Not talking about Eric Schmidt specifically, but this list seems to irrationally over allocate value creation to founders rather than the team that supports them?
The point is that it's a direct response to Forbes list of richest individuals. It's the same format, but arguing that measuring how much someone earned is a bad metric
Read the article. It calculates wealth creation in a very specific way, looking at public company value minus what the founder/largest shareholder holds. Obviously that doesn't apply to Linus Torvalds.
Obviously this is only a very small slice of what "wealth" means, but it's easy to calculate and objective.
Elon musk is among the top of the list. He is also the founder of companies that created and advanced a lot of technological wealth in the world. A huge contribution.
But it's far from certain that the recent SpaceX stock will create a lot of wealth for retail owners. Maybe even the opposite.
SpaceX is the only one I know that he founded and which, through their satellite network advanced "technological wealth".
Also this lists definition is:
> "Each figure is the shareholder wealth a founder’s company created, now held by index funds, pensions, employees and co-founders, minus what the founder kept."
I'm no economist but I'm having a hard time grokking any meaning out of this metric.
So if Elon decided to sell all his shares today (and likely destroy his companies in the process), he'd shoot to the top of the list? What's the point in that?
My 401k has benefitted from the growth of e.g. Amazon for sure, but the main 'wealth' I get from them is my ability to buy anything and get it delivered in a day. That is, I benefit from their infrastructure existing, regardless of who the shareholders are.
> So if Elon decided to sell all his shares today (and likely destroy his companies in the process), he'd shoot to the top of the list? What's the point in that
It looks like the methodology involves subtracting the founder's entire net worth, so selling the shares would leave him in the same place.
Hmm you are right. But looking closer at the methodology, I find myself even more confused.
It seems the metric is something like "most successful stewards of shareholders' investments" which I guess is interesting. But now I'm tripped up on why the metric would only consider founders rather than CEOs more generally. Imagine Gates didn't start Microsoft, but instead became its CEO a month after some other founder started it and that founder sat on the beach in Hawaii while Gates did well, what he did. The founder would appear on this list but not Gates.
Edit: basically, all my intuitive "this doesn't make any sense" alarm bells are going off, but I think I need someone who really knows what they're talking about to help me understand exactly why, or what would be a more sensical version of this
Personally, I thought the list was about the criteria for wealth creation—like a standard for discovering the most valuable knowledge, technologies, or research papers. But it turns out it's just a slightly different rich list. So what value did Buffett actually create?
I was expecting to see a list of technologies like Linus's Linux or the transistor, but it's just a list of rich people.
The strangeness of capitalism seems to be that it misjudges value that hasn't been financialized.
I think the title is misleading—I should probably correct it to something like:
'A list of donors who contributed a lot of dividends and capital gains to Wall Street pension funds and index funds.'
At a glance, this seems heavily recency-biased and not adjusted for inflation. I would expect a lot of other names that predate the 21st century to be on the list. The methodology page doesn't even contain the word 'inflation'.
Yeah, it only pays pensions, retirement accounts, provides liquidity for new industries, which then grow and provide jobs, and has been demonstrably one of the best inventions for pulling billions out of poverty and increasing standard of living generation after generation for hundreds of years over hundreds of countries on the planet.
> Yeah, it only pays pensions, retirement accounts, provides liquidity for new industries, which then grow and provide jobs, and has been demonstrably one of the best inventions for pulling billions out of poverty and increasing standard of living generation after generation for hundreds of years over hundreds of countries on the planet.
That it has not solved everyone's problems on the planet is no argument it against what it has provided more than any other system.
It's surprising how many of your comments place you in the US, and not one in Burundi. I'm guessing based on your past comments you're not too consistent on your claims.
> Nobody said this, asshole
You claimed they provide little value against obvious reality. We're done.
> It's surprising how many of your comments place you in the US, and not one in Burundi. I'm guessing based on your past comments you're not too consistent on your claims.
I am in the US. Umuryango wanjye uri mu Burundi. My loyalty lies with my family, asshole.
How is the "Multiple" column calculated? Is it wealth created "For Others" / "Self"? I can't get to that number for anyone if this is the formula. And Elon Musk's mutliple looks downright wrong if he created $357B for others and $917B for himself with a multiple of 1.4×
This is super wrong! Honestly they should probably take this down because of how wrong it is.
