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Comment by fsloth | Hacker News Reader

1. It's not about empowering everyone on the planet, it's about creating companies which become billion dollar unicorns

2. The probability of Unicornism is directly related to the size of the market you can access. US is the biggest single market on the planet.

3. Accessibility of markets: While EU is the second largest single market [0] US companies have entered european markets just fine. On the other hand, to operate in china, it's best to be a chinese company. Hence, to fund growth on a global scale going native in china is an obvious move.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_countries...

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> US is the biggest single market on the planet.

By which measure? China has nearly five times as many inhabitants, the biggest economic growth over the past three decades of any country, and out-produces the US by over nine thousand. If it's not yet the biggest market on the planet yet, it soon will be.

It will be, sure, but it's not there. Also the markets are very different - the Chinese government is much more likely to take an active role in the governing of large companies.

China may become richer but it will have to deal with the effects of a very fast aging population as well which will impede its economy as well.

By monetary measure.

China is a lot bigger market than the US. EU is slightly bigger. US is third. Maybe with extended markets (e.g. Central America and Canada for US, Eastern Europe for EU, Belt and Road area for China, US is number two). You need to consider several factors, like number of people, as well.

A big problem for the US is that it is a litle off, while most other social/cultural areas are closely connected. For instance, China and Russia might be almost as close allies as the pre-Trump US and Europe. But because Russia and Europe are so close, in fact the business dependencies between both are quite high as well. So a lot of business happens in that exchange, with high values due to the political risks. Since the US lacks such interdependencies with close neighbors it can survive better in a time like WW2 but it is harder in a long peace time like we currently have.

"China and Russia might be almost as close allies as the pre-Trump US and Europe. "

That completely underestimates the cultural ties US and 'Europe' has and overestimates the co-operation between parties who co-operate pragmatically from time to time but really can't trust or understand each other.

" US lacks such interdependencies with close neighbors it can survive better in a time like WW2 but it is harder in a long peace time like we currently have."

That's some extremely peculiar economic calculus.

Nominal GDP is used to measure country market sizes, sorry.

First google result already says different: http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/market-size.htm...

I woud assume it's not a term like "revenue" but more a general word. It's also not smart for your own analysis to assume a single value for it. If you write a business case for instance, it's quite smart to summarize how you size the market for your product/service as well.

Are you sure nominal GDP is the right metric to be using to compare market size? By adjusted (PPP) GDP it's China, EU and then the US. Those billions can go a lot further in China and the EU than they can in the US.

https://www.thebalance.com/world-s-largest-economy-3306044

As a complete economist noob this is my understanding: When discussing huge investements, the cost of goods and services does not really matter, but what matters is that what is the expected profit margin from the investment and at what risk.

From this point of view dollars do equal the estimated size, not how much commodities or services you can buy with it.

Someone with more experience can comment hopefully on this.

Yes, if you want the most money, you want the highest nominal number.

Something to consider as well, is there is fairly wide spread consensus that China's GDP is significantly artificially inflated.

You want money in nominal terms, so PPP doesn't matter. EU is not really a single market, they have unified regulations, which is helpful, but at the very least language differences mean you're doing custom work for every country.

> EU is not really a single market, they have unified regulations, which is helpful

The EU doesn't really have unified regulations. I mean, regulations passed at the EU level are unified, but countries have a great degree of country-specific regulations themselves.

Now, technically states within the US have the ability to regulate things at the state level, but due to various aspects of Constitutional law (the Commerce Clause, and case law such as the Sherman Antitrust Act, etc.), there are far fewer state-specific regulations that companies have to worry about for interstate commerce within the US than international commerce within the EU. Unless you're dealing with very specific regulated industries (money transmission, health insurance, etc.), you generally don't have to worry about a lot for basic interstate commerce in the US.

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