I read an article this morning about Paypal making the biggest gaff ever. In fact one that was “1300 times more than the entire world’s GDP, and trillions and trillions more than the $73 billion fortune of Carlos Slim, the richest man in the world.” What had they done? They had credited some ebayer with a full and meaty 92 quadrillion dollars. That’s a lot of numbers …. $92,233,720,368,547,800

Can you imagine? The poor man thought that he suddenly owed quadrillions when he realised that his account didn’t have the usual $100 or so. Interesting that his mind set interpreted it as being a debt first and not a windfall.

I have to love his response (once he’d gathered his senses) “I would pay the national debt down first. Then I would buy the Phillies, if I could get a great price.” Amazing how quick you can get a man to think big given the opportunity. This is quite a step up from buying and selling car parts on eBay. Makes me wonder how we are limiting our beliefs.

The story also got me thinking about the illusion of money. If this so-called sum had been credited was bigger than the entire world’s GDP then it clearly can’t be real. The reality is that this ‘transaction’ was just a realignment of pixels on a screen and bits of data in a database. And that is not exactly capable of putting food on the table, sheltering us, clothing us or protecting us from anything.

Question is though, whilst this was clearly a mistake, where do the boundaries between so-called real money and bits-of-data money exist?

If money is all an illlusion then what exactly are we doing all this work for then?
I feel certain that some of the energy that we expend ‘slaving’ would be much better placed investing in real things. Maybe too we need to find ways to unleash that creative potential that gets us thinking much much bigger than we are used to. I think that a new system is due to emerge from our economic agenda and a new currency will be invented.

Ultimately though – what are the really important things in life and how much attention are we paying to them as opposed to being dazzled by illusions?

What are the perceived boundaries that restrict us and how can we tear them down to expand our thinking?
If you were a quadrillionaire, what would you do?

Source: Gizmodo and Circa