I think it's nice that he's laying low, trying to find something he's passionate about, is willing to work hard, isn't a playboy, etc. He has a humble attitude. But his wealth is real, not theoretical, and he's still too detached to realize that.

This may be true, but it may not; he may be very aware of that, but is projecting himself as less wealthy than he actually is. I could imagine myself doing something similar if I had that kind of wealth.

While I guess that's somewhat true, it's not a "theoretical number", and there is a very straightforward way to turn that into cash if I want (of course, I'd have to find somewhere else to live). The same is true of this billionaire's net worth.

No, because while you own your house, the billionaire owns every house on the block. What happens when all of those houses get liquidated at once? First, local market is flooded, they no longer hold their original value. More importantly, and the part of the quote you left out, is that in this analogy, the houses can no longer be rented and a revenue stream dries up.

So no, it’s nothing at all like your home equity.

What buyer? At the time of the article, he's #79 on Forbes, so there's only 78 potential individual buyers here and they're probably all in the same pickle so far as getting liquidity.

Maybe you're thinking of a merger with some other company. How many companies had 7 billion dollars in liquid assets in 2007 and also thought owning FEV would be the best use of that money? I'm thinking not many, but I really don't have any idea.

Right, my read is that this is what makes the number theoretical

As an example, IBM paid $34 billion in cash to buy Red Hat last October, which it paid to Red Hats shareholders. Red Hat was worth $21 billion at the time.

In practice many cash purchases of businesses are funded in part by debt. Companies or investors can borrow money from banks, issue bonds to receive cash, and contribute some of their own cash to out find a cash offer for a company.

(However houses, as assets, leak a lot of worth in the form of upkeep and property taxes. Most times it’s better than rent, but not in all scenarios. And getting a cheaper house and investing the rest often gets better returns, once all costs and inflation are accounted for.)

(Contemporary) American culture tends to lean towards the latter while the old world (and particularly Germany) seems to lean towards the former.

While it may be true that the assets could be liquidated via M&A, oftentimes those st the helm genuinely believe that it is their duty to serve the company and its stakeholders and employees rather than use it/them to the owner’s maximum benefit.

If your business is a well automated machine where technology acts as a force multiplier for some level of human input that is approaching 0 over time, then it becomes a possession. Most tech people aspire to have this kind of business. It is easier to do with it whatever you please, including taking it in a risky new direction or even shutting it down completely. The only person you hurt is yourself.

If however your business is driven mostly by raw human labor and more and more families are depending on the jobs you create as you grow, then you are mostly in the stewarding category. You will lie awake at night knowing that many people are counting on you to make the right decisions and to be merciful to them.

There are Billionaires like James Simons, Robert Mercer, Azim Premji etc. who steadfastly keep a low profile; whether it is humility or if it fits their agenda is a topic for another discussion.

If we count the number of Billionaire names we remember, I'm sure we wouldn't even cover the top 25; so I don't think the list matters for anything significant except for the Income Tax departments of their respective countries.

This becomes even more difficult for owner large amounts of shares in the same company since you selling could have a negative effect on the shares. The reason they have the value could be that the market thinks you are in it for a long time and will provide additional value, once you start selling it could trigger a larger sell-off.

Or there could be a financial crash and the value could be cut in half.

So cash and cash-equivalent assets are special and worth more if you need to eat right now.

Even ignoring legal issues, for practical purposes society has accepted cash as the way to do trade. Everybody has cash (credit cards and checks are a proxy for cash) Thus a supermarket that doesn't accept cash is going to have problems selling anything because most people won't really know.

In the USA, cash is "legal tender for all debts", but private businesses aren't required to accept it in exchange for goods and services.

I am not redefining net worth so much as I am pointing out its theoretical (read: unrealized) nature.

> It’s assets that are necessary so that people can do their jobs.

And the main point of capitalism is that these assets have a price and are transferable. It is necessary that they exist for people to do their job, it is not necessary though that you own them.