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

Post by Cthulhu_ » Wed, Apr 10, 2019, 9:19 AM UTC

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.

Post by taffer » Wed, Apr 10, 2019, 9:26 AM UTC

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…

Post by close04 » Wed, Apr 10, 2019, 9:31 AM UTC

em500 wrote: post #74

em500 wrote: post #68

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 c…

As another reference point, an annual salary for low-to-medium skilled labour in mid-17th century Holland was around 100 to 200 guilders, which would be about 20 million USD according to the implied "Infl. Adjusted" conversion in the article (upon which the entire premise of the article rests).

Post by ionised » Wed, Apr 10, 2019, 9:35 AM UTC

Illniyar wrote: post #39

Erlich_Bachman wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you even mean? It sounds like a witty metaphor for something, but even for what? DEIco is a real historical enterprise with well-documented operations.

I assume he meant to decry the use of inflation adjusting and similar shenanigans to be able to compare two groups in vastly different ages. It is similar to saying that a peasant in today's world eats/lives better then a king a thousand years ago. For instance if you use percentage of world wealth as ameasure, then Adam controlled 50% of the world's wealth, arguably the richest person to ever live (or mythologically…

Post by VintageCool » Wed, Apr 10, 2019, 9:39 AM UTC

fsloth wrote: post #54

arcticbull wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hello? Bitcoin? Is that you? Nah just a ghost of poor banking decisions past. Spooky.

I think Bitcoin resembles the Mississippi company a bit more. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississippi_Company TLDR: Scottish gambler becomes the most influential financial state official in France and uses his power to create an impossible financial scheme, makes everyone crazy for stocks for a colony that is mostly composed of colonists dying of hardship, resulting in an implosion of French Economy. Scottish, oh h…