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Comment by bpodgursky | Hacker News Reader

Set aside the details of the case — if money actually translated into power, the richest man in the world wouldn't be struggling to strong-arm an unelected bureaucrat in a country of middling importance.

Kind of obvious IMO that money translates into less real-world power than ever before in history. In 1800, this judge would be at the bottom of the Atlantic ocean. In 1950, he'd be deposed in a paid coup. In 2024... the richest man in the world complains about him on Twitter.

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Brazil is both richer and more powerful than Musk. It's one of the top-10 largest economies in the world. They have so much more money than Musk they can maintain exclusive control over land, raise a military, and enforce their own laws and regulations within their borders. Never seen Musk even attempt anything like that.

Brazil the country is, but Brazil the country is also made up of people, and none of them individually hold $250 billion of assets that they could use against someone - that's about 10% of Brazil's GDP (not that GDP/net worth is a particularly good comparison for a ton of reasons, but it gives a general indicator).

100 or 200 years ago someone with that kind of wealth could definitely have had a country strong-armed into doing what they want - someone like the owners of the United Fruit Company or the East India Company.

Setting aside if Brazil is richer than Musk, his wealth is his stock. He doesn’t have tens of billions in liquid assets and he most likely never will.

So let’s remember that when assuming that billionaires whose wealth is mostly tied up in their company are actually a lot less wealthy and are less able to extract their wealth then the news makes it out to be.

This is true, but neither can Brazil utilise their entire economy against him. Musk could definitely get a few billion out if he really tried (he got a $6b loan backed by Tesla stock and $20 billion in cash to buy Twitter), and the equivalent of that amount back in the day would have been enough to finance a military expedition - the Boer War was at the modern day cost of 25 billion pounds.

I mean if we want to use that yardstick than Brazil has assets worth trillions.

> none of them individually hold $250 billion of assets that they could use against someone

That's not what's happening here though. What's happening is the Brazilian state, through a Supreme Court justice, going against Musk. Not a single individual.

I'm curious why you'd call Brasil a country of middling importance. What countries in the Western Hemisphere other than US and Canada have larger economies, military and local impact? Having the Amazon rainforest within its borders alone probably makes it an extremely significant nation internationally.

The really important countries are known as superpowers for a reason, and "BRICS" pretentions aside, Brazil is not in that club, it can't project power outside its immediate neighborhood and doesn't really even try. Economically, it's in the same league as Mexico.

Mexico is the #1 trading partner with the US (even beating China) can Brazil really be compared?

No, it cannot. India and Mexico are where the factories will likely migrate to in the post-Chinese manufacturing world. Brazil probably wasn't even considered.

It's kind of funny how Brazil always ends up named as part of the "BRIC" group. India put a spacecraft on the moon. Russia is, well, Russia. China is unquestionably a world power. Brazil is... The world's soy and cattle farm.

Brazil is fairly large in nominal terms but projects essentially no presence internationally, either diplomatically, economically, culturally, or militarily. It barely can even project influence within South America, despite being half the continent.

I'm not trying to diss the country, not every country could or should aspire to hegemony... but Brazil could sink into the Atlantic and I'd read about it in the NYTimes two weeks later.

And this folks, is why us Brazilians look up to the US so much. The respect, understanding and affection we receive is unparalleled.

After the US and China every country is middling, economically speaking. There’s a huge gap between China and the next largest country (Germany).

Oh how fun life is going to be when LLMs take over 99% of jobs and literally everyone is a slave to the whims and fancies of powerdrunk idiots :)

I think you are just looking at one specific issue on the wrong timescale. Palms will be greased and he will get what he wants.

Im not disagreeing, but how do you figure that it’s obvious and in 1950 or 1800 it would have been different?

That's an interesting thought. Although that might say more about geopolitical dynamics (US/Brazil, and in general) than the power of the billionaire class.

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