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Mansa Musa: The richest man who ever lived
- estomagordo 8y agoAm I the only one who primarily reacts to Gaddafi's inclusion? I knew the crazy geezer was rich, but richer than Bezos and Gates rich?
- pjc50 8y agoThis figure is disputed, and it's not clear what happened to it after his death. Despite a large campaign to seize it. On the other hand, Libya earns about $20bn a year in oil exports. Subtract cost of production and then consider how much of that could have been taken by Gaddafi personally.
- dagw 8y agoHere's a critical breakdown of where that number came from: https://www.forbes.com/sites/edwindurgy/2011/10/25/did-moammar-gadhafi-die-the-richest-man-in-the-world/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/edwindurgy/2011/10/25/did-moamm... TLDR: The $200 Billion number comes from the value of property and assets owned by the Libyan government and sovereign wealth fund. And while Gaddafi had zero qualms about using tax money to directly fund his lavish lifestyle, treating government property as his own and using the sovereign wealth fund as his personal trust fund, he never made any moves towards actually seizing the assets or principal of the wealth fund for himself, so technically it shouldn't count towards his wealth.
- Udik 8y ago> using tax money to directly fund his lavish lifestyle I am trying to find references for this lavish lifestyle claim. His Wikipedia entry says "His home and office at Azizia was a bunker designed by West German engineers, while the rest of his family lived in a large two-story building. Within the compound were also two tennis courts, a soccer field, several gardens, camels, and a Bedouin tent in which he entertained guests. In the 1980s, his lifestyle was considered modest in comparison to those of many other Arab leaders." I guess it's hard to say whether this amounts to a "lavish lifestyle" for a dictator.
- dagw 8y agoI am trying to find references for this lavish lifestyle claim First relevant looking link I found on Google: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-libya-gaddafi-homes/abandoned-gaddafi-homes-reveal-champagne-lifestyle-idUSTRE77U5NL20110831 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-libya-gaddafi-homes/aband...
- Udik 8y agoYes, there are several of those. I'm not very sure of their reliability though, as it is customary to paint in the worst possible light the people you've been waging war against.
- avar 8y agoThat seems like a weird definition of wealth. Is Bill Gates relatively poor by the same argument because his enormous investment in assets he ultimately controls dwarfs his personal consumption? If you have $100 million sitting in a bank account you never touch you still own at least $100 million.
- Tepix 8y agoIt's like Bitcoin: If you had 3 million BTC, you couldn't sell them all without the value of BTC plummeting.
- avar 8y agoThere's ~16 million BTC in circulation. If you had 3 million you'd be trying to sell ~20% of the total supply. Whereas Gaddafi allegedly had $200 billion in assets, which against the approximate world wealth of $300 trillion is around 0.05%.
- Cthulhu_ 8y agoI've read this or a similar article before; the main thing is when a person's personal fortune is mixed with that of a country. If you'd consider idk, the value of the US and Trump to be one and the same, he'd have hundreds of trillions of USD (based on the US's $20 trillion / year GDP).
- rtkwe 8y agoThat's silly in the US case because the president doesn't even have the power to decide how to spend the money in the treasury much less the accumulated wealth of the companies and people... In the case of a dictatorship mixing the wealth of both makes sense at least a bit because they can directly control a lot of it (and are often embezzling the shit out of everything too so they actually 'own' a lot of wealth).
- gabbygab 8y agoThe $200 billion gaddafi wealth was part of the psy-op to take down gaddafi a few years ago. I remember seeing it all over social media and the news before gaddafi was taken out. Interestingly enough, guess who else has $200 billion? https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/02/20/is-vladimir-putin-hiding-a-200-billion-fortune-and-if-so-does-it-matter https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/02/20... https://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/31/financier-bill-browder-says-vladimir-putin-is-worth-200-billion.html https://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/31/financier-bill-browder-says-... I'm sure they did a study to determine what wealth value was believable and anger inducing? Was $100 billion too low for people to care and $300 billion too high for anyone to take seriously? It'll be interesting to find ou thow they settled on $200 billion. If I was maduro, I'd look for places to hide if the psy-ops start to mention his $200 billion or starts to focus on his wealth.
