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Re:Mansa Musa: The richest man who ever lived by goto11 on Monday March 11, 2019 @03:45AM (#19357322)
Fun list, but it is pretty impossible to compare riches across history. Augustus personally owned Egypt, the breadbasket of the Mediterranean at that time. How to you even assign a dollar amount on that? How do you compare the purchasing power over time, when some valuables like gold or salt have become much more abundant, and other things like slaves cannot legally be traded anymore?
Re:Mansa Musa: The richest man who ever lived by tzfld on Monday March 11, 2019 @06:45AM (#19357947)
Even the ownership is a very relative term. Once I meet a homeless man who owned the whole universe, but the liquidity if this asset was nearly 0 as his ownership wasn't recognized by anyone.
Re:Mansa Musa: The richest man who ever lived by mrec on Monday March 11, 2019 @08:10AM (#19358302)
Then you've got people like Joshua Norton who fall somewhere in between:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emperor_Norton

Re:Mansa Musa: The richest man who ever lived by rebuilder on Monday March 11, 2019 @05:36AM (#19357704)
And, of course, when some things we now take for granted wouldn't simply not have been available to even the richest of people. Say, air travel.
Re:Mansa Musa: The richest man who ever lived by peteretep on Monday March 11, 2019 @06:29AM (#19357890)
Air travel is a luxury compared to the availability of antibiotics, and not getting plague.
Re:Mansa Musa: The richest man who ever lived by Nasrudith on Monday March 11, 2019 @08:42AM (#19358486)
Antibiotics I believe would best be valued as "magic/miracle" in the distant past.
Re:Mansa Musa: The richest man who ever lived by 4thaccount on Monday March 11, 2019 @07:28AM (#19358121)
Plague like epidemics are coming back due to the anti-vax movement. Fully preventable too.
Re:Mansa Musa: The richest man who ever lived by idointernet on Monday March 11, 2019 @07:33AM (#19358144)
Off topic much?
Re:Mansa Musa: The richest man who ever lived by 4thaccount on Monday March 11, 2019 @08:47AM (#19358529)
No. Parent talking about how they didn't have plagues. Just a note that we're moving back in that direction.
Re:Mansa Musa: The richest man who ever lived by littlestymaar on Monday March 11, 2019 @11:51AM (#19359866)
Nobody has ever been vaccinated against plague in developed countries (where the antivax are an issue) and plague hasn't been eradicated through vaccination but prophylaxis. So the gp is both off topic and factually wrong.
Re:Mansa Musa: The richest man who ever lived by 4thaccount on Monday March 11, 2019 @03:32PM (#19362028)
Plague-like epidemics.
Re:Mansa Musa: The richest man who ever lived by littlestymaar on Tuesday March 12, 2019 @04:07AM (#19366210)
Please: plague epidemics were massive outbreaks that lasted a somewhat short amount of time. No diseases of this kind had ever been prevented by vaccination (you just don't have time to develop/distribute a vaccine, think Ebola last time).

Vaccines aren't made for epidemics: they are for _endemic_ diseases, and especially the ones which target children. Vaccines are good for things like polio, smallpox and Measles. But plague, Cholera, SARS, etc. are delt with emergency measures: quarantine, not vaccines.

The problem (and there is indeed a problem) with antivaxs, is child mortality, not «plague-like epidemics».

Re:Mansa Musa: The richest man who ever lived by yboris on Monday March 11, 2019 @11:17AM (#19359573)
Comparing riches across history is precisely what Branko Mlianovic did: The Haves and the Have-Nots: A Brief and Idiosyncratic History of Global Inequality

Really clever stuff: looking at the amount of labor one could buy, etc.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0047T869M/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?...

Re:Mansa Musa: The richest man who ever lived by baxtr on Monday March 11, 2019 @08:11AM (#19358310)
Maybe a good KPI is:

What’s the share of people living that work for you?

Re:Mansa Musa: The richest man who ever lived by D_Alex on Monday March 11, 2019 @08:59AM (#19358597)
That ignores the productivity of these people. Generally speaking the BBC list seems to be quite silly because of this fact.
Re:Mansa Musa: The richest man who ever lived by baxtr on Monday March 11, 2019 @10:26AM (#19359191)
Productivity could be treated as constant, every 10 yrs or so? Maybe even 100 yrs in earlier times
Re:Mansa Musa: The richest man who ever lived by s_dev on Monday March 11, 2019 @07:39AM (#19358165)
Was Crassus not the wealthiest Roman ever?
Re:Mansa Musa: The richest man who ever lived by LoSboccacc on Monday March 11, 2019 @08:05AM (#19358281)
depending on how you count, likely yes: as far as private property accrued trough commerce he would.

the issue is figure of power in history accumulated wealth based on their domains, so while their treasure was a separate entity from their national treasure, the lines get progressively blurred as the political structure gets more totalitarian and the difference between state and dominion vanishes.

