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Jeff Bezos’s Wealth Soars to $171.6B to Top Pre-Divorce Record
- mhoad 6y agoJust a friendly reminder that this isn't normal and that you are responsible for helping to shape the kind of society that you want to live in.
- maerF0x0 6y agoHow do you define "normal" ?
- mjburgess 6y ago"Normal" politics is the world c. 1995, and "Normal" economics is the white upper-middle class post war US economy. Why? Presumably because those periods most comparatively advantaged the demographics of the people inclined to make such comments. Of course 171Bn is "normal", and most of human history has been more unequal, not less.
- 9nGQluzmnq3M 6y agoBezos seems pretty happy to be shaping the kind of society where he sits alone on top of the greatest pile of wealth ever amassed by man.
- kakd 6y agoBezos is nowhere near the top if you consider "ever", Cesar Augustus personally owned Egypt.
- skosch 6y agoBezos' dollars are a lot more fungible than that. What would "owning ancient Egypt" on paper do for you, really?
- tosers4 6y agoReally? He was being literally treated as a god among man. And his word was rule there, and not just for the slaves. Bezos is literally nothing. It's just that nowadays the average person has more power, and the average bourgeois has even much more power, but the old rulers could do anything.
- me_me_me 6y agoLol, Comparing the two is silly. But let's do it. Head to head. Bezos could hire a small army of mercenaries and defeat any cesar/king/emperor of the past. Also Rome didn't own any of the provinces, they occupied, governed and taxed them. Its not like they could do anything with Egypt.
- learc83 6y ago>Bezos could hire a small army of mercenaries and defeat any cesar/king/emperor of the past. The kind of army that governments would allow Bezos to own couldn't defeat the strongest rulers in the past unless he got very lucky and managed to pull a Cortes and ally with another much larger force.
- me_me_me 6y agoAnd now we are in territory of bizarre wargame scenario. If the army of the past came to present they are dead in the water. All you need is to know where their leader is and assassinate them, sniper rifle, explosives thrown from helicopter etc. You don't need military equipment, as the past people have no experience and knowledge of mode technology. Other way around - modern army in the past - is a bit too complex (too many variables/scenarios) to write in a comment. That is territory of a podcast episode or two :)
- malandrew 6y agoYou could borrow against it.
- kamaal 6y ago
- learc83 6y agoThat's true as a percentage of total world wealth, but if you're using money as a proxy for productivity, in absolute terms $200 billion probably outranks all of Egypt 2000 years ago. And if you're talking about how much wealth he could realistically extract from Egypt, it's much much lower. Maybe even lower as a percent of global wealth.
- Happpy 6y agoKing Leopold II 'owned' Congo as his personal property, before it became a Belgian colony.
- tosers4 6y agoEgypt at that was one of the most developed areas in the world, unlike Congo.
- malandrew 6y agoPretty much every member of congress has the ability to impact the spending of Jeff Bezos level wealth every single year.
- artemonster 6y agoI am with you, but please argument your opinion. It is somewhat obvious from any "moral" standpoint, but every time I try to dig why people think that way I only find badly formulated opinions, based on nothing, but some vague belief systems of "right" and "wrong".
- dabbernaught420 6y agoWealth gives a person power. The people who get very wealthy (in our current system) are not generally the people who will do the best things with power. This seems like a situation which could be improved on.
- tosers4 6y agoWell, Bezos is putting billions of his money (not amazon's) into space industry (Blue Origin), that's nice
- dabbernaught420 6y agoA person or group with immense power can trivially achieve great good. However, if you consider systems A and B, where system A is a bit better at using immense power for good than system B, you will notice that system A will result in a lot more good than system B. Therefore, if you care even a little bit about good things happening, you will be very keen to have system A instead of system B. The fact that someone with immense power does something good becomes a lot less reassuring when you consider the opportunity cost of not having someone or some people who are a lot better at achieving good have that immense power.
- tosers4 6y agoSomeone a lot better a doing good were not apparently good enough at getting the resources to do good. You can't just dump a lot of power into someone you think that does good, because you have know way to know if (s)he is even able to manage that to start to do go. At least bezos continues to improve the world infrastructure through amazon, and financing the space industry though blue origin.
- quaffapint 6y agoOf course it's not normal that's why it's news, but I don't see anything wrong with this. As long as he pays his fair share of taxes and Amazon pays it's proper share of corporate taxes then we're good. Problem of course is we all know that last part is very broken right now, especially on the corporate tax side.
