How to Steal a Billion • Hacker News Board

Re: How to Steal a Billion

#31

Post by djmips » Wed, Nov 06, 2019, 4:56 PM UTC

yawaramin wrote: post #7

Wow, this really drives home how absurd the whole WeWork thing was. And even until recently people were talking about how apparently Masayoshi San was playing some kind of three-dimensional chess and would come out the winner from WeWork. A fool and his money are soon parted, I guess. Also, the post title is a nice nod to an Audrey Hepburn/Peter O'Toole movie dripping with '60s cool: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060…

Masayoshi San I assume is not a fool but I also know that people have weak spots and can be manipulated.

Re: How to Steal a Billion

#32

Post by JohnFen » Wed, Nov 06, 2019, 4:56 PM UTC

asdfman123 wrote: post #12

lordnacho wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is overly optimistic, what you're saying. What's he gonna lose? Friends who invested with him? He can buy new ones. Feel bad? You can literally hire a whole team of therapists for life. He can sit in his mansions and not be in the public eye forever, it's not like being in the public eye is some sort of requirement for living. Heck, he might even find a new following among people who want to emulate how…

I'm intentionally being tongue in cheek. Unless he's a total sociopath (which I don't think he is) he's probably going to suffer mild blowback, the kind of blowback and shitty feelings us mortals feel when we've been ousted from a job. But it's the kind of disappointment and anger that you get over in a few months. The only difference is he'll have a billion dollars and the ability to do whatever in life he wants. If…

> If you were in his shoes, would you go back and do things any differently?

I wouldn't have been in his shoes, because I have a shred of decency.

Re: How to Steal a Billion

#33

Post by travisoneill1 » Wed, Nov 06, 2019, 4:56 PM UTC

yawaramin wrote: post #7

Wow, this really drives home how absurd the whole WeWork thing was. And even until recently people were talking about how apparently Masayoshi San was playing some kind of three-dimensional chess and would come out the winner from WeWork. A fool and his money are soon parted, I guess. Also, the post title is a nice nod to an Audrey Hepburn/Peter O'Toole movie dripping with '60s cool: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060…

To statistically show skill in investment it takes a whole lot more data than the human mind assumes, so this is a common occurrence in the world of finance. John Paulson, who became famous as one of the fund managers to make a killing shorting mortgage backed securities, lost 50% in a year (much of it to Sino Forrest, a Chinese fraud) a couple years later.

Re: How to Steal a Billion

#34

Post by rayiner » Wed, Nov 06, 2019, 4:57 PM UTC

CptFribble wrote: post #13

That's the funny thing about Billions-with-a-b: normal thinking about money and value just doesn't work IMO. The Vision Fund is going to lose ~$19 billion. But Masa Son still controls over $80 billion. That's more wealth and power than almost any human being will ever have in history, ever. At that point the numbers don't even matter. Maybe Neumann took Masa Son for $50 billion. Who cares? A person can live in the US…

> Most people out here are sweating medical bills in the low $10,000's, while the news is talking about billions being gained and lost in the span of a few weeks - so fast it makes you wonder if that amount of wealth really even existed in the first place.

If people lose confidence in the system because of that it’s because they can’t multiply. Billionaires are very rich compared to middle class people, but there are very few of them, and lots of middle class people. Elizabeth Warren’s new health plan will cost $50 trillion over ten years. Middle class Americans make $8 trillion a year, compared to about $130 billion for America’s too 400 taxpayers.[1] Confiscating the total wealth of every billionaire in America (about $3-3.5 trillion) would pay for Warren’s health plan for well under a year.[2]

We spend way too much time worrying about the wealth of a small group of people that, in the end, doesn’t add up to that large a fraction of total wealth or income. This is, in my view, the biggest reason why America can’t have nice things. Over on the other side of the pond, they don’t worry as much about figuring out how to tax billionaires. Because they know that, in the aggregate, it’s the middle class that has most of the money.

[1] https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/statistics/returns-taxpayers.... Rough proxy for billionaires.

[2] https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2019/10/03/forbes-400-a.... Top 400 billionaire have $3 trillion. Another 220 billionaires not included, but due to the cut off they have at most another $600 billion.

