
Billionaires - markbnine
http://www.bloomberg.com/billionaires/2013-01-22/aaa/jayaa
======
powertower
Tagged by how they made their money - first mover advantage, hard work and
insight, theft, unfair practices, cheating, destroying the environment, war
profiteering, rackets, bribery, political corruption, pure luck, ovarian
lottery, etc, would be a much more interesting read.

~~~
AndrewKemendo
If you take out the ones who were billionaires by inheritance, and then look
at those under 50, all but 5 are well connected beneficiaries of the fall of
the Soviet Union.

The other 5 made their money in IT (Dell, Bezos, Zuck, Brin, Page).

~~~
bilbo0s
When governments go away, there is always money to be made.

I strongly suspect that maneuvering of this nature is the most likely reason
for Cuba's undersea cable only being turned on for one way traffic. In lofty
debates on political world views, we can often overlook the greedy. I'd
imagine the same sorts of things were going on when the Soviet Union
dissolved.

------
ok_craig
Whenever I see these lists I always find it interesting to think about the
fact that the only reason a Walton isn't in #1 is because Sam is long gone,
and his value was split between his children, all 4 of whom have $30+ billion.
Kinda crazy.

~~~
emp_
Wikipedia puts him at $230 billion in 1992, crazy indeed.

EDIT: Wikipedia meme, move along.

~~~
mildavw
Pointing out the fact that the most successful store in history by a huge
margin is one that neither you nor anyone you know shops at is a great way to
illustrate the importance of market validation for startups.

~~~
pmorici
Sorry, are you saying no one on HN shops at Walmart or that there is a more
successful store?

~~~
mildavw
It's a broad stroke for sure, but, yes, no one on HN shops at Walmart.

~~~
protomyth
I hope you're joking. Shopped there tonight. It was there or a poorly stocked
K-Mart. I find the local grocery store less ethical than the Walmart.

~~~
mildavw
I'm not joking, but my point is lost in some confusion, so I'll add this
caveat:

If your audience _does_ shop at Walmart, or knows people who do, then pointing
out Walmart's jaw dropping numbers will not be a good device for illuminating
the importance of market validation. In fact it could encourage them carry on
with the potentially mistaken assumption that the entire planet's
needs/problems are the same as their own.

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tptacek
Not a single self-made woman makes the top 100.

~~~
leak
J.K. Rowling would have been on the list but she gave away a lot of her money
taking away her billionaire status.

[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/15/forbes-
billionaire-...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/15/forbes-billionaire-
list-rowling_n_1347176.html)

~~~
mynameishere
No, it's the top 100, not just anyone with a billion dollars. So, eg, Steven
Spielberg (~4 billion) isn't on the list either.

~~~
philwelch
Nor were British billionaires Mike Ashley or Richard Branson.

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downandout
It's interesting that the only 3 self-made billionaires under 40 are in tech -
Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Mark Zuckerberg. The fact that 12 of the top 100
are Russian is rather striking to me as well.

~~~
neel8986
I am also really surprised by number of russians. If you consider it with
other BRIC countries (Brazil 3,India 2, China 1) then you have to believe
something really strange is going on in russia

~~~
incision
It's not so strange, pretty straightforward actually.

When the Soviet Union fell apart a whole load of state assets were privatized
right into the hands of well-connected people for below market value [1].

Pretty easy to make money when you're handed a monopoly, at a deep discount.

1: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privatization_in_Russia>

~~~
philwelch
The original intention was to effectively give every Russian citizen stock in
all the newly privatized businesses. They did this, but the oligarchs were
able to front-run the actual privatizations and bought all the stock for
pennies on the dollar (ruble?) compared to what they ended up being worth.

Taking all the economic activity that was going on under communism and
immediately privatizing it is probably bound to create a few fortunes no
matter how you do it, but the way it ended up happening in Russia was
needlessly corrupt.

------
maniacwhat
I may be reading it wrong, but it looks to me that there are no female self-
made billionaires, which is interesting.

~~~
colmvp
That's my observation too. Also, none are African/African-American.

Edit: Stand corrected. Aliko Dangote.

