Elon Musk has recently stated his view that work could become optional over the next ten to twenty years due to the development of tech, including AI and robotics etc. In other words if a human does not fancy doing some heavy lifting to earn his pay packet then the advances in technical automation and the odd robot or two will do the job for him while he downs some tasty beers down the pub!
He likened the situation to be like growing vegetables in your garden. You don't have to do that he states, you could just go to your local store and buy them but some people enjoy the challenge and the sense of purpose of growing their own. He predicts a future where money is less relevant or even totally irrelevant which seems a tad ironic coming so soon after Tesla shareholders approved his potential 1 trillion dollar ten year pay award subject to the company achieving set goals. Nevertheless I was not surprised big numbers were involved in Elon's pay award as he is probably the foremost accomplished business person in the world today but i must admit I did not realise just how big a trillion actually is! Even spread over ten years the numbers are mind boggling.
Now it has to be acknowledged that i'm not great at maths, that is while I can cope with basic stuff on a day to day basis like how much i'm spending in the supermarket buying vegetables or more likely the pub buying other things essential for life, I cannot with any degree of truth claim to be anything more than average in the bean counting world.
So bearing that in mind you can perhaps understand why when I initially heard about the deal I merely shrugged my shoulders and pulled the old bemused boy gets lost in the number fog look I pulled often in maths classes at school. Then a lady with the number prowess of Rachel Riley pointed out that 1 trillion dollars equates to an average of a 100 billion dollars a year or over 8 billion a month which if you assume he does a five day week equates to about 400 million dollars a day!
Now of course, it's not just what he does that is being rewarded, it's having the gravitas and worldwide appeal of the Musk name and his contacts, both business and political which are immeasurable and work 24/7 and therefore the sums need to reflect this.
OK then, lets take a more pragmatic view, lets say he works 24/7 receiving no downtime whatsoever but fails to hit some of the targets that make up the contract. Lets say he only actually receives salary, shares and gratuities amounting to a mere half of the trillion. So 500 billion dollars over the ten year period.
So if he works every single day for the ten year period this equates to 3,650 days at roughly 137 million dollars a day!....... I'll say that again, 137 million dollars a day! That my friends is not too shabby a gig for half pay! 5.7 million dollars every hour of every day. 8 hours of sleep means he has accrued over 45 million dollars before finishing cleaning his teeth in the morning, which obviously is a necessity in readiness to smile insanely at all the other vegetable growers at the community gardens and why wouldn't he? don't forget this is only half of his potential earnings!!!
I don't think i'll see him at the allotments anytime soon do you?
