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Jeff Bezos Becomes the Richest Man in Modern History, Topping $150B
- axiomdata316 8y agoAdjusted for inflation John D. Rockefeller is still the richest man in modern history. Today his fortune would have equaled 340 Billion dollars. More than twice Jeff Bezos current net worth.
- chrisco255 8y agoIt's not inconceivable that Amazon's market cap could double over the next 10 years. They still have a long way to grow and they're involved in so many markets...
- ghosterrific 8y agoI'm pretty sure that the man/people behind Satoshi Nakamoto are the richest in modern history.
- bsvalley 8y agomost of it is virtual money... He could be worth $50B tomorrow if his company crashes. Still a lot of money though, but $150B don't mean anything. It would be interesting to see when/if bitcoin reaches $1 million USD. That Forbes list would get totally disrupted.
- xkjkls 8y agoWhat is anything other than virtual money though?
- TAForObvReasons 8y agoAMZN stock is currently not legal tender and government agencies and the like are not required to accept it as a form of payment. Can't pay for food with AMZN shares. The US dollar is backed by the "full faith and credit" of the US, which makes it "real" in some sense
- xkjkls 8y agoI mean, my house isn't backed by the full faith and credit of the US, but I'd still consider it a form of wealth. Pablo Escobar is about the only guy I know who kept all his money in cash.
- InitialLastName 8y agoIn other words, AMZN stock is as real as Amazon the company is, and USD's are as real as the US is. Where one has some assets and some shareholder agreements to back up its reality, the other has guns, a voting populace, and global-scale international recognition in favor of its reality.
- crazygringo 8y ago> $150B don't mean anything That's the silliest thing I ever heard. Anyone with more than $50K net worth is or ought to be keeping nearly all of it in investments of some sort, what you're calling "virtual money". It's no more virtual than your 401(k) or Schwab account or home. By your logic, nearly the entire American economy "doesn't mean anything."
- ericd 8y agoIf you sell off your 401k, the stock price dips a fraction of a cent. If he sells his Amazon holdings, the value completely craters. In that way, his holdings aren't necessarily worth what the market currently says they are.
- mikec3010 8y ago> in investments of some sort But he's got most of his investments in one sort, stock in AMZN. It's not a secret that there isn't $150bn of liquidity at the B/A price. If he tried to unload those shares he wouldn't get anywhere close to their calculated value. That's what GP means by "virtual" it exists on paper but any tangible use of that quantity will change it . Not only is there not enough liquidity at that price, but once the market learned he was unloading a substantial quantity the price would become depressed (not sure what the technical term for that is).
- bsvalley 8y agoI think you miss-understood my statement. They calculated $150B based on is 16.4% stakes in Amazon, 100% financial assets (stocks). Yes, you can convert it into real assets at any time, after vesting period, but as the CEO and founder of Amazon, he can't do that. So the point is, he is still considered the richest man on earth at the moment, but he can't still spend $100 billion tomorrow on a gigantic island. So, yeah, $150B doesn't mean anything. It's just a random number.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- skookumchuck 8y agoPaper money is 'virtual', too. History shows us that the value of paper money often crashes.
- CiPHPerCoder 8y agoIsn't this a bit too coincidental, considering today is Amazon Prime Day (i.e. a boycott/protest of Amazon)?
- adamnemecek 8y agoThe scariest part is that he's not done.
- olfactory 8y agoHe's going to be many times over the richest person in history before long. This has been clear for a long time if you look at the rate of growth of his wealth. But it's not bad news. Bezos has an unmatched ability to create infrastructure that works well and is low cost. E-commerce is a very competitive market and yet Amazon grows every day. Why? Because consumers trust Amazon's reviews and return policy. It's way better than what most retailers offer. The reviews are unparalleled and offer consumers tremendous power against firms that try to rip them off.
- frockington 8y agoWhy is that scary? Good for him, he has really changed the world, specifically the way retail has evolved in recent years.
- adamnemecek 8y agoConcentration of power is never good.
- frockington 8y agoEither is jealousy, but its rampant on hacker news and far more destructive
- marknadal 8y agoWhat on earth, he just hit $100B like a couple quarters ago. How on earth did his worth go up by 150% in less than a year? (Edit: up 50%, sorry you are right, I meant 150% of his previous net.)
- no_one_ever 8y agoWouldn't it be +50%? Doesn't seem unreasonable.
