[amelius]

The sarcasm was not directed at him, but at us, and our lack of ability to come up with an economic system that can properly evaluate what somebody is worth.

E.g. We have a legal system that decides when somebody is right or wrong, and it mostly matches with what people feel is right or wrong. Why can't we have a similar system that decides what somebody is worth?

[WalterBright]

Isn't that what a free market system does? Bezos' net worth is decided by what people freely decide his stock is worth.

[amelius]

No, because it doesn't align with what people feel is right.

[edanm]

I'm not sure you're right. Clearly you don't feel it's right, but it doesn't seem like you're necessarily in the majority here, at least not in a way that is actionable. People may complain, but it doesn't seem most people are actually doing something about this. (Or at least, looking e.g. at the last elections in the US, there isn't necessarily a majority that agrees with you.)

BTW, as to the broader point, I mostly disagree - I think our current systems is pretty good at figuring out how much value each person has created, and letting them capture a portion of it. (That's what the system does, not "decide how much someone is worth")

[amelius]

> I think our current systems is pretty good at figuring out how much value each person has created, and letting them capture a portion of it.

You are basically saying that Jeff Bezos has created more than 100x the value of, say, Linus Torvalds, Richard Stallman, Guido van Rossum, and Donald Knuth combined?

I think you forget how achieving near monopoly status is like gambling, and how much it depends on being first to market, and about convincing investors (for years Amazon has run on a loss, not sure how they do now).

[edanm]

"You are basically saying that Jeff Bezos has created more than 100x the value of, say, Linus Torvalds, Richard Stallman, Guido van Rossum, and Donald Knuth combined?"

An interesting point. I think most of the above people have created a lot of value as well. It's hard to quantify, so I think it's possible that Amazon has created more value.

However, I think it's far more likely that, while they created lots of value, they haven't captured most of it back. Arguably, that's because they didn't try to, which is a totally reasonable decision for them to have made.

[amelius]

> However, I think it's far more likely that, while they created lots of value, they haven't captured most of it back. Arguably, that's because they didn't try to, which is a totally reasonable decision for them to have made.

Yes, because going for money takes effort. This means that people who have hoarded a lot of money and wealth have spent time on capturing money and less time on producing value. Now we can ask, do we want to reward that kind of behavior by giving these people money and thus power, and wouldn't we get (i.e., select) better leaders if we assigned rewards based on true value?

[majani]

The way I see it, all those people are probably making good money($100k+ annually) and there is research that shows that above that point it's all gravy. In that sense the free market capitalism system works.

[rukittenme]

> our lack of ability to come up with an economic system that can properly evaluate what somebody is worth.

Uhh, how so? Jeff Bezos's assets are worth what people are willing to pay for it. That's the definition of value.