19 ms·

That's the funny thing about Billions-with-a-b: normal thinking about money and value just doesn't work IMO. The Vision Fund is going to lose ~$19 billion. But

That's the funny thing about Billions-with-a-b: normal thinking about money and value just doesn't work IMO. The Vision Fund is going to lose ~$19 billion. But Masa Son still controls over $80 billion. That's more wealth and power than almost any human being will ever have in history, ever. At that point the numbers don't even matter. Maybe Neumann took Masa Son for $50 billion. Who cares? A person can live in the USA for their whole lives without working on as little as $3-5 million. Throwing billions around like this, especially when it's digital/paper money in the form of stocks and big corporate deals, really puts the absurdity sprinkles on top of this whole turd bowl. It's this kind of thing that makes people lose confidence in the system. Most people out here are sweating medical bills in the low $10,000's, while the news is talking about billions being gained and lost in the span of a few weeks - so fast it makes you wonder if that amount of wealth really even existed in the first place. How much has to be "lost" between digital transactions before the numbers become completely meaningless? A trillion? A quadrillion?

fnord77 7y ago
not to mention the amount of political influence billions can buy. billionaires are incompatible with democracy
Invictus0 7y ago
Gates, Arnault, and Bezos each have had more than 100B, although not liquid.
- neffy 7y ago
  Not really. Adding up all the shares that they own, and saying that they have that much money, is completely incorrect. If any of them tried to liquidate even a small part of their shareholding the price would go swiftly to zero.
  - ahakki 7y ago
    They can borrow money with their stock as collateral (explicit or implicit). They only need the liquidity to cover interest. btw take a look at Gates' portfolio. He's as liquid as it get's at that level.
  - UserIsUnused 7y ago
    Bezos does so every year in order to finance blue origin.
    - hermitdev 7y ago
      Yes, but a little bit every year != all at once. Selling off a bit every year, you can likely find a welcome market. Sell everything at once, the market will tank/disappear or go for an extreme loss. He probably wouldn't even be able to find a buyer(s) if he decided to sell off completely today.
  - TheIronYuppie 7y ago
    The price would go down, sure, but the chance of it going to zero are... very close to zero. People aren't investing because these folks have shares, they're investing (at least in part) in the underlying value and forward numbers for the company. I guarantee that 100% of any of their shares would be swiftly picked up if they were sold at a 5%+ discount to the 52-week low stock price.
    - neffy 7y ago
      I would equally guarantee that they won´t be, simply because there isn´t actually enough actual money to buy them all. Markets are a real time pricing mechanism - they operate on instantaneous availability of both money and shares. Put enough shares out on the supply side, is the equivalent of flooding the demand side with money a. la. hyperinflation. In both cases, the good in question becomes effectively valueless.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
rayiner 7y ago
> Most people out here are sweating medical bills in the low $10,000's, while the news is talking about billions being gained and lost in the span of a few weeks - so fast it makes you wonder if that amount of wealth really even existed in the first place. If people lose confidence in the system because of that it’s because they can’t multiply. Billionaires are very rich compared to middle class people, but there are very few of them, and lots of middle class people. Elizabeth Warren’s new health plan will cost $50 trillion over ten years. Middle class Americans make $8 trillion a year, compared to about $130 billion for America’s too 400 taxpayers.[1] Confiscating the total wealth of every billionaire in America (about $3-3.5 trillion) would pay for Warren’s health plan for well under a year.[2] We spend way too much time worrying about the wealth of a small group of people that, in the end, doesn’t add up to that large a fraction of total wealth or income. This is, in my view, the biggest reason why America can’t have nice things. Over on the other side of the pond, they don’t worry as much about figuring out how to tax billionaires. Because they know that, in the aggregate, it’s the middle class that has most of the money. [1] https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/statistics/returns-taxpayers-top-400-adjusted-gross-income https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/statistics/returns-taxpayers.... Rough proxy for billionaires. [2] https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2019/10/03/forbes-400-amazon-ceo-remains-richest-person-us-despite-divorce/3849962002 https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2019/10/03/forbes-400-a.... Top 400 billionaire have $3 trillion. Another 220 billionaires not included, but due to the cut off they have at most another $600 billion.
- rayvy 7y ago
  Your comment is posted as a matter of fact, but includes no sources/citations
  - sharkmerry 7y ago
    Its probably true, just cherry picked. Currently healthcare will be 52trill over ten years Warrens plan from two estimates is 52-59 trill over ten years. Billionaire thing seems wrong. Forbes 400 richest americans has 2.96 trillion total between them. Lowest person on the list has networth of 2.8 bill
ksdale 7y ago
It's especially interesting, because although a billion dollars is a staggering amount of money for one person to possess, if you distributed the wealth of the world out to every single person evenly, it would only be something like $50,000 per person (based on some quick Googling), which is a life changing amount of money, to be sure, but it's a one time deal. It's not $50,000 per year of income, it's $50,000, period. The amount of wealth created per year is a fraction of that. Were it all distributed equally, basically everyone in the developed world would be taking a massive hit in quality of life, and every single person in the world would still be sweating medical bills in the low $10,000's. I agree that the numbers become meaningless past a certain point, especially where we're talking about valuations, where it's basically a bunch of people's vague agreement on a price and there are incentives to make it look one way or another, but we also have really bad intuitions about just how much wealth there is out there.
- ZhuanXia 7y ago
  >distributed the wealth of the world In the limit of a single individual wealth works in a naive fashion where such distribution is possible. But on the scale of the economy, such a thing is not possible without inventing a better distribution mechanism than capital itself. If you redistribute each peace of your car's engine to each passenger, you will be forced to walk. Even as a thought experiment, evenly distributing the wealth of the world is not possible. As the wealth is produced by the incentives inherent in gradients of inequality. Thus the project of the modern socialist is to develop redistributive structures that maintain such incentives. There are echos of this in George and Harberger, but little in modern Jacobin-style socialism, whose proposals amount to gifting the means of production to the sorts of people that staff an HR department.
  - ksdale 7y ago
    Yeah I agree it's not remotely practical and that there would be all sorts of crazy consequences, I just think the thought experiment is useful as an intuition check for how much wealth there is. As an aside, I don't agree that wealth is produced by the incentives inherent in inequality. Wealth is created when people make things and do stuff, which often happens because people want more than what they have, and that doesn't require inequality at all, just a desire to have a better life, however defined. Back to the main point, we see someone worth $100b and we think there's plenty for everyone, but even in a best case scenario, where we can magically distribute an equal share of all the wealth to everyone and it all holds its value, there's nowhere near enough for everyone to have the standard of living we have become accustomed to in the richest parts of the world.
x2f10 7y ago
>At that point the numbers don't even matter. Maybe Neumann took Masa Son for $50 billion. Who cares? The numbers don't matter to whom? I have to imagine the numbers matter to Neumann, Masa Son, WeWork stakeholders & WeWork employees. It is never meaningless.
christiansakai 7y ago
I am curious on how a person can live in the USA for their whole lives for $3 - 5 million. Serious question.
- maxerickson 7y ago
  Cost of living a decent life in much of the country is ~$35000. And it will be decent for that price if you can just buy a good house and vehicle.
- 1998 7y ago
  3,000,000 / 60 years of adulthood = 50,000 per year. Not a problem outside costal cities.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- selectodude 7y ago
  5 million over 100 years is $50,000/yr. The median household income is just over $60,000. I think you'd do fine.
  - hanniabu 7y ago
    As seen over the past few decades, $50k doesn't go as far as it used to, and I see no reason not to expect the same in the future compared to now. In 30 years $50k might be poverty level income.
    - selectodude 7y ago
      Sure but that ignores everything about compound interest. And most people don’t live too 100. Consider it reducto ad absurdum on my part.
    - boring_twenties 7y ago
      That's why you invest the $5m, not just keep it in cash.
- 7y ago
weaksauce 7y ago
A million seconds is 11.5 days. A billion seconds is 31.7 years. staggering difference.

