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The Dutch East India Co was richer than Apple, Google, Facebook combined (2017)

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Re: The Dutch East India Co was richer than Apple, Google, Facebook combined (2017)

#61

Post by avenius »

mcv wrote: post #37
xeeeeeeeeeeenu wrote: post #2

Dutch East India Company had its own colonies and army. Practically speaking, it was a branch of the Dutch government, so comparing it to the contemporary companies doesn't make much sense.

Was the VOC a branch of the Dutch government, or was the Dutch government a branch of the VOC? The Dutch government was extremely trade-oriented during the 17th century, and the army would be deployed to protect the trade interests of the VOC.

I believe it started out as an independent company, but was later taken over by the Dutch government.

Re: The Dutch East India Co was richer than Apple, Google, Facebook combined (2017)

#62

Post by melling »

zeropnc wrote: post #59
jayalpha wrote: post #58

Are Apple Google and Facebook so rich? And how do you measure it? (Have not read the link). t the time of his death in 1937, John D. Rockefeller was worth an estimated $1.4 billion. Rockefeller was the first man in history to ever accumulate more than $1 billion (nominal dollars) in total wealth. Rockefeller's $1.4 billion net worth in 1937 was 1/65th of the total GDP of the United States. In 2011, the total GDP of t…

> 232 billion I mean, there's a guy coming pretty close to that right now.

He just lost 25% of his money.

Re: The Dutch East India Co was richer than Apple, Google, Facebook combined (2017)

#63

Post by dalbasal »

The history of these companies (also the British east India company, and the various British and French companies of the Americas) is a massive part of modern history, and how the world got to where we are.

They were richer than monarchies, had armies, controlled massive colonies, founded cities, printed money, made international trade deals/wars. They ran circles around the older form of monarchy-run-empires like the Portuguese and Spanish. Late European colonial empires inherited their empires.

When Marx wrote about international capitalism (eg capitalism as a "fourth estate") in the 1840s, this is what he was referring to.

Re: The Dutch East India Co was richer than Apple, Google, Facebook combined (2017)

#64

Post by freddie_mercury »

jayalpha wrote: post #58

Are Apple Google and Facebook so rich? And how do you measure it? (Have not read the link). t the time of his death in 1937, John D. Rockefeller was worth an estimated $1.4 billion. Rockefeller was the first man in history to ever accumulate more than $1 billion (nominal dollars) in total wealth. Rockefeller's $1.4 billion net worth in 1937 was 1/65th of the total GDP of the United States. In 2011, the total GDP of t…

> Rockefeller was the first man in history to ever accumulate more than $1 billion (nominal dollars) in total wealth.

The first person to reach $1 billion USD isn't that impressive, since USD has only been around for a short period of time.

Other people before Rockefeller were richer, including a large number of monarchs, emperors, etc.

Augustus Caesar, for instance, was once estimated to have a personal net worth of $4.7 trillion, substantially more than Rockefeller.

Re: The Dutch East India Co was richer than Apple, Google, Facebook combined (2017)

#65

Post by jacquesm »

coldtea wrote: post #48
ignoramous wrote: post #23

VOC (Dutch East India Company) was more powerful than most nations at the time. I asked this question on Quora once and got interesting answers [0]. VOC was an incredible enterprise, and there are a few today too, imo, they exist as conglomerates (Samsung, P&G, Amazon), political entities (CIA, CPC), monopolies (Maersk, Google), syndicates (DeBeers [1], NeoAristocrats [2], BigPharma, BigBank, BigSugar, BigOil), and c…

> VOC was an incredible enterprise It's easy to be incredible on the backs and dead bodies of slaves...

This should not be downvoted, it is historically accurate, the VOC imported 10's of thousands of slaves to do work that they were not prepared to pay for.

It's a nice example of there being a huge crime at the foundation of huge riches, the VOC was definitely not a clean company by any stretch of the imagination and to this day the names of those who were responsible for the worst atrocities are proudly on display in the streets of various Dutch cities. Nothing to be proud of.

