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164 points Anon84 | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
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duttish ◴[] No.46189143[source]
I'll throw the British South Sea Trading Company into the ring for that title of most overvalued company ever.

It had the king himself on the board. The company value represented a decent fraction of the national gdp at the time. All without actually never producing anything of actual value. It was just bribes and speculation all the way through. It's wild.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Sea_Company

Extra History did a more easily digestible series, which was how I learned about it in the first place. https://youtu.be/k1kndKWJKB8

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petesergeant ◴[] No.46189620[source]
> The company value represented a decent fraction of the national gdp at the time.

The company's market-cap was almost 3 times national GDP

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maratc ◴[] No.46189694[source]
We should stop comparing incomparable things, like companies market cap (measured in dollars or pounds) to national GDPs (measured in dollars or pounds per year,) unless we want to reach outrageous but incorrect conclusions.
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gilbetron ◴[] No.46191765{3}[source]
What simple method would you use instead? It is effective to have such comparisons for quick communication of the relative size of things.
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1. testrun ◴[] No.46191858{4}[source]
It is effective but wrong. It is the same as to compare a river flow to dam volume. There is a relation, but does not mean anything.

A better comparison is to compare somebody's net value to the total housing value of a city. For instance comparing Musk's net value to the total value of all the houses/apartments in New York. Or the the value of the gold in Fort Knox.