- rtkwe 8y agoThat's a pretty steep rise in a short time for any asset though.
- oh_sigh 8y agoIt went up by 50%, not 150. You do that by having most of your net worth in a high performing stock. Of course, in 3 weeks we may see an article about how bezos lost $50B in one day due to the same reason.
- non_sequitur 8y agoAmazon's share price was mid 900s in Sept 2017...1800+ today. When you own a lot of that stock...
- mikec3010 8y agoSo it's similar to the $CURRENT_FAD coin valuations in that if Bezos were to try to liquidate all of his position it certainly wouldn't net him that publicised amount because there's not that much liquidity.
- adtac 8y agoAMZN was $1,010 on 2017-Jul-17. Right now it's $1,813. That's a ~80% increase, so it's extremely plausible that his net worth went up by 50% (in fact, I'm surprised it didn't go up by more).
- ggm 8y ago
- picsao 8y agoAnd all his riches couldn't stop the planets demise from a insane economical concept, who's crazy ess he took to the next level.
- sandworm101 8y agoPutin tops him. At these levels the dollar value is not a good measure. Bezos owns shares. If he started selling them their value would quickly drop. Monarchs (Putin) are different. They own things outright, or have such influence that they effectively own things that are legally in other people's names. The Saudi royal house has more wealth under their king's control, although not all in his name. What is scary is the math when calculated in how many person-years someone like Bezos can buy. Divide his net worth by a reasonable cost for a soldier. Bezos could hire vastly more troops than Henry VII could have in his day. $150,000,000,000 / $80,000 = 1,875,000 ... he could theoretically field an army large enough to sway any modern conflict. In person-buying potential, his wealth is on par with Genghis Kan or Stalin.
- seiferteric 8y agoBut he can borrow against his stock holdings at very low rates I am sure, so its effectively as good as cash.
- mieseratte 8y agoHow much of those assets could a Putin or the House of Saud liquidate before risking a coup? If we're playing speculator, shouldn't we consider risk of "devaluation" for both?
- sandworm101 8y agoThat's why so much of it, and so much of the ruling family, stays outside the country.
- whack 8y ago> "Gates would have had a net worth of more than $150 billion if he’d held onto assets that he’s given away, largely to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation." Sorry Bezos, you've still got some catching up to do. Lifetime earnings are what really count, even if you give it all away to charity.
- nsx147 8y agoGates does have an ~8 year lead
- qop 8y agoNo shit. The comment you're responding to included the words "catching up"...
- untog 8y agoI wonder how Gates' charitable givings 8 years ago compare to Bezos' today. I suspect Bezos wouldn't look fantastic by comparison.
- delecti 8y agoUnless I'm misunderstanding what you're saying, isn't it closer to 20 years? 1975 and 1994
- CamTin 8y agoWhy not simply avoid making billions so you don't have to give it all away to assuage your guilt and come out close to neutral?
- godzillabrennus 8y agoHardly. He’s a pauper compared to John D. Rockefeller who died in 1937. At the time of his death his assets equaled 1.5% of America’s total economic output. With a $20T GDP that would be a $300B net worth in today’s dollars or around 200% what Bezos is worth. Don’t worry. This second gilded age that we are living in is on track to ensure we have a trillionaire in short order.
- coldtea 8y ago>With a $20T GDP that would be a $300B net worth in today’s dollars or around 200% what Bezos is worth. That's close enough, and hardly make him "a pauper compared to JDR". And of course, you got to also examine how the rest of "America’s total economic output" was divided back in JDR era compared to today. Perhaps JDR had 1.5% of US output, but the rest was more equally distributed. E.g. today Bezos might have "just" 0.75% but a larger percentage than in JDRs time might be held by people like Bezos (and in all likelihood it is). In other words, what's important is how much more not just the richest man, but the top say 100 rich commanded then and now?
- tajen 8y agoPlus Jeff Bezos is only in his 50ies, if he’s 0.75% of USA’s GDP now, he may well be the double by the next 30 years.
- wilsonnb2 8y agoThat is an interesting way to compare wealth between time periods but I'm not sure it's the most valid method.
- godelmachine 8y agoYou spoke my mind. For one, Rockefeller grew rich quickly coz there wasn’t as much regulation as compared to what Bezos had to face. On the other hand, Rockefeller wasn’t in the Internet age and Bezos banker on the exponential rise of internet. I am sure there are many more variables.
