Pro­fes­sor C. Justin Robin­son

Imag­ine earn­ing $1 mil­lion every year. How long to be­come a bil­lion­aire? A thou­sand years. Now imag­ine the world’s rich­est peo­ple had to earn their for­tunes the same way—when would they have start­ed? Be­fore Christ walked the Earth. Some be­fore the pyra­mids were built. This mind-bend­ing thought ex­per­i­ment re­veals mod­ern wealth in­equal­i­ty in a way that tran­scends eco­nom­ics and en­ters hu­man imag­i­na­tion. To­day’s ul­tra-wealthy don’t just live dif­fer­ent­ly—they ex­ist in ge­o­log­i­cal time.

The Stone Age bil­lion­aires

* Elon Musk ($371 bil­lion) – Start­ed: 368,975 BC Tes­la’s CEO would have be­gun earn­ing dur­ing the Stone Age, when hu­mans were mas­ter­ing fire. His wealth pre­dates agri­cul­ture by 360,000 years. While Musk talks about Mars, his for­tune time­line sug­gests he’s al­ready col­o­nized deep time.

*� Mark Zucker­berg ($247 bil­lion) – Start­ed: 244,975 BC Face­book’s founder reach­es back to the Ice Age, when wool­ly mam­moths roamed and hu­mans num­bered in thou­sands. The man who con­nect­ed bil­lions would have start­ed when hu­mans bare­ly com­mu­ni­cat­ed be­yond grunts.

*� Jeff Be­zos ($237 bil­lion) – Start­ed: 234,975 BC Ama­zon’s founder be­gan when saber-toothed cats prowled Earth. No Prime de­liv­ery then—just hunter-gath­er­ers track­ing herds across con­ti­nents.

Hu­man-speed suc­cess sto­ries

But ex­tra­or­di­nary wealth doesn’t al­ways re­quire ge­o­log­i­cal time. Tal­ent­ed in­di­vid­u­als world­wide are com­press­ing cen­turies in­to decades:

* Ri­han­na ($1.4 bil­lion) – Start­ed: 625 A.D. Bar­ba­dos’ su­per­star built her Fen­ty em­pire in two decades, com­press­ing 1,400 years of the­o­ret­i­cal earn­ings in­to a gen­er­a­tion. From West­bury Road to glob­al icon: that’s Caribbean time, not ge­o­log­i­cal time.

* Gau­tam Adani ($77 bil­lion) – Start­ed: 75,025 BC In­dia’s in­fra­struc­ture mogul built his em­pire in decades dur­ing In­dia’s eco­nom­ic boom, de­spite his Stone Age time­line.

* Us­ain Bolt ($90 mil­lion) – Start­ed: 1935 The world’s fastest man built his em­pire in one Olympic ca­reer—a decade of peak per­for­mance dur­ing hu­man­i­ty’s Great De­pres­sion era.

The re­al­i­ty check

Here’s what these timescales mean glob­al­ly:

* Teacher in Kenya ($5,000 year­ly): 200 years to reach $1 mil­lion

* Fac­to­ry work­er in Bangladesh ($2,000 year­ly): 500 years

* Cof­fee farmer in Guatemala ($1,500 year­ly): 667 years

* Tech work­er in In­dia ($25,000 year­ly): 40 years

To be­come a bil­lion­aire at $100,000 an­nu­al­ly: 10,000 years

The con­trast is stag­ger­ing: while half the world lives on less than $6.85 dai­ly, some see wealth in­crease by bil­lions in a sin­gle trad­ing ses­sion.

Tem­po­ral aris­to­crats

When for­tunes span ge­o­log­i­cal ages, they cre­ate grav­i­ta­tion­al fields warp­ing en­tire economies. These aren’t just rich peo­ple—they’re tem­po­ral aris­to­crats com­mand­ing re­sources across hu­man evo­lu­tion. Musk’s for­tune could pro­vide clean wa­ter to every­one who lacks it, twice over. Yet 735 mil­lion live in ex­treme pover­ty while as­tro­nom­i­cal sums sit in stock port­fo­lios. As AI and biotech ac­cel­er­ate wealth cre­ation, we could soon see tril­lion­aires whose for­tunes would re­quire start­ing be­fore Earth’s con­ti­nents formed.

Quick ref­er­ence:

Elon Musk: $371B = Stone Age start (368,975 B.C.)

Mark Zucker­berg: $247B = Ice Age start (244,975 B.C.)

Ri­han­na: $1.4B = Me­dieval start (625 A.D.)

Us­ain Bolt: $90M = Great De­pres­sion start (1935)

Glob­al me­di­an wealth: $2,500 = Start­ed 2.5 days ago

Pro­fes­sor C. Justin Robin­son is pro-vice chan­cel­lor and prin­ci­pal of UWI’s Five Is­lands Cam­pus