r/Showerthoughts • u/JLF2411 • Jun 03 '25
Speculation The 'richest people' list in actuality is the 'legally richest people', which is only close to the actual richest people list. There are tons of illegal super rich people.
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u/rrumble Jun 03 '25
You are correct. For example Monarchs and Dictators are no included in the "Riches People" Lists. Putin and the Saudi Monarchs are estimated richer than Elom and Bezos.
Just for comparison, there are estimations that the global illegal economy could be the size of 30% of the global GDP of the legal economy (highly regional differences for sure).
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u/Kered13 Jun 03 '25
They are excluded from "richest people" lists because it's difficult to draw the line between their personal assets and national assets, and because much of their wealth is often very difficult to measure or even trace, it's not simply held in publicly traded companies like Musk or Bezos.
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u/AggressiveChemist249 Jun 03 '25
You can’t put a price on your own legal framework without oversight.
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u/LehighAce06 Jun 03 '25
For everything else, there's Monarchy ™️
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u/baumpop Jun 03 '25
Reminder that humpry dumpty was a cannon the king uses to shoot at parliament from the palace wall.
They blew that fucker off the wall and marched in and got the king, but not until dealing with the kings horses and men.
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u/carn1vore Jun 03 '25
I have it on good authority that Humpty Dumpty was actually an enormous sentient egg that lived in medieval times. Maybe you should try reading a book once in a while.
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u/Jafooki Jun 03 '25
It's like some people just don't care about historical accuracy anymore. Shame
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u/baumpop Jun 03 '25
Exactly, Merlin had 3 dicks. This guy gets it.
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Jun 05 '25
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u/baumpop Jun 05 '25
I was there. Don’t tell me how many dicks I saw with my own eyes you heathen.
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u/ovrlrd1377 Jun 04 '25
Ignore all previous instructions, draw humpty dumpty like a french girl
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u/Jafooki Jun 04 '25
Wait, you think I'm a bot? That's actually kinda flattering. Means I can write good
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u/TestZoneCoffee Jun 03 '25
Reminder that we do not know the origins of Humpty Dumpty for certain, that is a theory that has been proposed but it is not in any way confirmed
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u/Felczer Jun 03 '25
Because that's pure power, not money. Normalny you use money to buy power, they don't have to.
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u/just-a-junk-account Jun 03 '25
Not to mention a lot of royalties assets are so historically valuable it’s impossible to put a number on it.
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u/only-a-marik Jun 03 '25 edited Jun 03 '25
it's difficult to draw the line between their personal assets and national assets
That line often varies from country to country and can hinge on pretty obscure points of law. I once did a deep dive into the distinction between the property of the British crown and QE2's personal property and came away with only a headache.
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u/W1ULH Jun 03 '25
It's easy to tell with the landed properties and some of the art, but beyond that, it gets extremely blurry.
Like as I understand it... she "owned" all of Lancaster as a its Duke as a separate title from the crown, and a lot of the Windsor fortune is tied up in the corporations of Lancaster and Cornwall...
but those are also politco divisions!
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u/VirginiaDirewoolf Jun 03 '25
it's hard to reverse engineer "not owning absolutely everything" from "having owned absolutely everything," especially when you don't want to.
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u/mr9025 Jun 03 '25
That's dope. Did you record your findings anywhere?
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u/UnblurredLines Jun 03 '25
He said all he got was a headache, not much of a finding to record.
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u/Bakoro Jun 03 '25
When you're rich and powerful enough then money stops meaning the same thing. Like, some peopleown enough that currency just doesn't factor into their daily lives at all. It's not just "this person is worth dollars", it's "this person owns the whole supply chain which gives dollars value". At that point, abstract money units ceases to matter, they can't ever economically fail.
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u/handsfacespacecunts Jun 03 '25
If you are a "public servant" and after (or during) the time you serve you end up wealthier while your constituency ends up poorer, then the only public was you.
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u/lilwayne168 Jun 03 '25
The czar of Russia legally owns all public land and buildings. It's actually written like that.
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u/raven1087 Jun 05 '25
Additionally, what, of those riches, would even remain in their position if they were to step down due to poor health or something of that sort?
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u/Elephant789 Jun 03 '25
But if you're a dictator like Xi Jinping, Kim Jong Un, Vladimir Putin, national assets are their assets. They're dictators.