- josephjrobison 8y agoIf modern history goes back to the 1900s though, Rockefeller still has Bezos beat by more than double: "By the time of his death in 1937, estimates place his net worth in the range of US$300 billion to US$400 billion in adjusted dollars for the late 2000s (decade)." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wealthiest_historical_figures https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wealthiest_historical_...
- dgacmu 8y agoTime for Bezos to endow a university and some libraries? An earlier major technical university endowed by the richest person of the time is a pretty awesome place... (he says with no bias whatsoever. :-) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Carnegie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Carnegie
- xkjkls 8y agoAre universities really highly positive charitable investments in 2018? It's a very different time from when Carnegie existed.
- unimpressive 8y agoI think the research branches of a university are much less ambiguously positive than the teaching branches. One of the things people consistently fail to grok is that community colleges of the sort that are generally fairly cheap, are cheap in large part because their mission is to make higher education accessible. Universities do not (and probably shouldn't) have that mission. Their mission is to fund original research that would otherwise go undone and record it.
- xkjkls 8y agoI wonder if general research is really a great charitable investment either. Medicine seems the most obviously positive research initiative to fund, but looking at the last few decades of medical research, I don't see many discoveries that have demonstrably improved human well being.
- Endama 8y agoI feel that America is in the midst of a new gilded age; instead of Standard Oil, we have Amazon. Like the late 1920s, we saw losses in purchasing power of the average American, the collection of wealth among the top 1%, and disruption of our civic spaces as a result. I think the thing that many Americans aren't aware of was just how violent that time in US history was[1]. The US economy isn't just about how comfortable the average US citizen is, it is also a measure of how much cushion there is in our society between us being frustrated looking at a job board and being angry and armed in the streets. The teachers strikes in Oklahoma, Florida, and W. Virginia are showing the rise of Unions (much like in the gilded age as well). Protest and civic engagement must be our response, we should take signs like the wealth of Bezos as a cautionary tale, rather than something to simply marvel at. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Matewan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Matewan [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1920_Alabama_coal_strike https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1920_Alabama_coal_strike [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Blair_Mountain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Blair_Mountain
- _bxg1 8y agoThe silver lining of this interpretation is that it implies our current trajectory to be cyclical, and not exponential. We may have to re-learn some lessons the hard way in the meantime, though.
- skookumchuck 8y agoCyclical, no. It's an exponential system in the long term, and chaotic in the short term.
- nostromo 8y agoI think Bezos is a bad argument for us being in a new guilded age. When you look at Rockefeller, Carnegie, Ford, and perhaps even Gates, they had near total control over some aspect of the American Economy. And they used that control to make incredible profits. Amazon is trying to do the same, but they haven't done so yet. Their retail business is not wildly profitable (if at all). They haven't monopolized online retail (and may never be able to do so). Amazon may be the next Walmart, but they're not the next Standard Oil. And the market has priced in huge expectations that Amazon will eventually have to meet, or investor exuberance will wane.
- godelmachine 8y ago“I did rather have a kid without a finger than a resourseless kid” - Jeff Bezos.
- flyGuyOnTheSly 8y ago33% of that $150B came to him in 2018 alone (he started the year around $100B) and some people still claim that "we're not in a bubble".
- xkjkls 8y agoA bubble in what though? Amazon stock?
- sdljfslkjfdsj 8y agoEvery single risk asset. Bonds (lowest yields in recorded history including negative sovereigns in europe), stocks (price-to-sales, price-to-ebidta, & countless other measures), art, housing prices back at nominal pre bubble highs, leverage in margin accounts, public debt, central bank balance sheets, etc. That was just from the back of my mouth. Not only is it a bubble but it's quite possibly the largest & most systemic one ever since so much risk has been shifted to the sovereign & central banking balance sheets.
- xkjkls 8y agoI agree that based on historical prices, a large number of assets appear to be at the high end of valuation, but I don't know if it is already correct to call that a "bubble". I prefer the Cliff Asness bubble definition, "the term bubble should indicate a price that no reasonable future outcome can justify." Looking at a lot of those markets, it is definitely possible to see future outcomes that make the current prices justified. The stock market? After the tax cuts, Shiller P/E is on the low side of the 20s now. With another few years of solid earnings growth, there's definitely a possibility of justifying these prices. The bond market? Look at 90s Japan. That could easily justify those possibilities. Art and real estate? We have more rich people who want to have their capital flee countries like Russia/China than ever. That is a trend likely to continue. So I'd refrain from using "bubble". Valuations are stretched, but not absurdly so.
