My understanding of it is that its not really some conspiracy to hide the top wealth; the forbes lists are all opt- in. They reach out to a bunch of Uber wealthy, people, and those who want in send back bios and stats for them to rank and publish.

At least that’s the way it was explained to me. I dated an heiress for a while, and at one point her dad told me hed only ever had his name on the list for one year, and that was as part of the ‘debut campaign’ for his second wife.

Of you look ar the list it makes sense. It’s mostly the new rich, people still seaking validation and status from their wealth, the sociopaths and a lot of the tech bilionaires like elon and zuckerberg who treat it like a competition, and people who benefit from the name recognition and status perception for their company, like all the fashion and design company owners using it to help associate their brands with luxury, and the investment banker types like Bloomberg, ken griffin, etc, who use it to show success of their companies and get other rich people to invest with them.