Whenever the rebels storm the imperial base or break into the emperor’s palace in those Star Wars movies, the rebels never find anything cool — like a gnarly spaceship with leather seats and carbon fiber. Nobody seems motivated by personal enrichment.
That’s how you know it took place “A long time ago, in a galaxy far away.”
That's because, in the real world, behind every dictator is a fleet of expensive cars. Check out what the anti-Assad rebels found in Syria:
SYRIAN REBELS ENTER FACILITY HOLDING ASSAD CAR COLLECTION.pic.twitter.com/xUC2YRy4ye
— Citizen Free Press (@CitizenFreePres) December 8, 2024
A few observations:
- There’s a curiously large number of Toyotas.
- The Arabic word for “Lamborghini” is, apparently, “Lamborghini.”
- A bunch of those cars, including the one at the end, seem to have oil leaks? (That’s why you’ve gotta tip the guys at the parking garage.)
- It’s honestly not that great of a collection. Jay Leno’s is better.
But then again, Syria isn’t that much of a country anymore. It’s been an open-air “Call of Duty” game for a decade. Let me put it this way: Very few Spring Breakers are hitting the open beaches of Latakia for babes and waves.
Syria is a hellhole.
Yet somehow, Bashar Al-Assad is rumored to be worth at least a few billion.
Of course, now that he’s fled the country, his nest egg has taken a haircut. (I don’t think he’s getting any of his leaky Toyotas back.) But up until a few days ago, Assad was the dictator-for-life of a country with over 23 million people.
And if you lived in a city or town that his militia controlled, Assad owned everything you had: If he wanted it, he could just take it.
The concept of “mine” and “yours” doesn’t exist. Everything belongs to the dictator! He’s just letting you use it for a while.
That’s why it’s so cute and adorable when the media proclaims Elon Musk the “richest man in the world” or bemoans his “undue influence” in politics, culture, or free speech: Musk isn’t anywhere close to being the world’s richest man, and the reason he’s so influential has more to do with his brain than his wallet.
For God’s sake, even Kim Jong Un is significantly wealthier than Elon Musk. The tubby little Dear Leader owns everything in North Korea (which includes a number of rockets, missiles, real estate, and nukes). And North Korea is a country that can’t even feed itself!
But its population is even larger than Syria’s. It’s 46,720 square miles of land, all belonging to one little guy in a J. Jonah Jameson haircut.
So who’s really the richest man in the world?
I’d vote for Vladimir Putin. He “owns” the largest country on earth (with over 140 million civilians) plus all the rights to Russia’s natural resources. The total value is incalculable, but it’s easily in the trillions.
Probably hundreds of trillions.
Xi Jinping of China also has a legitimate claim to the golden crown. With a GDP of $37 trillion, Xi might actually be the wealthiest man in world history.
If not Putin or Xi, perhaps it's the Saudi royal family. Its wealth is estimated at $1.4 trillion, but when you consider the totality of its oil reserves (and the fact that Saudi Arabia is a corrupt, amoral kleptocracy), that’s almost certainly too low. There’s not an inch of Saudi land or property that the royal family couldn’t claim if it wanted to.
Still, it utterly dwarfs Elon Musk’s paltry $354.9 billion.
Beh! Barely pocket change!
What makes Musk so influential isn’t just his wealth; it’s how he accumulated it. From automotive to financial to space travel to AI, he revolutionized hi-tech industries before venturing into politics, MAGA, or the free speech debate. And sure, Musk can throw around a few hundred million whenever he wants.
But he’s nowhere close to being the richest man in the world.
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