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Jeff Bezos Surpasses Bill Gates as World's Richest Person
- pavlakoos 9y agoWell deserved, I'm afraid.
- efficax 9y agoI find it weird to report on this like it's a race or competition. His net worth bump right now is entirely due to rash market speculation and the recent tech bubble. When the crash comes (and it will), AMZN could easily be down to $500 in a week, and he'll just be insanely rich again.
- zoren 9y agoWhen will this crash come? And how do you know?
- efficax 9y agoBecause markets move in cycles? We've had multiple crashes in the past 40 years, most recently in 2008. Markets always crash, it's what they do.
- zoren 9y agoOh I understood you as if you where claiming we are currently in a tech bubble that will burst soon. That's why I asked when this would happen.
- HillaryBriss 9y agothey've been saying that since 1997
- efficax 9y agoAnd the tech stock market crashed in 2000-02. We're back on a rebound, especially in the past 5 years. Bubbles burst, it's literally the one reliable law of markets since the advent of joint stock companies.
- undersuit 9y agoI bought some Amazon stock when it was ~190. I sold at ~310 because I was happy with my profits. The crash is always coming.
- vanderZwan 9y agoHasn't Bill Gates mostly been focused on spending his fortune as effectively as he can on philantropy for the last decade or so? In that light it's more amazing it took that long.
- rottyguy 9y agoeven more amazing is that a lot of his [gates] fortune has been amassed as a result of one money manager after his departure from msoft.
- okreallywtf 9y agoGot any more information on that? I would be interested to read about it.
- dmcy22 9y agoA significant portion of Gates' wealth comes not from his Microsoft stock, but through his investment arm, Cascade Investment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cascade_Investment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cascade_Investment
- thealfreds 9y agoOwns 5% of Berkshire Hathaway. Doing pretty solid right there.
- pyrrhotech 9y agohis wealth has barely beaten the s&p 500 since he left though. The growth is more to do with the bull market in general than the specific feats of his money manager
- MLR 9y agoHe's surely been spending many billions of dollars in that time period though, we can't know how much but I think it would be more than enough to be significant.
- neiled 9y agoI was surprised by this. Anyone know the levels of philanthropy of Bezos vs Gates? I've ready many times of the great work and resources (money and otherwise) that Mr Gates has contributed to many causes.
- tuna-piano 9y agohttps://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/06/15/business/media/jeff-bezos-amazon-rich-charity.html https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/06/15/business/media/jeff-be...
- bluGill 9y agoA lot of rich people have decided the best thing for them to do is get as much money as they can and leave it to a worthy cause after they die. That is they spend their life investing and reinvesting, overall doing what they know best: making more money. Often it takes money to make money, and by not giving it away now when an opportunity to invest a lot of money comes up they have that money where as if they had donated it they wouldn't have it to earn more. When they die the amount they have to give is then overall much greater than if they had given away large parts of it. I don't know that I agree with it or not, but that is the thinking and it isn't completely unreasonable. Note that Bill Gates has been getting a lot of money from Warren Buffet and other rich people. I don't know the break down (it is likely public information: I just don't care to look it up), but it isn't fair to say Bill Gates is working on his own, though he is clearly giving his valuable time.
- BoiledCabbage 9y ago> A lot of rich people have decided the best thing for them to do is get as much money as they can and leave it to a worthy cause after they die. Yeah I don't know about that. The majority of rich people decide what they want to do is make as much money as possible and distribute it to family members. It's there money so obviously they have the right to do just that. I have a lot of respect for Bill Gates in that he has chosen to be as effective with his money as possible in positively impacting the world. I believe he has committed to giving away 99% (or 99.9%?) of his money to noble causes before he passes. As well as inspiring others to make similar pledges.
- VMG 9y agoPrime Day paid off it seems
- DannyB2 9y agoThis probably does not change Bill Gates' enjoyment of day to day life, or lack thereof, whatever the case may be. It depends on whether Bill Gates is obsessed by these kinds of facts, or whether he can enjoy life without a tiny hand size measuring contest.
- Verdex_2 9y agoHear hear. Bill Gates is trying to kill malaria. He doesn't care about having the biggest number next to his name when he dies. He wants to be the guy who's known for killing hunger in Africa.
- gk1 9y agoThere's nothing to suggest Jeff Bezos cares about the contest, either. He's focused on growing his company, just as Bill Gates was 20 years ago.
