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I don't place a lot of value on Carlos Slim's advice. His vast fortune has basically been a result of his ability to practice regulatory arbitrage and own a mon

• maxawaytoolong 16y ago
  "... and own a monopoly" Like Bill Gates and Microsoft, who were actually convicted as monopolists? After working in aid in Africa, I have to say I agree more with the Mexican monopolist than the American one.
  • jshen 16y ago
    except one could say that mexico represents Slim's philosophy and America (and most industrialized countries) more closely represent Buffet's/Gate's philosophies. I think it's clear which philosophy has the better outcome for people in general.
    • makmanalp 16y ago
      Wow, and this one is a false analogy. Just because one is from America and the other is from Mexico doesn't mean that they've been the sole affectors of their respective countries' welfares, or that the current (good or bad) state of their countries is a direct result of their actions. What is this, fallacy friday?
      • bilbo0s 16y ago
        I was thinking it was fallacy friday too. I think when people debate things like Charity, they take leave of logic.
        • lzw 16y ago
          I think the leave of logic is to reject economics and just believe in something for ideological reasons. Slim is making an economic point. Part of the reason there is no end of poverty in this US is due to the "War on Poverty" which destroyed the charity system (via government takeover of welfare programs) and has inhibited job creation (via government regulation, taxation and inflation.) We were well on our way to ending poverty in this country before the New Deal was done to us.
      • jshen 16y ago
        Mexico has virtually no safety net, a fraction of redistribution of wealth for social good such as infrastructure and education, etc Using taxes for laying a foundation that provides greater opportunity for society in general is very similar to doing it with charity. Not doing it is very similar to saying, "leave it to the private sector"
        • lzw 16y ago
          It is "very similar" in the way that buying a meal at mcdonalds is "very similar" to being mugged. In one case you do it voluntarily and the people involved are incentivized to do it efficiently.... and in the other case you do it at gun point and the person involved has no incentive to spend the money efficiently.
          • jshen 16y ago
            i disagree with the premise that the only motivation people have is personal greed. I disagree with the depiction of taxation is a mugging, even libertarians want government when push comes to shove. Afghanistan is what it's like with no real government, and no one is for that. Even libertarians want the government to put a gun to your head to enforce contract law!
            • lzw 16y ago
              I never said the only motivation people have is personal greed. Taxation is literally a mugging. And you are in error to assume that governments cannot exist without mugging. Businesses provide services and charge for them. A government could do this as well. don't speak for libertarians if you aren't one. If you are one, you've failed to apply the zero aggression principle. You also seem to fail to distinguish between using violence defensively against an agressor, which is moral, and using violence offensively to steal from someone (eg: taxation) which is immoral.
              • jshen 16y ago
                So you believe there should be no government? We have many examples of this throughout modern history. They were all shit holes. Every country on this planet that is a decent place to live has a strong central government. QED
    • maxawaytoolong 16y ago
      one could say that, but I don't think anyone would would actually say that with a straight face.
      • jshen 16y ago
        Read my reply to the above commenter
  • jakarta 16y ago
    That's the point. Bill Gates was convicted of being a monopolist and checks were put on what his company could and could not do. That does not happen in Mexico. In more extreme cases, look at John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil. Rockefeller used to be the wealthiest person in the world (according to some, if you inflation adjust his money, he may have been the wealthiest person in the last 200 years). His company was broken into parts in order to promote competition. Same goes for the Bell Telecom companies in America, they were also all broken up. We have checks in place to curb the anti-competitive forces of certain companies.
    • volski 16y ago
      In more extreme cases, look at John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil. Rockefeller used to be the wealthiest person in the world (according to some, if you inflation adjust his money, he may have been the wealthiest person in the last 200 years). His company was broken into parts in order to promote competition. John D. Rockefeller actually ended up being a lot richer because the courts broke up Standard Oil[1]. He went from having a controlling stake in the most powerful company in oil, to having a controlling stake in most of the powerful companies in the whole oil industry (ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP, Shell). I just wanted to clarify that point because the order in which your statement was crafted kind of made it seem like the courts broke up his wealth when they actually expanded it. 1.Rockefeller, who had rarely sold shares, held over 25% of Standard’s stock at the time of the breakup. He, as well as all stockholders, received proportionate shares in each of the 34 companies...The companies’ combined net worth rose fivefold and Rockefeller’s personal wealth jumped to $900,000,000.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_D._Rockefeller http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_D._Rockefeller
      • napierzaza 16y ago
        I agree with your statement, while at the same time it was the monopoly that got him to the position he was in. It's hard not to make money once you're at that point. I don't think he could have gotten that rich if actual competition existed and he was investing in hundreds of companies. He didn't do any manoeuvring to get his stakes in all those separate companies, unless you count back room deals.
