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Comment by arcanus | Hacker News Reader

> People that have money spread across borders.. trillionaires

The only person I could even speculate with that sort of wealth could be Vladimir Putin, if you argued he is a dictator and so controls the entire Russian economy / wealth base.

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By that argument, there’s another person that’s basically president for life that controls a country with about 10x of Russia’s.

While it's true that Xi Jinping (to whom you are presumably referring) is probably dictator of China for life now, he can't quite use the country as his personal piggy bank in the way Putin can.

Yep. That’s who I’m referring to. I don’t know each persons’ level of control and utilization of their country’s wealth. But Xi only needs a fraction of his country to match Putin’s.

The consolidation of power is what we have to look out for. So the qualifier to your statement is “yet”. Would you have said the same thing of Putin after he returned to being president? How long did it take him to control as much as he has?

Ya, no argument from me. I think Xi is a bad actor on the world stage. A realistic assessment of his 'true wealth' is probably extremely high, comparable to Putin's, you're right.

Except that the wealth of a country is not typically heritable, so I would say in the best case scenario (for him) he simply has temporary access to the resources of the country, which he seems to be using for the betterment of that country. After he's out of office or dies, his children will get some preferential treatment and their connections and influence may be worth millions, but not billions or trillions. His children will not inherit all the oil fields in Russia. And it's not like children of Western leaders don't gain similar influence and connections.

The monarchy of saudi arabia may be trillionaires.

Putin is controlled by oligarchs that are much more wealthy than he is. So not only does he not control the Russian economy (the oligarchs he reports to do), but he himself does not have the wealth you're assuming.

Would you mind to share some sources backing this theory?

It's the other way around. Oligarchs are oligarchs until Putin says otherwise: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3011021/Exiled-oliga...

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