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Comment by SanjayMehta | Hacker News Reader

They can keep the stupid rock provided they return the $45 trillion they stole from India over 200 years.

https://www.financialexpress.com/india-news/british-took-45-...

IIRC that is an absolutely bullshit number based on taking what the Brits actually did steal, giving it the most favorable conversion to USD, and then applying a few hundred years of compounding interest.

7% APR for 300 years is a 650,000,000x return.

>>and then applying a few hundred years of compounding interest.

Yeah that is unfortunately how money works. Why do you think countries like USA are so rich, they've been making investments for a few centuries now.

Robbers and looter should pay for opportunity costs, this is how it should work.

The problem with this logic is it means that the largest ever theft was some hunter-gatherer stealing a spear 100,000 years ago. That's worth almost 10^3000 dollars now, you know!

At some distance in time, returns on capital are no longer adequately approximated by "x%APR". I think this distance in time is at most around 150 years, and even then only in the USA. In most of the world, it's far less than that.

People can rob and loot. A notion of "country" that conflates things separated by hundreds of years is a polite fiction at best.

What do you think inflation is?

Depends on the basket, the location, and the time period!

Seeing what it would cost to replace the things directly extracted from India today would be extremely interesting, actually. Price of cotton * quantity, etc.

Oh so they only took 70k worth of stuff ... Sounds about right /s

Also yes I didn't compound, if we compound it's even less lol

By this logic, don't the Greeks owe the Israelis a nonillion USD for the Alexandrian conquests?

sucks to lose but winners do what they want

Says the winner.

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