- graphitezepp 9y agoThis is actually a shame if Bezos doesn't do anything good or interesting with it. Seeing piles of money go back into the money making game is sad compared to what a pile of money does in the hands of a Gates or Musk.
- ceejayoz 9y agoPsst. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Origin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Origin
- graphitezepp 9y agoThanks I forgot about that. Now I can use cognitive dissonance to believe I am helping space flight progress and continue to feel good about my prime subscription!
- kaybe 9y agoIs that coat of arms for real? It looks like something straight out of a Terry Pratchett novel. It's, like, on the other end of the spectrum of where you name your tunneling company 'Boring Company'.
- dumbfounder 9y agoCongrats dude, well earned. I expect him to put some serious space between him and rest of the pack in the next 10 years.
- droidist2 9y agoDamn it, why did I sell half my Jeff Bezos stock
- krapp 9y agoJust imagine the quality of head wax he can afford now.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- mythrwy 9y agoThere is a wax brand on Amazon that has 5,237 5 star reviews all posted within the last week. He should try that one.
- kelukelugames 9y agoIs this a bald joke?
- drewmate 9y agoCeci n'est pas une blague chauve
- miguelrochefort 9y agoI call 100 billion by 2019.
- pepehuehue 9y agoI call (Bezos will be worth) 100 billion before 2019.
- bvm 9y agoIs there a measure of the most fully liquid richest person? i.e. the individual that holds the most cash.
- gk1 9y agoPeople at that level try to hide their cash, so that's a difficult list to make.
- bvm 9y agoI feel like it might be fun (though ultimately utterly utterly worthless) to make a kind of 'best guess' one. I have genuinely no idea where one would start...
- water42 9y agoDrug lords
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- notheguyouthink 9y agoAre you kidding? (..not being sarcastic). Drug lords don't strike me as having quite the wealth that Gates has. Hell, I'd even assume drug lords pale in comparison to some oil Princes, but at least that's a more even comparison perhaps. Gates just has so much money that it's nearly beyond comprehension. But, I don't know any of this, just speculating. Do you know more?
- ratatouille72 9y agoHe's talking about liquidity rich as in cash rich. Bezos and Zuck have a majority of their wealth in stock. Pablo Escobar supposedly made 10+ billion a year, mostly in cash. I'm pretty confident the person holding the most cash in the world is a drug lord or criminal. Anyone who's worth 100m (via legitimate means) would not be holding that much cash
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- Verdex_2 9y agoSteve Yegge Story about Jeff Bezos: https://plus.google.com/110981030061712822816/posts/AaygmbzVeRq https://plus.google.com/110981030061712822816/posts/AaygmbzV... Joel on Software Story about Bill Gates: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/06/16/my-first-billg-review/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/06/16/my-first-billg-rev... Bonus Bill Gates Pancake Problem story: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=92236781&ft=1&f=3 http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9223678...
- Allvitende 9y agoGreat reads. Thanks!
- nikofeyn 9y agothat steve yegge story is...anti-climatic. you mean bezos pointed out he left off data mining and machine learning in a presentation about generalist engineers? what vast and yet cutting insight! ugh. that story just reeks of the blind idolization that goes on with these people. you see it in musk devotees as well. yes, these people are smart, successful, and driven. but they aren't literal incarnations of comic-esque super geniuses or intellectual gods. they are people who's primary power is their drive. how about just respecting their drive and intelligence rather than putting it on a pedestal? think originally and don't be some dumb slave that bows down to supposed super intelligence. question whether those people really have the capability to understand a certain novel idea, because they may not. they got to where they are because they followed a path and followed it HARD, meaning there are maybe paths they didn't have time to consider.
- hunterjrj 9y agoWell, this story was posted in 2011 and although Yegge doesn't specify a date, I think it's safe to assume that the story took place years before the blog was posted as Yegge had by then already moved on to Google. So this means that Bezos was thinking about data mining and machine learning in a presentation about generalist engineers at least 1/2 decade before this became common place.
- shimon_e 9y agoSomewhere there is a community of retailers that hates Amazon as much as Slashdotters hated Microsoft.
- rralian 9y agoI think that's a community of ex-retailers.
- giarc 9y agoI think their last name is Walton.