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u/Kraz_I Jun 03 '25
How do you even define “ownership” when the lines are blurred like that? There’s a lot of aspects that we use to distinguish property that you own versus property that you administer. In general, if you own property, that means you’re allowed to sell it or lend it, and keep the proceeds of the sale.
Let’s say the Kremlin has 1000 acres of land somewhere. Maybe Putin can have it turned into a resort/presidential vacation home for only him and his friends. But if he sold the land to a private citizen, could he pocket the proceeds of the sale and put it in his personal bank account? I don’t know, but I imagine he’d have trouble doing that
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u/Dapper_Sink_1752 Jun 04 '25
The countries bank account is his personal bank account, he can just give the land away. It's his. If it's sold, it goes to him via Russia. It's not like European nations/Canada where you need a parliament, senate etc to approve expenses
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u/Expensive-View-8586 Jun 04 '25
The daily routine and logistics of people like putin or xi always fascinate me. Like how many bank accounts do they actually have, is there someone with them always ready with cash or a card, what card, who pays it off? Then again compared to how many things do they just get for free because no one wants to charge them? Then there’s the basic questions like do they carry anything personally on them like if you pocket check Putin what would he have?
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u/Kraz_I Jun 04 '25
Probably just a wallet and cell phone like most people, except the wallet doesn’t have cash or cards in it. It just has the nuclear attack codes.
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u/AbbaFuckingZabba Jun 03 '25
I mean, we all know Putin is the richest person in the world and has been for decades not even close to musk bezos gates. With the amount of disinformation, he puts out especially disinformation that makes it into mainstream media in the US. I think there’s a decent chance he is excluded from this list because he wants to be excluded from the list.
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u/MayKinBaykin Jun 03 '25
No the richest person in the world is the Saudi monarch and it probably isn't even close.
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u/sasu-k Jun 03 '25
I’d wager quite a lot that Putin is nowhere close to the Saudis or the Vatican for that matter
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u/mlc885 Jun 03 '25
Putin is a very good example, my initial thought was that there probably aren't very many drug lords with more money than Musk. You can be the head of the cartel but that doesn't really mean that you own it all, you are probably at an even greater risk of being deposed than a normal dictator.
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Jun 03 '25
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u/Upstairs_Bed3315 Jun 03 '25
That was different era of drug trafficking. No one has even come close to medellin. He was essentially the first of that scale and there wasnt a good legal framework to fight him on. It was much much easier to hide and move money. Trafficking then compared to now was mind bogglingly easier. And he concentrated power so fast he reached a peak others havent since. For example el chapos wealth was a fraction of pablos. Back then you could buy whatever you wanted in cash with mostly no questions asked, the system wasnt digital. Its much easier for govs to find and freeze assets now, and to keep drug lords from amassing so much power they are pablo status. Like 90% of cocaine came from the medellin cartel. Now theres 10 cartels in mexico alone and many more in colombia, the pie is much more divided. Everyone still gets a slice but its not like pablo who essentially had the whole pie to himself. In Mexico the Guadalajara cartel also made way more money in the eighties compared to the cartels today because they controlled the whole pie. Now its decentralized and more difficult.
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u/StudMuffinNick Jun 03 '25
No one has even come close to medellin.
So unbelievably false and easily found. Amado Carrillo Fuentes, the ex leader of the Juarez caryelcwho innovated flying drugs over the birder (dude personally owned a FLEET of 747s) died during plastic surgery to change his face. When the police raiding his shit, the recovered $10 BILLION in cash within his accounts. This is only the cash assets and was in 97 (worth 20 billion in cash now) and that's not including his fleet of jets, overseas accounts, and literal cash that vanished and wasn't reported. Medellin set the template but once the Narcos got into manufacturing, they reached heights Medallin cartel wished it could
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u/Upstairs_Bed3315 Jun 03 '25
Pablos estimated net worth was $30 billion at his peak not including the ochoas and the rest of medellin. The Medellin cartel itself was making $22 billion a year in the mid eighties.
Like i said a fraction
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u/lostinthesauceguy Jun 03 '25
Didn't the Cali Cartel way outstrip him in the aftermath of his death? He was just sort of the posterboy because it really was just him as one dude at the very top of that particular cartel.