- taneq 8y agoBased on their chart, "incomprehensible" is a bigger number than "incalculable" and both are larger than $4.6 trillion.
- frozenport 8y agoAlos half baked stuff like taking the highest estimate of Libya's sovereign wealth fund as Gaddafi's personal fortune.
- estomagordo 8y agoNo. Incalculable is less than 4.6 TUSD.
- close04 8y agoIf you mean literally, mentioning the result of the calculation or estimation ($4.6 trillion) certainly disqualifies it from being "incalculable". Incomprehensible on the other hand is slightly more realistic as most humans can't really comprehend such high values. They understand them as a number but not the extent of it. Which is why when large numbers are involved you'll surely find some equivalences: "as heavy as 1000 747s", "1000 times taller than the Empire State Building", etc.
- InitialLastName 8y agoDid you read the article? They literally put $4.6 Trillion on an entry between wealth entries lableed "incomprehensible" and "incalculable".
- SketchySeaBeast 8y agoThat's why you gotta switch to using a long.
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- bibyte 8y agoThis Wikipedia article is pretty good: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wealthiest_historical_figures https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wealthiest_historical_...
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- 1llum1nat1666 8y agothe riches of mansa musa are currenly in the hands of the 13 family bloodlines that include the rotschild,rockefllers etc they used someone similar to indiana jones(sic) and accomplices for recovering the treasures during the RAIDS OF TIMBUKTU....glad we europeans have been able to survive of this stolen stuff for so long...praise ze ancestors!
- goto11 8y agoFun list, but it is pretty impossible to compare riches across history. Augustus personally owned Egypt, the breadbasket of the Mediterranean at that time. How to you even assign a dollar amount on that? How do you compare the purchasing power over time, when some valuables like gold or salt have become much more abundant, and other things like slaves cannot legally be traded anymore?
- rebuilder 8y agoAnd, of course, when some things we now take for granted wouldn't simply not have been available to even the richest of people. Say, air travel.
- peteretep 8y agoAir travel is a luxury compared to the availability of antibiotics, and not getting plague.
- 4thaccount 8y agoPlague like epidemics are coming back due to the anti-vax movement. Fully preventable too.
- idointernet 8y agoOff topic much?
- 4thaccount 8y agoNo. Parent talking about how they didn't have plagues. Just a note that we're moving back in that direction.
- littlestymaar 8y agoNobody has ever been vaccinated against plague in developed countries (where the antivax are an issue) and plague hasn't been eradicated through vaccination but prophylaxis. So the gp is both off topic and factually wrong.
- akudha 8y agoJeez, the numbers thrown around in the article are insane! Sample: The king reportedly paid the poet 200 kg (440lb) in gold A hundred camels were in tow, each camel carrying hundreds of pounds of pure gold. If this wasn't BBC, I'd have thought I was reading The Onion :P The later arrival of Europeans in the region was the final nail in the empire's coffin. :( Of course
- wtdata 8y agoMansa Munsa was head of an empire himself. It seems incongruent to show displeasure for it had been replaced by yet another empire, just because it was based in some European country.
- peteretep 8y ago> The later arrival of Europeans in the region was the final nail in the empire's coffin. > :( Of course We're talking here about an empire that tracked 12,000 slaves both ways across the Sahara. Most regions the Europeans colonized were plenty capable of inflicting the suffering on their people that the Europeans managed, the Europeans just industrialized the practices.
- fnordsensei 8y agoI think we can all agree that you don't have to go back very far in time for virtually everyone to appear like giant jerks (to put it mildly) when seen with modern eyes. Industrialization of exploitation has its own particular sinister aspect as opposed to just plain exploitation, though. I do get sad sometimes that Europe bulldozered over virtually everything, not from a "better or worse" perspective, or "right or wrong" (because how am I to be a judge of that?), but from the perspective of curiosity as to where the Mali, or Inca, etc., would have been today if that hadn't happened.