- mikeyouse 6y agoOf course the problem lies in that the rich and powerful have an immense amount of sway in what is defined as the "fair share of taxes" they have to pay.
- davidandgoliath 6y agoEdit: Nevermind, not getting into this today. Have a great weekend! :)
- mikeyouse 6y agoI'm suggesting that Amazon is insanely aggressive about corporate tax minimization and that if we held them to a minimum rate, Bezos's net worth would be substantially lower since it's all in Amazon's stock which is priced based on the future expectation of cash flow to equity holders. The chipping away of effective corporate tax rates is one of the big untold stories of inequality, especially now that most most cash to equity holders comes in the form of buybacks which are untaxed and most shares are owned in tax havens so the presumed capital gains upon selling can be readily avoided as well. https://itep.org/corporate-tax-avoidance-in-the-first-year-of-the-trump-tax-law/ https://itep.org/corporate-tax-avoidance-in-the-first-year-o... Just saw your edit - you too. I don't really care about Jeff Bezos's wealth, he's just going to blow it on more mansions and boats, but I think it's worth thinking about the virtuous cycle of wealthy people having so much political influence to determine how wealthy they can be.
- ixvvqktiwl 6y agoPeople like Bezos have far more influence on shaping the world than most of us mere mortals, and they are not going to make it easy to redistribute wealth.
- deadalus 6y ago" you are responsible for" According to what or whom? Morality? Morality is subjective. What is 'good' is subjective.
- Faaak 6y agoI think that they meant "responsible of how you want to shape Life", and not "responsible for Bezos' wealth"
- Super_Jambo 6y agoI'd say it is normal, the vast majority of time since humans started living in cities have been like this. A society based on a corrupt system structured to concentrate wealth and power in the hands of a ruling class. The abnormal time period is our brief flirtation with systems aimed to harness competition between the powerful in service of the masses. But it doesn't seem this can survive without rules to limit the power of the super rich to control the media & create monopolies.
- partiallypro 6y agoHow is this not normal? Amazon offers great services, both for consumers and through the cloud. It makes total sense that their stock would continue to increase as more and more people use their services. Bezo's owns a lot of Amazon stock...so his wealth goes up. It's no different than with Gates or Jobs. Gates has just sold off a lot of his stock or donated it, and like with Jobs, had a lower ratio of stock ownership than Bezos. This is no different that any other time in period of company holdings. Amazon certainly has its problems, and I'm a critic of it a lot...but they still offer services that are generally good for consumers, and that is something that drives its growth.
- mars4rp 6y agowhat is not normal is he is not paying much taxes compare to his wealth! He is selling around a $1B of Amazon shares each year and if he doesn't deduct anything he is paying 15% capital gain on it. That's 1/1000 of his net worth, I am pretty sure we all are paying way more than that. How is that fair? And also the taxes supposed to be progressive, rich supposed to pay more, our dream here is to have the rich pay as much as a teacher!
- brainzap 6y agohttps://youtu.be/a3_PPdjD6mg https://youtu.be/a3_PPdjD6mg
- rukittenme 6y agoYou've just discovered the problem with income taxes. A tax on labor favors capital. Good luck convincing any of your political allies that the income tax should be replaced with something more progressive.
- mars4rp 6y agoBernie/Warren wealth tax was a good idea in my opinion. It would increase Bezos's effective tax rate from 0.1% to 3%. Bezos's net worth still would increase every year, as the normal capital gain is 8% per year and it is much higher in Amazon.
- danhak 6y agoWhat is the alternative? For people not to own the things they create?
- brandon272 6y agoOwning something does not mean that you have zero responsibilities associated with that ownership. I may "own my home", but I still have to pay property tax on it.
- barrenko 6y agoPrecisely, but Bezos doesn't own something that's his, it's something that's everybody's, so definitely not the same.
- brandon272 6y agoNot sure what you mean by "it's something that's everybody's".
- yesplorer 6y agoI think he's implying you can also own part of Amazon by buying shares so it's not just for Bezos. Bezos owns 11% of Amazon which means over a trillion dollars in value is shared by other people who own pieces of Amazon.
- mhoad 6y agoThere are a whole spectrum of options between unchecked capitalism and communism. I'm just asking what kind of guardrails if any might be appropriate moving forward now that we can see for ourselves how the current system is working for everyone.
