If I had a trillion dollars (oh, if I had a trillion dollars..!), I'd build a funky corporate headquarters on a lush Pacific island, powered by the wind and tides, and I'd ask people to come work for me. Everyone would get a nice office; there would be healthy snacks and plentiful amenities and as much vacation time as you like. Room and board and two trips home per year would be included in your benefits package. Each of my 100,000 employees will get paid $100,000 US per year.
What's the job? You decide. The hours? You decide. What value are we adding to the world? Well, you decide that too. Come up with a brilliant project, I'll fund it. Come up with a silly project that's probably doomed to fail, and I'll fund that too.
Earlco's values are easy to remember:
Empathy
Anarchy
Revolution
Love
Do what you love, love who you do it with, have empathy for all, and stir things up. Come work for me! Create something! Invent something! Or just play Frisbee golf all day.
There's only one trick: if we create something that will be of tangible benefit to humanity, we give it away. No patents, no copyright, no profiteering. If I've done the math right, my trillion dollars should give us 100 years to change the world. Probably longer, considering all the interest a trillion dollars generates!
Now, someone give me the trillion, and we'll get started.
What's the job? You decide. The hours? You decide. What value are we adding to the world? Well, you decide that too. Come up with a brilliant project, I'll fund it. Come up with a silly project that's probably doomed to fail, and I'll fund that too.
Earlco's values are easy to remember:
Empathy
Anarchy
Revolution
Love
Do what you love, love who you do it with, have empathy for all, and stir things up. Come work for me! Create something! Invent something! Or just play Frisbee golf all day.
There's only one trick: if we create something that will be of tangible benefit to humanity, we give it away. No patents, no copyright, no profiteering. If I've done the math right, my trillion dollars should give us 100 years to change the world. Probably longer, considering all the interest a trillion dollars generates!
Now, someone give me the trillion, and we'll get started.
Man, I can't help but think that having both Anarchy and Revolution in your corporate values is going to attract a lot of,uh, let's call them 'counter-productive personality types'.
ReplyDeleteIf *I* got to spend your trillion, I would make you the head of the Blazing Earl Foundation, philantropic endeavour and occasionally anonymous benefactor to great causes and think tanks worldwide, but best known for the EarlX prize:$100M to the team or individual that can create a system allowing any individual fly like a comic book hero for less cost than a new Honda Civic.
Is it just me or is a trillion dollars more or less the opposite of empathy, anarchy, revolution, and love all put together?
ReplyDeleteAhh, the age old dilemma of values... a good task to examine for January. I remember playing a board game where we ran the country. When I was prime minister we had an orderly country, with fairness to all. Everyone hated it and impeached me, it was too boring. Yes, anarchy, entertainment and freedom are more valued then stability, compassion and equality.
ReplyDeleteWell, thinking on this some more the cautionary tale of EarlCo/Arulco Island would make a hell of a story, a Mosquito Coast sort of take perhaps told from the point of view of the 10,001th person, the poor soul that just missed the cut-off.
ReplyDeleteOops, I meant 100,001th person.
ReplyDelete