How Mexican Billionaries are Made

A case study in how economies fail when power and privilege replace competition.

For several years leading up to 2013, the richest man on earth was not Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, or Elon Musk. It was Carlos Slim, a Mexican telecom magnate whose story is not about invention or disruption, but about how economies can be rigged.

Slim’s rise captures everything wrong with Mexico’s economy —and yet his case is rarely discussed in international media.