Re: The Dutch East India Co was richer than Apple, Google, Facebook combined (2017)

#66

Post by jacquesm »

debaserab2 wrote: post #9
black-tea wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Practically speaking some of today's big companies are branches of the government too.

Name one?

Blackwater/Xe/Academi/whatever they will whitewash their name to next.

Re: The Dutch East India Co was richer than Apple, Google, Facebook combined (2017)

#67

Post by dalbasal »

caymanjim wrote: post #16

The Mississippi Company was never really worth $6.5T in any meaningful sense. Unlike Dutch East India, Mississippi was purely a speculative bubble. It only hit that value for a few weeks at the end before the whole thing imploded.

South sea company too.

That said, you could make a similar case about apple. If you measure by dividends, I think the VOC's lead over all those companies grows by a lot.

Re: The Dutch East India Co was richer than Apple, Google, Facebook combined (2017)

#68

Post by em500 »

This is a non-sensical article, relying on some obfuscating math hidden behind "Infl. Adjusted".

Inflation adjustments gets pretty fuzzy even in the same nation across a few decades, let alone between different nations across centuries.

The article equates the 1637 peak valuation of 78 million guilders with current day 7,900,000 million dollars (not the 79,000 million according to the bad math in the article!). Now consider that the initial capital raised for the company was 6.4 million guilders in 1602. That would be around 600 billion USD. (I'm neglecting inflation between 1602 and 1637 here, that doesn't change my point.) This was raised around 1800 families, with share varying from 50 to 85,000 guilders, which according to the implied inflation/currency conversion is between 5 million and 8.6 billion USD. How credible is is this conversion factor?

Consider as another reference that the nominal value increased 12 fold over 35 years. Todays elite PE/VC/incubators would probably scoff at such low ambitions. (Though the East India Co was pretty profitable and paid handsome dividends, so the returns are higher than capital gains.)

Re: The Dutch East India Co was richer than Apple, Google, Facebook combined (2017)

#69

Post by Cthulhu_ »

coldtea wrote: post #48
ignoramous wrote: post #23

VOC (Dutch East India Company) was more powerful than most nations at the time. I asked this question on Quora once and got interesting answers [0]. VOC was an incredible enterprise, and there are a few today too, imo, they exist as conglomerates (Samsung, P&G, Amazon), political entities (CIA, CPC), monopolies (Maersk, Google), syndicates (DeBeers [1], NeoAristocrats [2], BigPharma, BigBank, BigSugar, BigOil), and c…

> VOC was an incredible enterprise It's easy to be incredible on the backs and dead bodies of slaves...

I'm seeing a strong correlation with modern-day companies like Amazon - hugely profitable, wealthy company that exploit their hands-on workers in the warehouses.

The other correlation, for which both Amazon and the VOC deserve praise for, is their huge infrastructural reach and development. That is, the VOC helped mostly Europe access the products from the east-indies at the time, and made intercontinental trade a thing. In terms of scale it's probably still nothing compared to modern-day transport, but still.

Re: The Dutch East India Co was richer than Apple, Google, Facebook combined (2017)

#70

Post by Cthulhu_ »

freddie_mercury wrote: post #64
jayalpha wrote: post #58

Are Apple Google and Facebook so rich? And how do you measure it? (Have not read the link). t the time of his death in 1937, John D. Rockefeller was worth an estimated $1.4 billion. Rockefeller was the first man in history to ever accumulate more than $1 billion (nominal dollars) in total wealth. Rockefeller's $1.4 billion net worth in 1937 was 1/65th of the total GDP of the United States. In 2011, the total GDP of t…

> Rockefeller was the first man in history to ever accumulate more than $1 billion (nominal dollars) in total wealth. The first person to reach $1 billion USD isn't that impressive, since USD has only been around for a short period of time. Other people before Rockefeller were richer, including a large number of monarchs, emperors, etc. Augustus Caesar, for instance, was once estimated to have a personal net worth of…

When comparing people like that, there's an important differentiation - was it Augustus' personal wealth, or was his wealth and the country's wealth considered the same? A lot of monarchs from the times before the monarchy and state were separate entities like they usually are nowadays have a whole country's wealth.

But I hope an economist or historian can answer that.

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