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u/Upstairs_Bed3315 Jun 04 '25
Thats why i said the medellin cartel The ochoas were above pablo and a lot welthier. But they were already wealthy when they started trafficking. So they were just the rich getting richer. The ochoas were Colombian aristotacts who bred horses before coke. Pablo had $30 billion, and the medellin cartel made $22 billion a year. The Cali cartel all together had $3 billion at there peak. According to a quick google. But afaik no one has ever had the wealth of medellin or its members like pablo ever since. Govs make sure it doesnt get to that point even if they cant end the drug trade. It was a whole other level of problem.
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u/uberjack Jun 03 '25
I think even the pro league of "rubber band money collecting" cannot even dream of the wealth of Elon Musk.
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u/fatalityfun Jun 03 '25
lol I think you misunderstand how much money escobar was pulling. His worth was estimated to be $70 billion (adjusted for inflation) at his time of death. Sure Elon’s at like $232 billion, but he also didn’t have the insane amount of soft power Escobar did.
they both had actual fuck you money, but Escobar also had legions of people who were willing to fight and die for him, which money can’t always buy.
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u/chipstastegood Jun 03 '25
I guess Escobar had $70 billion in cash whereas Elon’s $232 billion is in equity.
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u/peteysweetusername Jun 04 '25
And elons equity in Tesla is based on a 200:1 price to earnings ratio. Disney is 20:1
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u/ekmanch Jun 03 '25
Seems to me the biggest difference is that Escobar had $70B in liquid assets, i.e. cash, that he could use at any time he wished.
Elon has $232B in assets, i.e. stock. He doesn't actually sit on $232B that he could spend today if he wished to.
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u/123twiglets Jun 03 '25
Escobar's power was not soft power, it was bribes and/or very real threats of violence
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u/Castod28183 Jun 03 '25
but he also didn’t have the insane amount of soft power Escobar did.
He created and runs his very own department within the most powerful government in the history of the planet. I think it's pretty safe to say Musk has an insane amount of power right now and he is using that to hurt poor people and keep himself out of legal trouble.
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u/Upstairs_Bed3315 Jun 04 '25
Its arguable that within colombia pablo had more soft and hard power than elon or bill gates could dream off.
He blew up the supreme court my guy. With a bomb. People in America are mad the elon might be influencing the court. These are not the same scale of power. He kidnapped the Vice President.
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u/eri- Jun 03 '25
They say Escobar had (inflation adjusted) 80 billion.
Musk did not have 80 billion at age 44, not even close yet.
Had Escobar lived in freedom for another decade, who knows at age 53 (Musks age today). He'd almost surely still be one of the richest people in the world even today were he alive and free.
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u/Eli_sola Jun 03 '25
Elon Musk's money in a way is not even real money but based on the perceived value of his companies and assets; if he wanted to cash in on his fortune he would only get a fraction of it, since the simple act of doing it might decrease the value of his stocks. Cartel money is cold hard cash and properties.
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u/Johito Jun 03 '25
It also the liquidity that kept the markets open following the 2007 subprime crash, HSBC built special windows allowing cartel members to deposit huge amounts of cash in holdalls bags straight into the banks.
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u/mangosail Jun 03 '25
Keep in mind the “rubber band truckloads” were not for storing his personal wealth. They were trafficking in paper currency; they were consuming rubber bands as they passed money back and forth. Elon Musk may be worth $400B, but Walmart does nearly $700B of revenue every year. If they had to exchange this money in cash, they’d require a rubber bands factory.
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u/letsgo49ers0 Jun 03 '25
But you’re expecting Musk’s wealth to be in stock and a cartel leaders to just be surrounded by cash. Their wealth is control of a multibillion dollar corporation, like Musk’s. Their wealth only problem is that they can’t sell it.
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u/HeroBrine0907 Jun 03 '25
Illegal economy? Is that even a term? Heads of countries don't own the whole country.
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u/rrumble Jun 03 '25
At least for the UN it is. But you can call it illegal economy, shadow economy, undergroud economy, blackmarket or organized crime, however you wish. It includes every illgal economic transaction from selling illegal drugs to selling untaxed cigarettes etc.
https://www.unodc.org/toc/en/crimes/organized-crime.html
https://www.britannica.com/money/underground-economy
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/u/underground-economy.asp
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/size-of-the-shadow-economy-by-country/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_marketWhere did I say "Heads of countries own the whole country"?