- oblio 8y agoThere's some anthropological research that basically says that remote communities are generally more backwards than bigger communities. Some examples of this being the populations of the Americas, compared to the ones from the Old World; or the one in Tasmania, which managed to lose the use of tools their forebears in Australia were using. Of course, extrapolating is super hard and risky, but the impression I get is that at least for the Americas, the local populations would be less competitive than the ones in the Old World.
- cjlars 8y ago>A hundred camels were in tow, each camel carrying hundreds of pounds of pure gold. Or around $1bn in gold assuming 500 pounds per camel at current exchange rates. As a percent of the then global GDP, this was likely well above the modern super rich, but as a head of state, his pilgrimage would have been perhaps comparable to a mid-sized war for that time period given the number of troops and total expense.
- _Microft 8y agoInteresting article but Jakob Fugger the Rich was estimated to be worth 400 billion Euro at the time of death and he's missing from the list. How accurate might the rest of the list be then?
- flurdy 8y agoI think they forgot the standard of first checking Wikipedia [1]. Though they might just have cherry-picked people for their comparison list. (not that Wikipedia is always correct, but it usually more likely to be correct than most sources) Though it is an interesting read on Mansa Musa. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wealthiest_historical_figures https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wealthiest_historical_...
- pavel_lishin 8y agoWait, the Fuggers were real? I thought that name and family were just an invention of Stephenson's in the Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O.!
- toasterlovin 8y agoThey are, indeed, real. And they make appearances in Stephenson's Baroque cycle as well, IIRC.
- rlglwx 8y agoRichest man in history and already unknown to most of the world, along with many others on the list. Just goes to show that legacy is not measured on a balance sheet.
- TuringNYC 8y agoYes. Legacy is governed by controlling the narrative. That is the real lesson. Another lesson - there is no one legacy, we each have our own context. Go overseas and they will know Mansa Musa better than our local legends. Sort of like you comparing your high school music playlist with a friend in college from another country and you're like...woah...never heard of these artists!
- maxxxxx 8y agoIt would be interesting to see how well known he is in Africa. As westerners we have only a very limited view of history and we know only about people who were relevant to our own history.
- sanxiyn 8y agoIf you liked this, you may also want to read about Howqua, a Chinese merchant who was the richest man in the world in the 19th century. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howqua https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howqua
- teddyh 8y agoExtra History did 5 episodes on the empire of Mali, where episode 3 is about Mansa Musa: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-Un2xx6Pzo&list=PLhyKYa0YJ_5DDhUWNT_5GWuCnXHh70Zz7&index=3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-Un2xx6Pzo&list=PLhyKYa0YJ_...
- nukeop 8y agoThe smart move is spreading the wealth across a large family so that neither member ever ends up on any of these lists and you're all out of the public eye, while having the same or larger power. The Rothschilds once pitted countries against each other while supplying all sides and making a fortune out of it, they practically owned the London stock exchange. You don't see their name on any of these lists anymore nowadays though.
- Nasrudith 8y agoThe whole Rothschilds thing stinks of anti-Semitic slander and refusal of spendthrift bellicose nations to take responsibility. It isn't that the ruling classes were all greedy, inhumane and glory hungry that got into deep debt killing each other in petty squabbles for no lasting gain - it is our wealthy creditor's fault! Especially since the two reason why jews were expelled were fundamentalism and avoiding paying their debts.
- nukeop 8y agoDo Rotschilds have a monopoly on being Jewish? They did make a fortune on wars and they did own the London Stock Exchange, those are historical facts and they have nothing to do with race - why are you trying to conflate pointing out some historical facts with "anti-semitism"?
- philwelch 8y agoThough anti-Semitism is definitely either a contributing or complicating factor, it's human nature to blame lenders for the failures of creditors.
- restalis 8y ago"Mansa Abu-Bakr, ruled the empire until 1312, when he abdicated to go on an expedition. Abu-Bakr was obsessed with the Atlantic Ocean and what lay beyond it. He reportedly embarked on an expedition with a fleet of 2000 ships and thousands of men, women and slaves. They sailed off, never to return." I wonder how America would have looked like if an African power could manage to establish colonies almost 200 years before Europeans. The technological superiority probably wasn't there but the presumed pandemics caused by the contact may still have provided the invaders an advantage. If nothing else, that would have provided the American natives some additional experience before facing the Europeans.
