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Jeff Bezos's Net Worth Just Broke $100B

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Re: Jeff Bezos's Net Worth Just Broke $100B

#81

Post by adventured »

paulpauper wrote: post #10
tzm wrote: post #2

> Bill Gates was last person to attain 12-figure fortune in 1999 $100B nearly 20 years ago, just before the federal antitrust case decision against Microsoft. Makes me wonder how much concentration of wealth would occur if regulation was not in place.

and Paul Allen got a huge chunk too, whereas Bezos is the only one

That's a flawed premise. Bezos owned less of Amazon at its IPO, than Bill Gates did at the Microsoft IPO.

His parents became billionaires via their holdings in Amazon.

20 investors put in $50k each to start Amazon. Any of them that held up to this point, became billionaires.

You're confusing concentrated wealth, versus total wealth created. Amazon has plausibly created wealth for more investors, precisely because it has had fewer very large owners; more of the company was distributed into more hands.

Re: Jeff Bezos's Net Worth Just Broke $100B

#82

Post by adventured »

seizethecheese wrote: post #18
holydude wrote: post #16

So his net worth is now more than the GDP of my country. Scary.

GDP is a flow, net worth is a stock. Not sure how this became a standard comparison.

Because there are very few things to reference, that most people have even a modest comprehension of, that have the scale of $100 or more billion.

Despite the comically predictable replies such posts (GDP vs wealth) always get in threads like this, it's a perfectly valid way to relate size.

The parent didn't say they were the same (in my observation in seeing this same line play out dozens of times over the years, the parent comment almost never says they're the same). The replies are jumping to that assumption as a very low bar way to make themselves look smart.

It's no different than articles that routinely point out the size of a plane's wingspan or the height of a rocket, compared to a building or a football field. The point is to provide the reader with something to stand it next to mentally.

Re: Jeff Bezos's Net Worth Just Broke $100B

#83

Post by hkmurakami »

JAFTEM wrote: post #24

Bezos is an advocate for basic income, but I question his motives. Is it because he is genuinely concerned for others and society, or does he want to avoid the pitchforks at his doorstep when Amazon gets blamed for mass unemployment? Coupled with the fact that he's the richest man on earth, it's very apparent he will have a target on his back if he doesn't already. Maybe his motives don't matter. Maybe we just need t…

Basic income is a way to recapture federal taxes into Amazon revenue.

Re: Jeff Bezos's Net Worth Just Broke $100B

#84

Post by adventured »

depr wrote: post #17
holydude wrote: post #16

So his net worth is now more than the GDP of my country. Scary.

This is not a great comparison: net worth vs market value of goods over time. E.g. what if GDP was measured in decades instead of years?

It's a perfectly good comparison in fact. Let me show you how that works.

Did you know, the Stratolaunch has a wingspan wider than the length of a US football field?

The equivalent reply would be: geez, that's a terrible comparison, because the Stratolaunch is not a large plot of ground, they're entirely different things!

GDP is obviously not inherently measured in years. GDP has no set measurement period of time. GDP can be measured in quarters (and frequently is), years, decades, etc. It's most commonly measured in a one year span of time though, and it's likely safe to believe that's exactly what the parent was referring to. One should give people the benefit of the doubt on their intellect and knowledge, imo.

Re: Jeff Bezos's Net Worth Just Broke $100B

#85

Post by adventured »

alexasmyths wrote: post #79
adventured wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon won't have a hard time eventually generating $20+ billion in net income (assuming very low net income margins of 5%). AWS by itself will hit $10 billion in operating income in three to four years. That business accounts for at least half of Amazon's present market cap. If AWS were a stand-alone publicly traded company, it'd have at least a $250 billion market cap right now. The market is clearly anticipating A…

They'll grow for a while yet but I don't see how they'll keep doing that, moreover, I don't see how they'll ever get to the margins they need. Cloud services are also a competitive business and margins I think will erode eventually.

Walmart is at $425-$450 billion in traditional retail sales ($485b total), it very clearly can be done. Ecommerce will double over the next ten years in the US. Out of the trillion dollars in that ecommerce expansion, Amazon will very likely get at least a quarter of it. If you slow Amazon's growth down to something like 9%-12% avg per year over the next 10 years - which is very reasonable based on where they're at now - they're over half a trillion in sales at the end of that.

On a modest decline from the present rate of growth, they'll hit $300+ billion in sales in just three years. AWS should easily be at a $9b operating income annualized run-rate, at that point.

The common proclaim for years now, has been that there would be no margins in cloud services. AWS has always proven that wrong, all the way back. There's no reason to believe after 11 years, the margins are suddenly going to disappear. If the fierce AWS / Azure / GC competition the last five years didn't squeeze those margins out yet, then what would? It's more likely that the AWS margins will hold as they add more specialized services that are difficult for basic / smaller competitors to replicate (unlike eg standard compute or database services).