Re:Mansa Musa: The richest man who ever lived by cm2187 on Monday March 11, 2019 @11:06AM (#19359481)
And Truman didn't have a penny to his name though headed the US at the top of its might and unleashed more firepower on its ennemies than any army in history. It doesn't mean much.
Re:Mansa Musa: The richest man who ever lived by maxxxxx on Monday March 11, 2019 @11:11AM (#19359511)
Wasn’t Truman the reason that US presidents received a pension after leaving office?
Re:Mansa Musa: The richest man who ever lived by dsfyu404ed on Monday March 11, 2019 @11:41AM (#19359764)
That was Grant. Grant finished his memoirs on his deathbed so that his widow would be provided for by money from their sale. He was also a damn good writer and Mark Twain published it which didn't hurt.
Re:Mansa Musa: The richest man who ever lived by amdavidson on Monday March 11, 2019 @01:48PM (#19361047)
While Grant was financially troubled, the pension wasn't passed until Truman was destitute in 1958.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Former_Presidents_Act

Re:Mansa Musa: The richest man who ever lived by Tsubasachan on Monday March 11, 2019 @06:03AM (#19357789)
This brings up a question: does Trump own the American Treasury? I see the PM of my country at Starbucks sometimes and he looks like any other office drone but he makes billion euro decisions every day.
Re:Mansa Musa: The richest man who ever lived by pjc50 on Monday March 11, 2019 @06:50AM (#19357959)
No?

I mean, there are countries where the President personally controls the Treasury, and you can usually spot them by the enourmous statutes and portraits of the Leader.

Re:Mansa Musa: The richest man who ever lived by peteretep on Monday March 11, 2019 @06:32AM (#19357901)
> does Trump own the American Treasury

No, Congress controls that, and they're elected by the American people, who ultimately own it.

Here's a more interesting example: https://www.thecrownestate.co.uk/en-gb/resources/faqs/

> The Crown Estate belongs to the reigning monarch 'in right of The Crown', that is, it is owned by the monarch for the duration of their reign, by virtue of their accession to the throne. But it is not the private property of the monarch - it cannot be sold by the monarch, nor do revenues from it belong to the monarch.

Re:Mansa Musa: The richest man who ever lived by vntok on Monday March 11, 2019 @06:43AM (#19357940)
> No, Congress controls that, and they're elected by the American people, who ultimately own it.

Trump is also elected by the American people, though, right?

Re:Mansa Musa: The richest man who ever lived by tirpen on Monday March 11, 2019 @07:55AM (#19358231)
So is the winner of American Idol, that doesn't mean he/she own the treasure either.
Re:Mansa Musa: The richest man who ever lived by pjc50 on Monday March 11, 2019 @06:51AM (#19357967)
Trick question: he's elected by the Electoral College. Which is why he's president despite recieving fewer votes than the other candidate, because it's not a direct election but a delegate system.
Re:Mansa Musa: The richest man who ever lived by Frondo on Monday March 11, 2019 @09:50AM (#19358926)
For those haven't heard, there are plans underway to change that, too. Check out the National Popular Vote movement:

https://www.nationalpopularvote.com/

They're more than halfway there. I'm all in favor of the movement, and am holding out hope we'll see it click into place in the next decade or so.

Re:Mansa Musa: The richest man who ever lived by Frondo on Monday March 11, 2019 @12:16PM (#19360094)
FWIW, I am happily planning to expend my 3500 magic internet points promoting unions, worker's rights, and democracy in the strongly antidemocratic USA. In fact, I am looking forward to it.
Re:Mansa Musa: The richest man who ever lived by dang on Monday March 11, 2019 @04:52PM (#19362693)
You can't use HN primarily for political and ideological battle. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. The reason is that it destroys intellectual curiosity, which is what this site exists for.

We've warned you about this numerous times already. I don't want to ban you, but if you keep doing this we're going to have to.

Re:Mansa Musa: The richest man who ever lived by Frondo on Monday March 11, 2019 @04:59PM (#19362770)
I sincerely wish the site admins were as fastidious at minimizing ideology when it's pro-capitalist, but I also understand that this site functions largely as a promotional vehicle for a venture capital fund; it's never wise to bite the hand that feeds one.
Re:Mansa Musa: The richest man who ever lived by dang on Monday March 11, 2019 @05:41PM (#19363121)
Those are cheap and easy shots to take, with no burden of proof. But you actually don't know how hard we work for those things not to be true. Nor does it change the rules or the request that you abide by them.
Re:Mansa Musa: The richest man who ever lived by Kye on Monday March 11, 2019 @10:00AM (#19359001)
States elect the president. The people vote on the electors who represent their state in the electoral college.
Re:Mansa Musa: The richest man who ever lived by mcherm on Monday March 11, 2019 @06:14AM (#19357832)
> does Trump own the American Treasury?

Depends on what you mean by "own". I would use "able to decide how it is used". So I would say that Mark Zuckerberg "owns" Facebook because he has a controlling interest (although he does not own 100% of the stock). I would say that Donald Trump does not "own" the US Treasury because our form of government contains checks and balances.

Re:Mansa Musa: The richest man who ever lived by dcdanko on Monday March 11, 2019 @08:42AM (#19358487)
Still not applicable to Trump because the U.S. Congress has power of the purse, not the President.
Re:Mansa Musa: The richest man who ever lived by craftyguy on Monday March 11, 2019 @12:21PM (#19360155)
Not true, the president can declare an 'emergency' and circumvent Congress.
Re:Mansa Musa: The richest man who ever lived by amdavidson on Monday March 11, 2019 @01:51PM (#19361067)
Referring to no specific case in particular: that is not a circumvention but an application of the authority that Congress delegated to the President in the National Emergencies Act.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Emergencies_Act

Re:Mansa Musa: The richest man who ever lived by craftyguy on Tuesday March 12, 2019 @12:44PM (#19370129)