~~~
jules
Not just Aliko Dangote, but also #16 Alwaleed Al Saud.

~~~
philwelch
I wouldn't really characterize Arabs from the Arabian Peninsula as African in
any respect.

~~~
jules
Yes, somehow I thought he was from egypt.

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sergiotapia
Surprised to see Sergei Brin so low on the list, considering his website is
the number 1 IN THE ENTIRE PLANET.

Then I remembered, the old saying: "You gotta diversify yo bonds, nigga." [1]
- The top spots have mining operations, tech, banking, etc.

[1] - [http://www.comedycentral.com/video-
clips/tw2ltp/chappelle-s-...](http://www.comedycentral.com/video-
clips/tw2ltp/chappelle-s-show-wu-tang-financial)

~~~
bostonpete
If he wasn't splitting that #1 website with Larry, he'd be in the top 10.

~~~
dennisgorelik
If he wasn't splitting that #1 website with Larry, he wouldn't be anywhere
near the list of billionaires.

------
bjhoops1
At risk of sounding like a communist...

When you consider just how much money $10+ billion is, from an ethical
standpoint, does any individual deserve to have that much money/power?

I can't help but think that it is really a grotesque thing for a single person
to have more money than the GDP of a country like Cuba. There's just no way
one person has contributed to society enough to justify that kind of wealth.

~~~
AVTizzle
"Deserve" ?

Except for thief, lottery, inheritance, marriage, or trickery, money is made
when you've created _value_ for others. Repeat and scale multiple times over,
and you've not only made money, you've contributed and made others lives
better, happier, more entertaining, or less stressful, etc.

Using their businesses as leverage, most of these billionaires have made their
fortunes creating billions of dollars worth of value for the masses. They
deserve every penny of it.

~~~
bjhoops1
"They deserve every penny of it?"

I'm sorry, but there's no way that any person's _individual_ contributions to
society are worth 3-4 orders of magnitude more than most other people's. And
if there are such individuals, they are the Teslas, Newtons, Einsteins or
other true geniuses whose ideas have shaped the world and opened up new
possibilities - not the oil magnates, plutocrats or Wall Street bankers that
make up most of this list.

The only way one could argue that all of the uber-rich deserve all of their
money is if you subscribe to an incredibly simplistic, idealistic, optimistic
Milton Friedman-esque economic and political philosophy which assumes that the
earning of income directly corresponds to value added to the economy and
society.

~~~
AndrewKemendo
>I'm sorry, but there's no way that any person's individual contributions to
society are worth 3-4 orders of magnitude more than most other people's.

Why not? Just because it was likely timing, doesn't make the impact less
great.

Your point seems to be that such a person isn't inherently that much better
than someone else. Ok, but no one is inherently that great. 90% of "making it"
in any of the senses is timing and placement, so it's really all relative.

By being able to post on HN you are about the same magnitude "better off" in
real wealth terms compared to a man in the Shomali plains than a billionaire
is to you. Does that make your accomplishments better compared to that Afghani
man's?

~~~
bjhoops1
>By being able to post on HN you are about the same magnitude "better off" in
real wealth terms compared to a man in the Shomali plains than a billionaire
is to you. Does that make your accomplishments better compared to that Afghani
man's?

Good point. I would say that no, my accomplishments are not. The fact that I
spend more money on a nice dinner than some people make in a year is just
another sign of the gross inequity in the world. Really that's all I'm saying
- just pointing out that there is some sort of inherent injustice in the
distribution of wealth, power and quality of life, and it is just much more
plainly visible in the case of individual's with the purchasing power of
entire nations. Just something to think about.

------
msandford
How is it that Bloomberg himself isn't on the list? According to Wikipedia
he's worth $25B which is well within the top 100.