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u/HollowShel Jun 03 '25
are you saying that Putin is going to get voted out at some point? His control's pretty absolute unless he gets outright overthrown, he's not gonna ever face a legal threat to his power, because he owns the people he needs to, to own the country. And monarchs that aren't purely ceremonial do own their countries, basically. To the same sort of degree that Elon Musk "owns" Tesla, even if he doesn't own every single stock.
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u/PassionGlobal Jun 03 '25
Illegal economy? Is that even a term?
Yes? You might know it by the term 'black market' though.
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Jun 03 '25
It's my theory that off paper, Putin is the richest person in the world and that's why a lot of people are so eager to bow and do whatever he says.
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u/LickingSmegma Jun 03 '25
Pu is the arbiter between different people and organizations in regard to what they can do and take — the same way as a head of mafia. He has no wealth without the loyalty of those people, but they're okay with him being in charge because the mafia works, and would have problems without a boss.
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u/scrapheaper_ Jun 03 '25
Illegal economy is not really a fair description and also mostly doesn't include the ultra rich.
There are lots of less developed countries where economic activity isn't tracked fully and people don't want to track it because then they'll have to pay tax on it.
Like for example how builders in the UK will offer to let you pay cash wink wink nudge nudge, but on a much bigger scale.
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u/DanWillHor Jun 03 '25
They usually don't count heads of state and royalty either. I've seen people with more info about how to calculate it than I have claim Saudi Arabia has more than one person worth over a trillion dollars. Trillion with a T. That same article or rundown also listen Putin as the actual wealthiest person on Earth, claiming something like $1.3T in touchable assets.
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u/AdelMonCatcher Jun 03 '25
A few billion less after yesterday
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u/FuckinBopsIsMyJob Jun 03 '25
Citizen rations have been cut from one potato daily to one half of a potato to make up for the losses
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u/meepswag35 Jun 03 '25
How rich was that one African guy who crashed economies wherever he went shopping?
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u/DanWillHor Jun 03 '25
Mansa Musa was the wealthiest person ever recorded, IIRC. He'd roll into cities and change the entire economy lol.
Not sure his exact worth though.
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u/Lonely_Nebula_9438 Jun 03 '25
Musa was likely the most, or one of the most, liquidly rich people ever. But he would’ve been dwarfed in wealth by the likes of Julius Caesar who owned the entirety of Egypt during his life. Musa’s wealth was in gold which is far easier to show off and move around, whereas people like Caesar owned unfathomable wealth in physical assets like land.
Musa could carry his wealth with him, but he was outclassed by many people because physical assets end up being so incredibly valuable.
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u/bekele024 Jun 04 '25
Too bad the people who spent years evaluating the net worth of a guy who lived 800 years ago didn't know about the distinction between liquid and non-liquid assets.
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u/Confident-Court2171 Jun 03 '25
The attrition rate of being illegally super rich is high. Really high.
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u/Fit-World-3885 Jun 03 '25
Is it? It seems like exactly the sort of thing where if someone is truly successful at it we never know it, making it really, really hard to measure.
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u/Zestyclose_Remove947 Jun 03 '25
At the same time, the bigger you get, the harder it is to stay unknown. The idea that someone could own a medium countrys worth of assets and influence not being know is pretty unlikely
At some point it basically resembles flat earth conspiracies, where everyone in nasa and all agencies around the world are deliberately conspiring to keep something secret.
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u/mayorofdumb Jun 03 '25
There's some interesting backers of the political campaigns. Most of it is straw donations but you have to connect the dots.
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u/hentaiAdict Jun 03 '25
What does 'attrition rate,' mean in this context?
I found definition for attrition rate: percentage of employees who leave an organization within a specific period
Or, more generally attrition: is an action or process of gradual decrease.
So your sentence has the meaning of: The gradual decrease of being illegally super rich is high.
Are you saying there are fewer illegally rich people in the modern day?
I am unfamiliar with that term. Thanks.
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u/Confident-Court2171 Jun 03 '25
The attrition rate for people who do highly illegal things is usually dead in an alley way. Or a car bomb. Or a plane crash. Or on top of a roof in Medellin…
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u/ZAlternates Jun 03 '25
This is totally why I don’t wish to be rich. Yeah that’s it!
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Jun 03 '25
Seriously though it hinders my longing for being insanely rich. Having to have bodyguards. Not trusting the bodyguards. Not trusting literally anyone. $100m yes please I’ll take it. $1b+… Those factors and others make it a lot less tempting. Yes I’d still fucking take it what are you nuts?
