
Jeff Bezos Becomes the First Person Ever Worth $200B - mgdo
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanponciano/2020/08/26/worlds-richest-billionaire-jeff-bezos-first-200-billion/#15f816b84db7
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Pompidou
If you try to imagine the amount of real things Bezos can buy, and even more,
the amazing mass of 200B$ in 10 dollars bills, you then realize his fortune is
more a symbolic attribute than the transposition of productible stuffs in real
economy. This absurd level of fortune shows us that we don't live in a pure
rational world/economy, but rather that we still follow and believe in fictive
or conventional representations of wealth. The question is : how long people
will still believe in theses social conventions, because as a last resort our
actual world stand on social beliefs.

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afiori
That is not the amount of money Bezos has, that is the estimated selling price
of the stuff he owns. He could use it as money (by paying in fraction of
shares) but a significant part of the value relies on the fact that he is not
currently selling (a substantial part) of his wealth.

Similarly for Musk, it is easy to imagine how quickly Tesla value would drop
if Musk where to tweet "I will now sell all of my shares" (he received a
formal complaint because he said something that was vaguely close to it)

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Pompidou
Ok thank you for your comment, I will go deeply in your point of view later.

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TheGallopedHigh
Interesting to compare it to this list for some perspective:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wealthiest_historical_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wealthiest_historical_figures)

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vanusa
... Which of course the authors of the Forbes article never did, judging by
some of the obvious historical competitors (Rockefeller, Carnegie, Vanderbilt,
etc) they missed.

Leaving aside the bias for figures from the last 200 years (ignoring many
figures from earlier epochs, whose shares of global wealth were no doubt
comparable, or most likely far higher).

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chmaynard
Just think, if he hadn't cheated on his ex-wife he'd be worth even more.

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snypher
And he would have more money too!

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bryan_w
Some will see this with outrage, but I'm just thinking that it's an ad. I feel
like I should get into Amazon stock while it's on the upswing!

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anm89
Buy high sell low right?

Being half sarcastic though. There is still an argument that Amazon is a value
stock.

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evolve2k
Is it still true that he’s behind on paying his taxes?

