this post was submitted on 25 Oct 2024
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Okay so then how is he worth that much?
These memes and stories are like, "its unbelievable that Bezos is worth so much money", no it makes perfect sense!
Having listened to 'good bad billionaire' for several episodes the formula is
Or
Or
Easy: He birthed himself into a rich family. Classical self made billionaire
His parents were not all that well off. They invested $300,000 in his new company. That's within the ability of many middle class workers
His parents were employees, not business owners.
But his parents weren't super rich billionaires, were they? No one had a hundred billion dollars before, he didnt get it all from his parents, where did he get it all?
The answer is hard work.
Not his own hard work, obviously, the the hard work of the workers he exploited
Totally agree. How does the hard work become his hundreds of billions?
amazon grows its revenue → amazon stock value increases → amazon share holder richer
Many companies also pay dividends directly to the share holder but iirc Amazon has preferred to reinvest in growth
The other user said it was exploited labor, what does that have to do with revenue and stock value?
Those are the vehicles that transfer the plunder.
How does that work?
Amazon has been really successful in several domains and he's owned a lot of it from the start
How does owning something turn into hundreds of billions of dollars? I own things too, they don't turn into hundreds of billions
You need to own stuff that others value
I'm sorry to ask such elementary questions, but why do others value it?
Amazon: people like books; people like next day delivery of stuff; people and companies like making stuff and running stuff in Amazon web services
Minecraft: Marcus Persson owned the game studio (and wrote quite a bit of the game) that made Minecraft, lots of people like it, Microsoft was willing to buy it for billions
Kiran Mazumdan-Shaw made beer, people like beer. They then used beer making processes to make biotech medicines - people like being alive and will pay a lot to stay alive, or even just a bit healthier
It's not an elementary question.
Best I can guess is: plenty of people, plenty of reasons. Which is a stupid answer.
This all seems very far removed from other people's concerns about worker exploitation
Is that a problem?
What about their concerns? Are their concerns not a problem?
?
Your things didn't increase in perceived value as much as Amazon then
Is that how value is determined? How others perceive value? Isn't that kind of subjective? Is there a possibility he isn't worth that much money? Could he be worth even more? Not like margin of error, but dramatically more or less like 20-30% off one way or the other?
The value is tecknically the effect of what is called a stock market, and it does vary quite a bit over time as perceptions and economic factors change
You lost me. Sounds like made up crap
No but if you start with millions and invest it or make interest on it you have a lot more options and opportunities to make more money.
If you start with nothing you are just blocked out of that all together. It's why I'm having such a hard time starting my own business. I have to pay all my bills so my time goes to that instead of what would actually make me successful.
What kind of business do you want to start?
I'm an artist of sorts. I make interactive art kind of like games so I want to open a gallery space with a bar where I can have people come and try my experiences.
They are similar to arcade games but they have physical dioramas with transparent screens inside as the game levels. You control your character or whatever the game calls for with your phone. My current iteration uses multiple screens and diorama as well as physical objects for a single experience. Kind of like a Metroidvania style game.
I have so many ideas for larger experiences I could build with all of the stuff I have learned making these crazy games. My goal would be to make an experience that takes about an hour to complete. Similar to an escape room except you're not locked in a room. Maybe more tiki bar vibes where the scenery of the bar is interactive too.
All of my free time when I'm not working or doing family stuff goes into making the art for these games and it's hard to then come up with the time and money to get a space and advertise. Plus I have a family to support. So I work full time as a software engineer making someone else's boring idea. While my fun innovative ideas get less of my attention lol.
I feel my only hope is to get an investor or something but then I have to deal with all that comes with that.
Wow do you have any of it already created? Can I see it?
Yeah I posted a video of one of the games I made already here https://peoplemaking.games/@Intelligentbean/110914972158457991
Plenty of people in that situation who aren't Bezos rich, no?
Makes me think that explanation isn't sufficient.
It's not sufficient, but it is necessary. They also have to invest (AKA owning the means of production, wonder why that's so profitable...)
It certainly helps a lot!
But again, there's something different about them. that made them different from many others from a similar start.
Wonder what it could be
Not having a conscience, probably
Recipe for a billionaire includes:
Billionaires like to think they worked hard but in reality they exploited others and were lucky in some form or another. Exploitation comes from paying workers as little as possible and/or having such terrible work conditions to maximize efficiency to the point that who cares if someone dies working. Fighting unions and keeping costs down (including pay) means more profit. It also means you can charge less to force other competitors out of business unless they can do the same amount of exploiting to keep costs down.
Beyond that, there's just general business and economic concepts like operating at scale which luck or generational wealth can help shortcut there.
Being born wealthy isn't really optional. It's actually necessary and a big reason why this system is so absolutely terrible, because the American dream is a capitalist myth to manipulate the masses.
The exceptions are not always exceptions, like the apartheid boy Elon and the 1 in a million that actually is an exception is drilled into our brains by the media like how gambling companies make ads about the people that win the lottery.
There have been a couple (or maybe one or a few) that started with very little. A lot more had a gift or loan from a parent for enough to buy land or start a business, often that was less than $100,000
As much as Musk's family had money before, his initial big money came from his share of his brother and his city guide software "zip2" which they sold to Compaq for a few hundred million. Lots of people have made more complex or bigger programs with no more wealth than an average middle class family.
Then x.com (the 1999 one, a bank) which became part of PayPal which sold to eBay for $1.5 billion which Musk got a share of
Then he made SpaceX then Tesla* and Tesla made him a billionaire through his ownership of a large part of it
*Tesla was made of Musk's money and A/C Propulsion electric vehicle conversion system. It was incorporated with SpaceX's incorporation papers with the company name changed. A/C propulsion's drivetrain was replaced by a new system after a year of production of the roadster
Being born wealthy can also just be wrapped into luck. But i separated it because it isn't strictly required, however unlikely, to become a billionaire. Exploitation and luck in some form is required every time.