- Turing_Machine 9y agoAnd yet Walmart is still much larger than Amazon. In 2015, Walmart had sales of about $508 billion, while Amazon only had $83 billion. AMZ barely cracked the top ten: https://nrf.com/2015/top100-table https://nrf.com/2015/top100-table The difference, of course, is that Bezos controls a much larger portion of AMZ than the Waltons control of WMT. None of them are anywhere near John D. Rockefeller, who had an inflation-adjusted net worth of $392 billion, equivalent to 1.5-2% of the entire U.S. economy at the time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_D._Rockefeller https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_D._Rockefeller
- odiroot 9y agoI wonder how does his security detail look like.
- _Codemonkeyism 9y agoI was one of the guys writing M$ and annoyed by the shady business practices of Gates. Today he has my utter respect on how he tranformed and how he spent his money.
- andreygrehov 9y agoInteresting. Anything you could share with us?
- donatj 9y agoI'm personally more than a little impressed on his anti malaria work.
- enraged_camel 9y agoAnd his anti polio work. Humanity is very close to eradicating polio forever, thanks to Bill Gates and Rotary.
- iicc 9y agohttps://www.gatesnotes.com/2017-Annual-Letter https://www.gatesnotes.com/2017-Annual-Letter
- the_common_man 9y agoHuh? Have you thought about all the dreams he destroyed? This is not even Robinhood style where he made money off evil people.
- ajross 9y agoSeems like "dreams" in the broad tech community have done pretty well on the whole. This whole site is kinda dedicated to them. Conversely, have you thought about all the third world disease deaths the guy's money has prevented? To be clear: I was in the anti-MS camp from way back when that means "OS/2" instead of Linux. I was no fan, and still don't use their software for anything meaningful. But "dreams destroyed" is a bit much.
- m12k 9y agoOfficially at least - there is a chance that Putin is actually the richest person in the world: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/07/bill-browders-testimony-to-the-senate-judiciary-committee/534864/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/07/bill-br... "He wasn’t saying 50 percent for the Russian government or the presidential administration of Russia, but 50 percent for Vladimir Putin personally. From that moment on, Putin became the biggest oligarch in Russia and the richest man in the world, and my anti-corruption activities would no longer be tolerated."
- adventured 9y agoThat would be unofficially. Nobody has managed to prove Putin is sitting on the claimed wealth and Putin / his circle has denied it. I seriously doubt anyone is going to step forward with the evidence necessary to prove it, for obvious reasons.
- MisterBastahrd 9y agoPutin doesn't need to be personally wealthy. He's got the largesse of the Russian government at his disposal and a populace which has been conditioned for generations to support the person in power.
- e40 9y agoWhat is known publicly is certainly an indication that he is criminally wealthy. I can't find the reference right now, but there's a Russian bureaucrat close to Putin that makes a small salary, yet he has a large villa in Italy and many other properties, totally many millions of <insert currency> of net worth. There was even a Russian citizen that was documenting and publishing the info and using drones to video him at his Italian villa. I wish I could find that link, it was fascinating. Ah, found it: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/02/world/europe/russia-dmitri-medvedev-aleksei-navalny.html?mcubz=1&_r=0 https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/02/world/europe/russia-dmitr... The video, with English subtitles, as almost 24M views: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrwlk7_GF9g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrwlk7_GF9g
- GFischer 9y ago
- bmcusick 9y agoThis is wonderful news for humanity, in the long term. Bezos is dedicated to expanding humanity into the solar system in a more sensible way than Musk is. O'Neil cylinders are really the way to go for a lot of reasons, and that's the vision that Bezos is dedicated to. More money for that is fantastic. I just wish there was a Bezos/Gates-level billionaire who care as much about life extension via SENS. That's the only thing of equal importance I can think of that needs long term vision and financial support.
- door 9y agobillionaire capitalists are not good news for humanity
- cmahler7 9y agopretty much every technological advancement and the quality of life improvement that came with it is through capitalism. There's a reason that Cuba and Soviet Russia were basically trapped in time
- aaron-lebo 9y agoCapitalism does not require inequality and obscene compensation.
- cmahler7 9y agopeople aren't equal so you're going to have inequality unless you regulate things so everything is equal outcome, in which case you will end up with a failed civilization due to there being no reason for talented people to work hard because they get no benefit for doing so.
