If you just want to disagree that's fine, but I was actually looking for a discussion? For example:

>>I'm sort of confused why you don't see any issues with that definition of wealth

>>the simple act of attempting to exercise that wealth suddenly means you have less of it?

>Yes, that is kind of the point of spending.

I don't understand why you're trying to say here, I'm saying in a situation I want to give someone $100 cash, I would be upset if the process of handing them the money results in them getting $80 cash. When I say "suddenly means you have less of it?" I don't mean I have less money, that's obvious, I mean the recipient receives less money than I expected or they expected. I can absolutely hand over the equity, but as I said it may not be accepted.

>>Well if you take spend as a transfer of wealth

>They are actually not the same thing at all.

Ok, how would you describe spend? How is a wealth transfer specially distinct from spending.

You keep handwaving away the fact that there is a difference between an equity valued at X and cash of X value. There is a difference, such that you can't treat them as the same thing. We merely use the current market value as a way of computing it, but it is in no way pinned to that value.

-- EDIT as responding to parent edit --

> Your presupposition is seemingly that although he is doing this the wealth he is and will spend "isnt quite real" or "should be discounted" because he can't squeeze all that spending into one day.

> Is that correct? Please, indulge me by answering this question directly.

I'm merely pointing out that the numbers we bandy about aren't accurate.

Ultimately wealth is buying power.

If we're talking about someone who owns $100k in Amazon stock at the current market value, I think we'd be happy to say that the person in question has $100k in buying power, they could sell all of that stock and then buy $100k worth of goods with it.

Someone who has $100B in Amazon stock can't do that, they're buying power isn't $100B. Now what exactly it is, is a fascinating question. I'm saying that based on different specified timescales it's different, if that person wanted to get their hands on $10B in 1 month, 6 months and 1 year, they would have to sell a different quantity of their equity stake to achieve that. In fact if the underlying asset goes up in value over that time period then it may even be worth more. However I'm talking in terms of "discounting" because a lot of assets value goes down if you try and trade them, primarily because the seller wants to buy them at less than their "current value".

So to summarise, I'm not questioning the "realness" of his wealth, I'm simply stating that at those quantities of illiquid wealth, how to actually utilise the buying power of your wealth is not that straightforward. The fact that we use "number of shares owned x current market price on an actively traded public corporation" is just a way to get a nice easy number that hides a lot of interesting detail.

On this topic, there was a really interesting money stuff article that went into how private equity firms were selling small stakes of their company to "price" their equity suddenly allowing their owners to declare themselves billionaires. They sold some of their assets, but by allowing the market to "price" them we accept they now have more wealth.