[Folcon]

I mean that is broadly how we come to compare wealth, we don't spend much time going into the weeds of how that number came into being and what assumptions were made there. So I'm not surprised that some people think that of money.

That being said he has gone through a divorce, he did lose a good chunk of his assets pretty quickly. Sure it was just a reallocation of assets, but unless you specifically want all of that money in cash you don't need do actually sell it. Banks for example will give you cash against the value of shares, allowing you access to liquid funds while you're slowly selling the equity.

Anything specific cause you want to spend all of that money on will probably have a limit at which you can spend at, there just isn't enough stuff in the world or people offering services to absorb all that wealth instantly. Trying to cure all the world's diseases will very quickly consume all lab and relevant researcher capacity, which will only grow at the rate people start skill retraining to this new lucrative career.

So I'm not sure it matters? I mean assuming the underlying share value doesn't freefall for some reason.

[pydry]

>we don't spend much time going into the weeds of how that number came into being

Because number of shares owned x current market price on an actively traded public corporation just isn't all that complicated. Where are the weeds?

Using $ as a measure of wealth whether liquid or not is absolutely normal in all sorts of contexts. I struggle to see why anyone would object

>absorb all that wealth instantly.

I asked before why anybody would want to spend $180 billion in a single day. You seem to have tacitly assumed that he would but I'm uncertain why. Or, alternatively, why this unreal hypothetical matters in this context.

Bill Gates is in the slow process of liquidating his entire MSFT fortune and spending it/rebalancing it, proving that being rich on that level is no impediment to actually using your wealth. Bezos is doing the same with a billion sold here and there to build rockets too. Where are the weeds?

[Folcon]

> Where are the weeds?

I've been describing them? "number of shares owned x current market price on an actively traded public corporation" doesn't mean that you can execute it. So it's not perfectly valid, to the point where you need specialist knowledge to even know at what rate you can expect to get that turned into liquid cash, or convince the seller to accept shares at their market value, which not all sellers will be willing to do. I'm sort of confused why you don't see any issues with that definition of wealth, when the simple act of attempting to exercise that wealth suddenly means you have less of it? The same is not true of cash for example...

A more accurate measure might be, "number of shares owned x current market price on an actively traded public corporation with a rate of loss over a specified time period, where if you wish to access the money faster, the rate of loss will increase based on this model" or something to that effect. I'm sure someone who actually knows the intricacies of this will be able to chime in with the expected amount of money you will end up with given that size of equity stake to some specified error margin.

> I asked before why anybody would want to spend $180 billion in a single day.

Well if you take spend as a transfer of wealth, then I mentioned a divorce which would fit as a significant wealth transfer that happens the instant the document is signed, Inheritance would be another.

> Bill Gates is in the slow process

The fact that you are describing it as slow is an impediment it may not be much of one, but it is an impediment. These are those weeds.

[pydry]

>I've been describing them?

I really dont think you have. You've been describing a hypothetical weed that doesnt manifest IRL.

>doesn't mean that you can execute it.

Coz you defined "execute it" in such a wildly unrealistic way that in no way resembles how any person actually or would want to "execute" that level of wealth.

>I'm sort of confused why you don't see any issues with that definition of wealth

Coz I'd never want to spend $180 billion of wealth in a single day either. The more wealth I have the more I'd want to draw out spending it.

>the simple act of attempting to exercise that wealth suddenly means you have less of it?

That is the point of liquidating your wealth and spending is it not?

>Well if you take spend as a transfer of wealth

They aren't the same. "Spending" wealth typically requires liquidation.

>divorce which would fit as a significant wealth transfer that happens the instant the document is signed

You are confusing liquidity and wealth again, I think. Bezos's wife wasnt given ~40bn in cash. No monetary transaction took place.

>The fact that you are describing it as slow is an impediment

It's slow because Bill Gates wants to spend the rest of his life spending his fortune. Your presupposition is seemingly that although he is doing this the wealth he is and will spend "isnt quite real" or "should be discounted" because he can't squeeze all that spending into one day.