- door 9y agotheres a difference between inequality in the sense of "a junior developer makes 60k, a senior developer makes 100k" (what you're talking about, and which is totally fine) and the inequality that actually exists, whereby a small number of extraordinarily wealthy people control a massive proportion of wealth while those in poverty lack access to food security, healthcare, childcare, the basic necessities of life.
- nolok 9y agoI cant entirely decide if I find that graph [1] more impressive or terrifying. Look at the time scale and the speed at which Bezos' net worth increased, while starting at the already insane point of 30 B. [1] https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/iVJAUVVd7l0g/v4/800x-1.png https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/iVJAUVVd7l0...
- kooky5489 9y agoIt should be Elon Musk!! He is the ultra billionaire we deserve...
- erokar 9y agoAs Trump would say: SAD. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/technology/inside-amazon-wrestling-big-ideas-in-a-bruising-workplace.html?hpw&rref=business&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region®ion=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=2 https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/technology/inside-amazon-...
- JustAnotherPat 9y agoI wonder at what point the world's richest will no longer include those philanthropically inclined like Buffet, Gates, and Bloomberg and will be dominated by the likes of Bezos, Slim, and Ortega. (The jury is still out on Zuckerberg and his dubious initiatives) Our global economy is trending towards benefiting only the most ruthless, even at the very top.
- bagacrap 9y agoLots of billionaires (most?) become more philanthropic after retirement. I don't think we're at a risk of this changing as even the most self-centered billionaire would find more value in spending their money on their legacy rather than buying 10,000 Ferraris.
- sqeaky 9y agoA high end Ferrari goes for about $400,000. So $10,000 is only about $4 billion. For Gates at least, he could do both.
- chadgeidel 9y agoNitpick: A high-end Ferrari (and other high end supercars) is well in the millions. You aren't going to see these at your local showroom because they aren't available. They are only offered to folks that already own Ferraris and are Ferrari enthusiasts. For example - Bill Gates could not buy a Ferrari LeFerrari (from the factory) because they would not sell it. Obviously there is a healthy second hand market - which Ferrari also tries to limit. https://www.wired.com/2014/10/herjavec-ferrari-laferrari/ https://www.wired.com/2014/10/herjavec-ferrari-laferrari/ (EDIT: Better article)
- sqeaky 9y agoI was just using the price range provided when I google "ferrari price". The number range passed a sniff test so I picked the highest one and ran with it. Your numbers and sources are clearly better. Are there even 10,000 of those "hyper-cars" out there to be bought?
- _pmf_ 9y agoBest paid CIA operative.
- Dirlewanger 9y agoSo when do we think Bezos will go on the typical billionaire philanthropy track? Actually, a better question is probably will he even? At Bezos' age, Gates was already in a backseat role with most of his non-philanthropic ventures. Though he shares some similarities with Gates, he shows no signs of stopping. He seems actually content with Amazon eating the world, and I don't think it will be a net positive for humanity.
- kogepathic 9y ago> He seems actually content with Amazon eating the world, and I don't think it will be a net positive for humanity. You mean Bezos? Well of course, he's CEO of Amazon and I don't think the board or shareholders would tolerate him saying "this is such a good idea that would make us tonnes of money, but we'd better give the opportunity to someone else" I'm actually kind of amazed that Amazon has managed to plow so much money into their business without shareholders throwing a fit. The usual modus operandi of activist shareholders now is to get the company to pay out as much money as possible to shareholders while investing as little as possible into R&D. They've even managed to squeeze Apple into stock buy backs! Amazon seems to have avoided this and is thus able to invest lots of money into their business units, and look at how it's paid off for them (amazingly well). Regarding Amazon eating the world, I'm not that concerned about it honestly. If Amazon starts acting like a monopoly, regulators will step in and force them to divest from certain business segments. If Amazon gets lazy and starts charging people higher prices or offering a more limited selection, then people will vote with their wallets and order from somewhere else. So on the whole I still see Amazon as a net positive. They're pushing the rest of industry to innovate in ways we haven't seen before (logistics, online shopping, cloud services, assistants) and this is a win for consumers. Sure, there's been some high profile bankruptcies/fire sales from competitors who haven't been able to adapt (e.g. Sears in 6 months), but I have to ask: do you really want to prop up companies that cannot compete in the market? That doesn't make sense from a consumer or economic perspective.
