Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Jeff Bezos Is Now the World's Second Richest Person

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 548 posts

Re: Jeff Bezos Is Now the World's Second Richest Person

#151

Post by ohyes »

SwellJoe wrote: post #140
ohyes wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not considering US to be a moderately sized country. While you are technically correct (the best kind of correct), this was kind of a brain-fart on my part and not really important to the point. The point is that net worth includes the assumption of future earnings in the valuation. GDP is just one year's production. Bill gates is orders of magnitude less wealthy than Ukraine, for example, even though his net wor…

I think it is important to the point, that one man is worth the annual GDP of countries that have millions of people. A country is not a person...it's millions of people, and it's nonsensical to say, "Oh, it's not such a big deal, because a nation of millions makes as much in a year as this guy's whole net worth." That's a terrible argument for why the amount of money Bill Gates has is not absurd.

I'm not saying it isn't absurd I'm saying it isn't comparable to feudalism.

(It is indeed a terrible argument for the point I'm not making).

In feudalism a single person is the entire state. His wealth isn't comparable, disregarding the extra rights that are conferred from literally being the law of the land as a monarch.

Re: Jeff Bezos Is Now the World's Second Richest Person

#152

Post by ryanwaggoner »

samstave wrote: post #128
astrodust wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you're embezzling money the last thing you want is to reveal enough information about your stash to show up on these lists. Saddam Hussein obviously had tons of liquid assets but the totality of them was never truly known. It was all squirreled away, and likely stolen by the caretakers when his regime imploded and the threat of retribution was removed. How much did Pablo Esbobar have at his peak? We can only gue…

in the /r/conspiracy realm - it is widely believed that the reason for Gaddafi's execution was to go after the billions he had - and to take him down. The idea is that the Benghazi fiasco was let loose by the state dept so that HRC could loot Libya... its not provable - but the fact is that Gaddafi was one of the worlds richest ppl - and the rumor is that HRC and cabal stole all his loot. He was worth a reportable 70…

As long as you recognize that this is just nutjob conspiracy nonsense, then yeah... I guess it's entertaining?

Re: Jeff Bezos Is Now the World's Second Richest Person

#153

Post by ohyes »

TheGrassyKnoll wrote: post #138
ohyes wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, but think of it this way. Bill Gates is worth 90 Billion, sure fine. What is the entire United States worth? GDP is 18 Trillion, expenditures are 4 trillion. So if you do something (admittedly kind of dumb), like take the GDP, subtract expenditures, let's pretend the earnings are 14 trillion? Valuing the US at 10x earnings, that would put it at a valuation of 140 trillion dollars. This is horribly incorrect, bu…

Putin kinda has '>... his own airforce, navy, army'.

Yeah, I was thinking about that too. He's definitely the closest.

Re: Jeff Bezos Is Now the World's Second Richest Person

#154

Post by flyinglizard »

andrepd wrote: post #87
_m8fo wrote: post #84

Everytime I see these types of articles I wonder if we're still in feudalism. Should we really be celebrating that a single individual is worth more than hundreds of millions of people[1]? I dunno, it seems dystopian , like we're enslaved to the system. [1] https://www.oxfam.org/en/pressroom/pressreleases/2017-01-16/...

Absolutely. Did this person work more or does he have more merit than 100.000.000s of people? It's absurd.

That's not about what he did do or did not do. In reality there's no concept of "fair pay" or "just earnings". In fact, Bezos doesn't even matter, personally. What matters is that he owns an asset (Amazon) that appreciated in value. Obviously, his "net worth" is tied to this holding. It appreciated because it provided desirable services.

Now, preventing it can be done in two ways, and only two ways - either limit Amazon's appreciation in value (curb the company), or limit the person's holding in Amazon, meaning that if you started as a founder of a company having 50% of the total shares, your holdings will decline as the company's worth rises. Does this seem reasonable to you?

Re: Jeff Bezos Is Now the World's Second Richest Person

#155

Post by SerpentJoe »

mjfl wrote: post #100
_m8fo wrote: post #84

Everytime I see these types of articles I wonder if we're still in feudalism. Should we really be celebrating that a single individual is worth more than hundreds of millions of people[1]? I dunno, it seems dystopian , like we're enslaved to the system. [1] https://www.oxfam.org/en/pressroom/pressreleases/2017-01-16/...