- amelius 6y agoPeople create wealth all the time without (the prospect of) being paid billions Just look at some great FOSS projects: Linux, GCC, ...
- abstractbarista 6y agoEh, I'm fine with it. It's mostly stock, not Dollars. He couldn't actually turn that in to $171.6B in cash.
- sudhirj 6y agoThis sentiment comes up a lot as a protest against power laws; but they are perfectly normal, in that they're natural. In any situation where there are differences among individuals and a single axis store of value (currency) there is going to be power law. Imagine a world where everyone started with an equal amount of money, and people only paid each other to see them do X. X could be singing, playing basketball, make youtube videos, standup comedy, croquet, whatever. With the passage of time, money will concentrate in a fractal representation of the 80-20 power law. 80% of the money will go to the top 20% of the people best at X, and even in that 20%, 80% of that money will belong to the top 20% of the top 20% and so on. If X was basketball, Michael Jordan would be a thousand times richer than me (he is) and a million or billion times richer than the poorest people (he is). Same for the best artists, most widely read authors, everything. If the currency is power / reproductive rights, the top 20% would pass their genes on to 80% of the children, again fractally. This is also borne out in nature, we're all children of Genghis Khan or King David or Abraham or whoever your geography's alpha was. What we can say, is that the situation is not rational, just, or merciful. All beneficiaries of the power law ride on the value provided by everyone else that cannot be quantified properly into the single-axis measure of value. Bezos could only build Amazon because there were already a country that was fought and paid for, roads, courts, electricity, planes and trains that society as a whole built for before he was born. That attribution is not being captured in any way, and we try to re-balance that value owed with taxes, which are again imperfect because we have only a single-axis value store. So normal and natural, yes, but the value is not distributed correctly. That's a rational and ethical problem, both of which are very artificial human constructs.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- jacknews 6y agoit's perfectly normal, that's the way nature and unrestrained free markets work, 'winner' takes (nearly) all. It's just not what we want as a society. Most of us anyway. Perhaps the 'winners', or those who think they can be, disagree.
- sdinsn 6y ago> isn't normal You're right- creating a amazing, successful business that employs a ton of people isn't normal. Just a friendly reminder that some people do deserve the money they've earning. Bezos is one of them
- throwaway77384 6y agoHow does one create a society that is both free and yet safeguarded against this kind of egregious, unnecessary and possibly dangerous amassing of wealth and power in the hands of so very few people?
- TremendousJudge 6y agoOne way is to get the state to tax the rich, like many first world countries did in the post-war period. It's hard because the rich get a lot of say in the government, and they don't want to get their taxes raised.
- HenryKissinger 6y agoWith that kind of money I would keep a couple billions for myself and slowly liquidate the rest and give it away. Charities, public schools, research institutes, universities, the Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, etc. There's so much work to do. I'd probably produce movies too, with zero expectations of them turning a profit, just to experiment with various storytelling ideas I have in mind.
- new2628 6y agoSo if you were the richest person in the world you'd donate your wealth to the second richest.. I kid, I kid...
- gcheong 6y agoPerhaps but I get the feeling that when people become that rich they suddenly find reasons for why they should keep their wealth solely under their control. That’s why you see them setting up foundations of their own instead of giving it away to various existing charities.
- bydo 6y agoFor reference, this is roughly the same as the GDP of Kansas, or the market cap of Toyota.
- mxfh 6y ago~1/8 of market cap of Amazon, which is reaching almost 1.5 Trillion, that's a 10th of 2019 GDP of China. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi...
- pontus 6y agoCrazy. That means that he has $72B more than $100B.
- HenryKissinger 6y agoCorrection: investors from all over the globe value the shares in Bezos' possession at 172B. These investors could also arbitrarily declare these shares as worthless (theoretically), and Bezos' net worth would crater to only consist of his leftover cash and physical assets in his possession - real estate, art, cars, etc.
- linus_torvalds 6y ago"would crater to only consist of his leftover cash and physical assets in his possession - real estate, art, cars, etc." That is still much more than most people will possess in their entire lifetime.
- rcoveson 6y agoThat's an irresponsible use of the word "theoretically". What actual theory would have them do that? You're describing a coordination problem of absurd proportions and you haven't even proposed a shared motive. It like saying, "This specific aspect of society could change if a potency-majority were fully committed to the idea that it should be changed in that way."
