Sorry, I think I didn't explain well enough why it doesn't make sense to me, so let me try again. In his example there are 256 workers and 64 line bosses running at 1x, and a CEO running at 21x. Why not instead have 16 workers, 4 line bosses, 1 CEO, all running at 16x, which would do the same amount of work in the same amount of time? If we assume that 21x is the maximum feasible emulation speed, it doesn't seem plausible that slowing down the workers to 1x saves enough money (compared to running them at 16x) to make up for increasing the memory requirement by 16 times.
Theoretically you'd be running each of the 256 workers at 1,000,000x speed already. The boss goes into 21,000,000x speed, but has to pay a non-linear cost for that so you can only have one person at that speed. It would require a very particular price/speed discrimination structure to make that viable though.
The other option is that you're in a job that needs 256 different skill sets and we haven't learned how to swap out parts of people's personality yet. Eg, you're translating a book into 256 languages and each person only knows 1 language.
Although neither scenario strikes me as particularly likely.
Lecture at youtube.
Sorry - haven't watched it yet so no summary, but I expect it to be fun.