- sdljfslkjfdsj 8y ago
- ForHackernews 8y agoThis is kind of obscene. Even more so since Bezos shuns the kind of charity work through which other multibillionaires like Gates and Buffet shoulder their noblesse oblige.
- lostlogin 8y agoIn fairness to Bezos, did anyone think Gates would turn out like this?
- matte_black 8y agoNot at all, there was a time where people thought Gates was a worthless little shit who made too much money.
- ThirdFoundation 8y agoTo that point, perhaps Bezos has decided to live by Andrew Carnegie's dictum? "-To spend the first third of one's life getting all the education one can. -To spend the next third making all the money one can. -To spend the last third giving it all away for worthwhile causes."
- extragood 8y agoThe difference between Bezos and Gates reminds me a lot of the difference between Jobs and Gates, in terms of philanthropy. Gates has been very public about the plans for his wealth since at least the mid 90s, famously saying that his kids would only inherit a few million. He's regularly committed very large amounts of his capital and time to his philanthropic organization since it was started in 95. I admired him back then, and even more-so now that he's followed through on his commitments and his encouragement for other billionaires to do the same. I get the impression that he understands that hoarding huge amounts of wealth commits you to using that wealth for the public good more than most other billionaires. Jobs was never publicly philanthropic (and actually shut down a lot of Apple's internal philanthropic work himself when re-instated as chief), and the best that we've gotten from Bezos so far is the nebulous message that philanthropy is in his future, but not now. Even Zuckerberg is doing better on that front. Bezos may turn it around and surprise us, but right now we don't really have much data to support that.
- 0xmohit 8y agoReminds one of a couple of related posts: > When I worked at Amazon we had to run around the warehouse, bc if our pick rate fell below a certain number we stopped getting paid. There were bottles & bins full of piss at odd points, bc you were penalised for toilet breaks. A co-worker attempted suicide on-site bc of the stress Source: https://twitter.com/OwennnThomas/status/1007957414577090560 https://twitter.com/OwennnThomas/status/1007957414577090560 > Workers at Amazon warehouse in Minnesota say they've suffered exhaustion, dehydration, injuries while working without air conditioning. Source: https://apnews.com/1d62290004b340feac5c359d59b86823 https://apnews.com/1d62290004b340feac5c359d59b86823
- TheOtherHobbes 8y agoYou'd think with all that cash Bezos could afford to pay his minions a humane rate. But he just doesn't care.
- TheLoneAdmin 8y ago$12/hour is inhumane?
- detaro 8y agoIf its combined with inhumane conditions as a requirement to stay employed, yes.
- TheLoneAdmin 8y agoSo what would you consider a "humane rate" to pay someone to work in inhumane conditions? $20/hr? $100/hr?
- benologist 8y agoWhy don't they just pay a humane rate and have humane conditions? Bezos is the only one demanding inhumane conditions and it doesn't have to be that way at all, it's an entirely contrived problem he invented to be a tiny little bit richer.
- ksec 8y agoIn theory, If you are a CEO, and you knew your stock is in bubble, could you have leverage it and borrow as much as you could for low rate, say $200B or more for 2%, and use that buy whatever business when the bubble burst?
- lainga 8y agoYes, and likely in practice too, but in practice you would probably also run afoul of insider-trading laws.
- CamTin 8y agoThe fiduciary thing to do if you're in this spot is simply to issue equity like it's going out of style: If the market wants to pay you way more than you're worth, take them up on it and stockpile cash for the lean years that are coming. That said, depending on the time horizon of your existing investors, this may not be popular and you may find yourself out of a job.