fnord77 7y ago

not to mention the amount of political influence billions can buy. billionaires are incompatible with democracy

Invictus0 7y ago

Gates, Arnault, and Bezos each have had more than 100B, although not liquid.

neffy 7y ago
Not really. Adding up all the shares that they own, and saying that they have that much money, is completely incorrect. If any of them tried to liquidate even a small part of their shareholding the price would go swiftly to zero.
- ahakki 7y ago
  They can borrow money with their stock as collateral (explicit or implicit). They only need the liquidity to cover interest. btw take a look at Gates' portfolio. He's as liquid as it get's at that level.
- UserIsUnused 7y ago
  Bezos does so every year in order to finance blue origin.
  - hermitdev 7y ago
    Yes, but a little bit every year != all at once. Selling off a bit every year, you can likely find a welcome market. Sell everything at once, the market will tank/disappear or go for an extreme loss. He probably wouldn't even be able to find a buyer(s) if he decided to sell off completely today.
- TheIronYuppie 7y ago
  The price would go down, sure, but the chance of it going to zero are... very close to zero. People aren't investing because these folks have shares, they're investing (at least in part) in the underlying value and forward numbers for the company. I guarantee that 100% of any of their shares would be swiftly picked up if they were sold at a 5%+ discount to the 52-week low stock price.
  - neffy 7y ago
    I would equally guarantee that they won´t be, simply because there isn´t actually enough actual money to buy them all. Markets are a real time pricing mechanism - they operate on instantaneous availability of both money and shares. Put enough shares out on the supply side, is the equivalent of flooding the demand side with money a. la. hyperinflation. In both cases, the good in question becomes effectively valueless.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