- dentemple 8y agoIt certainly might have been possible for them to reach Brazil, if they had set off in the right direction and could weather any storms. I wonder, though, if Mali would have found the place as hostile as Vikings found North America.
- novacole 8y agoWell if Mali has 2000 ships, that would have been “technologically superior” to what the native Americans would have had, since they had boats, not ships. But Mali also had guns so I’m not sure how Mali couldn’t have been seen as more technologically advanced. I’m asking out of actual curiosity.
- restalis 8y ago"that would have been «technologically superior» to what the native Americans would have had, since they had boats, not ships" Technological superiority as in "the air [or aura] of invincibility"¹ that conquistadors acquired in their campaigns. That required quite a difference in military capabilities and skill to leverage that superiority into an exploitable psychological effect. I'm sure there were plenty of technological advantages over native Americans, but I'm not so sure that those were enough to have the same impact as that had for the later Spanish conquest force. "Mali also had guns so I’m not sure how Mali couldn’t have been seen as more technologically advanced" I doubt that gunpowder had at that time a significant use in Middle East², let alone in some far western parts of Africa. That use was initially reduced to casted-on-the-spot direction-fixed heavy bombards, used in fortress sieges, not against dispersed groups of infantry. It took time for technology to be developed into hand-wielding guns like the Arquebus. Add to that it would have been a stretch for some attacking force accustomed to dry weather to rely on gunpowder in (probably unexpected) tropical/equatorial wetlands. ¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Cajamarca https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Cajamarca ² https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunpowder#Middle_East https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunpowder#Middle_East
- edoo 8y agoSo he was 32 when his brother handed over the throne. His brother was presumably older, I'm guessing under 45 though. The brother is the king, has everything, probably realizes he is getting old, and purposely heads out on a final adventure to see for himself what lies on the other side of the ocean. That is pretty epic.
- codeisawesome 8y agoGaddafi was worth $200bn?!! What an ignominious way to go. It must have sucked particularly hard to be that rich and die the way he did... money != power I suppose, not always anyway.
- kerbalspacepro 8y agoNo, it should be clear that however they're calculating wealth is obviously wrong. Augustus Caesar has the wealth of $4.6 trillion? There is simply no way that is true.
- fnord123 8y agoMost of the story is ripped from the Wikipedia article. But then... > Lucy Duran of the School of African and Oriental Studies in London It's the School of Oriental and African Studies - SOAS. Not SAOS. Yikes.
- gabbygab 8y ago"But he is by no means the richest man of all time. That title belongs to Mansa Musa, the 14th Century West African ruler who was so rich his generous handouts wrecked an entire country's economy." How can anyone, let alone the BBC, make this claim? There aren't any records or any legitimate evidence to seriously compare wealth between eras. But even without records, we can safely say that mansa musa wasn't anywhere near the richest man in the 14th century where the khanates of the mongol empire, the holy roman empire, ottoman empire, etc reigned supreme. Why make a claim as if it was a statement of fact when it is a conjecture at best? And is a website called "Celebrity Net Worth" really anything that the BBC should be sourcing? What's the point of this article? It's not news. It's not history. Why did I spend a few minutes reading this article? The first time I heard of mansa musa was years ago on reddit's TIL, but even there, it was ridiculed as being clickbait nonsense. Now the BBC is at it?
- ramblerouser 8y agoThe British government, via its public broadcaster, is trying to reduce xenophobic sentiment and boost support for African immigration by combating commonly held beliefs about Africa being poor and backwards long before colonization. Debunked depictions of early Britons as dark skinned, and Swedish tapestries aledgedly containing Islamic writing are two more examples of this pro-migration effort being undertaken by Western governments.
- dang 8y ago"Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- erbium 8y agoThis article is intended solely to make fun of HN and you in particular.