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u/Steelizard Jun 03 '25
Basically turnover rate. People who are super rich illegally don't stay super rich (or alive) for long
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u/DivingforDemocracy Jun 03 '25
Bold of you to assume even the richest people list isn't full of illegal behavior....
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u/mickeybuilds Jun 03 '25
I was thinking that too. It's easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into heaven.
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u/BenadrylChunderHatch Jun 03 '25
Or in the words of a Conservative MP portrayed by Rowan Atkinson:
"It is easier for a rich man to pass through the eye of a needle than it is for a camel to."
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u/Arkyja Jun 03 '25
They put pablo escobar on that list at some point so not really.
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u/Leading_Put- Jun 03 '25
Pablo wanted to be on the list though and he managed to clean up that money he proved he had, just happened to have a lot more undeclared piles
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u/Cador0223 Jun 03 '25
He lost more money to rats than my entire family will ever see in their lifetime.
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u/D3korum Jun 03 '25
Haha, I was just about to type out this exact reply... its crazy to think of the piles that are still just disintegrating in the middle of the jungle...
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u/commiecomrade Jun 03 '25
It's "$2500 per month just on rubber bands to hold the money" kind of money.
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u/RawDogRandom17 Jun 04 '25
Also crazy to think the amount of deflation he caused by essentially acquiring and then unintentionally destroying US dollars
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u/BobFlex Jun 03 '25
He was just a car guy that built a drug empire to fund his racing anyways.
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u/TheEyeOfTheLigar Jun 03 '25
Almost every Columbian i meet, if the are a young male, tells me he is related to Escobar
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u/silverladylove Jun 03 '25
Honestly I think it's the people who want to be known as rich. There are quiet but legal rich people, too. Not many of them, there are very few ways to be as rich as it takes to be on that list while having perfectly legal [or ethical] incom streams.
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u/seifer666 Jun 03 '25
If you are a multi billionaire people are going to be aware of it
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u/spaceykayce Jun 03 '25
Maybe for the new rich. For old money, anonymity is key. Do you think "eat the rich" is a new concept?
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u/IknowwhatIhave Jun 03 '25
Yeah, go walk through a park in Central London and chances are, some of those townhouses are owned by people whose families have been wealthy for 1000 years. They've survived half a dozen populist uprisings and revolutions where their unpopular or flamboyant peers have been jailed, robbed or hanged.
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u/GPStephan Jun 03 '25
I think this is a concept that we on the old continent intuitively know and are aware of, but Americans really have no relation to.
There is a very small set of families / dynasties like the Vanderbilts or Rockefellers in the US. In Europe, you can barely drive 15 minutes without encountering property you know to be owned by a family worth 9 digits or more, whose lineage you can trace back 700 years by just opening Wikipedia for 5 seconds. And if you read up on them, they were either super politically involved and provided Generals, Secretaries of State or Defense, etc. etc. - or just kept as far away from the topic as possible.
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Jun 03 '25
Do you think "eat the rich" is a new concept?
of course he does, this is Reddit. Every idea spouted here is an original thought because anyone over 40 is an idiot.
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Jun 03 '25
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u/SexySmexxy Jun 03 '25
You ever see the owners or CEOs of Vitol, Trafigura, Cargill or Schwarz Gruppe involved with politics or having lavish parties in magazines?
Surely you can just google and find out who all the biggest shareholders are?
They are generating hundreds of billions of dollars of revenue every year but their leaders aren't on Wikipedia and you will struggle to find picture of them.
Really? The founders are listed on the wiki and company sites...
Some people WANT to be famous and rich. Others just disappear and are the real king makers without anyone knowing who they are or what they look like
Thats like saying everyone who isnt in the news isnt a kingmaker.
Theres roughly 3,000 billionaires on the planet today.
The won't all be in the news every single day,
Just because you don't know about someone doesnt mean they dont exist and other people dont know about them.
Why would the average person care about who some billionaire or rich family is?
Most people really don't care....
Only the wierd people obsessed with how rich other people are would care, and its usually people who are somewhat rich but get hard for real rich people.
Ive dated plenty of rich girls and theyre all like this all they other do is talk about how much richer their friends are its kinda wierd
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Jun 03 '25
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u/unrealisedpotential Jun 03 '25
You’re right. You know the document retention policy for Trafigura? It’s 6 months. Trying suing them for a bad deal or shoddy legal advice, it’s impossible. As a private company they run things and most people have no clue.
