3 ms·
> I can see you are angry I'm not angry. I'm just making a point. > Building a company is hard. Building something like Amazon is freakishly hard. And that's
by philwelch 4y ago
> I can see you are angry
I'm not angry. I'm just making a point.
> Building a company is hard. Building something like Amazon is freakishly hard.
And that's the point.
> If there was some (weird) regulation that meant no-one can become richer than 10 billion dollars, and would need to improve share grants when they go over, guess what, Bezos would still have started Amazon, still done it all, and still have a yacht and a second wife.
I don't want to fixate on Bezos in particular, but there are probably a lot of founders who would be hesitant to start a company if, once that company became valuable enough, they would be forcibly divested from it by law and therefore be at risk of losing control. Even if you're a vision-focused founder who is intrinsically motivated by wanting the company you are founding to exist in the way that you want it to exist, with no regard to your own personal wealth, you're going to be hesitant with that sort of confiscatory regime. And that's setting aside the fact that building a large company is not only "freakishly hard" but also tremendously risky. If you have a wealth cap of 10 billion dollars thinking "10 billion dollars is enough motivation for anyone", sure, but there's a risk premium involved and the expected value is nowhere close to that number.