After the Bell: Musk to Makate — ‘please call me’

They might not be an obvious pairing but Nkosana Makate and Elon Musk have quite a lot in common.

They were born in the same country, they are incredibly clever, they are also inventors and, as of last week, can look forward to a lot more money in their bank accounts.

Last week, Tesla shareholders voted to grant Musk the world’s first trillion-dollar pay package.

Of course there is some detailed devilry. To get that amount he has to make payments that take the real total to about $878-million (about R15-billion).

He seems pretty happy with that. As Reuters reported, with rare wire-service glee, he “bounded to the stage, accompanied by dancing robots”.

Meanwhile, here on Planet Earth, Makate is getting, depending on the estimate, up to about R700-million at the end of the Please Call Me saga.

Strangely, Vodacom says that both sides of this dispute have signed a nondisclosure agreement, which means everyone has been going through Vodacom’s financial statements trying to work it out.

I have to confess, I’m not sure why there is this insistence on all the secrecy.

Obviously Makate is not going to keep it all; he has lawyers and other people to pay.

But surely all of those people would know what the final figure is.

And I don’t know what Vodacom is really protecting – this case has done all the damage that it could possibly do, and it’s done the right thing by reaching a settlement.

Now, the speculation about the figure will give the entire issue much more power than it would have had if they had just made it public.

But at some point these sums of money just become meaningless.

Perhaps I lack imagination, but after I get to about R100-million I don’t really know what I would do with it. 

Sure, I could put the money into research to find a cure for black algae and to build a pool cleaner that will do the steps. But after that?

I’m lucky, of course, I don’t have an extended family that I’m obligated to support.

And I know I’m not the only one with this lack of imagination.

Because so many of those who become suddenly rich have blown their cash on cars. 

Does anyone seriously need more than one Lamborghini to know that they’re overpriced and underperform?

A few years ago there was a lot of talk about an idea popularised by Malcolm Gladwell, that there is a sort-of limit to how much money makes you happy. He based that on research (by Daniel Kahneman and Angus Deaton in 2010) that suggested that in the US, if your family was happy and you had a middle-class background, after you earned about $75,000 (R1.3-million) a year, the amount did not have a big impact on your level of unhappiness.

To put it slightly better, after that amount, other factors – such as your family, whether you have a sense of purpose in life and how much time you have for yourself – start to have a bigger impact on your happiness than money.

Of course, this is hugely contested. And, as this entertaining blog points out, it can really depend on your personality. 

I know some people who have grown up in almost exactly the same way I did who don’t care for money at all, like they are far more interested in what they’re doing for it to matter. And I know others who will really push themselves hard just to make a bit more money.

Almost all of us are interested in people with money. 

That is surely the secret to the apparent success of The Real Housewives of Durban. Or anything remotely connected to the Kardashians.

But in the end, so many other things really matter.

If you told Warren Buffett (who still lives in the same house he bought in 1958) that he had done well in life, he might point to his son as someone who has done more than he has.

Musk, on the other hand, for all of his money, often strikes me as slightly miserable. I can’t imagine what it must be like to have to strive so hard all the time, just to prove yourself.

While I simply do not know enough about his upbringing to judge, I’m sure his father played a role in that.

Unfortunately, Musk is recreating that for his children.

There must be a link between the fact that he is the richest person in the world and has 14 children (he has said he wants a “legion” of kids before the “apocalypse”). 

I think most of us probably wish Makate well. He had a great idea (although he was not the only person to have it – and a contractor at MTN took out the patent) and had a long fight.

I think he will be happy.

And he won’t need dancing robots to stay that way. DM