[adverbly]

This is super wrong! Honestly they should probably take this down because of how wrong it is.

Where is Norman Borlaug?

Looking only at stocks is spitting in the face of every economist in the history of humanity. And they didn't even do that right. A company is not one person for starters! And what about if your company causes another company's stock to decrease in value, thereby destroying wealth? This is embarrassing.

[hn_throwaway_99]

I commented elsewhere that I think that arguing over the definition of "wealth creation" is pointless - obviously there are a million different subjective interpretations of that, and I at least give credit to the author to fully specifying his (admittedly very narrow) methodology.

That said, I think your point about "And what about if your company causes another company's stock to decrease in value" is an interesting and valid one even under the author's very narrow definition. Just take the current (at least very recent) phenomenon where tons of SaaS companies completely tanked due to AI fears. How does Jensen Huang get allocated some of that "wealth destruction"?

[dumbfoundded]

It's absolutely wrong. We also have: Alexander Fleming, Howard Florey & Ernst Chain who contributed significantly to antibiotics.

You could even add politicians. How much wealth did FDR create?

[snapplebobapple]

An economist would say that making another company less valuable is good in most cases because it usually means you are outcompeting them because y(u found another way to supply that need more efficiently.

the real reason this is not good is because it doesnt and cant easily capture what value flows to the customers and if the market is competitive all the value will eventually flow to the customer since pricing aboce marginal cost will get competed away and moat innovation is essentially making marginal cost lower

[tzs]

It is a list of very wealthy people showing how much they created for others and how much they created for themselves.

Norman Borlaug was not wealthy.

[hn_throwaway_99]

> showing how much they created for others

Except it's not even that, even if you still only look at outside investor returns.

[tzs]

Sure, we can argue about whether it is measuring that correctly, but my point is trying to look at how well billionaires have done at creating wealth for others.

All these commenters listing people for inclusion who created a great deal of wealth but aren't/weren't billionaires (many of them not even wealthy) are missing the point of the list.

[hn_throwaway_99]

No, that's not my point, as a commented elsewhere. Even restricting it to "outside investor returns generated by billionaires", this list is only looking at outside investor returns since the IPO and in excess of T-bill returns.

Drew Houston generated tons of wealth for outside investors, but only for pre-IPO investors, hence he's on the list with a -3B number, because post-IPO investors have done so poorly.

[throway92]

unrealized gain it isn't wealth creation unless the gain is realized.

[bwanab]

It is indeed wrong if it were trying to show a list of people who have helped humanity, but that is clearly not what it was intended to show. The specifically define what they're showing as market value of company a founder created minus the amount that the founder took out of the company. In so doing, it downgrades Elon Musk considerably presumably because he's retained so much of the shares of his companies.