I think that's a little hyperbolic. In feudalism the balance of power is enforced by violence, whereas Jeff Bezos got rich because you gave him money in exchange for products. Like, "Hey, here's this cool electronic device called the Amazon Echo for $50." is a markedly different from "Farm here or I'll decapitate you." The fact that you harbor a resentment as if the former is anything like the latter is slightly terr…

Whatever economic system may be in place, it will be possible to profit by making better decisions in that context, but that doesn't prove the superiority of that system, and it doesn't make it "terrifying" to wonder whether this or that emergent phenomenon is a feature or a bug.

Re: Jeff Bezos Is Now the World's Second Richest Person

#156

Post by guelo »

ohyes wrote: post #124
_m8fo wrote: post #84

Everytime I see these types of articles I wonder if we're still in feudalism. Should we really be celebrating that a single individual is worth more than hundreds of millions of people[1]? I dunno, it seems dystopian , like we're enslaved to the system. [1] https://www.oxfam.org/en/pressroom/pressreleases/2017-01-16/...

Okay, but think of it this way. Bill Gates is worth 90 Billion, sure fine. What is the entire United States worth? GDP is 18 Trillion, expenditures are 4 trillion. So if you do something (admittedly kind of dumb), like take the GDP, subtract expenditures, let's pretend the earnings are 14 trillion? Valuing the US at 10x earnings, that would put it at a valuation of 140 trillion dollars. This is horribly incorrect, bu…

> expenditures are 4 trillion

Your calculation is making my head hurt. I assume by 'expenditures' you mean the US governments budget is about 4 trillion? If so, your $14trillion represents expenditures by the private sector. So if we build a bridge or something it doesn't count into your 10x, for some reason. Sorry this whole argument makes no sense to me.

Re: Jeff Bezos Is Now the World's Second Richest Person

#157

Post by vecinu »

reddytowns wrote: post #147
mjfl wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's a little hyperbolic. In feudalism the balance of power is enforced by violence, whereas Jeff Bezos got rich because you gave him money in exchange for products. Like, "Hey, here's this cool electronic device called the Amazon Echo for $50." is a markedly different from "Farm here or I'll decapitate you." The fact that you harbor a resentment as if the former is anything like the latter is slightly terr…

For people paying alimony and child support, you must work or go to jail. And buying cheap stuff goes along with that.

Were you forced into having that child in the first place? We don't need children for farm work anymore (in first world countries).

Re: Jeff Bezos Is Now the World's Second Richest Person

#158

Post by 100ideas »

derwiki wrote: post #98
andrepd wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely. Did this person work more or does he have more merit than 100.000.000s of people? It's absurd.

But someone's got to be the hardest working and have the most merit... just like someone has to be the least hardest working and have the least merit.

You're saying net global merit is a zero-sum system?

Re: Jeff Bezos Is Now the World's Second Richest Person

#159

Post by blueside »

Keyframe wrote: post #118

Kudos to him, hopefully he will go all in on some crazy idea eventually. I still have this feeling amazon (as in online store) isn't all that big outside of US/english-speaking world. I do have a question though. When you have that much net worth and you get plastered all over the press about how much you have... What do you do then? What's your life then like? Seems like a nightmare, especially if you have kids and…

until the competition is completely annihilated, jeff is not content.

Re: Jeff Bezos Is Now the World's Second Richest Person

#160

Post by mahyarm »

kbenson wrote: post #78
astrodust wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

San Francisco has tons of land to build on. The density there is an absolute joke. Whenever someone proposes building something one story too high the local neighborhood groups lose their collective shit and shut it down.

Unrelated, but I wonder what the sweet spot is height/floor wisefor developing affordable units. That is, given zero pushback from local citizenry and groups, if a locality wanted dense housing due to lack of space, at what point does adding a story make average cost per unit slightly more expensive instead of slightly less expensive (assuming it actually is cheaper to add a second or third story than a single story…

It's really a function of land cost. A high rise unit costs about $30k more per unit according to here: http://www.humphreys.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/MFT_FL-0...

There are also costs that developers do not directly pay for but a city pays for. Maintaining all of the miles and miles of road, metro, pipes, power lines, police patrols and so on is more expensive than the equivalent amount of people in a smaller space.

Post reply on HN