Re: Jeff Bezos's Net Worth Just Broke $100B

#86

Post by cirgue »

barrkel wrote: post #56
protomok wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bill Gates has also given a lot to charity, from the article - 'Gates, 62, who has a net worth of $86.8 billion according to the Bloomberg index, would be worth more than $150 billion if he hadn’t given away almost 700 million Microsoft Corp. shares and $2.9 billion of cash and other assets to charity, according to an analysis of his publicly disclosed giving since 1996.'

Charity is problematic too, though. It's subject to the whims of the wealthy, and worse it's damaging to the dignity of recipients - it denies them agency in their own well-being. I say this having been the beneficiary of charity myself: needing to be grateful to someone else is a kind of psychological servitude. We'd be better off with an economic system that values agency and lives worth living a little more than e…

> Charity is problematic too, though. It's subject to the whims of the wealthy, and worse it's damaging to the dignity of recipients - it denies them agency in their own well-being.

What would you have the ultra-wealthy do? Give their wealth to the government? Distribute their wealth evenly to everyone? What is a non-problematic way to use concentrated wealth to help people, in your view?

Re: Jeff Bezos's Net Worth Just Broke $100B

#87

Post by WalterBright »

ryanx435 wrote: post #80
WalterBright wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The stock price at any point in time is set by about an equal number of investors thinking it'll go up as those that think it'll go down.

its not an equal number of investors, its an equal number of buy and sell orders at a certain price. an individual with a billion shares has more of an impact on a share price than an individual with one share.

Yes, you're right.

Re: Jeff Bezos's Net Worth Just Broke $100B

#88

Post by kbutler »

QAPereo wrote: post #28
JAFTEM wrote: post #24

Bezos is an advocate for basic income, but I question his motives. Is it because he is genuinely concerned for others and society, or does he want to avoid the pitchforks at his doorstep when Amazon gets blamed for mass unemployment? Coupled with the fact that he's the richest man on earth, it's very apparent he will have a target on his back if he doesn't already. Maybe his motives don't matter. Maybe we just need t…

Realistically, BI won’t save him, or his progeny when/if it comes down to “pitchforks” any more than the French aristocracy could throw potatoes at starving peasants and hope to live. I can’t imagine how much good someone would have to do to justify concentrating a hundred thousand million dollars in their person. When so much of that probably wasn’t fairly subjected to taxation... well... maybe he deserves some “pit…

This is just crazy to me. Every purchase at Amazon is made because it makes the purchaser better off. Amazon out-competes by serving the customer better. If Bezos also benefits, that's great - he's made the world a better place. I'd love to richly reward millions of people for making the world better like Amazon has.

Save the pitchforks for negative-sum beneficiaries - companies and individuals who benefit by leeching/destroying value (e.g., most financial "innovation", big pharma using legal tactics to avoid competition, etc.)

Re: Jeff Bezos's Net Worth Just Broke $100B

#89

Post by davidivadavid »

adventured wrote: post #82
seizethecheese wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GDP is a flow, net worth is a stock. Not sure how this became a standard comparison.

Because there are very few things to reference, that most people have even a modest comprehension of, that have the scale of $100 or more billion. Despite the comically predictable replies such posts (GDP vs wealth) always get in threads like this, it's a perfectly valid way to relate size. The parent didn't say they were the same (in my observation in seeing this same line play out dozens of times over the years, th…

No, it's not a valid way to relate size, because we're talking about different units (dollars vs. dollars per year).

That's like saying it would make sense to compare a plane's wingspan to the speed of a bullet.

Re: Jeff Bezos's Net Worth Just Broke $100B

#90

Post by AznHisoka »

alexasmyths wrote: post #26
garmaine wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

P/E is not a meaningful metric. The 10x rule of thumb doesn’t work for all companies. For one, not all companies have the same level of infrastructure—Amazon has a lot of warehouse and distribution infrastructure, not to mention all those AWS servers they own, etc. you should properly subtract that out before doing the calculation. Even still Amazon has a crazy high valuation, just not insanely high. Not sure I’d bet…

It would take way more than 300 years of profits at the current level to justify the stock price. That's crazy high. Even if AMZN could 10x their earnings overnight by stopping expansion or something, they'd still have a 30x - meaning way more than 30 years of future profits at this level. Either that, or they'd still have to grow that much. Stocks are in a clear bubble. Snap, AMZN, Tesla, and also BTC are stupid, an…

Except stock price isnt intrinsically related to profits at all. So Amazon is $1100. Great. Does that entitle you to x% of the profits? nope. We just believe that stock prices should reflect profits but its just a false fabrication. Price simply reflects demand from stock buyers.

as a thought experiment, Lets suppose that everyone on earth is forced to invest 10 percent of their salary in their 401k and it has to be in equities. And they cant take it out until they are 90 years old. Stock prices would probably inflate 5-10 times current prices. Amazon would be 10 times "overvalued" in relation to profits. Would you not buy becauss of this? Of course not, Because people would continually invest in stocks and much fewer people are cashing out.

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