- sdljfslkjfdsj 8y agoLOL, no CEO's in the modern era aren't interested in buying assets or growing revenues organically. They are interested in juicing EPS from quarter to quarter. That's why 2018 is already set to be the largest in record history of stock buybacks. That means corporations c-suite execs are deciding to go to the bond market & issue debt so they can take that money & use it as an open tender in the market every single day buying back shares so EPS gets juiced (smaller denominator). Then they promptly sell stock options to this new bidder on the open market... beautiful isn't it? 2018 will also be on record as the largest insider selling year & that's no coincidence. It's just like George Carlin said "it's a big fucking club & you ain't in it"
- jpao79 8y agoNot sure if when you say CEO, if you are talking about a CEO with his individual personal stock holdings or for the company itself. If its the former, it feels like Mark Cuban did something of the sort with his Yahoo stock with his own personal holdings in Yahoo. https://www.quora.com/How-did-Mark-Cuban-save-his-wealth-from-the-dot-com-crash-He-sold-Broadcast-com-for-5-7-billion-in-Yahoo-stock-How-did-he-get-out-before-it-all-went-down https://www.quora.com/How-did-Mark-Cuban-save-his-wealth-fro...
- JustSomeNobody 8y agoThat's crazy. Let's say the average home price in the U.S. is $200K. If this was cash, he could buy 750,000 houses. There's about 250 million people over 18 in the U.S. so Bezos could buy a house for roughly 1 in every 330 adults in the U.S. That's just unfathomable.
- conanbatt 8y agoHe wouldn't be able to do it because houses dont materialize with the creation or burning of money.
- JustSomeNobody 8y agoI ... I wasn't really suggesting...
- ttoinou 8y agoso Bezos could buy a house for roughly 1 in every 330 adults in the U.S. Looks like you were. J. Bezos does not have 150 billions baguette and cannot buy 150 billions baguette with what you think his wealth is
- JustSomeNobody 8y agoNo, "could" doesn't mean "should". Saying someone "could" do something is speaking in the hypothetical which is most certainly not suggesting they do that something.
- ttoinou 8y agoAnd what does the GP means then ? He wouldn't be able to do it
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- gnarcoregrizz 8y agoWow. Since Amazon's IPO in 1997 (21 years ago), that's like earning $227/sec, $13k/min, $817k/hr, $19m/day, 7.2b/year, and, 150b/21 years. To put it differently, you could either hire jeff bezos for a year, or 60k "highly" paid software engineers. He's richer than God. (yes I know these comparisons are useless since it's based on valuation based on a single point in time, but it does give it more perspective)
- ryanmercer 8y agoI was like "wait, that doesn't sound right". Nope. Nope it's right, it would average out to $226.49 a second if an even 21 years heh.
- gnarcoregrizz 8y agoSoon all he'll have left to do is make a 1 click checkout for buying palaces. Oops, never mind, it's hard to counterfeit those
- olfactory 8y agoThat's misleading though, because he's had great risk of ruin and lots of smart people have tried (Jet, Azure, etc.) to compete with him but have fallen short. Compare Amazon to something done by government like the highways. When I order something on Amazon it nearly always arrives exactly on time as expected. Highways are always in a state of disrepair and congestion, and get worse every day. This is not an example of why Bezos wealth should be used to build highways. Every penny of his wealth was earned by offering services in a competitive market better than the alternatives. With government infrastructure there typically are no alternatives and so nobody cares or expects much. Bezos is not an enemy of the little guy, he's someone who has made it so much cheaper to build a startup. Remeber the days when the first $200K of fundraising would go straight to Dell for a bunch of bare metal hardware? Contrast that to AWS. He's done the same in many areas of the economy.
- gnarcoregrizz 8y agoAmazon wouldn't even EXIST without those highways which are "in a constant state of disrepair and congestion." It's fair to say that their delivery vehicles are making it worse. Maybe some of his wealth should be used to improve or expand them? As far as amazon being that great, a lot of the time their stuff is in fact late, and people on their marketplace sell counterfeit items. They also treat a lot of their workers like garbage. I agree with you on your other points, he's effectively beaten the competition and Amazon is great in many ways, partly because they are so, so convenient, but I wouldn't paint him as some saint of good capitalism
- tzs 8y agoOT: I've always wondered, if some multi-billionaire became personally offended by some lesser multi-billionaire and decided to destroy them, what could they do? Assume that they don't want to do anything illegal enough to get themselves into serious trouble. For example, suppose Bezos decided he really hated Rupert Murdoch ($15B). If Bezos decided he could happily live on a mere $100B, that would leave him $50B for the "Destroy Murdoch" project. Might not be able to actually destroy Murdoch for that, but could probably make his life very annoying.
- drinkzima 8y agoCarl Icahn [sort of] just did this to Bill Ackman: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/24/how-carl-icahn-came-to-join-herbalifes-fight-against-bill-ackman.html https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/24/how-carl-icahn-came-to-join-...
