A large number of small amounts
Our intuition struggles to correctly interpret the combination of very large and very small numbers
The medieval mythical land of Cockaigne, graphically represented by Pieter Bruegel the Elder in his 1567 painting, Het Luilekkerland (literally, the “lazy-tasty land”), is a nice example of humanity’s yearning for an existence in which we can get something for nothing. Such a land of plenty, where we can obtain all we need without any effort is, sadly, an unattainable ideal. That doesn’t stop us looking for ways, though, and sometimes believing we found one.
The tax that costs (almost) nothing
One example I came across the other week was a tweet from entrepreneur Carl Gough, proposing a small charge for each email that is sent. Every single day of 2023, an estimated average of 347.3 billion emails were sent and received. A one-cent levy on each email would thus raise nearly 3.5 billion dollars every day, or more than 1.2 trillion dollars in a year. It reminded me of a fantasy I used to have as a seven-year-old. I had learned at school that the population of Belgium (my native country) was about 9 million (it is a little while ago). I imagined that, if every one of them gave me 1 franc (a negligible amount back then — it would buy just two pieces of…
