There are many dilemmas about who is the richest man in the world, but have you ever thought about who is the reachest man in history? Mansa Musa v. Genghis Khan? There has been an evolution of what wealth can help one to acquire–from land to services to life itself.
Did you know that one of the richest men in history is David Koch? Together with his brother Charles Koch, David owns the Koch Industries. Their family is known in the U.S. as business magnates, and his wealth is over 35 billion dollars. Off course, after David Koch goes Charles Koch. Now the CEO and Chairman of Koch Industries, Charles has long been managing their business of oil and gas, manufacturing, chemicals, and pipelines. The founder of software giant Oracle, Larry Ellison has been all over the rungs of the billionaire ladder for the past few years but has recently managed to catch up.
For the modern period, wealth can be measured more or less objectively via increase adjustment, e.g. associating the nominal GDP of the United States of the respective ends, and then transforming it into contemporary United States dollars. For the medieval and classical history, comparison of wealth becomes more problematic, on one hand due to the inaccuracy or unreliability of records, on the other due to the difficulty of matching a pre-industrial economy to a modern one, and particularly in the presence of absolute monarchy, where an entire kingdom or domain is considered the ruler’s individual property. Forbes’s list of the richest people is constantly changing, so as the market changes, it also changes the most prosperous among them. Have you ever thought about how much people were rich in history and whether their wealth can be measured today? Whether the property of the Cleopatra or Napoleon was so big and enormous, or is it not measurable with the richness of today’s richest people?
If you want to see who is the reachest man in history- Mansa Musa v. Genghis Khan?, check Insider Monkey’s list of Mansa Musa v. Genghis Khan: Who Is The Richest Man in History? and find out more about this interesting topic.