Is that correct? Please, indulge me by answering this question directly.

[Folcon]

You're making a lot of short points without actually describing any reasoning behind them.

If you just want to disagree that's fine, but I was actually looking for a discussion? For example:

>>I'm sort of confused why you don't see any issues with that definition of wealth

>>the simple act of attempting to exercise that wealth suddenly means you have less of it?

>Yes, that is kind of the point of spending.

I don't understand why you're trying to say here, I'm saying in a situation I want to give someone $100 cash, I would be upset if the process of handing them the money results in them getting $80 cash. When I say "suddenly means you have less of it?" I don't mean I have less money, that's obvious, I mean the recipient receives less money than I expected or they expected. I can absolutely hand over the equity, but as I said it may not be accepted.

>>Well if you take spend as a transfer of wealth

>They are actually not the same thing at all.

Ok, how would you describe spend? How is a wealth transfer specially distinct from spending.

You keep handwaving away the fact that there is a difference between an equity valued at X and cash of X value. There is a difference, such that you can't treat them as the same thing. We merely use the current market value as a way of computing it, but it is in no way pinned to that value.

-- EDIT as responding to parent edit --

> Your presupposition is seemingly that although he is doing this the wealth he is and will spend "isnt quite real" or "should be discounted" because he can't squeeze all that spending into one day.

> Is that correct? Please, indulge me by answering this question directly.

I'm merely pointing out that the numbers we bandy about aren't accurate.

Ultimately wealth is buying power.

If we're talking about someone who owns $100k in Amazon stock at the current market value, I think we'd be happy to say that the person in question has $100k in buying power, they could sell all of that stock and then buy $100k worth of goods with it.

Someone who has $100B in Amazon stock can't do that, they're buying power isn't $100B. Now what exactly it is, is a fascinating question. I'm saying that based on different specified timescales it's different, if that person wanted to get their hands on $10B in 1 month, 6 months and 1 year, they would have to sell a different quantity of their equity stake to achieve that. In fact if the underlying asset goes up in value over that time period then it may even be worth more. However I'm talking in terms of "discounting" because a lot of assets value goes down if you try and trade them, primarily because the seller wants to buy them at less than their "current value".

So to summarise, I'm not questioning the "realness" of his wealth, I'm simply stating that at those quantities of illiquid wealth, how to actually utilise the buying power of your wealth is not that straightforward. The fact that we use "number of shares owned x current market price on an actively traded public corporation" is just a way to get a nice easy number that hides a lot of interesting detail.

On this topic, there was a really interesting money stuff article that went into how private equity firms were selling small stakes of their company to "price" their equity suddenly allowing their owners to declare themselves billionaires. They sold some of their assets, but by allowing the market to "price" them we accept they now have more wealth.

[pydry]

>It's slow because Bill Gates wants to spend the rest of his life spending his fortune. Your presupposition is seemingly that although he is doing this the wealth he is and will spend "isnt quite real" or "should be discounted" because he can't squeeze all that spending into one day.

>Is that correct? Please, indulge me by answering this question directly.

You did not answer the question.

If you aren't at all concerned with the central point of this discussion and simply wish to abstractly discuss the nature of liquidity and wealth then I will leave the discussion here. There are economics textbooks that explain the topic to the layperson better than I would.

[Folcon]

Sorry, you added the question after I'd read and responded to a previous version of your question, I'm currently answering it.

[vishnugupta]

> there is a difference between an equity valued at X and cash of X value.

Indeed, based on my readings and thought exercises this is absolutely correct.

In case of equity it is the market i.e., the collective belief of participants in the market is what is backing the value. As we see once in a while market for specific stocks could vanish leaving nothing backing that value. Where as in case of cash it is backed by the US government. That is a big difference.

For a day-to-day retail equity trader you could assume there is close to 1-1 correspondence between equity and cash. But at scale that 1-1 mapping breaks down.