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Comment by wayoutthere | Hacker News Reader

It's no different than a peasant (or even a lesser lord) challenging a king in the feudal era. You spoke out against the king, you lost your head.

Billionaires are our kings. Jeff Bezos' wealth is 3 times the GDP of North Kora, which has a standing army of over a million people. They are more wealthy than a number of independent states. Do you think he couldn't fund and equip 100,000 mercenaries if his monopoly were threatened? When a peasant threatens his power, he doesn't even need to do that: a single assassin is enough. Replace Bezos (who I doubt would order a hit but you never know) with a Russian oligarch (who absolutely would order a hit) and you have your explanation.

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No Jeff Bezos doesn't have the liquid assets to recruit and equip 100,000 mercenaries. Not even close. We've seen billionaires go to jail before btw (without raising a private army to protect them).

The comparison of his total net worth to the North Korea's yearly GDP and army size is irrelevant.

If he even tried to raise an army to resist the will of the US government, they would seize his assets so fast his head would spin.

That's not to say money doesn't buy political influence, but it's a much subtler kind of influence.

This is a good point. "Net worth" frequently isn't even liquid, but moreover, it's also completely subject to the whims of the government that controls that currency. That government is able to enforce its whims using sheer force, through its military.

NK may not have that much worth in USD, but it occupies territory and has military force to back its claim, and that military is motivated by things other than USD numbers on computers somewhere.

If Jeff Bezos was to commit murder tomorrow and be caught I suspect the police would chase him, catch him, throw him in jail, he'd make bail and it would turn into a scene like OJ. I don't expect he'd be able to raise an army to break him out or defend is home. He might be able to flee the country but even that might be hard even with all his money.

If he had covertly planned ahead and already had his mercenary army in place maybe. (though maybe he'll have the secret code for all the drones....)

Recently a Mexican cartel outgunned the Mexican police and forced the release of El Chapo's son. It's hard to imagine something like that happening in a wealthy country, but it's not unheard of in the real world.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/31/americas/el-chapo-son-operati...

Mexican cartels are much closer to terrorists, rebel groups, or rival states than they are to businesses operating in a functioning country.

The difference in what's basically a warlord who already has loyal troops to command, controls territory, and assets that can't be easily seized and Jeff Bezos is too much to make a comparison remotely useful.

Sure, it seems out of character for someone like Bezos to raise an army of armed thugs like you might expect from the Sinaloa cartel. But history is full of wealthy people getting away with obvious crimes. A more likely response from someone with Bezos' personality to some situation like this is taking a private plane to a no extradition country, bankrupt a state with lawsuits from an army of lawyers, or bribing/blackmailing low level officials. Bezos isn't an Epstein, and we did eventually put Epstein in prison, but we knew that guy was raping kids ages ago and the state of FL let him go free under very sketchy circumstances.

It has happened (and still happens) in the US when white nationalist militias have a lot of guns. The cops don't want another Ruby Ridge or Waco; see also Cliven Bundy.

When Kim Chen Ir's wife gets half of the NK army via divorce, I'll believe that JB is comparable to NK.

Watching Putin force oligarchs to hand over billions in 2015-2016 and the rush to get money out of Russia makes me think you are over stating this more than a little.

> [...] Do you think he couldn't fund and equip 100,000 mercenaries if his monopoly were threatened? [...]

In abstract, from the numbers sense (dollars), sure, your argument stands that test.

However, it does not stand the common sense test: what are said contractors going to do once the gig is over? Part of mil contracting is keeping yourself in the good graces of the sugar-daddy government to keep the funds rolling into the future when needs arise. Oh yeah, and also avoid going to prison (for reference, see Blackwater / US Contractor indemnification in Iraq).

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