Envy

The 10 richest men of all time

• Mansa Musa (1280-1337, king of the Mali empire) wealth indescribable
• Augustus Caesar (63 BC-14 AD, Roman emperor) $4.6tn (£3.5tn)
• Zhao Xu (1048-1085, emperor Shenzong of Song in China) wealth incalculable
• Akbar I (1542-1605, emperor of India's Mughal dynasty) wealth incalculable
• Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919, Scottish-American industrialist) $372bn
• John D Rockefeller (1839-1937) American business magnate) $341bn
• Nikolai Alexandrovich Romanov (1868-1918, Tsar of Russia) $300bn
• Mir Osman Ali Khan ( 1886-1967, Indian royal) $230bn
• William The Conqueror (1028-1087) $229.5bn
• Muammar Gaddafi (1942-2011, long-time ruler of Libya) $200bn

Source: Money.com, Celebrity Net Worth (found at Marginal Revolution).

Two of the all-time top ten are well known American capitalists. The other eight perhaps a bit unsavory. Note that inequality warriors presume that all wealth is a sure sign of bad behavior. This often works. Non-zerosum is subtle and envy runs deep and is exploited by politicians.

We know that Carnegie and Rockefeller did us much good -- just like Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates. But they are suspect nevertheless. "Robber Barons" is the unfortunate term routinely applied by those who think we live in a zero-sum world.

Innovators, on average, get about 4% of the wealth they create (Nordhaus). A better prepared Michael Bloomberg might have tried this approach. Would many in the audience and celeb interviewers have fainted?

The Economist reviews Thomas Piketty's latest and notes "... it is hard to to conclude that, deep down, Mr. Piketty believes the worth of a society is measured by its Gini coefficient." He and many others.

ADDED

Billionaires and super-billionaires.

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