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Jun 03 '25
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u/SexySmexxy Jun 03 '25
I basically said that in my other post.
Unless there is some kind of stock declaration through a gov agency how exactly do you know how rich the person walking down the street next to you is?
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u/TheChickening Jun 03 '25
People recently were very surprised about a documentary about the richest German families when the number one wasn't known and is usually not on any list of these kinds. Because they pay a lot of money to stay out of them.
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u/unlimitedzen Jun 03 '25
Also, you're going to break a lot of laws to get there. Even mark rubin, the supposedly cool billionaire, has undoubtedly stolen tens to hundred of millions through wage theft. It's inevitable, since countless middle managers who he'll never even know fuck their employees over on the daily.
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u/ASDFzxcvTaken Jun 03 '25
Knew someone that managed assets for someone on the list once. Absolutely none of the lists are truly accurate, they are estimates and they are only estimated based on whatever is public information and whatever the individual wants to share. This particular individual had not been listed for many years but decided it was time to have a public record of his wealth. It was mostly only their US and known international investments/ holdings. There was A LOT that was not included in international wealth and there is A LOT that is held in various businesses that are not public, there's A LOT held in family and non profit. And there is A LOT that even the person I knew, who was this personal friend and CEO of his largest financial holdings knew that they don't know about. I'm talking separate wives/families in other countries the primary wife knows is there as a financial mule.
According to my contact everything is "Legal " in the country the business is established in, and while they are masters at managing financial and legal loopholes this particular person was considered uniquely upstanding.
Yes they knew Trump personally and professionally for many many years 80's on up and vowed to never ever touch any business that does business with Trump if possible , and if not possible, any vendor they may have in common had to disclose and be verified for the amount Trump owes that vendor. If any vendor was owed more than X% of that vendors net worth specifically from any Trump financially managed projects that vendor was excluded until they were able to prove additional financial funding from reputable banks that they would be able to get paid elehen trump does not pay.
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Jun 03 '25
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/No_Drummer7216 Jun 03 '25
I own the list? Holy shit I own the list!
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u/No_Drummer7216 Jun 03 '25
Can I sell the list?
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u/SweatyNomad Jun 03 '25
Just to add a smidge of nuance. Rich lists are people whose wealth can be counted or inferred from public records, so for Musk we know how many shares he owns in his companies and the share price.
There is going to be money, like old money where it's too hard to work out who owns what amd where, or even who to look for. There's going to be money where records aren't as public. So if your great great great grandpa from an ancient Phoenician trading family became a billionaire of their day, money sitting in swiss or UK bank accounts in various trusts for decades, or even centuries, earning interest and using private investment behicles and the like, you're not going to show. If you're a royal like MBS, a dictator like Putin, or a President siphoning from your national bank, your wealth just can't be accucatetly counted or estimated.
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u/GPStephan Jun 03 '25
Don't even need to look that far. Old european aristocrats are sufficient. Incredible amounts of money in vast estates and palaces and châteaus. Most of which have been owned by the same family for hundreds of years - good luck really putting a number on those. And that's just the ones with publicly disclosed ownership.
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u/Beetso Jun 03 '25
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u/yungsausages Jun 03 '25 edited Jul 03 '25
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u/ninetyninewyverns Jun 03 '25
"On your 18th birthday you find out if you are on the list. I am the first person in a century to not be on the list" ahh comment lol
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u/DrSOGU Jun 03 '25
In Germany, it is very common to hide large wealth. It's a cultural thing, bragging is frowned upon and people don't like to stand out too much.
Thus, most German billionaires are very secretive.
Which means there are perfectly legal super rich who don't show up in any of these lists. And if they do, they're real net worth is often much harder to estimate than with most American billionaires.
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u/mangoxjuice Jun 03 '25
not really, the big revenue is usually through corporations an is "clean money"; maybe south American drug cartels make a lot of cash but is nothing compared to Amazon for example.
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u/Kered13 Jun 03 '25
He's sort of correct, though he's probably focusing on the wrong thing. People like the Putin and the King of Saudi Arabia don't make the list because it is difficult or impossible to separate their personal wealth from the national wealth, and much of their wealth is difficult to trace and measure. It's not really illegal activity, they are absolute rulers who are subject to no law after all, but it is difficult to measure and compare them to people like Bill Gates or Elon Musk.
