Apparently, the world is about to get its first trillionaire.

A report from the business intelligence agency Informa Connect says, at his present rate of wealth accumulation, tech billionaire Elon Musk is on track to be the world’s first trillionaire, three years from now.

At the moment, Musk is said to be worth US$195 billion (A$293 billion), but if his wealth continues growing at the recent rate of 110% per year, he will hit US$1.195 trillion in 2027.

The next trillionaire after Musk should be Indian mining magnate Gautam Adani, followed by Nvidia chief Jensen Huang and Indonesian mining mogul Prajogo Pangestu, all of whom are on track to hit the milestone in 2028.

The nearly 1 billion human beings who don’t yet have electricity connected to their homes will doubtless be looking on with interest as the tech bros and mining bosses vie to crack 13 digits.

Before examining how it is that someone could ever make a trillion-dollar fortune, and what it might mean for the world for so much of the world’s wealth to be held in the hands of one person, it is important to first try to comprehend how big a trillion actually is.

One trillion seconds last 31,000 years

A million is a big number: it is 1,000 thousands. If you managed to retire with that many dollars in superannuation, you would have saved up more than 90% of your fellow retirees.

One billion is 1,000 millions. It takes 12 days for a million seconds to pass, but 31 years for a billion seconds to tick over.

That means a trillion seconds would equal 31,000 years.

If you had $1 trillion and did no more than stick it in the bank where it earned 4% interest per year you would get $40 billion per year in interest.

No one needs $1 trillion, and it is hard to see how anyone could spend it as fast as it grew, which raises important questions about how societies, economies and democracies will be able to function if and when governments allow trillionaires to emerge.

For mortals, a trillion is hard to justify

France’s King Louis XIV spent today’s equivalent of US$200 billion–300 billion building his palace at Versailles, and it was by no means his only palace.

Pyramids and sphinxes didn’t come cheap either, but these sorts of expenditures were seen as needed for beings selected by gods and not entirely mortal.

For mortals, some believe that the entire population benefits when a small minority controls most of the resources on the basis that it builds incentives.

Just as peasants spent millennia awaiting their reward in the afterlife while their rulers enjoyed heaven on earth, in modern economies we are told wealth and prosperity will trickle down to us eventually if we keep working hard.

Unfortunately for most of us, despite the wealth of the richest 200 Australians growing from A$40.6 billion to $625 billion over the past 20 years, neither the Australian economy nor the wages of ordinary Australians are soaring.

High profits are meant to be temporary

Incentives can and do play an important role in our economy.

In the so-called “free market” envisaged by 18th-century economist Adam Smith, if my new farming technique or silicon chip is so good that everyone wants one, it is considered only fair that I get an initial reward.

But after a while, everyone else will be free to compete with me by selling similar goods and in turn stopping me from getting an extraordinary ongoing reward.

The problem is that some markets aren’t free and don’t work properly. It is no accident that the world’s biggest fortunes are held by those who have monopoly rights to sell natural resources or technologies that are protected by patents or systems that lock in users.

That’s bad news for those still waiting patiently for wealth to trickle down or to be spread more evenly.

Technofeudalism keeps profits growing

In his latest book former Greek finance minister Yannis Varoufakis describes the world we now live in as one of technofeudalism in which online platforms have the ongoing opportunity to exploit workers, consumers and producers in ways Smith could not have imagined.

Having created digital platforms where the price of entry is handing over your personal details and preferences, modern tech titans use a new form of alchemy to convert data into knowledge that allows them to keep you on their platform and exploit you or advertisers or suppliers in the belief that you won’t leave.

And while there are physical limits to how big a car factory or fast-food chain can grow, there are almost no physical limits on how much money tech platforms can make by selling ads they didn’t make for products they didn’t make to consumers they know nearly everything about.

Restraining profits is pro-market

It isn’t anti-capitalist to want those profits competed away, it’s pro-market.

When the United States broke up J.D. Rockerfeller’s oil monopoly in the early 20th century, the oil industry prospered rather than vanished. consumers and the businesses that had dealt with Rockerfeller were better off, and so was the economy as a whole.

Democracies have, for now, the power to use taxes and regulations to redistribute the enormous benefits flowing to the new class of billionaires (and soon trillionaires) from the sale of scarce resources and the creation of platforms that keep us trapped.