Where is Norman Borlaug?
Looking only at stocks is spitting in the face of every economist in the history of humanity. And they didn't even do that right. A company is not one person for starters! And what about if your company causes another company's stock to decrease in value, thereby destroying wealth? This is embarrassing.
I commented elsewhere that I think that arguing over the definition of "wealth creation" is pointless - obviously there are a million different subjective interpretations of that, and I at least give credit to the author to fully specifying his (admittedly very narrow) methodology.
That said, I think your point about "And what about if your company causes another company's stock to decrease in value" is an interesting and valid one even under the author's very narrow definition. Just take the current (at least very recent) phenomenon of where tons of SaaS companies completely tanked due to AI fears. How does Jensen Huang get allocated some of that "wealth destruction"?
It is indeed wrong if it were trying to show a list of people who have helped humanity, but that is clearly not what it was intended to show. The specifically define what they're showing as market value of company a founder created minus the amount that the founder took out of the company. In so doing, it downgrades Elon Musk considerably presumably because he's retained so much of the shares of his companies.
An economist would say that making another company less valuable is good in most cases because it usually means you are outcompeting them because y(u found another way to supply that need more efficiently.
the real reason this is not good is because it doesnt and cant easily capture what value flows to the customers and if the market is competitive all the value will eventually flow to the customer since pricing aboce marginal cost will get competed away and moat innovation is essentially making marginal cost lower
Comments here are all arguing over the list without reading or understanding the methodology.
My biggest issue with the methodology is that it really only counts stock returns of people not including founder in excess of the T-Bill rate since the IPO. So companies, like Dropbox, that are less than where they were on IPO date give their founders huge negative value created for others, despite the fact that lots of people besides Drew Houston got rich as pre-IPO investors.
I still think the methodology is useful - collectively, every investor since the IPO into Dropbox has done pretty horribly. But that's also pretty obvious just looking at the stock price.
Obviously there are a billion different possible interpretations of what "wealth" could mean, but even if you only take the very narrow definition of "outside investor returns", this is only looking at post-IPO returns.
Warren Buffet is number one. He has shown generations how to invest and think about investing (not only using Bershite Hathaway). He would have been a perfect president of the Unitef States!
This seems very lazily/sloppily put together. I think it would have been far more useful if a more involved and holistic approach to measure/estimate the proposed idea was taken.
What is concerning to me is how many people in this comment section have little to no reading comprehension if they even read the site at all. The site is clear of what exactly they are calculating and how (in a specific and narrow way - whether you agree with it or not).
There should be some kind filter/litmus test to prevent people commenting here if they didn't view/read the site first [1]. It will save the rest of us some time reading alot of these garbage comments[2].
[1]: yes I know this is hard problem to solve (if solvable at all), but my general point stands. HN comment quality is steadily degrading because people cant be bothered to RTFA
[2]: Probably should just stop coming here in the first place
What a bullshit list this is. It's high time we grew out of this myth that 'wealth creation' comes from capitalists. Any list like this first needs to make some effort to quantify how much of that 'wealth' is being created by employees, or scientists and engineers whose ideas made the venture responsible for that wealth possible. And as others point out in this thread, look at how much wealth these capitalists destroy, from crushing competition, monopolistic practices, legal intimidation, or most of all from imposing unfair burdens on other companies by lobbying for tax breaks or paying workers too little. All of which shift non-trivial costs onto the shoulders of others.
48 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 27.2 ms ] threadThat's news to me
I would expect him to be in one of the top spots.
Obviously this is only a very small slice of what "wealth" means, but it's easy to calculate and objective.
It needs some improvement.
Elon musk is among the top of the list. He is also the founder of companies that created and advanced a lot of technological wealth in the world. A huge contribution.
But it's far from certain that the recent SpaceX stock will create a lot of wealth for retail owners. Maybe even the opposite.
SpaceX is the only one I know that he founded and which, through their satellite network advanced "technological wealth".
Also this lists definition is:
> "Each figure is the shareholder wealth a founder’s company created, now held by index funds, pensions, employees and co-founders, minus what the founder kept."
How should this even remotely apply to Elmo?
