And this is another secret to skunk — it provides the full upgrade. Combine the rules for isolation and rapid iteration discussed in this section wit… - Peter Diamandis

Already, over 10 percent of millennials have opted for ridesharing over car ownership, but this is just the beginning. Autonomous cars will be four to five times cheaper — they make owning a car not only unnecessary, but also expensive. My guess, within ten years, you'll probably need a special permit to drive a human-operated car.

The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves, Matt Ridley elaborates: "'If I sew you a hide tunic today, you can sew me one tomorrow' brings limited rewards and diminishing returns. '[But] … I make the clothes, you catch the food' brings increasing returns. Indeed, it has the beautiful property that it does not even need to be fair. For barter to work, two individuals do not need to offer things of equal value. Trade is often unequal but it still benefits both sides.

To adapt to the reality of scale, meanwhile, Musk employs a number of other strategies. We'll start with first principles, which is a lesson he borrowed from physics. "Physics training is a good framework for reasoning," explains Musk. "It forces you to boil things down to their most fundamental truths and then connect those truths in a way that lets you understand reality. This gives you a way to attack the counterintuitive, a way of figuring out things that aren't obvious. When you're trying to create a new product or service, I think it's critical to use this framework for reasoning. It takes a lot of mental energy, but it's still the right way to do it."