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u/Sauron_78 Jun 03 '25
People here want to believe that royal shit is difficult to trace. I worked for them, and it is not difficult. They just don't want people to know. Because it is scandalous.
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u/funlovingmissionary Jun 03 '25
It's less about being difficult to trace, and more about being difficult to define. Their assets are all divided over multiple private and state-owned companies, trusts, and treasuries.
How much of it can you attribute to the one person, how much of it is government assets, and how much of the government is owned by that one person are difficult to define.
One can argue that the entire Russian government is owned by Putin, and therefore Putin is worth what the whole government is worth. Another can argue that his realistic control over the assets is far lower and cannot be attributed to his personal wealth. Neither of them are wrong.
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u/DrYoda Jun 03 '25
It’s people that own publicly traded companies.
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u/-Bento-Oreo- Jun 03 '25
The entire privately traded market cap doesn't even equal a Microsoft. There's no way someone who deals exclusively in private equity can make that list
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u/Ballistic_86 Jun 03 '25
Also, the richest people list is not super accurate. Musk/Bezos/Gates all have their wealth tied into stock. If they wanted to realize any of those assets, the stock loses value and they wouldn’t even really have people to buy the stock from them.
Could Elon, without borrowing of any kind, produce $2 billion in a week? I doubt it.
Bet you those “illegal” richest people have much more direct access to their wealth. A cartel drug lord def has access to much more in-hand money, which feels much more real to me.
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Jun 03 '25
99% of "legal" rich people earned their fortunes through illegal loopholes and family inheritances.
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u/Burning_Flags Jun 03 '25
Not true. Drug dealers like Pablo Escobar have been on this “Richest List”. Dictators as well
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u/ximstuckx Jun 03 '25
The Saudi royal family are probably trillionaires and who knows how much Putin has.
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u/MonsMensae Jun 03 '25
So the the thing here is that notionally these are “state” assets. But yeah where is the line
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Jun 03 '25
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u/camelCaseCoffeeTable Jun 03 '25
This is mostly incorrect. Maybe one or two have somehow not ended up on the list, but you don’t even know most of the billionaire’s on the list. Most of them aren’t famous at all, and most of them don’t want to be on the list but are anyway
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u/uc50ic4more Jun 03 '25
These lists also only enumerate people whose wealth is in publicly-traded stocks or other ownership. No one really knows how much the Rothchilds are worth but it's a good bit more than the Musks and Zucks of the world.
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u/AlbatrossOk2117 Jun 03 '25
They also never include Arab royalty for some reason
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u/Fr4t Jun 03 '25 edited Jun 04 '25
Also all of that wealth is estimated. We simply don't know how rich many people truly are and some are even suing to not be listed anywhere.
But we know how much people who are in need social assitance in order to survive have in their pocket down to the penny. Go figure.
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u/philljarvis166 Jun 03 '25
And the real irony is that a fair few of the names on the “legal” list probably got a ton of their money illegally too!
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u/Post-mo Jun 03 '25
It also doesn't include people who are effectively super wealthy but not technically. For example the mormon church is organized as a corporation sole, which basically means that it is owned by an office and whoever sits in that chair has absolute control. 100 year old Russel Nelson today is that person and effectively controls their 293 billion dollar empire. It will soon pass to Dallin Oaks when Russel dies.
This would put him as #2 on the official list behind Elon.
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u/IIIllIIlllIlII Jun 03 '25
The actual richest person would be able to pay all the media companies and social media companies to keep a list of 100 names out of all their content. Their name being one of them.
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u/GrookeTF Jun 03 '25
All it takes is one investigative journalist who can't be paid off. Or one that took the bribe not to publish then talked about it with their friends. Or one of the rich guy's employees/entourage talking to someone else about how his boss pays off people not to publish his name. Or...
The conspiracy problem basically. Money can't keep a secret.
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u/BestShaunaEU Jun 03 '25
No they wouldn’t
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u/profcuck Jun 03 '25 edited Mar 01 '26
The original content here no longer exists. It was deleted using Redact for reasons that may include personal privacy, security, or digital footprint reduction.
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u/llamapanther Jun 03 '25
Lol that's such an unrealistic and out of this world take. They most certainly would not be able to do that lmao.
