Bill and Melinda Gates: America’s Top Farmland Owner

Re:Bill and Melinda Gates: America’s Top Farmland Owner by dheera on Thursday January 14, 2021 @02:46PM (#25781403)

> You might say, no, Musk and Bezos are worth 50% (or ~60 billion) more. On paper yes, but that's not a great metric. When I think of wealth, I think of what you can reasonably acquire.

Exactly. Stock wealth isn't real money because it isn't actionable. You can't sell all of it without crashing. All personal wealth should be measured by how much liquid cash you could get for it in a short term sale.

That's also the amount you could theoretically donate towards, for example, averting a short-term humanity disaster. If you needed $100 billion in hard cash to pay for a bunch of things to avert an asteroid or nasty virus, Elon Musk wouldn't be able to provide that sum even if he wanted to.

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Re:Bill and Melinda Gates: America’s Top Farmland Owner by mrguyorama on Thursday January 14, 2021 @02:52PM (#25781524)

I'd argue if you own a significant fraction of a large company, you have a significant effect on it's decisions. Controlling a giant company and all it's connections, levers, abilities, etc is way more valuable than just a hundred billion in hard cash

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