  • sprout 16y ago
    Wow, that's a load of non-sequiturs. Monopoly is a side effect of the massive corruption plaguing Mexico. Microsoft doesn't even come close. As for aid in Africa, that's a specific charity you worked with in Africa. There are people who do good work there. Dismissing aid because people are bad at it is like dismissing software development because people are bad at it. One way or another it's necessary.
    • bilbo0s 16y ago
      Just to round it out... There is also the logical fallacy known as "Appeal to Authority" in @maxawaytoolong's comment. But we should not be logic nazis I suppose. My own opinion is that both Slim and Gates can be right at the same time. Lots of businesses provide for lots of people...but not all.
    • yters 16y ago
      I went to a missionary conference once where an African princess came in and talked to us. Exactly the place where you'd expect a plea for more aid, right? Well, not really. She said we needed to mind our own business and let Africa take care of itself. Then a Bono video from his opulent mansion came on with some sort of campaign to end world poverty or something.
      • euccastro 16y ago
        "Minding your own business" may be a loaded phrase there, though. Much of the misery in Africa is a direct result of western exploitation. That includes much misery the proximate cause of which is corrupt leaders. Guess who keeps many of them there. She has a point that truly letting Africa "take care of itself" may be more effective than any aid. But that statement is not primarily about aid, and withdrawing aid doesn't help with the subjacent problems.
    • huherto 16y ago
      "Monopoly is a side effect of the massive corruption plaguing Mexico" Hold it. Please don`t make broad accusations. If you have any specific information about Telmex say so, but do not generalize. That badly hurts our reputation and it has been said many times that people just take it as true. Mexico has corruption levels that are consistent with outher countries with similar development levels. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index
  • damoncali 16y ago
    Where is being a monopolist a crime?
• makmanalp 16y ago
  This is ad hominem if I've ever seen it. Especially in corrupt societies, I feel like jobs would fare much better than donations by: 1) Increasing economic activity which is required for growth 2) Making sure the money goes to where it's supposed to, and used the way it's supposed to. (Remember the stolen OLPCs? Donations don't always make it to the destination if they're juicy targets.)
  • jakarta 16y ago
    A number of countries experimented with shock treatment capitalism as a means of quickly bringing their economies up to speed. Take Russia or Bolivia as examples of what can go wrong. In each case, they quickly freed up their economy and tried to privatize everything. The problem was, they had no real legal system in place to properly check that activity. Key national industries went into the hands of just a few wealthy people (see Russia's Oligarch's). In Bolivia, after shock treatment, there was a rise in unemployment, a fall in industrial output, and a fall in per capita GDP. At my university (50k students) I started the first micro-credit organization and we've made over 100 loans to entrepreneurs in developing nations -- so I am not against capitalism or anything like that. But I've studied economic development enough to know that you have to take a multi-pronged approach to promoting development. It's not just about going full-free market or full donations/state involvement. It's requires a mix.
    • makmanalp 16y ago
      Upvoted for insight! This is true, however I wasn't trying to suggest shock treatment. As you said, there is significant evidence against that. In fact, I don't think such a thing happens often without a change in regime. However, production and a larger workforce still do contribute much more to growth. Constant aid, however, has the danger of making the economy reliant on it. Thus, a transition from the latter to the former is desirable.
    • ESchmidtSeesYou 16y ago
      You can blame people like Larry Summers, who advocated shock therapy when he was Chief Economist of the World Bank, devastating the economic potential of the former Soviet bloc.
