One sentence summary

Whoever controls the "main narrative of the era" will sit at the position of the richest person;
Once the narrative collapses, wealth evaporates much faster than imagined.

Act One: 🇯🇵 Japan Real Estate Bubble (1987–1994)
The richest = Land King
Yoshiaki Taketomi, Yoshiro Mori, fundamentally all come down to one word:
👉 Land
It was an era when Tokyo’s Imperial Palace could "buy the entire California."
The source of wealth was not efficiency, not technology, but:

Land Financialization

Unlimited Credit Expansion

Unilateral Asset Price Rise

What happened after the bubble burst?
People are still here, but the money is gone.
This is not personal failure; it’s the end of a national asset model.

Act Two: 🇺🇸 Technology and Globalization (1995–2007)
The richest = Operating System
Bill Gates appears.
Note a detail:
His wealth was not from "selling software," but from—

Monopoly standards + Network effects + Global replication

Windows was the "infrastructure" of that era.
This was also the first time that the wealth of the richest did not rely on domestic asset bubbles,
but was built on global productivity division.

Act Three: 🇺🇸 Post-Financial Crisis Capital Restructuring (2008–2013)
The richest = Cash Flow Controller
Warren Buffett and Carlos Slim top the list, not by chance.
The only common point:
👉 Acquiring cheap assets during crises

Telecommunications

Energy

Consumer Goods

Utilities

This round of the richest is not glamorous, but extremely stable.
The essence is: whoever has bullets in the ruins wins.

Act Four: 🇺🇸 Platform Economy (2018–2021)
The richest = Traffic and Fulfillment Capability
Jeff Bezos.
He is not just a bookseller; he is someone who reconstructed the retail fulfillment system.

Platforms

Cloud Computing

Logistics

Scaling

This is an era where "scale is the moat."
But the problem is:
Once platforms mature, growth begins to plateau.

Act Five: 🇫🇷 Short-lived Luxury Goods Interlude (2023)
The richest = Printing Press Brand
Arnault’s top spot is the result of global liquidity flooding.
The essence is:
👉 The number of wealthy people increased, willing to pay higher premiums for "status."
But this is the extreme of consumption upgrade,
Not new productivity.
So he only held the top for a year.

Act Six: 🇺🇸 Musk Era (2022–2026)
The richest = Narrative + Technology + National Will
Musk’s uniqueness lies in:
He hits three lines simultaneously:

Energy Transition (Tesla)

Space and Military (SpaceX)

AI + Computing Power + Infrastructure

His wealth skyrocketed not just because of company valuation,
but because:

The strategic direction of the US for the next 20 years has been compressed into a few companies.

So what you see is not just the "richest person,"
but a—mapping of national-level asset concentration.

What is truly worth remembering is not the numbers,
but this pattern:

80s: Real Estate → Collapse

90s: Software → Stable

00s: Cash Flow → Defense

10s: Platforms → Peak

20s: Hard Tech + National Narrative → Extreme Concentration

Final sentence
The richest person is not the smartest,
but the one who hits the "next default setting of the world."
When you see someone’s wealth surge again,
don’t just ask:

How much did they earn?

Ask instead:

What has this era priced to the extreme?

Because—
Thirty years east of the river, thirty years west of the river,
but before the river changes course, the water will definitely become more turbulent.