------
learc83
Why does the link go to directly to self made, energy billionaires?

~~~
tokenadult
_Why does the link go to directly to self made, energy billionaires?_

I noticed that too. The link was submitted with a search string appended,
methinks, rather than in canonical form.

Submitting canonical links is friendly to HN users:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4624933>

------
guimarin
Wow. The infographic is cool but some of the copy is incredibly snarky. On
Mark Zuckerburg under 'intelligence' "Sister Randi likes to pretend she was a
television production assistant." That said I think it's more interesting to
see who the next 900 richest people are than the top 100. maybe just me
though.

------
jules
Interesting that 71 of the 100 are self made. Of the 29 that inherited their
wealth, 12 are female, however of the 71 that are self made, none are female.
Very surprising that the disparity is that huge. Also surprising that only one
of the 100 is black. We have a long way to go!

~~~
philwelch
You'd expect close to half of people who inherit wealth to be women, because
about half of births are women. Unfortunately the same cannot be said of
entrepreneurs and business moguls.

~~~
jonpeda
I'd be interested to see how the numbers play out if you include spouses in
the lists.

------
abat
Is this list accurate? I don't see Bloomberg (the person). According to
Wikipedia, he's worth 25B, so I would expect to see him.

~~~
30thElement
If you click the little "i" in the top right you can get the full methodology.
In there it explains why Bloomberg the person is missing

>Bloomberg News editorial policy is to not cover Bloomberg L.P. As a result
Michael Bloomberg, the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, isn’t
considered for this ranking.

------
ggordan
Is there a reason why the Rothschild family doesn't appear on the list? I'd
imagine that they are still billionaires.

~~~
mmagin
Well, it's a list of individuals, after all this time, I imagine that wealth
has been split between quite a few of them.

Also:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rothschild_family#Conspiracy_th...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rothschild_family#Conspiracy_theories)

------
GuiA
Wouldn't Laurene Powell technically have a very nice spot on this list?

~~~
tptacek
No, she apparently misses it by just a hair. Didn't Jobs also miss this list
while he was alive?

------
p3r1
Someone have checked the "map" part? It shows a world map with a slider of the
last year net worth changes. Something happens at April 18 and August 2.

------
elboru
It's interesting how the richest man in the world comes from a third world
country (Carlos Slim from Mexico).

~~~
civilian
I was going to question whether Mexico is a third world country but I did some
googling and yeah, I guess that's an okay assessment. But I think the term
"developing country" would be more appropriate.

I think Mexico can be more easily grouped with the BRIC countries, rather
than, say, Kenya and Cambodia.

I guess the only point I really want to make is that naming and labeling is a
difficult problem, even outside of computer science.

~~~
elboru
Well, yeah you're right Mexico is supposed to be the 8th economy by 2050,
acording to HSBC, Mexico will be above France, Canada, Italy, Turkey and
S.Korea

[http://business.blogs.cnn.com/2012/01/12/worlds-top-
economie...](http://business.blogs.cnn.com/2012/01/12/worlds-top-economies-
in-2050-will-be/)

------
arbuge
One inaccuracy: Ortega (founder & ceo of Zara) doesn't pop up when you choose
apparel.

------
redwood
Interesting, only 1 British. Zero in Singapore... seems likely incorrect.

------
gavanwoolery
Big mistake:

They drew eyebrows on Larry Ellison.

(Reference image: <http://allthingsd.com/files/2012/05/larry_ellison1.png>)

------
CleanedStar
#6 and #7 on the list are the Koch brothers. Under the categories "inherited"
or "self-made" Bloomberg lists them as "self-made". Only 29 of the 100 are
listed as having inherited their wealth. Ibn Saud's grandson, Alwaleed Al Saud
is #16 and is also listed by Bloomberg as self-made. I guess even if you're
the grandson of the guy your country is named after, you can still be listed
as self-made by Bloomberg. Happy to see these self-made guys pulled themselves
up by their bootstraps and became billionaires.

~~~
adventured
It's a fair point. So is the fact that it's extraordinarily easy to destroy
vast amounts of wealth very quickly.

Shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves in three generations, is a classic inheritance
saying for a reason. Hand someone a large sum of money as inheritance and I
would argue they're just as likely to destroy it as preserve it (much less
grow it substantially).

It's far easier to destroy $50 million than to multiply it by 1,000 times
(which is what the Koch brothers did).

------
rglover
Fuck billionaires.

