this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2023
1530 points (98.5% liked)
Memes
45644 readers
1506 users here now
Rules:
- Be civil and nice.
- Try not to excessively repost, as a rule of thumb, wait at least 2 months to do it if you have to.
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
It's not though, right? Capital is stuff. Means of production. Land. Jet planes. Bridges. Sewing machines.
Money is just tokens that certain people are using to allocate actual capital amongst themselves.
Eh. Capital is basically anything of value that is consumed to generate flow in return. It can be money, land, resources, etc.
Also, the US is one of the premier offshore place to hide money from my understanding. So even if it was money, a lot of the US tokens would be hidden locally.
Exactly. The three richest people in the world:
Elon Musk. Net worth ~$248 billion.
Owns ~13% of Tesla, which is worth ~$768 billion. That's ~$99 billion in his net worth.
Owns ~48% of SpaceX, which is worth ~$150 billion. That's ~$72 billion in his net worth.
That means at least ~$171 billion of his net worth is in companies, which is ~69% of his wealth.
Bernard Arnault. Net worth ~$207 billion.
Owns ~41% of LVMH, which is worth ~$422 billion. That's ~$175 billion in his net worth.
That means at least ~85% of his wealth is in companies.
Jeff Bezos. Net worth ~$161 billion.
Owns ~10% of Amazon, which is worth ~$1430 billion. That's ~$143 billion in his net worth.
That means at least ~89% of his wealth is in companies.
How is Tesla worth 5x SpaceX. That's just insane to me.
Tesla probably has a lot more customers, and if memory serves, they also make money by deals with other car companies, where Tesla's lack of emissions offsets their excess of emissions for government regulations.
I prefer the definition of capital as the political stake to wealth. It makes more sense and explains things like how the police will defend landlords over tenants who would literally freeze or die of exposure if denied housing.