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Jeff Bezos Is Now the World's Second Richest Person

bloomberg.com

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

#491

Post by samstave »

astrodust wrote: post #317
openasocket wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd imagine a lot of his liquid assets were seized by militants. From some googling, it seems some portion of his wealth was in a bunch of real estate he owned. I imagine those have also been seized, those that weren't destroyed. But the most part his wealth was invested in several western countries. Per http://articles.latimes.com/2011/oct/21/world/la-fg-kadafi-m... that money has been seized by the governments in q…

People that are very good at hiding money for the ludicrously and criminally rich are also, not surprisingly, very good at making money disappear. If your biggest client just got killed in a coup do you really think you'd go through a lot of trouble to track down his various relatives as they're being systematically captured and/or executed by the uprising? No, you'd quietly wrap up all those trusts and funnel the mo…

You're just a hypocritical person...

You denigrate my comments yet you just state a reinforcement of my speculation "criminally rich are also, not surprisingly, very good at making money disappear.

this was the premise of my post!

Money went someplace, and we dont know where it went - did HRC profit off it or not....

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

#492

Post by acalderaro »

_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/...

Should we celebrate that a single individual has provided millions of dollars worth of value to society through innovation and willful exchange by all parties?

Or should we be saddened that most of society fails to provide similar value, despite having similar access to education, ability, and capital?

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

#493

Post by memmcgee »

aljungberg wrote: post #448
appleflaxen wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. the solution should be to just to tax Wilt Chamberlain at a rate high enough that the astronomical net worths become merely "stratospheric".

That's just another way of saying people shouldn't be allowed to give their shares freely. You give your shares to Wilt, the government gives them back to you (assuming the government has no overhead). So the original argument stands: forced wealth redistribution is incompatible with free will and liberty. The word "force" itself means the removal of freedom.

The government doesn't give you back everything you gave to WC and it doesn't necessarily give it back to you.

You van spend your money however you want. Taxes simply mean that everyone benefits from spending, not just WC.

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

#494

Post by rohit89 »

laughingman2 wrote: post #479
rohit89 wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Different people are motivated by different things. While its true that scientists and engineers and everyone else have done a great deal in advancing things, the sad reality is that unless someone fronts the money, nothing will get done.

>the sad reality is that unless someone fronts the money, nothing will get done. Its not the natural law of universe which cannot be changed. We humans create the systems of economic organization. So if you agree that profit is not main motivation for many creative jobs, then perhaps the optimization function of the economy should not be to optimize for monetary profits. So perhaps other modes of economic organizatio…

Well, the natural law here is that we need access to resources to do anything. And money is basically a proxy for it. Until we solve the resource problem, I think other economic systems would eventually run into trouble as well. Its human nature to try to game the system.

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

#495

Post by memmcgee »

WalterBright wrote: post #333
8note wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

each system is as violent as the people running it. An ideal king is just the land owner collecting rents from the people on their land, and lending rights to people they think can make more wealth from it. Capitalism is perfectly happy with slavery; it didn't end because it wasn't profitable. There's still some rather violent things in today's capitalism like "give me all your money or die from cancer" which when th…

> it didn't end because it wasn't profitable. Actually, it ended because it could not compete with free labor. It was dying around 1800 because of that, and then the cotton gin revived it. It was dying again in the 1850s, and a big driver of the Civil War was the slave states trying to protect their economy from free labor competition. I don't think it's a coincidence that social justice has tended to follow what wor…

Slavery ended in the US because we fought a war. And some forms of slavery do exist today. See prison labor for example.

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

#496

Post by dragonwriter »

averagewall wrote: post #428
dragonwriter wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you reject all inheritance, you reject much of the incentives of capitalism. I reject the idea that inheritance is a matter of right, and particularly that there is any moral right in extending the will of the dead past their death. I don't, OTOH, disagree that some inheritance may even socially useful and worth permitting, with appropriate conditions and limitations, on that basis. In fact, I said so explicitly…

People care about what's going to happen after they die. You can see this from any global warming activist. They're not concerned about their own live but about future generations. Are you saying they should mind their own business and ignore the grandkids who might have more storms and famines?

> Are you saying they should mind their own business and ignore the grandkids who might have more storms and famines?

No, I'm not.

I'm saying that once they're dead, what they cared about when they were alive matters, if at all, because and to the extent people still living care about it, and that there is no inherent right that the dead have to have their will dictate actions or rights of the living once they have died.

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

#497

Post by HeavenBanned »

emcq wrote: post #231
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…

There are 540 billionaires in the US. The top 400 combined are worth 2.4 trillion. That's a remarkable portion of the economy.

We need progressive taxation that goes up to 94% of wealth earned. If we took 94% of Bezo's income, he would still have an island to live on. If we took 94% of Zuckerberg's income, he would still be able to live in a mansion. They just wouldn't be stinking rich. WW2-level taxation is what I'm thinking of - of the FDR type. That's all I have to say. The rest of this thread is glorious and filled with juicy debate.

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

#498

Post by khazhoux »

greenhatman wrote: post #360
sooheon wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is Poe's law making a fool of me, or do you truly believe this?

He is sarcastic. But it's also a false dichotomy. It is different from taking things by force. There is in general mutual benefit between all involved parties. Though that doesn't mean we can just completely relax. We should stay vigilant, because tyranny is always just around the corner.

> tyranny is always just around the corner.

I believe in capitalism, but still when a handful of people own the world, that in itself is a form of tyranny. The article below says EIGHT PEOPLE control as much wealth as over 3 BILLION PEOPLE, 50% of the world's population. And much of that number lives in poverty. It's no ill will against Bezos or his success in business to say, it sure would be nice if the world didn't have 1.3 billion people in extreme poverty, while the world's wealth is controlled by, and for the benefit of, just a roomful of people.

http://www.businessinsider.com/worlds-eight-richest-as-wealt...

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

#499

Post by ImSkeptical »

zer0tonin wrote: post #389
ImSkeptical wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't seen opinion polls, but I doubt that's a widely held view. Why should people conform to your unusual position on property, as opposed to the mainstream one? Personally, I quite like owning things that are mine. The cost, that other people can own things that are theirs and not mine, seems well worth it.

>Why should people conform to your unusual position on property, as opposed to the mainstream one? That's a nice fallacy you've got here, and that would imply that his opinion is actually uncommon around people who have studied the subject (spoiler : it's not). >Personally, I quite like owning things that are mine. Possession and property are not the same thing.

If you interpret "property is violence" to mean that property is maintained by organizations willing to use violence - I.e. That something is "my property" because I can appeal to a police system who will help me defend, retain, or regain possession of it, then that's obviously true. I expect nobody disagrees with that. If that is the interpretation you're trying to defend then I have no objection beyond an arched eyebrow at something trivial being obfuscated to appear objectionable.

The interpretation I made, and challenged, is that property is violence. I.e. Owning things is violent towards other people.

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

#500

Post by samstave »

astrodust wrote: post #319
samstave wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cool - thanks - so rather than provide any refuting evidence to something I stated was a RUMOR, you post this drivel. So - if you are so informed, please update me.

Don't spread unfounded, crackpot rumors. Thanks.

You are both a troll and an asshole.
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