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Comment by retrocryptid | Hacker News Reader

Yes. The East India Company was notoriously short lived.

I know this was intended to be sarcastic, but it is the exception that proves the rule. The big East India Companies (both the Dutch and English ones) only really lasted so long because of governmental charters that granted them valuable monopolies on trade, and they later became models for Standard Oil and other similar monopolistic businesses that really kicked off the era of the perpetual company. However, they were basically arms of their respective imperial governments.

So if you countered with a list of companies in the 1830s that lasted only 3 months, that would be great.

Surely you understand the obvious survivorship bias problem with that demand.

you mean you dont recall your stale shares in United Hay?

But if your assertion is "we used to have a lot of business in the past that failed quickly," I would hope you would offer some data to backup that assertion.

That is not my assertion, because I'm not user pclmulqdq.

That's how conditionals work.

You can definitely find diaries from the Gold Rushes of the 1800's where the author will write something to the effect of "me and twelve other men formed a company last night", matter-of-factly. This is among reports of various threats to life and limb that were normal to that time and place.

The companies usually failed within a few weeks because of infighting.

[citation needed]

"Exception that proves the rule" requires the example to be notable specifically because the example violates the rule. In this case, the East India Company is not notable because it was long-lived.

I understood the point to be that they were exceptional because they were arms of governments.

I think they were extensions of the state, not the government.

It certainly is notable for its longevity, outliving most of today's companies. And there is a good reason for that longevity: its special arrangement with the crown.

Yes, and the rule parent initially stated was "Pretty much all businesses used to be basically ephemeral until about 150 years ago".

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