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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

#431

Post by [deleted] »

efaref wrote: post #387
sudhirj wrote: post #375

I just don't get this complaining about wealth concentration - for every person capable of complaining on an online forum that some people have 100 to 1000x the wealth they do, there are also likely to be more people that exist who have 1000x less than you. How exactly am I any more entitled to the wealth of those richer than me, than are those poorer than me entitled to my (relative) wealth? It seems to me that the…

The problem isn't that Bezos has 1,000x my net worth. He has 1,000,000x my (approximate) net worth. One millionth of my net worth is seven cents, so Bezos:me is me:$0.07. The graph isn't logarithmic. It's shaped like this: | | | ____________|

[deleted]

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

#432

Post by [deleted] »

_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/...

[deleted]

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

#433

Post by [deleted] »

_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/...

[deleted]

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

#434

Post by gonvaled »

rsync wrote: post #267
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".

"Interesting. the solution should be to just to tax Wilt Chamberlain at a rate high enough that the astronomical net worths become merely "stratospheric"." The solution to what ? Could you describe the problem in the (above) Wilt Chamberlain example ?

Inequality.

The problem is, nearly never, access to resources: modern society (including in poor countries) puts necessary resources (food, clothing, shelter and even transportation) available to all at a very small price. Our material needs are 100% guaranteed.

The problem is that most of the goods that modern society produces are unavailable for most of the population. By reducing inequality, we could improve life quality for the masses.

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

#435

Post by eddiecalzone »

celticninja wrote: post #419
rsync wrote: post #267

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"." The solution to what ? Could you describe the problem in the (above) Wilt Chamberlain example ?

unequal distribution of wealth is the underlying issue, so essentially they are suggesting a progressive tax system whereby higher earners are taxed at a higher rate. Which allows the government to redistribute that wealth towards poorer areas of society whilst not impacting significantly on the living standards of the higher earner.

Well stated. All of the arguments above amount to "sure inequality is happening, but that's just capitalism so what can be done?" This.

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

#436

Post by 72deluxe »

It is interesting to know that Bill Gates is still the world's richest. Thinking about how little I have directly spent with Microsoft is interesting.

I bought Windows 3.11 from a computer fair. I got Windows 95 from school (proper CD, not a pirate). I bought a computer that came with Windows 98 (and a lame Cyrix processor), got an XP licence from a case someone was throwing out, skipped Vista, bought Windows 7 Pro system builder from eBay (proper version, no pirate copy, I don't like pirating software). I then got a free upgrade to Windows 10.

Hardware, I think I bought an xbox 360 controller for the PC. I got given an old generation 1 xbox (since retired) and a load of games. Bought Office 2003 from eBay (proper version, OEM with hardware to satisfy licence) when Office 2007 was all the rage (so it was cheap). I think my brother once bought a Sidewinder joystick (had the footprint of a large dinosaur, such a big piece of hardware).

Then I used the Express editions of SQL Server (MSDE before that), Express editions of Visual Studio and now the Community as I am a Lone Ranger developer at home.

Oh and I bought a laptop that had Windows 10 on it so I guess they had a cut of its value.

So basically Microsoft have had very little direct money from me, despite basically being responsible for my employment for the last 15 years (I write apps under Windows).

I have spent more money with Parallels Inc as they force me to "upgrade" every year (every other year if I can help it) despite Apple introducing a new virtualisation layer a couple of releases ago.

So thanks Bill.

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

#437

Post by pikzen »

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…

In case anyone is wondering what libertarian revisionism looks like, look above.

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

#438

Post by hyperpallium »

adventured wrote: post #274
bpicolo wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Inflation alone means eventually someone will. (Just like Rockefeller's adjusted fortune is 300-400billlion)

Rockefeller's adjusted fortune is not $300-$400 billion. It's a lot closer to $30 to $40 billion in fact. That huge fake number - which has been thrown around the Web for more than a decade - is derived from the GDP share. It goes like this. Rockefeller in 1915 (pick the year), was worth the equivalent of 1/37th of the US GDP. Therefore, adjusted to today, Rockefeller would be worth $bazillion (1/37th of $19 trillion…

Yes, not in terms of buying power, but success in terms of proportion of GDP seems a reasonable measure. It must be harder to make the same amount of money in a smaller market. It also shows how well you did relative to others, and may be a better measure of how much actual power you have over others.

Just use the proportion 1/37 instead of converting to dollars, or I agree it's misleading.

Also: perhaps, $1500 per day today is reflective of our buying power in a way, if we consider new inventions like TV, smartphones, internet, air-travel, when the closest equivalents back then were much more expensive.

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

#439

Post by emt02 »

monort wrote: post #424
emt02 wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that's communism. I think you're confused about communism. What you're talking about seems more about soviet russia and other countries that run/ran an authoritarian state-capitalism system (often calling it communism). However, communism has nothing to do with enforcing people to work under a threat of death, rather the contrary.

From Communist Manifesto: 8. Equal liability of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture. Unsurprisingly this leads to labor camps in every communist government.

According to the communist manifesto, the point you mention should be put into effect during the transitory phase from capitalism to communism, where the State gathers the power in order to then build a class-less, state-less society.

That is just a mean to reach the final goal, and it does not mention labor camps or anything like that.

I'm curious on which communist government are you talking about, since pretty much all the "communist" revolutions so far did not actually implement communism but state capitalism (as Lenin himself said), except for some libertarian communist revolutions (e.g. revolutionary Catalogna, Ukraine) that were then defeated militarily.

On one thing I agree with you though, which is that putting all the power into the state is not a good way to achieve communism, as it is dangerous and it pretty much never worked so far.

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

#440

Post by efaref »

terryf wrote: post #402
efaref wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem isn't that Bezos has 1,000x my net worth. He has 1,000,000x my (approximate) net worth. One millionth of my net worth is seven cents, so Bezos:me is me:$0.07. The graph isn't logarithmic. It's shaped like this: | | | ____________|

What difference is there between 1000x and 1,000,000x ? Should there be a cap somewhere? I just completely fail to see how this is anything other than being jealous of someone elses's success. Please do explain.

It's not about being jealous of a particular person's success, it's more about observing the problems with a world where a tiny fraction of the population capture and control over half of the wealth.

If that were problem free, then fine. But it's not. Think of it as a symptom of an illness, and we should work to get the fever down.

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