- bpicolo 9y ago> If Amazon starts acting like a monopoly Haven't they already? Their breadth is insane
- dluan 9y agoSomething in the water in Seattle
- swehner 9y agoYou guys haven't been keeping up the boycott, have you?!
- advertising 9y agoExcept it's Putin
- once-in-a-while 9y agoRichest in what sense? In some sense, the poorest (I would guess); e.g. what will be the destiny of their eternal soul?!)
- losteverything 9y agoFrom the article " Anyone who joins Prime shops in retail stores 10 percent less, and that number will keep accelerating as Amazon adds more inventory.” Id love to know the analysis on this. I deliver to amazon addicts and prime-ers. Although, yes, they order often (5-6 days a week) the volume of items by count is tiny compared to a shopping cart at a store.
- 0xbear 9y agoBillG has been giving away something like $2B a year for the past 15 years. He's not really holding onto the title very much.
- kens 9y agoI think most people don't realize just how much money the richest people have. People generally think of normal(ish) distributions like height, where if you're 10% taller or shorter than average, you're a tall or short person, and 40% taller makes you the tallest person in the world. In comparison, wealth has a very, very long tail, making it hard to comprehend. Here's what I've come up with to visualize wealth in the United States. Suppose you start counting, going up by 1 million dollars every second, and people sit down when you reach their net worth. Most people will sit down immediately. After about 9 seconds, people in the "1%" will start sitting down. Near the 17 minute mark, billionaires would start sitting down. Donald Trump would sit down just before the hour mark. A day later - an hour and 10 minutes into the second day of billionaires sitting down - Bill Gates would sit, followed by Jeff Bezos just three minutes later. The point of this is there's a huge range of billionaires (analogous to comparing 17 minutes to a day). The 1% hardly even registers on this scale (a few seconds). (I should also mention that there should be huge error bars on reported net worth numbers.)
- ttoinou 9y agoWhy not rather think about wealth on a log scale ?
- sushisource 9y agoLog scales aren't intuitive to humans. I think it's a great example because that's sort of what it tricks you into doing.
- welterde 9y agoOne would think it would be since we hear and see in log scale.
- zild3d 9y agoYes we hear in log scale, but why would that be intuitive? Ask someone how loud or soft any sound is - a dog bark, a cymbal crash, a whisper - and you won't get a numeric response. We're used to measuring distances, weights, etc but not volume, aside from the volume knob which goes from 0-100%, and the logarithmic scale is already built in
- Tomis02 9y agoKind of surprised to see this so upvoted, I was under the impression that "top N richest people" articles only impress kids and the immature. Don't have a source for it but I'm pretty sure people with more than a few hundred million in the bank couldn't care less if they're richer or poorer than someone else, as they haven't made their fortune by worrying about frivolous things. But that's just me.
- Allower 9y agoAnd why the fuck should anyone care about this non issue?
- jcmoscon 9y agoSo to understand how much money he has let's say Jeff Bezos is walking in the street and sees US$42,000 laying on the ground. He is so rich that it's not worth for him to stop and get the money. It's like you and me seeing a 10 cents coin on the ground. That's his life.
- throwaway328832 9y agoMoney frankly is irrelevant beyond a certain point (and most of it is in the form of share holdings anyway). I'd be more worried about the power/political influence these individuals wield. There is generally an incestuous coterie of the rich that one gets access to after a certain point, where the destruction of freedom is lubricated with champagne and caviar. Bildeberg/IMF/WTO/G20 etc. are symptomatic of such cabals of corporatocracies and their retainers in the state apparatus that wield power over the world.
- sealthedeal 9y agoJeff: "Hey Bill" Bill: "WTF do you want Bezos" Jeff: "Nothing just calling to see how your charity is going" Bill: "Im sure you were, its going good...yadayda" Jeff: "That sounds great Bill, ive gotta run... Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, im wealthier than you now, K BYYYYYYEEEEE!" Jeff: hangs up Bill: murmuring, "that fung Bezos"
- gpawl 9y agoOnly on a technicality, because Gates's Net Worth doesn't include money in the foundation that Gates controls.
- arsenal 9y agoHow much of that money is he actually giving away to uplift other people? A lot to catch up on Bill Gates there
- 4010dell 9y agoOk, thanks for the info. Now, i can pass rest of my day miserably.