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Jeff Bezos Is Now the World's Second Richest Person

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

#131

Post by sharun »

_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/...

If you want more blue whales you need more ocean.

And if the ocean don't have its few blues, krill and algae explode and the whole system, sooner or later collapses. Nature has had a long time to find alternate ways of keeping ecosystems temporarily stable and everywhere you look in nature you see hierarchies prop up.

The only difference with humans is we can "choose" who to collectively prop up.

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

#132

Post by lawnchair_larry »

tucaz wrote: post #111
_cairn wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not saying that what you are implying is wrong, but empirically speaking working hard/relative merit do not correlate to proportionate monetary rewards in our current system. The idea of a pure meritocracy is an interesting one, I wonder what some of the outcomes would be.

There is also the fact that money (and value) is not a zero sum game. Bezos making billions doesnt mean that the money was taken from someone else in the sense that that person cannot have it anymore. The opposite is also true. If he was poor it doesn't mean that I would have more money. Value creation is a weird but beautiful thing.

I don't think that's the entirely the case. True it's not zero sum, but it's not free either. There is absolutely wealth transfer. For example, if he were poor, many middle class Seattle residents would have far more purchasing power in their current real estate market. Amazon have expanded rapidly and transplanted most of the cogs who are building the Bezos empire.

The many displaced multi-generational residents of Seattle and San Francisco might not refer to this phenomenon as beautiful.

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

#133

Post by wozniacki »

sushisource wrote: post #59
jorblumesea wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Houses are going for 500k+, please, less hype actually. All we want to do is build cool product and enjoy our life. I don't think anyone in Seattle wants the SV arrogance and lifestyle.

Heh, this is the Seattleite party line. Don't kid yourself into thinking people in Seattle are more humble than the people in SV. They're just not as overt about it. I agree with you that the flashy culture of SV doesn't exist as much here, and that's a good thing, but I'd say Seattleites are some of the most arrogant, standoffish, and surface-polite people I've met anywhere in the world.

   I'd say Seattleites are some of the most arrogant, 
   standoffish, and surface-polite people I've met 
   anywhere in the world.
Could you perhaps expand on this observation? I genuinely find it interesting. This is the sort of thing you don't see measured in those "most-livable cities" indices you see from time to time [1]. Tricky to capture I agree, but doable. It would greatly simplify one's choice when deciding where to build a career.

[1]The 10 most livable cities in the world http://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-10-most-livable-cities-...

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

#134

Post by DamnYuppie »

ruleabidinguser wrote: post #129
greghatch wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The negatives need not be so similar for the two to occupy the same space of vast property ownership concerns - namely that a single person has what many consider to be a troubling amount of wealth and power. EDIT: sentence structure change

Sorry, why is it concerning? It seems concerning to me but only if you choose not to really engage with what it means.

Throughout human history there has never been a time where those in power, regardless of how obtained, didn't turn to violence and subterfuge to maintain it.

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

#135

Post by owenversteeg »

nier wrote: post #103

Would it be possible for a guy like Jeff to sell all his stock and convert his wealth to, let’s say, gold? The motivation for my question is my doubt that the different sources of wealth are comparable. So this ranking is hypothetical. Wouldn’t the stock price drop if someone was to sell so many shares?

Yep. Bezos owns around 16%. He recently sold about 1% in May 2016 (May 3-5), then another 1% in August 2016 (Aug 2-4). These caused roughly a 1% and 2% decline in the stock, respectively. In both cases it recovered within 3 days.

Obviously if he continued to liquidate his stock at around 2% absolutely per year, he'd reach zero in eight years. Bezos owning zero Amazon shares would be very weird if he was CEO, though. I imagine he could comfortably get down to owning 4-5% of Amazon without damaging the stock too much.

Disclaimer: I own Amazon through VFINX, and if you are Jeff Bezos and taking advice from my comment, uh, don't I guess.

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

#136

Post by ohyes »

SwellJoe wrote: post #127
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…

"The richest person's entire net worth is orders of magnitude less than the yearly GDP of a moderately sized country." Economically speaking, the US is not a "moderately sized country". It is the richest country in the world. There are several moderately sized countries with lower GDP than Bill Gates net worth.

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 worth is similar to Ukraine's GDP.

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

#137

Post by zvpxdlk »

aaron-lebo wrote: post #113
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…

There's a lot of ways you can look at it. Feudalism was a hierarchical system. Not all nobles went around hacking off heads - they could farm that out to higher ups who kept order. What's the difference between Amazon's reliance on national governments? The business model only works because the US enforces peace on parts of the world and because the Chinese government allows its workers to be used for pennies on the…

> any less intelligent or hard working

Not necessarily true. Luck plays a big role in things like this but Bezos is clearly in the elite when it comes to effective professionals.

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

#138

Post by TheGrassyKnoll »

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…

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

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

#139

Post by jameshart »

nier wrote: post #103

Would it be possible for a guy like Jeff to sell all his stock and convert his wealth to, let’s say, gold? The motivation for my question is my doubt that the different sources of wealth are comparable. So this ranking is hypothetical. Wouldn’t the stock price drop if someone was to sell so many shares?

Make him an offer. How much do you think you'd have to pay him to give you all that stock? That's how much it's worth.

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

#140

Post by SwellJoe »

ohyes wrote: post #136
SwellJoe wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The richest person's entire net worth is orders of magnitude less than the yearly GDP of a moderately sized country." Economically speaking, the US is not a "moderately sized country". It is the richest country in the world. There are several moderately sized countries with lower GDP than Bill Gates net worth.

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.

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