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I'm a little sad to see Paul's footnote 2, where he declares that "the numbers in the Forbes 400 are nonsense. But it will do ..." Has Paul ever interacted wit

by GCA10 11y ago

I'm a little sad to see Paul's footnote 2, where he declares that "the numbers in the Forbes 400 are nonsense. But it will do ..." Has Paul ever interacted with the Forbes Wealth team? My book research has overlapped their interests going back to the 1990s, and every time I've spoken with them, I've been impressed with how much work they put into trying to come up with the best possible approximations. Most of their numbers are pretty good -- and in some cases, their research trumps the public boasts that various rich people offer up on their own behalf. If Paul had said Forbes's numbers were "imprecise," he could have made his point. But "nonsense" is a loaded word, and Paul has been around long enough to know that. If he wants to be taken seriously in this conversation, a better discernment/name-calling ratio would be nice.

jonstokes 11y ago
My guess is that he probably knows actual, bona fide net worth numbers for some of the people on that list, and the Forbes numbers for those people that he knows about are way off.
- GCA10 11y ago
  That's totally possible for the founders of not-yet-public companies such as Dropbox and Airbnb, where the Y Combinator connection is highly relevant. You're right to add that to the conversation. At the same time, lots of other numbers for companies with public share prices and proxy-disclosed ownership data should be exquisitely accurate. My issue was mostly with PG's presentation style, where he offers up data, dismisses it in a footnote, and then says it will do anyway. It's a weird way to make an argument. On an intricate issue like this, I appreciate exposition that is steadily nuanced, rather than battling self-made contradictions.
  - jonstokes 11y ago
    Even in the best-case scenarios, you have no way of knowing what those people have borrowed against those shares and/or what they've done with that leverage (maybe bought some illiquid assets that it's difficult to mark to market even if you knew what they were), so it's still impossible to compute a net worth. I'm sorry, but for all the efforts of the Forbes guys, I'm inclined to agree with PG -- the numbers are probably hot garbage.
graeme 11y ago
Felix Dennis made the same point. In his book "How to Get Rich", he said that even he didn't know how rich he was, and that for that reason he and his rich friends always had a good laugh at the idea of wealth lists. That doesn't mean the Forbes team is doing poorly – the point is that it may not be possible to get better than "nonsense" as a result.
elsewhen 11y ago
the following post is old, but a hacker news poster in 2010 did the research on the constituents of the forbes list, and it seems that there aren't too many startup founders featured there: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1444212 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1444212

by GCA10 11y ago

jonstokes 11y ago

My guess is that he probably knows actual, bona fide net worth numbers for some of the people on that list, and the Forbes numbers for those people that he knows about are way off.

GCA10 11y ago
That's totally possible for the founders of not-yet-public companies such as Dropbox and Airbnb, where the Y Combinator connection is highly relevant. You're right to add that to the conversation. At the same time, lots of other numbers for companies with public share prices and proxy-disclosed ownership data should be exquisitely accurate. My issue was mostly with PG's presentation style, where he offers up data, dismisses it in a footnote, and then says it will do anyway. It's a weird way to make an argument. On an intricate issue like this, I appreciate exposition that is steadily nuanced, rather than battling self-made contradictions.
- jonstokes 11y ago
  Even in the best-case scenarios, you have no way of knowing what those people have borrowed against those shares and/or what they've done with that leverage (maybe bought some illiquid assets that it's difficult to mark to market even if you knew what they were), so it's still impossible to compute a net worth. I'm sorry, but for all the efforts of the Forbes guys, I'm inclined to agree with PG -- the numbers are probably hot garbage.

graeme 11y ago

Felix Dennis made the same point. In his book "How to Get Rich", he said that even he didn't know how rich he was, and that for that reason he and his rich friends always had a good laugh at the idea of wealth lists. That doesn't mean the Forbes team is doing poorly – the point is that it may not be possible to get better than "nonsense" as a result.

elsewhen 11y ago

the following post is old, but a hacker news poster in 2010 did the research on the constituents of the forbes list, and it seems that there aren't too many startup founders featured there: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1444212 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1444212