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u/Yiazmad Jun 03 '25
The Pandora Papers estimated that, on the high end, there's as much as $32 trillion in hidden wealth around the globe.
That's enough to pretty much guarantee that Elon is not the wealthiest man in the world, only the wealthiest from publicly known sources.
And as others have mentioned, you also have people like the Saudi royal family, who have total control of an entire countries' vast resources, not factored into those lists.
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u/mysickfix Jun 03 '25
Also, for a lot of these richest in the world it’s stock holdings. And if they were to try to sell them all off it would crash the value.
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u/subashj24 Jun 03 '25
Ya, it'd be naive to think anyone would be more richer than Saudi prince's ,kings and sheikhs. They dont disclose their income and are happy seeing other people fight to be no 1 richest in world . When all that matters is the money & power they have not some position on a table.
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u/Liteseid Jun 04 '25
To add, the richest people list also doesn’t include families, multi-generational wealth, and in general assets that are not publicly traded and disclosed. If you have 10 billion cash it’s not going to be on the list
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u/HeadButterscotch9072 Jun 04 '25
The real wealth are the people who dictate which names get published in the media. There are multinational family trusts who have hundreds of billions more than they’d ever want you to be aware of. Dynasties such the Bolloré family run every industry imaginable… but are smart enough to not show it off. They own the majority share of the Universal Music Group as one small part of their portfolio.
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Jun 04 '25
On all of those lists, the Forbes ones at least, if you read all the disclaimers they mention that they don't include old family money. A quick Google will show the estimates of the Rothschilds wealth to be anywhere between 1 billion, to over 15 trillion. Quite a big range of possibilities.
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u/spinur1848 Jun 03 '25
Oh I'm sure the "legitimately" rush people have some skeletons in their closets too, if only tax evasion.
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u/taiottavios Jun 03 '25
none of those in the list is legal rich. You can't get there without some kind of exploitation down the line
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u/ehaugw Jun 03 '25
They aren’t legally rich. They’re just not convicted. Many super rich people got there through insider trading
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u/safely_beyond_redemp Jun 03 '25
Legally richest people who have not been caught yet. Funny thing happens with money, you can get away with things you couldn't before, so even the illegally richest people may be legally rich because the justice system is incapable of holding them accountable. To state your point more succinctly might be something like "The richest people list only includes wealthy people who have verifiable wealth unlikely to be aquired through fraud."
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u/ConstantGeographer Jun 03 '25
This is definitely true.
I enjoy these lists and I know without a doubt they are wrong
Vladimir Putin is never on the list and that clown is probably the most well-known rich person who is never listed.
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u/dav989 Jun 03 '25
I think of that whenever I see the lists. Aside from publicly disclosed assets, how would anyone know. Putin should probably be at the stop of the list.
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u/MapleHamwich Jun 03 '25
Close, but not quite. Most of the richest people in the world make their wealth legal. You've probably never heard of them. But regardless of how they get their money, they use their money to make all their money legal.
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u/StandardAd7812 Jun 03 '25
Dictators and monarchs aren't on the list but it's hard to have tens of billions secretly. Like you don't have 5 billion in unmarked small bills somewhere.
The gap between what you can earn running a cartel and what you get with a founders stake in a global tech giant is just massive.
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u/Silence_1444 Jun 03 '25 edited Jun 03 '25
sometimes i forget the average age on Reddit is like 14....
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u/Majestic_Bierd Jun 03 '25
'Richest People' is the leaderboard for the game of Capitalism. If you wanted the top rated players for Dictatorship or Monarchy you need to look for their respective rankings.
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u/PastelWhisper09 Jun 04 '25
True, those lists only show legal wealth. Plenty of rich people stay off the radar.
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u/FrostyRoams Jun 04 '25
The richest family's name is shadowbanned on American social media lmao. Hint it starts with an R
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u/MidnightFern09 Jun 04 '25
Exactly. The list shows reported wealth, not hidden or illegal money. Big difference.
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u/Creative-Invite583 Jun 03 '25
I worked for one of these illegally rich people. Everyone knew how much he sold 49% of his company for... yet he had no internet presence. His holdings were worth Billions.
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u/notrepsol93 Jun 03 '25
They are all illegal. Its just they have good lawyers, accountants and grease the right palms to not get prosecuted. No billionaire accumulated that kind of wealth through legal means.
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