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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 24, 2022

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This is how wealth is always reported. And yes, it is misleading--Jeff Bezos is "worth" over $100 billion on paper, but if he were to try to cash that out all at once, there's no way he'd get $100 billion out of it.

Not the same thing. The Adidas's deal was effectively an IOU that could be cancelled at Adidas's discretion. Amazon stock is an asset that legally belongs to Bezos that can be sold on an exchange.

The price of his stock would plummet faster than he could sell it, never mind finding $100 billion in cash buyers.

Not quite so. He could sell it to a private investor, like a bank , without the shares having to hit the exchange. This is how Elon negotiated the Twitter buyout. Also, Amazon trades considerable volume daily , so selling even on the market would not be too hard. Third, Bezos could also hedge the position with options.

Not the same thing. The Adidas's deal was effectively an IOU that could be cancelled at Adidas's discretion.

Well, yes, shares of Amazon are not the same thing as a partnership contract. But shares of Amazon are also not the same thing as a house, or a piece of art, or a bitcoin. One thing they all have in common, though, is that they (can) get counted as assets when calculating wealth. Another thing they have in common is that their value can disappear suddenly and without much warning under the right circumstances. Those circumstances differ by the kind of wealth under consideration, but in general that's not the kind of thing people bother to factor in when calculating present wealth.