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Comment by GFischer | Hacker News Reader

There's a LOT of people that are richer than Gates or Bezos, but many don't have their fortunes personally tied or traceable to them.

I've been told that Arab sheiks in Saudi Arabia and the UAE laugh at the claims of Gates or Bezos or Slim being the richest person in the world. Same would happen with the Russian plutocrats, and whomever controls Chinese companies at the moment. There are other strange arrangements like Ingvar Kamprad and IKEA (which is supposedly a nonprofit but Kamprad is effectively a dictator and uses company funds for whatever he wants).

https://www.fastcodesign.com/3035734/ikea-is-a-nonprofit-and...

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I mean that Ikea thing is brilliant. May not be the most honest but damn impressive circumvention of the system.

This is very true. For example I have some family friends that would easily crack into the low end of the Forbes billionaires list but they operate their business legally in the islands south of America (sorry for vagueness, it is intended). No one has ever come knocking from Forbes and they like it that way.

A family I grew up with has a net worth of ~$20B but it's layered through hundreds of LLC's. Easy to understand the truest wealth figures avoid publicity the most.

Two other families nearby hit the ~$2B range but you'll never hear about it unless you're floating on a boat when their name comes up.

Bulk of the worlds wealth is held by unknown(or at least non-famous) people. Anonymity and low key profile helps them escape being in spotlight. Being invisible to tax agencies, crime rings and mobs among masses is far more preferable than having a celebrity profile and a photo on forbes.

Also its easy to bequeath your descendants wealth easily that way.

> I've been told that Arab sheiks in Saudi Arabia and the UAE laugh at the claims of Gates or Bezos or Slim being the richest person in the world.

Can you post a source? The link you posted only talks about IKEA.

I was told that verbally by someone that lives in Dubai and sells to ultra high net worth individuals.

Here are some attempt at explanations:

https://www.quora.com/Why-arent-the-Arab-sheikhs-among-the-m...

The Forbes methodology rules ranks individuals rather than large, multi generational families who share fortunes.

A WikiLeaks document mentions lots of behind-the-scenes ways that the arab royals siphon money. So I guess it's impossible for Forbes or anyone to know their true net worth:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/28/wikileaks-saudi-roy...

asset liquidity matters though, right? amazon or msft stock are highly liquid. stolen renaissance paintings, giant palaces in the middle of a desert wasteland, and hereditary claims to mineral rights are not very liquid assets.

oil is an extremely liquid asset. and not just literally

when pumped out of the ground and put into the holding tank of a giant ocean-going ship it sure is.

but I was referring to hereditary mineral rights, which is really more about political power and the (very expensive) maintenance of an oppressive regime. those mineral rights eventually convert into oil on tanker ships but it's really incredibly precarious and a single political shift (internal revolution, invading army, etc.) makes it all vanish in a heartbeat.

the amount of oil-on-ships wealth that an Arab tyrant has on hand at any given time is relatively modest. most of the wealth is future claims to continue selling that oil, and that's not a very liquid form of wealth at all.

No good is a liquid asset. You realize it takes weeks to get from crude oil to something you can pump into your car (including shipping time), right?

Not really -- if you are in control of Oil wealth you are most likely part of a family that runs a country. Your fortune is dependent on staying in power and in favor of the patriarch. If there were to be a cultural revolution, uprising or falling out, you can't jump on your g6 and fly to whatever western country you pick and bring your oil with you like you can with stocks, bonds and other globally traded holdings.

If you are in control of Oil wealth because you are part of a family that runs a country, you most likely already own stocks, bonds and importantly real estate in a number of safe countries, so you can flee there when your dynasty is toppled.

Yes, but you'll "only" control those assets, not the oil that supposedly made you the richest man on Earth.

Only literally. It is buried in miles of rock and the transaction cost to turn it into cash is very large.

Not for Saudi Arabia it isn't.

Though that's much of Venezuela's present problem.

Also the U.S. and Canada. Fracking, deep water, tar sands.

"I've been told that Arab sheiks in Saudi Arabia and the UAE laugh at the claims of Gates or Bezos or Slim being the richest person in the world."

Some have laughed right back:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtcaIA9SU7o

Considering Western world and its media's solipsism, this might be true.

If it is, it has much more to do with the determined efforts of the world's oligarchs to hide their fortunes from public scrutiny than it does with Western "solipsism". An excellent example of this is the New York Times's investigation into the phenomenal wealth of the family of Chinese PM Wen Jiabao, which led the CCP to order the paper blocked in China.

New York Times is a western media. I would take its content with a grain of salt in our part of the world.

You actually cannot take that content at all, since the leaders in "that part of the world" are so fearful of such coverage that they censor it entirely.

Didn't you know about the new warfare that western governments employ ? Create unrest in a country by printing fake news, thereby topple the government. Much cost effective than weapons with less world attention.

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