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Comment by seventhtiger | Hacker News Reader

It's a realistic scenario for illiquid assets like art and land. Antique roadshow has real examples filmed on camera.

Right, and there would be exceptions made for edge cases like "someone uncovers a hidden treasure trove" or "oil is discovered"

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31745780

So it is no longer "Billionaires shouldn't exist", but "Billionaires who build a successful business shouldn't exist, but if you uncover a hidden treasure trove you can be a billionaire"

If you find a treasure trove worth billions of dollars, it is probably also of such archeological, historical, and cultural significance you are doing an immense service to humanity that you deserve it

Maybe it is just someone's old pile of gold. Like the San José galleon. Sure, it will be cool when it is raised, but I'm not exactly sure that it is going to change the world by bringing it up rather than just leaving it there.

By this same standard, maybe Amazon is doing an immense service to humanity, and that is why so many people use the site daily, and actually enjoy doing so. So maybe Bezos should get to keep his billions as well.

Maybe I never weighed in on the question of whether there should be billionaires or not, but you have simply projected a strawman upon me, which is fitting because this whole thread was started because I said the aforementioned parable was a strawman.

Currently, gold retails at $1808 an ounce. So it would take over 15.6 metric tons of gold to be even worth a billion dollars. That is substantially more than an "old pile", and probably of historical worth, like contained in a ruined temple or wartime vault or something

Sorry, it's hard to keep track of who believes what when I get multiple replies to my response to a single person, where there is no continuity of viewpoint between the responders. I don't think one can really have any kind of cohesive conversation that way because literally everyone is arguing something completely different. I just assumed you agreed with OP.

The San Jose galleon as I mentioned is estimated to have about $17B of gold on it. I don't think very much is going to change about the world when it is raised.

Niels Bohr said, “There are trivial truths and there are great truths. The opposite of a trivial truth is plainly false. The opposite of a great truth is also true.” And indeed, every conversation is a web of many truths, all worth examining. Ponder upon it, and one day it shall set you free.

Sure, but for now, the San Jose pretty fairly counts as an old pile

And who knows what ancient secrets lurks within its hull

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