So if Elon decided to sell all his shares today (and likely destroy his companies in the process), he'd shoot to the top of the list? What's the point in that?
My 401k has benefitted from the growth of e.g. Amazon for sure, but the main 'wealth' I get from them is my ability to buy anything and get it delivered in a day. That is, I benefit from their infrastructure existing, regardless of who the shareholders are.
It looks like the methodology involves subtracting the founder's entire net worth, so selling the shares would leave him in the same place.
It seems the metric is something like "most successful stewards of shareholders' investments" which I guess is interesting. But now I'm tripped up on why the metric would only consider founders rather than CEOs more generally. Imagine Gates didn't start Microsoft, but instead became its CEO a month after some other founder started it and that founder sat on the beach in Hawaii while Gates did well, what he did. The founder would appear on this list but not Gates.
Edit: basically, all my intuitive "this doesn't make any sense" alarm bells are going off, but I think I need someone who really knows what they're talking about to help me understand exactly why, or what would be a more sensical version of this
I was expecting to see a list of technologies like Linus's Linux or the transistor, but it's just a list of rich people.
The strangeness of capitalism seems to be that it misjudges value that hasn't been financialized.
I think the title is misleading—I should probably correct it to something like:
'A list of donors who contributed a lot of dividends and capital gains to Wall Street pension funds and index funds.'
We should outlaw all markets, right?
Compared to what? The rest of what you said is obvious bullshit
What is it doing to feed my family in burundi?
> We should outlaw all markets, right?
Nobody said this, asshole.
That it has not solved everyone's problems on the planet is no argument it against what it has provided more than any other system.
It's surprising how many of your comments place you in the US, and not one in Burundi. I'm guessing based on your past comments you're not too consistent on your claims.
> Nobody said this, asshole
You claimed they provide little value against obvious reality. We're done.
I am in the US. Umuryango wanjye uri mu Burundi. My loyalty lies with my family, asshole.
Where is Norman Borlaug?
Looking only at stocks is spitting in the face of every economist in the history of humanity. And they didn't even do that right. A company is not one person for starters! And what about if your company causes another company's stock to decrease in value, thereby destroying wealth? This is embarrassing.
You could even add politicians. How much wealth did FDR create?
That said, I think your point about "And what about if your company causes another company's stock to decrease in value" is an interesting and valid one even under the author's very narrow definition. Just take the current (at least very recent) phenomenon of where tons of SaaS companies completely tanked due to AI fears. How does Jensen Huang get allocated some of that "wealth destruction"?
Norman Borlaug was not wealthy.
the real reason this is not good is because it doesnt and cant easily capture what value flows to the customers and if the market is competitive all the value will eventually flow to the customer since pricing aboce marginal cost will get competed away and moat innovation is essentially making marginal cost lower
My biggest issue with the methodology is that it really only counts stock returns of people not including founder in excess of the T-Bill rate since the IPO. So companies, like Dropbox, that are less than where they were on IPO date give their founders huge negative value created for others, despite the fact that lots of people besides Drew Houston got rich as pre-IPO investors.
I still think the methodology is useful - collectively, every investor since the IPO into Dropbox has done pretty horribly. But that's also pretty obvious just looking at the stock price.
Obviously there are a billion different possible interpretations of what "wealth" could mean, but even if you only take the very narrow definition of "outside investor returns", this is only looking at post-IPO returns.
Other possible titles:
Logic fully breaks down when looking at ratios. If you have 1 cent, your ratio explodes.Reed Hastings may be the most regretful. He kept just 1.4% of the eventual value:
https://anti-forbes-list.vercel.app/founder/reed-hastings
There should be some kind filter/litmus test to prevent people commenting here if they didn't view/read the site first [1]. It will save the rest of us some time reading alot of these garbage comments[2].
[1]: yes I know this is hard problem to solve (if solvable at all), but my general point stands. HN comment quality is steadily degrading because people cant be bothered to RTFA
[2]: Probably should just stop coming here in the first place
Maybe Stallman deserves to be on that line as well.
I do wonder where on the list people like Fabrice Bellard and other folks of the FOSS community would sit.
[0] https://www.hbs.edu/ris/Publication%20Files/24-038_51f8444f-...