• nonce91329713 16y ago
  Historically many fortunes were built because of special privilege from the King. Ignoring for a moment the anti-competitive claims against Microsoft, consider that that fortune already hinges on the special privilege of intellectual property law, which is backed in full force by the US justice system. Not all countries have this protection. Microsoft does not do anywhere near as well in countries without it. Does this protection ultimately help US citizens.....that point is up for debate, but it exists, and businesses exist to capitalize on it. Is it something that should be expected? For now, yes, but two hundred years from now, my guess is that intellectual property rights will have eroded, and we will view Gates's fortune as a fortune built using special privilege, just like oil fortunes were built before regulations against monopolies, and just like many shipping fortunes were built before that with special privilege from princes. Special fortunes typically need something special in the first place. Carlos Slim is not that much different from Bill Gates. Bill Gates spent a little bit of time as a heroic startup guy, but he spent the majority of his career doing much the same stuff that Carlos Slim does. If copyright law changed, as many MP3 sharers wish it would, his fortune would deflate as much as Slim's.
  • Andrew_Quentin 16y ago
    You mean it would be best that others could copy the ideas of inventors so that inventors die poor rather than breakthrough pioneers who have given this world the digital age, or at least have contributed towards it significantly, be rewarded appropriately?
    • deleted 16y ago
      [deleted]
    • borisk 16y ago
      Right, Bill Gates - the inventor of the PC, word processing, electronic spreadsheets and more ...
      • ESchmidtSeesYou 16y ago
        And convicted monopolist. Not all good, not all bad.
• bobbin_cygna 16y ago
  ... So What? "The only way to fight poverty is with employment" "Trillions of dollars have been given to charity in the last 50 years, and they don’t solve anything" "There is a saying that we should leave a better country to our children. But it’s more important to leave better children to our country" That's what he said. It may be really wrong, stupid, or right. What matters is "is he right?".
• jamn 16y ago
  Even though Telmex (his landline company) was acquired from the state, and therefore was a monopoly from the start, Slim faced a monopoly by Iusacell on the wireless phone industry, which he managed to break and manage to get Telcel (his wireless company) to become a monopoly basically by making people want to switch. Slim's story includes several investments on different industries, including specialty shops (Sanborn's) which he has managed to completely turn around from near-bankrupcy to huge commercial success. I am not making a claim that his wealth from Telmex didn't contribute to his success, but implying he just managed to get where he is because Mexico's regulatory bodies are useless is a huge understatement to his ability in an industry where several key players (Like AT&T, Nextel, Telefonica Movistar, and others have failed).
  • jorgeortiz85 16y ago
    You can't think of any ways Telmex could leverage its landline monopoly into advantages in the wireless sector? Or use an existing monopoly to prevent new competitors from gaining traction, no matter how well-funded? Telmex charges exorbitant fees for any call that needs to connect to one of their customers. Given that they own 90% of the market, it's impossible to run a telephone company without letting your customers call Telmex customers. If you have to pay Telmex's fees, there's no way your prices to customers will be competitive.
• deleted 16y ago
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• huherto 16y ago
  You are attacking the person. Not his arguments. Most people assume that just because he became so rich in a developing country he must have done it thru corruption. Carlos Slim is an engineer, he teached algebra and linear programming at the national university. Before buying telmex he was already very successfull in many areas( real state, industrial, financial, comercial and mining). Many people say that he was so rich because president Salinas helped him, but Salinas left 16 years ago and his businesses have flourshed in many areas and in many countries. Why can`t Mexico have somebody as talented as Warren Buffet?
  • lzw 16y ago
    Why can't Mexico have somebody as talented as Warren Buffet? It is because Americans are prejudiced. (note this may not be true of HN readers, I'm speaking of the broader american culture.) They don't believe they are prejudiced, they don't know they are prejudiced, but they believe what they are taught to believe. And they believe that mexican is full of corrupt people with little motivation. this isn't racism... it is the image of mexico we are sold by politicians ("all drugs come from mexico" "mexican immigrants just want to use our welfare programs") and the media. I'm not sure if they view all spanish speaking countries as corrupt and full of people who need to be "Saved" by american imperialist "enlightened socialism" or if mexico is a special case. They talk fondly of Venezuela, because Venezuela has a strong leader who is a clear leftist and has done photo ops with Oliver Stone and other prominant leftists. (nevermind that he appears to be the most corrupt leader in the western hemisphere.) Americans' world perceptions are shaped by media. And media doesn't allow for the possibility that people everywhere are essentially the same, with cultural differences. So, americans think that the Nazis had to come to power in Germany because germans are genetically fascist people, for instance. I say this, not as an outsider criticizing americans. But as an american who has studied how the nazis came to power, and how ideology is used to shape americans perceptions of other people, as an academic subject.