If the idea that someone can have a net worth of a trillion dollars seems unreal, that’s because it is. Most of Elon Musk’s fortune is tied up in stock, and the value is whatever he and fellow stockholders convince the rest of us it is. In fact, the US dollar and all other forms of currency only have the value we as a society assign them. Under certain circumstances, like in Zimbabwe and in Germany in the 1920s, money isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on.
But let’s say it was possible to have the actual worth of a trillion US dollars. What would you do with it?
If you divided $1 trillion among the 8.2 billion people on Earth, they’d only get $122 each. That’s a significant amount for many people around the world. For others, it would only buy a tank of gas and a 44-ounce soft drink. But that money would go into the local economy, support local businesses, cover their paychecks, which in turn builds the economy further. Thanks to the multiplier effect, every dollar put in people’s pockets generates many times that amount in the economy. That amount varies based on economic conditions and other factors, but that $1 trillion investment can turn into $2 trillion or more in societies around the world.
But let’s say you want something more tangible and permanent. Think of all the infrastructure you can build with $1 trillion. Schools, libraries, and universities will give students the skills they need to start careers and businesses. Roads and transit systems will make it easier for people to get around. Hospitals, sewer systems, and water treatment plants will keep communities healthy and thriving. When people are educated, healthy, and happy, they are more productive—and can build that $1 trillion investment even further.
Suppose you are a big science nerd. Great! Think of all the diseases you can cure with $1 trillion in research. Or other global problems, such as hunger and climate change. If space is your thing, you can build probes to other planets, telescopes to find exoplanets, and new propulsion systems that would make a manned trip to Mars feasible.
You can do a lot of good in the world with $1 trillion, but only if it goes back into the hands of those who created it.
Money is like water. If it is pooled in one place, it grows stagnant and brackish. It becomes an algae-ridden breeding ground for disease-bearing mosquitoes. But if the water flows, it stays clean, nourishes the land and creatures around it, and joins the ocean where it evaporates and continues the cycle again. We give value to money because of what it does for us, for how it provides for our needs, and the things we can own and experience by using it.
What is the value to society of someone who can horde $1 trillion of it? Outside of the products his companies make, how has his fortune benefitted any of us? What good does it do to the well-being of humanity? Elon Musk’s worth is as arbitrary as the fortune he claims to have. Still, people hold him and billionaires up as gods, glaze over their often ill-gotten achievements, believe their claims of being self-made when they had a boost from their parents’ fortune and connections, and allow them to commit the most heinous acts without consequences.
Or we can assign them the value based on what they actually give to society, which is nothing.
A trillion dollars is just a number unless it is put to good and productive use. To do that, we can’t entrust it to just one man or a roomful of men. It should be in the hands of all of us. We who build, create, educate, spend, and consume. Those of us who raise families to inherit the abundance we create. In our hands, we can create the type of fortune that cannot be measured on a balance sheet. This is how you create real value with money.
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