- HenryKissinger 6y agoYou're absolutely right. I don't try to pretend that it would be possible in the slightest. Just that stock wealth is a societal, and thus arbitrary, construct, unlike, say, gold and precious gems, which have intrinsic value across time, space, and cultures.
- therealdrag0 6y agoAt some point stock is as intrinsically valuable as gold, when it has legal support and billions of people buying and selling it. I have no interest in gold and I never will afaict.
- wlll 6y agoI would love to know what goes on in someone's head when they could use their money to massively improve the lives of millions of poor or un-privileged people, or even save them from a premature and/or painful death, withough ever noticing the difference in your quality of life. But they don't.
- p49k 6y agoProbably the same things that enabled them to amass that amount of wealth in the first place.
- wlll 6y agoI don't know what that is though, hence my question.
- legohead 6y agoit's not like he has a bank balance of 171b. it's mostly his ownership in Amazon, which he isn't going to just sell away.
- wlll 6y agoNope, I figured that. He's still absurdly rich though.
- patall 6y agoWhile that is true, that is true for our entire society. Big projects are almost never started nowadays by selling somethings else (unless its a direct replacement). Instead, what usually happens is that you take a bank loan that is secured by assets, in this case his stock. Or to put it short: pretty much any bank would give Jeff a 10 bn loan that is tied to his stocks, its simply not true that there is any problem there.
- eloff 6y agoHave you ever heard of the giving pledge? Where wealthy people pledge to donate at least 50% of their wealth to charity? Jeff Bezos is not a member of it, but his ex-wife is. Have you looked at the amount of good Bill Gates has done in the world?
- trianglem 6y agoI would dump all that into cosmetic genetic research so we could all grow wings some day
- hckr_news 6y agoWho says he’s not doing just that? Probably funding anti-aging measures as well. All for the Ultra wealthy of course..
- eloff 6y agoThat's the power of leverage. Good for him. He is one of the greatest investors of all time, just only investing in growth of his own company. I don't think any human needs that kind of wealth, but I also don't begrudge him of it. He earned it. The problem with society is not that there are rich people - there always have been and always will be. It's in fact a sign of a healthy economy. If you have no inequality, it also means you have no growth or innovation - everyone is equally poor. Cuba and Soviet Russia tried to be examples of this kind of society, and few would argue they are desirable models to emulate. The problem is rather the number of people who can't find steady employment, earn a livable wage, and take care of the basic necessities of food, shelter, and health. That does need to be addressed, and the sooner the better.
- TremendousJudge 6y agoHe earned it? And what about all the people who work and worked at Amazon and built all of it?
- eloff 6y agoYes he did, he took the risks, not them. He quit his high paying job and risked his financial future by opting to start Amazon. He sacrificed endless amounts of free time and sanity to build an empire. That's why he owns a large piece of it. You could argue that maybe the employees should have a greater share in the company, and that could be correct. Many of the early employees no doubt did. But at the end of the day, they choose to work at Amazon over somewhere else. But they didn't take the risk, if it hadn't worked out they would've moved on to the next thing without batting an eye. A good economic system must reward successful risk taking, otherwise nobody would do it, and nobody would have jobs. Whether it needs to reward it this much is another question entirely. We do have a mechanism for redistributing wealth to maintain to a fair society, called taxes. It just doesn't work at all if you don't earn income, but instead accumulate wealth via capital growth like Jeff Bezos. Some countries have a small tax on wealth, e.g. 0.5% of total wealth, per year. I'm not sure how well that works.
- 6y ago
- dlojudice 6y agoThe bizarre scale of super richs (400 people in US) https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/ https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/
- happytoexplain 6y agoI rarely make blanket statements: Anybody who sees this and thinks the downsides of this society are lesser than the downsides of undoing it (both the direct result of wealth redistribution, as though by a magic wand, and the indirect results of using the kind of heavy-handed federal regulatory changes that would be required), is immoral. You are somewhat less unreasonable to say, "yes, we must change it, but first we must find a way that doesn't involve gross socialism stuff", and I may reasonably disagree with the practicality of your position, but to cross the line into, "no, the state of things is natural and amoral", is monstrous, and such people must be defeated at any cost.
