I'm not real rich, but I'd turn you down. Someone so selfish running around with close to a billion dollars...no. The misery you could cause! Let the researcher keep their money, they will probably offer it to someone more deserving in the next round.
Doubt it. Quite sure you'd take it with both hands.
Seeing as you work in the oil industry - the above statement does strike one as being exceedingly odd. You are in the industry for the money aren't you?
That's some serious cognitive dissonance you've got there.
Furthermore, I thought you guys pumped misery out of the ground day in, day out?
> Doubt it. Quite sure you'd take it with both hands.
Damn, now even I'm thinking I'd turn that down to teach your selfish ass a lesson.
You're confused because you're thinking about this (selfishly) as money being granted to you, and expecting your partner to do the same. Your parent (pun intended) is considering the whole relationship: Money will be redistributed from a researcher R to A and B only if A and B can agree on a fair distribution method. This will alter the balance of power between these three agents at a minimum. A and B should agree to this only if they both feel it is globally optimal; the more unfair the distribution A chooses, the more likely that this change is for the worse overall, which places increasing moral pressure on B to veto.
This isn't really something we can try, but I suspect you'd get turned down some reasonable percentage of the time (2%-10%, say) with such an offer, by people who have "all the money they need." Since to me the utility of the first few million is vastly larger than the last 500 million, I'd offer 50% just to avoid that rare case.
I'd probably offer you a lot less if it were real - say 10-15 million.