- jamestimmins 8y agoWow, that was so much more dramatic than I realized. These public fights (esp where normal people's jobs are at stake) are almost certainly a bad thing, but they're just fascinating to watch in real time.
- technobabble 8y agoIt may look similar to the Peter Theil / Gawker debacle i.e. one party attempts to drown the other in red tape, proxy "wars" through shell companies.
- mandeepj 8y ago> If Bezos decided he could happily live on a mere $100B Yeah, it's so mere that there are n't too many examples to cite.
- sjg007 8y agoSure to some extent. But.. Say Bezos buys Fox News to wipe it off the map. Another billionaire or two would just start another version of it. The market is still there.
- twodave 8y agoIn my opinion, the biggest risk to Bezos' wealth is the same thing that drew me into the service to begin with. In the mid-to-late 2000s it was easy to go to Amazon, search for "thing I want" and blindly purchase the 4.5-5 star item with enough reviews to appear legitimate. I could do this and expect to get a great product _every_ time. Now, I find myself spending an hour screwing with the filters and reading reviews to figure out which listings are noise with fake reviews and which ones are for real. And even then with many products fulfilled by Amazon, you end up having to read reviews to figure out which seller to buy from to get the real item and not a counterfeit. This combination of fake reviews and counterfeiting is what I think threatens Amazon's position. I don't make many large purchases on Amazon any more as a result of the risk, and those that I do make are fulfilled by the manufacturer so I know what I'm getting is legitimate.
- cmjqol 8y ago>reading reviews to figure out which listings are noise with fake reviews and which ones are for real I thought I was the only guy looking for patterns in Reviews and grammatical style to eliminate fake reviews. Amazon has an insane amount of traffic making it the ideal choice for Chinese electronics makers who have lived or studied to america. They understand western marketing and psychology and it's fairly easy for them to manufacture clones of something that works really well in those countries at lower cost. The products are often flooded with 5 stars rating , mostly incoherent.
- kart23 8y agoHonestly, I fucking hate Amazon. I love going to a store, feeling the product and then deciding if I like the look and feel of a product. And Amazon doesn't even carry good stuff anymore. It's all just junk nowadays, and the useful stuff is often overpriced or out of stock. I want somewhere where I can find unique, good quality brands, and brick&mortar will always be best for that.
- 0x00000000 8y agoAnd even if you check something out in person at a retail store and go buy it on Amazon, there is a chance you receive a counterfeit. A very, very high chance for some items.
- koube 8y agoThis thread is one of the prime examples of Hacker News being terrible when going off topic. You only have to read three comments to get to the most upvoted person saying the rich are at risk of violent revolution. A few more comments and people are discussing logistics of violent revolution, and whether police are too obese to participate or perhaps they act only in the interest of the 1%. Are these educated opinions?
- ahelwer 8y agoYour synonymous use of "educated" with "neoliberal" is notable. Those who ignore the views of the workers because they are not articulated in language they find acceptable do so at their own historical peril.
- koube 8y agoI didn't advocate any position besides that violent revolution is improbable. Is the improbability of violent revolution a neoliberal concept? Do I ignore workers when I state that discussions around police obesity are not grounded economic discourse? Is there any universe in which this conversation leads to a reasonable place?
- frgtpsswrdlame 8y ago>Do I ignore workers when I state that discussions around police obesity are not grounded economic discourse? Well it's not economic discourse at all, it's political discourse. >Is there any universe in which this conversation leads to a reasonable place? You're against the conversation in general? It seems that you think discussion of inequality leads inevitably to the idea that we should engage in violent revolution. If that's the case maybe violent revolution is the most reasonable place.
- koube 8y agoWhat exactly do you have a problem with? You want discussions of inequality to center around police obesity more? Or did you perhaps not know that the order of comments can change? I am literally pointing out that the top few comments were centered around violent revolution and police obesity. I'm not saying "inevitable slippery slope", I am literally describing the content of the first few comments at the time. If your conclusion from this is that violent revolution is the most reasonable then you just wanted violent revolution in the first place. And no, this conversation didn't lead to a reasonable place, seeing as you're now here saying that I, because of a hacker news comment, am justification for violent revolution.
- bryanlarsen 8y agoVladamir Putin's net worth is estimated to be more than $200B.