- basch 6y agoA logically defensible position against this is: "I trust those 400 people to do more good, to spread more wealth, to create more value, to create more jobs, to innovate more, than I trust the government." Its a calculation of best return on investment, and not just return in a dollar sense. It might be more efficient for those 400 people to dump all their money into a charity that redistributes the money, than it is to trust elected officials to understand how to handle it. This isnt cash he has in a bank account. It's his money, reinvested into a conglomerate that builds, delivers, creates, serves.
- benjaminsuch 6y agoI really don't like these kind of headlines and honestly I'm not sure why it's even posted on HN. What is here to discuss? His wealth comes from his company and to brag about morale, justice and society usually ends up in fights. I don't know Jeff, but I'm pretty sure he doesn't care much about money, like if it's $100B or $172B. From my point of view, money is only a way to make his visions come true. For me that is Blue Origin.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- tosers4 6y agoFrom watching from afar, it seems that right now he makes sure amazon grows just to be able to finance Blue Origin from his own pockets. He is just a man with ambitions, whose "crime" people call out is amazon not paying profit taxes... With all the taxes from the non cash business amazon brings, that is the least ethical concern about amazon, specially since most of time they indeed have no profit as they reinvest. Now the warehouse conditions is another thing, but hey it's america, those are spoken about because every its like that but amazon is a big target. Amazon is a big corp like any other it has a bunch of faults, but to point Bezos simply evil over it is ridiculous, he does not have full control of amazon like Zuck has over FB
- therealdrag0 6y ago>but hey this is America I think that’s worth discussing (op asked what there is to discuss). I don’t think rich people are evil. But I wish we could come up with mechanisms for them to share their wealth with their employees who helped them build that wealth.
- benjaminsuch 6y agoI know where you are coming from, but that is basically what the salary is for. We just have the bad situation that not everyone is in a driver seat to negotiate his salary (or have a choice). I'm not sure how it is in the USA, but in germany for example, there is minimum wage. I think the society and politicians are responsible to make sure that employees are treated gracefully and to establish mechanisms.
- barrenko 6y agoSociety, humans, hell , mammals value others who provide leveraged value to them in a not linear fashion. Programmers should be able to graps this.
- xkuc 6y agoPeople have been trained to justify these capitalists for whom we place on pedestals, while at the same time disparaging the common worker for some perceived lack of "merit" and "effort". As programmers, we encourage open source work with little to no return on the effort when compared to how these projects are utilized. Amazon is a fantastic example for how it abuses this effort and the community.
- tkeAmarktinClss 6y agoGive it a few years and either Amazon won't be worth as much OR this is hyperinflation and we have bigger problems to worry about.
- maxekman 6y agoLike the climate crisis.
- laichzeit0 6y agoAll that money and he can't cure baldness.
- koolba 6y agoOr he realizes that being bald saves a few cycles when taking a shower. If it's specifically to attract the ladies, I think having $165B and being the world's richest person would be a larger factor than any mane.
- laichzeit0 6y agoNot so sure about that, nothing really compares to having a magnificent hairline. Take David Bowie, for example. Now imagine he was bald.
- thekyle 6y agoI think it's important to remember that most of Jeff Bezos wealth is in Amazon stock. I say this because it seems like people see $171b and assume Bezos has that amount of spending power. In reality if Jeff tried to liquidate all of his Amazon shares into USD it would crash the stock price and he would get nowhere near the quoted figures.
- therealdrag0 6y agoThat’s just an artifact of a mass selling event right. If he had instead given more stock to employees as they worked for him over the years and helped him build the company, then the wealth would be spread around less unequally. It’s not just a given that he should be worth this much.
- thekyle 6y agoThat's right. Although based on some quick Googling Jeff Bezos owns 11% of Amazon which has a market cap of $1.4 trillion. So Bezos has generated about $1.2 trillion of wealth for other people.
- therealdrag0 6y agoThat's a good alternative perspective. But IMO it's still worth pointing out that it's not JUST Besos, it's him AND everyone else who has worked at Amazon since it was founded. There's 10000x more man hours and brain power that have gone into that company than just Besos himself. A lot of people busting their ass to produce that value.