Re: How to Steal a Billion

#35

Post by buboard » Wed, Nov 06, 2019, 5:01 PM UTC

logfromblammo wrote: post #2

I'd like to think that Adam Neumann will see some manner of ill effect for paying himself $1 billion of other people's money, while delivering negative value, but then reality comes crashing in to remind me that no, he won't. Consequences are for people who don't have a billion dollars.

I don't really understand the hate. He didn't steal it from an old lady behind her back. If that was the case, i can understand the feelings of empathy that it would evoke to people. But capitalizing on some uber-rich person's mistakes? Cry me a river, do you think Mr Softbank cares? Yeah he might drink one cocktail more, but who cares.

What if Adam now becomes a great angel investor? Life is like that , all twists and turns , and the ToS says it's not guaranteed to be fair.

Re: How to Steal a Billion

#36

Post by ahakki » Wed, Nov 06, 2019, 5:01 PM UTC

neffy wrote: post #23

Invictus0 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gates, Arnault, and Bezos each have had more than 100B, although not liquid.

Not really. Adding up all the shares that they own, and saying that they have that much money, is completely incorrect. If any of them tried to liquidate even a small part of their shareholding the price would go swiftly to zero.

They can borrow money with their stock as collateral (explicit or implicit). They only need the liquidity to cover interest.

btw take a look at Gates' portfolio. He's as liquid as it get's at that level.

Re: How to Steal a Billion

#37

Post by rayvy » Wed, Nov 06, 2019, 5:01 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #34

CptFribble wrote: post #13

That's the funny thing about Billions-with-a-b: normal thinking about money and value just doesn't work IMO. The Vision Fund is going to lose ~$19 billion. But Masa Son still controls over $80 billion. That's more wealth and power than almost any human being will ever have in history, ever. At that point the numbers don't even matter. Maybe Neumann took Masa Son for $50 billion. Who cares? A person can live in the US…

> Most people out here are sweating medical bills in the low $10,000's, while the news is talking about billions being gained and lost in the span of a few weeks - so fast it makes you wonder if that amount of wealth really even existed in the first place. If people lose confidence in the system because of that it’s because they can’t multiply. Billionaires are very rich compared to middle class people, but there are…

Your comment is posted as a matter of fact, but includes no sources/citations

Re: How to Steal a Billion

#38

Post by ksdale » Wed, Nov 06, 2019, 5:01 PM UTC

CptFribble wrote: post #13

That's the funny thing about Billions-with-a-b: normal thinking about money and value just doesn't work IMO. The Vision Fund is going to lose ~$19 billion. But Masa Son still controls over $80 billion. That's more wealth and power than almost any human being will ever have in history, ever. At that point the numbers don't even matter. Maybe Neumann took Masa Son for $50 billion. Who cares? A person can live in the US…

It's especially interesting, because although a billion dollars is a staggering amount of money for one person to possess, if you distributed the wealth of the world out to every single person evenly, it would only be something like $50,000 per person (based on some quick Googling), which is a life changing amount of money, to be sure, but it's a one time deal. It's not $50,000 per year of income, it's $50,000, period. The amount of wealth created per year is a fraction of that. Were it all distributed equally, basically everyone in the developed world would be taking a massive hit in quality of life, and every single person in the world would still be sweating medical bills in the low $10,000's.

I agree that the numbers become meaningless past a certain point, especially where we're talking about valuations, where it's basically a bunch of people's vague agreement on a price and there are incentives to make it look one way or another, but we also have really bad intuitions about just how much wealth there is out there.

Re: How to Steal a Billion

#39

Post by cryptica » Wed, Nov 06, 2019, 5:02 PM UTC

>> He saw an excess of capital in Silicon Valley and a raw, unsatisfied ambition in SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son and his $100 billion Vision Fund

It doesn't take a genius to see this opportunity but it does take an incredibly lucky person to be in a position to exploit it.

If Adam Neumann doesn't end up in jail after all this, then I will concede that he is not an idiot.

Re: How to Steal a Billion

#40

Post by UserIsUnused » Wed, Nov 06, 2019, 5:03 PM UTC

neffy wrote: post #23

Invictus0 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gates, Arnault, and Bezos each have had more than 100B, although not liquid.

Not really. Adding up all the shares that they own, and saying that they have that much money, is completely incorrect. If any of them tried to liquidate even a small part of their shareholding the price would go swiftly to zero.

Bezos does so every year in order to finance blue origin.