It's not enough to do anything, you're still limited to things a wealthy private investor could do - but a state can still do a lot more.
In the late 1700s, John 'Iron Mad' Wilkinson, British industrialist and inventor of the first iron boat offered to pay off the entire national debt.
With a mere $500M you couldn't build a motorway of any significance, you couldn't buy so much as a medium sized town, you'd struggle to build the world's tallest building unless it was just a spike, you couldn't jump start a large company such as an Intel/AMD competitor or an Amazon competitor or create license and market a new cellphone unless you had a very low cost startup/bootstrap approach.
You couldn't amass a world class art collection or establish an underwater city, fund a significant amount of anti-aging research or push a bill through congress or have your own Formula 1 team or brute force your way to the moon with some Flanderys domes, some GM plants and a seed terraforming plan.
In short, you could live a hedonistic life, become famous, seed invest, philanthrophise, give something back, make local successes, but you couldn't "really be disruptive" on the world scale.
In the late 1700s, John 'Iron Mad' Wilkinson, British industrialist and inventor of the first iron boat offered to pay off the entire national debt.
With a mere $500M you couldn't build a motorway of any significance, you couldn't buy so much as a medium sized town, you'd struggle to build the world's tallest building unless it was just a spike, you couldn't jump start a large company such as an Intel/AMD competitor or an Amazon competitor or create license and market a new cellphone unless you had a very low cost startup/bootstrap approach.
You couldn't amass a world class art collection or establish an underwater city, fund a significant amount of anti-aging research or push a bill through congress or have your own Formula 1 team or brute force your way to the moon with some Flanderys domes, some GM plants and a seed terraforming plan.
In short, you could live a hedonistic life, become famous, seed invest, philanthrophise, give something back, make local successes, but you couldn't "really be disruptive" on the world scale.