You have to imagine people in poverty and a sum that is not only poverty-ending, but probably allowing you to live in relative luxury, probably allowing you to start a business to have a better source of income. Assuming you're an American not living in a leaky tin-roofed cardboard box in 2020, sure, for you $40,000 is not that sum of money, but in early 1990's Philipphines it probably was...
You can simply multiply that sum by 100 or 1000 and ask yourself how would you react if the same happened to you. In this order:
1) you buy several Pepsi
2) you discover you won 40 million
3) you discover everyone else won 40 million
4) it is explained to you that there was a mistake and you can get 100 dollars as a refund.
5) you start burning cars and throwing bombs together with all the others because each really really wants his 40 million.
Do you think you would go from 4 to 5? Do you think your society would work if it contained a large percentage of people who would go from 4 to 5? That's what I was trying to point out.
No you can't multiply it by a number and say it's comparable...
If I don't win 40 million, I'll still have a warm apartment, a well paid job, a car, electronic toys, and a vague plan of a leisure trip to Iceland after this whole pandemic blows over. Once in a while I'll say "Fuck, at one point I thought I was a multi-millionaire, but it was a mistake!", and I'd be able to distract myself by, I don't know, playing Xbox or going out drinking overpriced cocktails with friends.
Meanwhile a lot of the Filipinos probably thought they'd get to no longer live in a cardboard box in a slum, no longer wear ratty clothes, worrying about work and food... And we don't know how many rioted, presumably many cried quietly after having their dreams quashed..
I'm sorry they weren't all clear-headed zen monks who could accept the loss of their presumed liberation from poverty (in some minds maybe even a return to poverty?) without releasing any anger.
If only the whole world was like you right, I'd bet it'd be an easier to place to govern, right?
There is no way to make them happy. Pepsi clearly didn't have $32B. The only conclusion you can make from this situation is that these people clearly didn't want to be happy.