Whether and how we use that power is up to us, but we mightn’t have it for long. The more the new class of billionaires and trillionaires becomes entrenched, the more it will be able to use the political system to protect their interests rather than those of mere mortals.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

From rule breaking and theft to verbal abuse and foul language, one customer’s behavior can negatively affect another customer’s experience. How hospitality businesses can best respond to instances of customer misbehavior can depend on the strictness of societal norms, according to a new study from researchers in the Penn State School of Hospitality Management.

The study, published in the Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management, found that customers who observe misbehavior in countries with strict societal norms—or specific expectations for how people should act in public—respond better to an apology, while customers who observe misbehavior in nations with looser societal norms respond better to acknowledgements or appreciations of their patience.

Anna Mattila, Marriott Professor of Lodging Management at Penn State; Barbara Atanga, assistant professor of marketing at Johnson C. Smith University who earned her doctorate in hospitality management at Penn State this year; and Lavi Peng, current Penn State doctoral candidate, led this research.

“When customers observe other customers misbehaving, it affects their satisfaction,” Mattila said. “They become unhappy with their experience. This can be costly to businesses, as these customers may never come back. We wanted to identify a way that businesses could satisfy customers who observe these unfortunate instances.”

The researchers conducted two studies to find the effect of apologies and appreciation on customers who observe misbehavior. To survey participants with both distinct strict and loose societal norms, the research team recruited participants from the United States, a country with loose norms, and India, a country with strict norms.

Each study recruited participants via Amazon Mechanical Turk, and participants were randomly assigned to either an apology or appreciation condition.

The first study surveyed 187 people—97 from the United States and 90 from India—and used a hypothetical scenario in which participants were asked to imagine checking in at a front desk while observing two guests in an argument.

The second study surveyed 202 people—101 from the United States and 101 from India—and used a hypothetical situation in which participants were asked to imagine dining in a restaurant while nearby customers were being disruptive.

In both studies, an apology resulted in higher recovery satisfaction among observing customers with strict societal norms, whereas showing appreciation led to enhanced recovery satisfaction among observing customers with loose societal norms.

“Businesses may see the terms ‘thank you’ and ‘sorry’ as interchangeable,” Atanga said. “However, these terms serve distinct purposes. ‘Sorry’ explicitly says this is wrong whereas ‘thank you’ is more subtle and implicit. Businesses should understand the strictness or looseness context of their customer base to use these two strategies effectively.”

In a third study, the researchers tested if violations of perceived norms drive the impact of recovery strategy on satisfaction among observing customers. This study surveyed 180 participants—95 from the United States and 85 from India—via Amazon Mechanical Turk.

Participants were randomly assigned to either an apology or appreciation condition in a hypothetical scenario where they observed two other patrons arguing because one of them jumped the queue.

The researchers found that acknowledging customer misbehavior had a mediating effect on the observing customer’s recovery for participants with loose norms but not for participants with strict norms.

“People with strict norms may appreciate an apology, but this may not be enough to reduce the impact of the norm violation,” Peng said. “This could be why the mediating effect was not found for those with stricter norms.”

The researchers said effective ways businesses can address the negative implications of customer misbehavior is to practice service recovery techniques. For example, apologies—even generalized ones like “sorry for the inconvenience”—or by purposely showing appreciation like thanking customers for their patience can help other customers’ satisfaction with the business when they observe customer misbehavior.

“Saying ‘sorry’ or ‘thank you’ is a cheap, easy way for businesses to conduct service recovery,” Atanga said. “This is also a cost-effective strategy, as saying ‘sorry’ or ‘thank you’ does not have a monetary cost attached to it.”

The researchers also said businesses should train their employees in how to properly handle situations where customer misbehavior may occur. Employees should learn to listen and remain calm in these situations before evaluating how best to act, and to do so strategically.

In addition, brands operating across different nations should adjust and adapt their recovery strategies as opposed to having a single, universal service recovery protocol, according to the researchers.

“Businesses can get so wrapped up by customers who are misbehaving that they forget about the customers who witness the norm violation,” Peng said. “Even if observing customers don’t actively speak out, they still may have noted the inconvenience in their heads.”