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To be clear and fair, Free Basics is the East India Company of our day.
by zeeshanm 11y ago
To be clear and fair, Free Basics is the East India Company of our day.
- neximo4 11y agoYou're kidding? Nothing like
- Lazare 11y agoThat seems like the sort of thing you might say if you had no clue what the East India Company was or did.
- RaleyField 11y agoFacebook's core business is procuring tea from India and selling opium to China and employs large privateer fleet so the comparison is apt.
- douche 11y agoFacebook investors would shit a brick if they were as profitable as the BEIC. The Dutch VOC gave out 18% dividends.
- Lazare 11y agoThe history of the BEIC is long and varied, but it actually ran into financial difficulty repeatedly and had to be bailed out by the British government, and was always vastly smaller and less profitable than the Dutch equivalent. The VOC did something like 5 times the amount of trade the BEIC did, at their respective peaks. (Incidentally, one of the many bailouts of the BEIC company took the form of the Tea Act of 1773. American's probably know it better as the trigger for the Boston Tea Party, and one of many steps on the road to revolution. And you thought Occupy Wall Street was upset about corporate bailouts...)