- markhahn 8y agoWho really thinks that stock price has anything to do with ownership? Since no one can actually buy Amazon, it's "market" price is purely speculative. In both senses.
- mi100hael 8y agoWhat are you talking about? A share represents a literal 1/485320000 ownership stake in Amazon and the market price of a share is definitely not speculative as I can go out and easily purchase shares at a given price. If Walmart or Alibaba or some other sufficiently large enough company wanted to buy Amazon, they absolutely could. And they'd probably pay a premium over Amazon's current market cap!
- dapf73 8y agoNot richer than Putin.
- kolbe 8y agoReminder: Qaddafi was worth $200b[1] at the time of his death, and that was in liquid assets. Not an unsellable position in one speculative stock. Other notable heads of state that probably blow Bezos away: Putin, bin Salman, and probably Xi. [1] http://www.businessinsider.com/qaddafi-200-billion-richest-2011-10 http://www.businessinsider.com/qaddafi-200-billion-richest-2...
- amelius 8y agoCapitalism needs an upgrade. Our current version breaks down in the global internet economy with digital platforms and digital retailers, where simple brands combined with external capital have the ability to turn companies into supermassive black holes for consumer attention. As we know from math, singularities need special care, so we better start thinking about how we could fix the situation.
- frockington 8y agoWe are now at a point in history where the average human is better off than ever before. Capitalism has pulled more people out of poverty than any other system. If someone who radically changed the world has a ton of wealth, good for them. Jeff Bezos having money has no impact on my ability to succeed, if anything it has positively affected it as he has created so many new jobs
- amelius 8y agoTrue, but it's like saying that MS-DOS doesn't need an upgrade because it allows the average human to work more efficiently than ever before.
- csomar 8y agoThese numbers are not fair and square. Let's say someone has $100. Cold Cash. Let's say someone has $100. In xyz Asset. Comparing both in terms of wealth is not fair and square. First. They might have different purchasing power. Bezos can't liquidate $150bn of AMZ stock without slippage. If he could, then there must be another party willing to put $150bn of cash. Not many such parties in this world have that kinda cash laying around. Second. They have different volatilities. $100 in cash is worth roughly $98 by next year. $100 in xyz asset might be $50 or $200. Third. Holding an asset might have unrealized tax positions. I don't know the fiscal laws of America. But I think bezos will have to pay a significant portion of the liquidated asset since he is going to make profit. If you have $100 in cash, you don't have to pay anything. You already "realized" whatever profit. But sure Bloomberg and Forbes would like to make headlines. That's their business. What I'm trying to say is that this number is meaningless. Literally. Some asset management company has $6trillion under their management. That's x40 times more $$ power than bezos. But the bosses of these companies don't get as many headlines. Have you heard of BlackRock?
- WilliamEdward 8y agoAsset management is not the same as owning the assets so I don't really understand that point. If you were to write up a balance sheet to measure the net worth of an Asset management company, you wouldn't really count other companies assets as their own.
- mi100hael 8y agoNice strawman. You're the only one I see conflating net worth & liquidity.
- delecti 8y agoDoes anyone with a net worth greater than $1B calculated in such a manner have more than even a tenth in liquid wealth?
- ValleyOfTheMtns 8y agoNot to downplay the absurd amount of wealth he has, but it's interesting to look at richest people in history, adjusted for inflation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wealthiest_historical_figures https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wealthiest_historical_... https://www.celebritynetworth.com/articles/entertainment-articles/25-richest-people-lived-inflation-adjusted/ https://www.celebritynetworth.com/articles/entertainment-art... Bezos is less than half the wealth of the people at the top of those lists. Puts this into context.
- erikpukinskis 8y agoTracking a flagged comment from picsao here: > And all his riches couldn't stop the planets demise from a insane economical concept, who's crazy ess he took to the next level. I think this is an interesting point. Has Amazon grown industrial production and shipping and therefore increased net CO2? Possible counterclaims: - more informed purchasing leads to fewer discarded items - centralized shipping is more efficient than driving your car to the store It does seem like in the limit Amazon could have a profoundly positive effect on the net carbon of our products. It doesn’t seem like they are optimizing for that right now. Although and optimal strategy there would probably be growth first and then carbon efficiency when the growth levels off.
- amai 8y agoThat is about 300000 Dollar per Amazon Employee (assuming 500000 employees). Maybe it‘s time to pay Amazon employees some dividends?