Jeff Bezos Becomes the Richest Man in Modern History, Topping $150B • Hacker News Board

Re: Jeff Bezos Becomes the Richest Man in Modern History, Topping $150B

#211

Post by CryptoPunk » Mon, Jul 16, 2018, 8:16 PM UTC

aphextron wrote: post #49

Endama wrote: post #15

I feel that America is in the midst of a new gilded age; instead of Standard Oil, we have Amazon. Like the late 1920s, we saw losses in purchasing power of the average American, the collection of wealth among the top 1%, and disruption of our civic spaces as a result. I think the thing that many Americans aren't aware of was just how violent that time in US history was[1]. The US economy isn't just about how comforta…

Except we actually had a functioning federal government during the last gilded age, so we ended up with things like the Sherman Antitrust Act, and eventually the New Deal. I doubt we'll be so lucky this time around. Things are about to get absolutely brutal for the 90%.

The New Deal was responsible for stretching the Depression out for several additional years. It was one of the most economically ignorant and harmful interventions in US history.

Food was actually destroyed during the New Deal to create artificial scarcity in agricultural produce:

https://livinghistoryfarm.org/farminginthe30s/crops_17.html

This destruction of agricultural stock was based on the idea that the problem in the economy was low nominal prices, when that was merely the symptom of the contraction in the money supply as a result of widespread defaults and an erosion in lending.

The low nominal prices were a natural reaction to the reduced money supply, that enabled consumption levels to remain at their pre-crash levels. With their efforts to increase nominal prices by creating artificial scarcity, all the New Deal officials did was reduce economic output, and with it, consumption levels, resulting in lower quality of life.

Re: Jeff Bezos Becomes the Richest Man in Modern History, Topping $150B

#212

Post by bsvalley » Mon, Jul 16, 2018, 8:16 PM UTC

crazygringo wrote: post #79

bsvalley wrote: post #41

most of it is virtual money... He could be worth $50B tomorrow if his company crashes. Still a lot of money though, but $150B don't mean anything. It would be interesting to see when/if bitcoin reaches $1 million USD. That Forbes list would get totally disrupted.

> $150B don't mean anything That's the silliest thing I ever heard. Anyone with more than $50K net worth is or ought to be keeping nearly all of it in investments of some sort, what you're calling "virtual money". It's no more virtual than your 401(k) or Schwab account or home. By your logic, nearly the entire American economy "doesn't mean anything."

I think you miss-understood my statement. They calculated $150B based on is 16.4% stakes in Amazon, 100% financial assets (stocks). Yes, you can convert it into real assets at any time, after vesting period, but as the CEO and founder of Amazon, he can't do that. So the point is, he is still considered the richest man on earth at the moment, but he can't still spend $100 billion tomorrow on a gigantic island. So, yeah, $150B doesn't mean anything. It's just a random number.

Re: Jeff Bezos Becomes the Richest Man in Modern History, Topping $150B

#213

Post by TangoTrotFox » Mon, Jul 16, 2018, 8:17 PM UTC

ajmurmann wrote: post #102

nostromo wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Bezos is a bad argument for us being in a new guilded age. When you look at Rockefeller, Carnegie, Ford, and perhaps even Gates, they had near total control over some aspect of the American Economy. And they used that control to make incredible profits. Amazon is trying to do the same, but they haven't done so yet. Their retail business is not wildly profitable (if at all). They haven't monopolized online ret…

It makes no sense for Amazon to turn a profit. They invest everything back into growth. This way the stock keeps going up, Bezos and co sell their stock and pay long term capital gains tax instead of income tax. This way Bezos can get a better tax rate than his secretary.

At Amazon's scale you cannot simply turn tens of billions of dollars into economically meaningful growth. If you could, and expect proportional increase in valuation, then nearly every company would be doing the exact same thing. Take for instance Apple. They are netting some $48 billion a year with much more than that on hand. They clearly desperately want to move beyond just the iPhone and have been trying all sorts of ideas, but nothing is really sticking. And so they've been left to resort to spending literally hundreds of billions of dollars on share buybacks to try to increase the stock price that way. If they could just invest their profits into growth and expect proportional benefit, that's precisely what they would be doing!

Re: Jeff Bezos Becomes the Richest Man in Modern History, Topping $150B

#214

Post by 0x00000000 » Mon, Jul 16, 2018, 8:19 PM UTC

sdljfslkjfdsj wrote: post #98

xkjkls wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A bubble in what though? Amazon stock?

Every single risk asset. Bonds (lowest yields in recorded history including negative sovereigns in europe), stocks (price-to-sales, price-to-ebidta, & countless other measures), art, housing prices back at nominal pre bubble highs, leverage in margin accounts, public debt, central bank balance sheets, etc. That was just from the back of my mouth. Not only is it a bubble but it's quite possibly the largest & most syst…

Don't forget higher education.

Re: Jeff Bezos Becomes the Richest Man in Modern History, Topping $150B

#215

Post by amelius » Mon, Jul 16, 2018, 8:20 PM UTC

Capitalism needs an upgrade.

Our current version breaks down in the global internet economy with digital platforms and digital retailers, where simple brands combined with external capital have the ability to turn companies into supermassive black holes for consumer attention. As we know from math, singularities need special care, so we better start thinking about how we could fix the situation.

