Every once in a while, when your favorite Autopian writers crank out the next article for you to be enjoyed and entertained by, we make a silly mistake or two. Usually, it’s just a typo or a few that we fix and move along with our day. But, sometimes, a small error turns into something hilarious.
Back at the old site, a headline I wrote was changed before publishing, and what came out of the other end made for an unfortunately funny introduction to the then-new Volkswagen Golf R. Thankfully, we caught and fixed that pretty quickly. Look, those 31 horses are working really hard.
Today, our Matt Hardigree had his own gaffe when he accidentally referred to the UK as a company as he explained the country’s rollback of its ICE sales ban. Reader …getstoneyII noticed it:
“…the Tory government of PM Sunak has pulled what critics are calling a “U-turn” on the company’s …”
“…and risk the company’s long-term industrial position.”
Even though these may be Freudian slips, it still sums up the whole EV thing nicely. It’s never been about the environment, it’s about creating a new economic marketplace to supplement the super-saturated ICE market, only with countries acting as bigger “companies.”
All these government mandates are gonna end up being a huge waste of time, energy(ha), and money.
Icouldntfindaclevername responded:
In other news, the UK is the first country to become an LLC
Then TheHairyNug drove it home:
You joke, but the East India Company was p real
If you aren’t up to snuff on the East India Company, I’ll let A&E’s History explain:
One of the biggest, most dominant corporations in history operated long before the emergence of tech giants like Apple or Google or Amazon. The English East India Company was incorporated by royal charter on December 31, 1600 and went on to act as a part-trade organization, part-nation-state and reap vast profits from overseas trade with India, China, Persia and Indonesia for more than two centuries. Its business flooded England with affordable tea, cotton textiles and spices, and richly rewarded its London investors with returns as high as 30 percent.
[…]
But just when the East India Company’s grip on trade weakened in the late 18th century, it found a new calling as an empire-builder. At one point, this mega corporation commanded a private army of 260,000 soldiers, twice the size of the standing British army. That kind of manpower was more than enough to scare off the remaining competition, conquer territory and coerce Indian rulers into one-sided contracts that granted the Company lucrative taxation powers.
The East India Company was involved in the slave trade as well as sending opium to China. Heavy stuff for a COTD and I’ll let you do your own research there.
Have a great evening, everyone!
(Topshot: Royal Museums Greenwich artwork ID: 12649)
Also see the Hudson’s Bay Company, which still exists, and owned rights to a massive chunk of North America in it’s heyday. Founded 1670, it’s one of the oldest corporations on the planet.
Page 73. Johnson, Navin R.
I’m somebody now!
🙂
The best part of an article about a typo? “Autopian writers crank out the next article for you to be enjoyed and entertained by”. You to be enjoyed by? Are we being enjoyed by the article? I, for one, did not come here to simply be enjoyed by an article. I will be respected, dammit!
It’s a give-and-take man. We are entertained by said article, and it gets to enjoy us reading it. Win win!
Dang, so Pirates of the Caribbean was actually a documentary series.
Watch “Black Sails” too.
More truth than fiction.
I was just learning oodles about the East India Company in the “Empire” podcast, hosted by William Dalrymple and Anita Anand.
They describe the company as the Amazon of its day, only with a standing army.
Were all the other armies sitting down?
or laying down. You had to pay them extra to stand. It was in their union contract. Or was that their confederate contract. Either way, a standing army is the way to go, history has shown us that.
A standing army was proven to be ineffective in the face of withering machine gun fire in World War 1. In that situation, a prone army is a living army.
The French 🙂
I kid, I kid
I guess if Amazon had a standing army, they would have to use only women soldiers.
The craziest thing is that you could buy stock in these companies on exchanges just like any other publicly traded company today
Thanks for the feature!
And it then led to the South Sea Bubble!
I enjoyed Extra History’s explanation of that—and recommend it to anyone who likes history. Be warned, though; that’s a massive YouTube rabbit hole
reminds me of when pepsi was the world’s 7th largest navy…
Wait what? They have/had their own ships?
It has to do with Pepsi entering the USSR marketplace but Soviet currency not being able to be sent outside of the country. I forget the minutiae, but Pepsi was given ownership of some ships as collateral at the time.
yeah, the ships were only good for scrapping, and I don’t think many of them even floated, but technically they did have something like 20+ warships in their inventory…
It is a true story!
Wait, so, what is Charles’ role in this company? I’m torn between “Chief Marketing Officer” and “Celebrity Spokesman”.
Also, the Scottish Division seems to have consumed next year’s whiskey budget already. I’m not going to tell you what the Welsh have been up to.
I could tell you what the Welsh have been up to – but it’s unpronounceable.
Pass the Haggis.