rayiner 7y ago

> Most people out here are sweating medical bills in the low $10,000's, while the news is talking about billions being gained and lost in the span of a few weeks - so fast it makes you wonder if that amount of wealth really even existed in the first place. If people lose confidence in the system because of that it’s because they can’t multiply. Billionaires are very rich compared to middle class people, but there are very few of them, and lots of middle class people. Elizabeth Warren’s new health plan will cost $50 trillion over ten years. Middle class Americans make $8 trillion a year, compared to about $130 billion for America’s too 400 taxpayers.[1] Confiscating the total wealth of every billionaire in America (about $3-3.5 trillion) would pay for Warren’s health plan for well under a year.[2] We spend way too much time worrying about the wealth of a small group of people that, in the end, doesn’t add up to that large a fraction of total wealth or income. This is, in my view, the biggest reason why America can’t have nice things. Over on the other side of the pond, they don’t worry as much about figuring out how to tax billionaires. Because they know that, in the aggregate, it’s the middle class that has most of the money. [1] https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/statistics/returns-taxpayers-top-400-adjusted-gross-income https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/statistics/returns-taxpayers.... Rough proxy for billionaires. [2] https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2019/10/03/forbes-400-amazon-ceo-remains-richest-person-us-despite-divorce/3849962002 https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2019/10/03/forbes-400-a.... Top 400 billionaire have $3 trillion. Another 220 billionaires not included, but due to the cut off they have at most another $600 billion.

rayvy 7y ago
Your comment is posted as a matter of fact, but includes no sources/citations
- sharkmerry 7y ago
  Its probably true, just cherry picked. Currently healthcare will be 52trill over ten years Warrens plan from two estimates is 52-59 trill over ten years. Billionaire thing seems wrong. Forbes 400 richest americans has 2.96 trillion total between them. Lowest person on the list has networth of 2.8 bill

ksdale 7y ago

It's especially interesting, because although a billion dollars is a staggering amount of money for one person to possess, if you distributed the wealth of the world out to every single person evenly, it would only be something like $50,000 per person (based on some quick Googling), which is a life changing amount of money, to be sure, but it's a one time deal. It's not $50,000 per year of income, it's $50,000, period. The amount of wealth created per year is a fraction of that. Were it all distributed equally, basically everyone in the developed world would be taking a massive hit in quality of life, and every single person in the world would still be sweating medical bills in the low $10,000's. I agree that the numbers become meaningless past a certain point, especially where we're talking about valuations, where it's basically a bunch of people's vague agreement on a price and there are incentives to make it look one way or another, but we also have really bad intuitions about just how much wealth there is out there.

ZhuanXia 7y ago
>distributed the wealth of the world In the limit of a single individual wealth works in a naive fashion where such distribution is possible. But on the scale of the economy, such a thing is not possible without inventing a better distribution mechanism than capital itself. If you redistribute each peace of your car's engine to each passenger, you will be forced to walk. Even as a thought experiment, evenly distributing the wealth of the world is not possible. As the wealth is produced by the incentives inherent in gradients of inequality. Thus the project of the modern socialist is to develop redistributive structures that maintain such incentives. There are echos of this in George and Harberger, but little in modern Jacobin-style socialism, whose proposals amount to gifting the means of production to the sorts of people that staff an HR department.
- ksdale 7y ago
  Yeah I agree it's not remotely practical and that there would be all sorts of crazy consequences, I just think the thought experiment is useful as an intuition check for how much wealth there is. As an aside, I don't agree that wealth is produced by the incentives inherent in inequality. Wealth is created when people make things and do stuff, which often happens because people want more than what they have, and that doesn't require inequality at all, just a desire to have a better life, however defined. Back to the main point, we see someone worth $100b and we think there's plenty for everyone, but even in a best case scenario, where we can magically distribute an equal share of all the wealth to everyone and it all holds its value, there's nowhere near enough for everyone to have the standard of living we have become accustomed to in the richest parts of the world.

x2f10 7y ago

>At that point the numbers don't even matter. Maybe Neumann took Masa Son for $50 billion. Who cares? The numbers don't matter to whom? I have to imagine the numbers matter to Neumann, Masa Son, WeWork stakeholders & WeWork employees. It is never meaningless.

christiansakai 7y ago

I am curious on how a person can live in the USA for their whole lives for $3 - 5 million. Serious question.

maxerickson 7y ago
Cost of living a decent life in much of the country is ~$35000. And it will be decent for that price if you can just buy a good house and vehicle.
1998 7y ago
3,000,000 / 60 years of adulthood = 50,000 per year. Not a problem outside costal cities.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
selectodude 7y ago
5 million over 100 years is $50,000/yr. The median household income is just over $60,000. I think you'd do fine.
- hanniabu 7y ago
  As seen over the past few decades, $50k doesn't go as far as it used to, and I see no reason not to expect the same in the future compared to now. In 30 years $50k might be poverty level income.
  - selectodude 7y ago
    Sure but that ignores everything about compound interest. And most people don’t live too 100. Consider it reducto ad absurdum on my part.
  - boring_twenties 7y ago
    That's why you invest the $5m, not just keep it in cash.
7y ago

weaksauce 7y ago

A million seconds is 11.5 days. A billion seconds is 31.7 years. staggering difference.