The Richest Man Who Ever Lived
He's Alive Right Now... And He Makes Billionaires Look Poor.
Dear Permission to be Powerful Reader,
You think you know how big a trillion is.
You don’t.
Nobody does.
Your brain simply wasn’t designed for numbers that large.
One million seconds ago...
That was 11 days ago.
One billion seconds ago...
It was 1994
One trillion seconds ago...
That was 31,700 years ago.
Agriculture didn’t exist.
Writing didn’t exist.
Civilization as we know it didn’t exist.
And yet...
This week, after SpaceX’s historic public debut, Elon Musk reportedly became the world’s first trillionaire.
His estimated net worth now exceeds $1.1 trillion.
Even crazier...
He’s roughly three times as rich as the second-richest person on Earth.
Andrew Carnegie.
John D. Rockefeller.
J.P. Morgan.
The Vanderbilts.
They’re all broke next to Elon.
A trillion dollars.
A one followed by twelve zeros.
$1,100,000,000,000.
You do not understand that number.
Neither do I.
Seems like more money than God.
Let’s try something else.
Imagine the average person is a bacterium.
Almost invisible.
Now enlarge it until it becomes a cricket.
That’s a billionaire.
An extraordinary leap.
Now enlarge the cricket until it becomes a blue whale.
That’s Elon Musk.
At some point...
Your brain stops thinking about money.
It starts thinking about scale.
That’s the problem with a trillion.
It isn’t just a bigger number.
It’s a different universe.
Let’s keep trying.
Suppose Elon Musk woke up tomorrow and decided to spend one million dollars every single day.
No weekends.
No vacations.
No holidays.
Every morning...
“Here’s another million.”
How long before he spent it all?
Almost 3,000 years.
The Roman Empire would rise.
And fall.
The Renaissance…
The United States would be founded…
The automobile would be invented.
The airplane…
The internet…
And he’d still be spending.
Let’s try houses.
Buy a $20 million mansion.
Another.
Another.
Another.
Buy one hundred of them.
Fill every garage with Ferraris.
You’re still nowhere close.
Maybe yachts.
Buy a $500 million superyacht.
Now another.
Now another.
Eventually something strange happens.
The world starts running out of yachts before you run out of money
Maybe sports teams.
Buy every NBA team.
Done.
Every NFL team.
Done.
Every MLB team.
Done
Every NHL team.
Done.
Every Formula One team.
Done
You now own the greatest collection of sports franchises in history…
You’re still astonishingly wealthy.
Maybe employees.
Hire 100,000 people.
Pay each of them $100,000 per year.
That’s a payroll of $10 billion every year.
Keep paying them.
For ten years.
You’ve spent $100 billion.
You’re not even 10% of the way there.
Let’s go bigger.
Maybe countries help.
At roughly $1.1 trillion, his fortune exceeds the economic output of many nations.
🇳🇱 The Netherlands
🇨🇭 Switzerland
🇸🇦 Saudi Arabia
🇵🇱 Poland
🇧🇪 Belgium
🇸🇪 Sweden
🇮🇪 Ireland
🇦🇹 Austria
🇳🇴 Norway
🇩🇰 Denmark
🇸🇬 Singapore
Their economies produce less in an entire year than his fortune.
There are over 150 countries with smaller GDPs.
If Elon Musk’s fortune were an economy...
It would rank among the largest on Earth.
Your brain wasn’t designed for numbers this large.
Let’s make it even more absurd.
There are roughly 770,000 homeless people in the United States.
Suppose Elon Musk decided that every single one of them deserved a brand-new $300,000 house.
No shelters.
No apartments.
An actual house.
The bill would come to roughly $231 billion.
An unimaginable amount of money.
Except...
With a $1.1 trillion, he could do it...
And still have most of his fortune left over.
The difference between one million dollars and one billion dollars...
Is approximately 999 million dollars.
That’s already difficult to comprehend.
Now do it again.
Take a billionaire.
Multiply everything...
By one thousand.
That’s the scale we’re talking about.
To most people, a billionaire is unimaginably rich.
In fact…
It’s not the same game.
It’s not the same league.
It barely feels like the same planet.
So what does a trillionaire buy?
Another mansion?
Another yacht?
Another private jet?
Sure.
But eventually there aren’t enough toys.
There are only so many islands.
Only so many skyscrapers.
Only so many masterpieces hanging in museums.
Only so many professional sports teams.
Only so many companies worth buying.
The Earth starts running out of expensive things before the money runs out.
The richest man who ever lived...
Is alive right now.
And after everything you’ve just read...
I still don’t think you grasped how fucked up that is.
Tony V.
Editor-in-Chief
Permission to be Powerful
