Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Amicus brief on behalf of 97 tech companies

cloud.app.box.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 221 posts

Re: Amicus brief on behalf of 97 tech companies

#21

Post by return0 »

donaldguy wrote: post #10

I did a run at the (amateur) math off Google Finance and Crunchbase. With some companies I couldn't find's numbers outright omitted, and using old valuations, I totaled those corps filing as valued at $2.58 trillion in market cap., at least $131 billion of valuation and another $8 billion in investments in un-valuated companies. Assuming those investments hold value at least equal to the total worth of those companie…

But that argument won't fly well: "Bunch of rich guys want to go against the will of the people"

Re: Amicus brief on behalf of 97 tech companies

#22

Post by tzmudzin »

jondubois wrote: post #18

I don't know what Americans are protesting about. I don't agree with the bans at all but at least you have a president who is true to his words for once - For me that is a higher moral value. You have to take the good with the bad. I don't agree with Trump on a lot of things but I can respect a politician who does what he says he'll do. It's a refreshing break from the typical Washington charlatans who don't do anyth…

> I don't agree with Trump on a lot of things but I can respect someone who does what he says he'll do.

Adolf Hitler was also keeping his promise of eliminating the Jewish "problem" or the lack of the living space for the Germans. Does this increase your respect to him?

Of course this is overblown, and Trump is not Hitler. But we should learn our lessons rather than repeat the errors of the past.

Re: Amicus brief on behalf of 97 tech companies

#23

Post by JumpCrisscross »

jondubois wrote: post #18

I don't know what Americans are protesting about. I don't agree with the bans at all but at least you have a president who is true to his words for once - For me that is a higher moral value. You have to take the good with the bad. I don't agree with Trump on a lot of things but I can respect a politician who does what he says he'll do. It's a refreshing break from the typical Washington charlatans who don't do anyth…

> I can respect someone who does what he says he'll do

The point of a leader is to do what's right, not what's popular. Short-circuiting our republic into a direct democracy defeats its purpose.

Re: Amicus brief on behalf of 97 tech companies

#24

Post by donaldguy »

johnloeber wrote: post #19
lpolovets wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard to compare market caps to GDP because GDP is kind of like "aggregate value of everything produced this year" while a market cap is "estimated total profits for a company from now until the end of time." So you might have a company like Walmart with $200b in market cap but ~$500b in annual revenue (3% of GDP by itself!) and $15b in net income. On the other hand there are companies like Adobe with $60b market…

To be clear: it's not just hard, it is explicitly wrong . A more correct measure is a much simpler one: the aggregate product of all these companies over the GDP. Note that this aggregate product is of course a component of the GDP, so you can express this neatly as a percentage. I see only one major accounting complication in constructing this metric, and that's the inclusion/exclusion of foreign products and subsid…

Are product numbers (domestic or multimarket) accessible somewhere to construct this? (Would revenue numbers suffice or is there more that should be factored in?)

Or is there an accepted measure of national economy that might play a sensible denominator for the sum I put together?

As I said, I don't know enough about economics to pretend to be making a reasonable comparison, I just went for the numbers I could find on a whim at 2am :-)

Thanks for actually knowing things

Re: Amicus brief on behalf of 97 tech companies

#25

Post by [deleted] »

johnloeber wrote: post #19
lpolovets wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard to compare market caps to GDP because GDP is kind of like "aggregate value of everything produced this year" while a market cap is "estimated total profits for a company from now until the end of time." So you might have a company like Walmart with $200b in market cap but ~$500b in annual revenue (3% of GDP by itself!) and $15b in net income. On the other hand there are companies like Adobe with $60b market…

To be clear: it's not just hard, it is explicitly wrong . A more correct measure is a much simpler one: the aggregate product of all these companies over the GDP. Note that this aggregate product is of course a component of the GDP, so you can express this neatly as a percentage. I see only one major accounting complication in constructing this metric, and that's the inclusion/exclusion of foreign products and subsid…

[deleted]

Re: Amicus brief on behalf of 97 tech companies

#26

Post by [deleted] »

jondubois wrote: post #18

I don't know what Americans are protesting about. I don't agree with the bans at all but at least you have a president who is true to his words for once - For me that is a higher moral value. You have to take the good with the bad. I don't agree with Trump on a lot of things but I can respect a politician who does what he says he'll do. It's a refreshing break from the typical Washington charlatans who don't do anyth…

[deleted]

Re: Amicus brief on behalf of 97 tech companies

#27

Post by qzervaas »

jondubois wrote: post #18

I don't know what Americans are protesting about. I don't agree with the bans at all but at least you have a president who is true to his words for once - For me that is a higher moral value. You have to take the good with the bad. I don't agree with Trump on a lot of things but I can respect a politician who does what he says he'll do. It's a refreshing break from the typical Washington charlatans who don't do anyth…

He says a lot of words. Many are false, some are true.

I don't understand how everybody (well, many people at least) ignore the obvious pathological lying and conclude he's doing what he said he would.

Re: Amicus brief on behalf of 97 tech companies

#28

Post by akiselev »

donaldguy wrote: post #17
lpolovets wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard to compare market caps to GDP because GDP is kind of like "aggregate value of everything produced this year" while a market cap is "estimated total profits for a company from now until the end of time." So you might have a company like Walmart with $200b in market cap but ~$500b in annual revenue (3% of GDP by itself!) and $15b in net income. On the other hand there are companies like Adobe with $60b market…

Fair points, both you and akiselev; thanks for the clarification I am not an especially economically-(or even really quantitatively) inclined person; I just see GDP bandied about as a metric of "size of economy" and market cap as "value of company". Revenue is probably locatable if someone wants to dig into quarterlies... I probably spent too much time on this exercise already

It's actually pretty easy but for a first order estimate: http://wolframalpha.com/input/?i=total+2015+revenue+of+Googl...

I'm on mobile so I can't get the interface to work properly but it's much easier on desktop Mathematica or WolframAlpha. In the above figure, I only included names from the OP that I was certain were public after a quick glance and I didn't even get to Microsoft. The number is something like $500 billion a year but as a sibling comment to yours mentions, this includes international revenue that may never make it to the US.

Accurate data on this scale is hard to come by without a working Bloomberg terminal.

Re: Amicus brief on behalf of 97 tech companies

#29

Post by 0xC0DECAFE2020 »

jondubois wrote: post #18

I don't know what Americans are protesting about. I don't agree with the bans at all but at least you have a president who is true to his words for once - For me that is a higher moral value. You have to take the good with the bad. I don't agree with Trump on a lot of things but I can respect a politician who does what he says he'll do. It's a refreshing break from the typical Washington charlatans who don't do anyth…

Says it all that you make a good point and are still getting down voted. This industry is very nervous about something and it's my belief it has more to do with what's coming next.
Post reply on HN