Re: Jeff Bezos Becomes the Richest Man in Modern History, Topping $150B

#216

Post by prolikewh0a » Mon, Jul 16, 2018, 8:20 PM UTC

fullshark wrote: post #151

vlunkr wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are average Americans losing purchasing power? This is a real question, I don't know where to look that up.

Goods are cheaper, Rent + College Education + Healthcare is much more expensive.

Everything you really don't need is cheaper, everything you do need (rent, groceries, education) is much more expensive while wages haven't increased since the 90's.

Re: Jeff Bezos Becomes the Richest Man in Modern History, Topping $150B

#217

Post by prolikewh0a » Mon, Jul 16, 2018, 8:21 PM UTC

ralusek wrote: post #136

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd think with all that cash Bezos could afford to pay his minions a humane rate. But he just doesn't care.

Aren't their margins like, razor-thin? Obviously at Amazon scale, even razor-thin margins mean huge profits, but that doesn't mean that you have any wiggle room within the profit. Imagine you have 100 people working for you, and off of each person, you make 10 cents a day. Now imagine you grow your business and you have 1,000,000 people working for you. At 10 cents per person per day, you're now making $100,000 a DAY…

Your margins are so thin that you're worth $150,000,000,000. Right.

Re: Jeff Bezos Becomes the Richest Man in Modern History, Topping $150B

#218

Post by FussyZeus » Mon, Jul 16, 2018, 8:22 PM UTC

code_duck wrote: post #180

TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most Americans have guns. The police has better weapons, but it would be a war of attrition, and I doubt most police would want to go on killing sprees against their fellow countrymen. Although I doubt it'd reach the point of massive insurrection. That would require a total loss of trust in the government, and I think we're still far from that.

How old is the average American gun owner? Are they physically fit? Merely owning guns is different than possessing the physical ability and training in weapons and tactics to use them effectively, especially versus military or paramilitary forces (National Guard and Border Patrol is a much more likely initial pro-government force than police). Not only are they equipped and trained with the same weapons civilians ma…

In every instance throughout history, the $weapon wielded by the peasant has been vastly inferior to the one wielded by the noble's army, guards, etc. In fact one could argue that the peasantry has never been less outgunned that they are currently, when previous uprisings made do with sticks and rocks, and the heads of the wealthy still rolled in the end.

The fact is that the select few protect themselves with rolls of the sons and daughters of the masses. Sure, plenty of them will turn their weapons on their fellow countrymen for a paycheck, but how many? And for how long?

And especially once those bullets start flying, how useful is the money being paid to those guards? How long before they have all the money they could ever want and no one will sell them food?

In our hyper-connected world, we lose people jobs when they crack a racist joke on twitter. How hard will it be to find the 1%'s executioners?

Re: Jeff Bezos Becomes the Richest Man in Modern History, Topping $150B

#219

Post by paulddraper » Mon, Jul 16, 2018, 8:23 PM UTC

tomjakubowski wrote: post #208

paulddraper wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Virtually all credible historians agree that the New Deal itself was largely ineffective in solving the Great Depression. It started in 1933 with unemployment rate of 25%. Half a decade and many millions of dollars later, unemployment was 19%. [1] The Great Depression ended only when Europe went to war in 1939 and financed the American economy. Depending on who you ask, the New Deal was either ineffective because it…

By your own source, a majority (51%) of "economic historians" working in economics departments and a strong majority (74%) of "economic historians" working in history departments disagree outright with the statement: "Taken as a whole, government policies of the New Deal served to lengthen and deepen the Great Depression." It seems unlikely that some huge portion (say, > 90%) of those historians further believe that…

I've never read any modern historian to say that the New Deal effectively fixed the Great Depression.

So yes, I believe that most of those 51% and 74% believe the effect was nonexistant or small. Typically, something like "if FDR had spent as much on the New Deal as he did during the War, it would have ended the Depression". [1] (I.e., it was too little, as in my previous comment.)

I welcome any references to historians claiming the New Deal largely fixed the Great Depression. (Or really, any option from a historian more positive than the quoted article.)

Or...you know, just silently downvote this comment :)

[1] https://www.thebalance.com/the-great-depression-of-1929-3306...

Re: Jeff Bezos Becomes the Richest Man in Modern History, Topping $150B

#220

Post by csomar » Mon, Jul 16, 2018, 8:25 PM UTC

Endama wrote: post #15

I feel that America is in the midst of a new gilded age; instead of Standard Oil, we have Amazon. Like the late 1920s, we saw losses in purchasing power of the average American, the collection of wealth among the top 1%, and disruption of our civic spaces as a result. I think the thing that many Americans aren't aware of was just how violent that time in US history was[1]. The US economy isn't just about how comforta…

> I feel that America is in the midst of a new gilded age; instead of Standard Oil, we have Amazon.

Except that Standard Oil probably had real oil (asset) and Amazon now has an inflated valuation based on potential future earnings.

Apple to Oranges in my opinion.

> The US economy isn't just about how comfortable the average US citizen is

If people are comfortable, they'll accept whatever. Look at the middle-easter countries (Dubai, Qatar, Kuwait). Look at the American people pre-2008 crisis.

The people of America are being squeezed by relentless financial predators (like banks), expensive wars that they have to fight and support (or maybe not but they are paying the price), globalization, expensive bureaucracy, etc...