- cyrksoft 6y agoThey got a salary in return. They did not ‘help him’ build the company. They were paid to do so. They didn’t take any risk working for a salary. Employees don’t inherently deserve anything other than a salary. It’s a matter of incentives
- therealdrag0 6y ago
- brandon272 6y agoThese discussions are pretty difficult to have as it's clear that many people have dysfunctional ideas around corporate/brand worship (e.g. "he created such a great company") as well as success worship. To what degree Jeff Bezos is benevolent doesn't factor into this for me. Whether or not Amazon is a great company doesn't factor into this for me. It's a larger discussion about whether or not it's grotesque for a nation with such a large number of billionaires to have some of the most serious socioeconomic issues of any modern, developed nation. I'd feel more happy and congratulatory toward Bezos' increasing fortune if, say, homelessness weren't a serious problem in America, and if every child were guaranteed a decent meal, which seems like it could be accomplished with a tiny sliver of the overall wealth of America's billionaire class.
- SketchySeaBeast 6y ago> To what degree Jeff Bezos is benevolent doesn't factor into this for me I agree it's grotesque, but given the utterly inconceivable amount of money he has, maybe making a name for himself via donation wouldn't hurt his public image. The richest man in the world twice over could probably afford the same sort of PR that's softened how people feel about Bill and Melinda Gates.
- edanm 6y agoI don't disagree with the sentiment, other than it seems you're somehow "blaming" Bezos for this. Why? The States has those socioeconomic issues for historical and political reasons. They're certainly something people can change. But Bezos' wealth, large as it is, is tiny compared to the wealth the government manages. The government's money is allocated via a democratic process. There's certainly good cases to be made for fixing a lot of issues - I just don't think those cases should start with "Bezos is too rich, while there are people in with serious issues". Better to just focus on the people with the issues and figure out ways to fix that.
- brandon272 6y agoMy point really had nothing to do with Bezos in particular. He's one data point among hundreds of America's billionaires. And their collective wealth is by no means tiny. You're right in that the U.S. has socioeconomic issues for political reasons. But we can't disconnect the billionaire class from our political class. Billionaires have ridiculous, outsized influence over politicians and therefore public policy in the United States. And that influence ranges from crafting tax law that benefits them to modifying rules and regulations that given their businesses advantage. When wealthy people have tax law changed in their favor, we could charitably say that it is "indirectly" pulling money away from social programs that matter.
- bryanlarsen 6y agoVladimir Putin's personal net worth was estimated to be between $70B and $200B in 2018, so it's quite possible that Bezos is not the richest man in the world.
- mchusma 6y agoI hope that he does something great with this - like building an open source medical record system and diagnostic tool that can be used for the global poor for free.
- hindsightbias 6y agoBezos’ wealth is a function of the Amazon’s stock price. It is a company with a P/E ratio of 137. That is not normal. He does not set his stock price. So when people talk about taxation, its taxation based on the general stockholders speculation. Which seems fair if we think BTC or 401k holders should be paying taxes on their annual values. Pretty sure most on HN would want not want that. So it’s a question of limits, or a line, picked by society on how much something of arbitrary valuation one can own. But I’d bet there are many here with >$1M is assets and >50% of the public would find that outrageous. As far as AMZN being too big, I’d be fine with breaking it up as the components would probably be valued more than they are together (remember Standard Oil). Which would be good for my 401k. The people have voted on the Walmarts and Amazons of the world. They lost something for the convenience, and it’s 100% their fault, not Bezos.
- basch 6y ago>But I’d bet there are many here with >$1M is assets and >50% of the public would find that outrageous. 171.6/137 is still $1.2525B. Lets say 15 is a fair P/E ratio, thats almost $19B. 1900 Million. People with >$1M is assets and >50% of the public still cant fathom the difference between a million and 10 billion. And historically, despite having a high P/E ratio, Amazon exceeds growth expectations. I don't know who is saying to tax his assets. But the laws, rules, economies of scale, feedback loops, and anti competitive behaviors that allow one person to amass that much money should be treated as glitches that need to be patched.
- hindsightbias 6y agoBezos doesn’t care about his wealth or the valuation anymore than John D. Rockefeller did. It’s just more paper. He cares about maintaining control of Amazon and dabbling in his hobbies. Kneecaping Amazon would result in hundreds of billions in wealth loss spread across millions of investors.
- basch 6y agoIf you look at it from the perspective of Amazons own internal wealth being its own currency, money has a different value in the system and outside it. He buy things directly with stock, like we would use cash. He can downgrade his value store from Amazon bucks to USD, but he doesnt have to to spend it. Knowing how Amazon shares convert to USD is probably less useful than knowing what you can buy directly with Amazon shares.
- amelius 6y agoStanding on the shoulders of giants. And reaping all the benefits.