Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2022 October 25

Welcome to the Wikipedia Humanities Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is a transcluded archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

October 25

What are May Lights in reference to old Customs and Excise documents?

[1]https://archive.org/details/reportbythomastu71tuckuoft/page/52/mode/2up While researching for an essay I came upon this set of Graphs detailing the customs and excise of various Scottish ports over various periods of time. I (or at least I think I) understand that customs and excise are the taxes of goods entering and leaving the country respectively, though I have no clue what the "May Lights" row is for, and what it means in relation to the other information. 2A02:C7C:C828:A600:1802:AD6C:D067:7C4C (talk) 13:52, 25 October 2022 (UTC)

Isle of May#Lighthouses? fiveby(zero) 13:59, 25 October 2022 (UTC)

Ah, and note in that article that the lighthouses charged a fee to ships. Note also that in the customs report, "May lights" only occurs under ports on the Scottish east coast, where the Isle of May is. I think that must be it. --174.89.144.126 (talk) 14:32, 25 October 2022 (UTC)

The Literary Panorama and National Register - Volume 3 - Page 1025 (1816) says:

May Lights. It is with great pleasure we congratulate the public and the nautical world , on the alteration which took place lately on the Isle of May, by the substitution of an oil light, with reflectors, contained within a glazed room, instead of an exposed coal fire.

Alansplodge (talk) 11:52, 26 October 2022 (UTC)

billionaire

I had thought that a billionaire was someone with 1e9 bucks in the bank or some equivalent in owned assets that could in principle be sold, or that sort of thing. That is, assets that are under someone else's control don't count. Thus the term "F-U money". But now I hear[2] that Ye aka Kanye West just lost his billionaire status as a result of Adidas unilaterally (though with justification) cancelling a joint marketing deal:

Forbes magazine said the end of the deal meant Ye's net worth shrank to $400 million. The magazine had valued his share of the Adidas partnership at $1.5 billion.

Do those sorts of potential income streams that depend on someone else's good graces usually count as assets? I have a pretty dim opinion of Ye, Adidas, expensive sneakers, and the whole general situation around celebrities, so am mostly asking this just as a matter of understanding concepts. (I don't hold the crazy rant against Ye that much personally though, since it's like when a mentally ill person goes into a violent rage. It's mostly just sad and the best I can do is hope that the person recovers).

Thanks. 2602:24A:DE47:B8E0:1B43:29FD:A863:33CA (talk) 23:18, 25 October 2022 (UTC)

Assets, in this context a synonym of wealth, is something else than income. Someone whose net worth (assets) is high can have a low income; perhaps they own a de Kooning while living on a small pension. Conversely, someone can have a very high income but spend all on gambling, so in the end their wealth amounts to nothing and their heirs may inherit only debts.  --Lambiam 17:18, 27 October 2022 (UTC)

I understand that about assets, I'm asking if it still counts as an asset if its disposition is actually controlled by someone else. Like you have a de Kooning painting, but the de Kooning estate can reclaim it from you if you post a tweet that they don't like. Also, the de Kooning painting can in principle be exchanged for cash, but a personal brand like Ye's is harder to exchange that way. I'm not feeling sorry for Ye, I'm just of the impression that his wealth was overstated since it it included stuff that he didn't completely own (as evidenced by Adidas being able to obliterate it). 2602:24A:DE47:B8E0:1B43:29FD:A863:33CA (talk) 22:21, 27 October 2022 (UTC)

• Yes, they count as assets, perhaps intangible assets. Branding, Goodwill (accounting), etc. Abductive (reasoning) 05:56, 26 October 2022 (UTC)
  • Thanks, I have to wonder about the accounting, especially if that value was at someone else's whim. Or if it was protected by a contract with a DBAD clause, could someone as volatile as Ye have gotten insurance against the clause triggering? For that matter, if I have a contract with Elon Musk saying that tomorrow he's going to flip a coin and pay me $3 billion if it comes up heads, can I claim to be a billionaire today? Maybe yes, in the sense that maybe an insurer or other backer would pay me $1B today for the 50% chance (minus some Musk flakiness risk) of collecting $3B tomorrow. Goodwill per the article only comes from acquisitions, which doesn't apply to Ye afaict. 2602:24A:DE47:B8E0:1B43:29FD:A863:33CA (talk) 15:35, 27 October 2022 (UTC)

    While maybe less on perceptions of the person, realistically any billionaires net worth nowadays (except for maybe for a few) depends on other people in some way. Often not quite as much or in the same way as Ye, however if we take Elon Musk, if people stop thinking Tesla and SpaceX are worth what they are, his value would significantly tank. In fact Musk is a particularly interesting example. Perhaps not quite so much any more, I'd suggest for a long while, Tesla's and probably SpaceX's value depended significantly on perceptions of Musk. To the extent that I suspect there was a time if Musk had died or suffered a catastrophic brain injury, Tesla's share price would have lost 50% of its value or more. I mean look at what happened when Musk smoked weed on the Joe Rogan show only ~4 years ago. And think of the wild swings in net worth of anyone who's net worth largely derives from bitcoin and for a brief period GameStop. While true most of these could in theory move their networth to something else entirely at the present value without too much loss, this isn't the case for someone like Musk for example. (And actually I do wonder how easy it would be to convert e.g. a networth of $100 million in bitcoin to something else.) Nil Einne (talk) 13:15, 29 October 2022 (UTC)

    • Most really rich people's net worth is mostly based in investment value; basically ownership of companies, (shares, stocks, etc.), or in other investments such as real estate, art. etc. If the company tanks, the person's value goes with it. I can't think of anyone who has a billion dollars lying around in fat stacks of cash around their house, a lot of value is dependent on market forces. --Jayron32 14:49, 31 October 2022 (UTC)

      • Right, but those stocks and stuff can at least in principle be liquidated, and there is no one who can cancel Musk's ownership of Tesla shares. They can drive down the market value, but that affects all the share owners, and the possibility of it happening is already supposedly built into the share price. Ye's deal is more like Twitter hiring me for (lol) $1M/year (weekly paycheck). Does that make me a millionaire today? I'd say no, Musk buys Twitter and fires everyone tomorrow at his whim. I'd hope no accountant would let me book that contingent income stream as if it were cash. The idea of ownership is that it is very hard for someone else to reverse. Maybe I'm missing something though. 2601:648:8201:5E50:0:0:0:DD22 (talk) 18:42, 31 October 2022 (UTC)