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Re:Jeff Bezos’s Wealth Soars to $171.6B to Top Pre-Divorce R... by 9nGQluzmnq3M on Thursday July 02, 2020 @11:04AM (#23713978)
Bezos seems pretty happy to be shaping the kind of society where he sits alone on top of the greatest pile of wealth ever amassed by man.
Re:Jeff Bezos’s Wealth Soars to $171.6B to Top Pre-Divorce R... by kakd on Thursday July 02, 2020 @11:08AM (#23714037)
Bezos is nowhere near the top if you consider "ever", Cesar Augustus personally owned Egypt.
Re:Jeff Bezos’s Wealth Soars to $171.6B to Top Pre-Divorce R... by learc83 on Thursday July 02, 2020 @11:17AM (#23714178)
That's true as a percentage of total world wealth, but if you're using money as a proxy for productivity, in absolute terms $200 billion probably outranks all of Egypt 2000 years ago.

And if you're talking about how much wealth he could realistically extract from Egypt, it's much much lower. Maybe even lower as a percent of global wealth.

Re:Jeff Bezos’s Wealth Soars to $171.6B to Top Pre-Divorce R... by skosch on Thursday July 02, 2020 @11:16AM (#23714168)
Bezos' dollars are a lot more fungible than that. What would "owning ancient Egypt" on paper do for you, really?
Re:Jeff Bezos’s Wealth Soars to $171.6B to Top Pre-Divorce R... by tosers4 on Thursday July 02, 2020 @11:38AM (#23714458)
Really? He was being literally treated as a god among man. And his word was rule there, and not just for the slaves.

Bezos is literally nothing. It's just that nowadays the average person has more power, and the average bourgeois has even much more power, but the old rulers could do anything.

Re:Jeff Bezos’s Wealth Soars to $171.6B to Top Pre-Divorce R... by me_me_me on Thursday July 02, 2020 @12:09PM (#23714791)
Lol,

Comparing the two is silly. But let's do it. Head to head.

Bezos could hire a small army of mercenaries and defeat any cesar/king/emperor of the past.

Also Rome didn't own any of the provinces, they occupied, governed and taxed them. Its not like they could do anything with Egypt.

Re:Jeff Bezos’s Wealth Soars to $171.6B to Top Pre-Divorce R... by learc83 on Thursday July 02, 2020 @07:14PM (#23719152)
>Bezos could hire a small army of mercenaries and defeat any cesar/king/emperor of the past.

The kind of army that governments would allow Bezos to own couldn't defeat the strongest rulers in the past unless he got very lucky and managed to pull a Cortes and ally with another much larger force.

Re:Jeff Bezos’s Wealth Soars to $171.6B to Top Pre-Divorce R... by me_me_me on Friday July 03, 2020 @04:48AM (#23722247)
And now we are in territory of bizarre wargame scenario.

If the army of the past came to present they are dead in the water. All you need is to know where their leader is and assassinate them, sniper rifle, explosives thrown from helicopter etc. You don't need military equipment, as the past people have no experience and knowledge of mode technology.

Other way around - modern army in the past - is a bit too complex (too many variables/scenarios) to write in a comment. That is territory of a podcast episode or two :)

Re:Jeff Bezos’s Wealth Soars to $171.6B to Top Pre-Divorce R... by kamaal on Thursday July 02, 2020 @10:55PM (#23720630)
Owning a database record some where on NASDAQ/NYSE saying you own 172b doesn't do anything either.

Money is useful only when spent on something productive.

Re:Jeff Bezos’s Wealth Soars to $171.6B to Top Pre-Divorce R... by malandrew on Thursday July 02, 2020 @11:48AM (#23714589)
You could borrow against it.
Re:Jeff Bezos’s Wealth Soars to $171.6B to Top Pre-Divorce R... by Happpy on Thursday July 02, 2020 @11:36AM (#23714437)
King Leopold II 'owned' Congo as his personal property, before it became a Belgian colony.
Re:Jeff Bezos’s Wealth Soars to $171.6B to Top Pre-Divorce R... by tosers4 on Thursday July 02, 2020 @11:39AM (#23714472)
Egypt at that was one of the most developed areas in the world, unlike Congo.
Re:Jeff Bezos’s Wealth Soars to $171.6B to Top Pre-Divorce R... by malandrew on Thursday July 02, 2020 @11:48AM (#23714574)
Pretty much every member of congress has the ability to impact the spending of Jeff Bezos level wealth every single year.