items that are so dense and heavy that 100 lbs of them wouldn’t take up too much space, and that I could make arrangements to have carted away by someone who could use the stuff once in a while. Gold is an obvious candidate for that; of course I’d likely keep some for my own financial enrichment.
So:
- 100 lbs of foodstuffs for each of the food banks on island, on a rotating basis, scheduled at a frequency I’ve arranged with them in advance.
- 100 lbs of any kind of needed medical supplies for local hospitals, again with timing arrangements worked out in advance with recipients.
- 100 lbs of school supplies (computers, pencils, paper, etc.), at pre-determined intervals, for all island school.
- 100 lbs of air on occasional days when nobody needs anything and stuff just can’t be absorbed.
- 100 lbs of water in non disruptive form to flow to the ocean.
- 100 lbs of gravel to fill in ruts in our driveway, repeated as often as necessary (it’s a long gravel pathway to our house).
- 100 lbs of dirt or compost to spread on our property to promote gardening/agriculture.
- 100 lbs of gold or other heavy item, see comments above.
Hopefully, that’s enough stuff that I could keep it going indefinitely without difficulty. But I’d probably be on alert for additional ideas all the time, just in case I needed them.
I don’t think gold is difficult to explain; open a mine. Figure out what a 90th percentile mine of that size would produce and then ask for gold N days a year when N/365 * 100 lbs hits your mark. The rest, take water or fried chicken or whatever you want. Then expand or retire depending what your actual plans for the money are.