
Saudi Aramco Is World’s Most Profitable Company, Far Exceeding Apple - dkyc
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/01/business/saudi-aramco-profit.html
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tmh79
Saudi Aramco is essentially part of the Saudi government, not an apples to
apples comparison IMO. If they're going to discount the free mineral rights
given to Aramco, then they should also account for the social services that
the government uses Aramco to pay for, because without the social services,
you're not getting free mineral rights.

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gimmeThaBeet
I guess it depends on which numbers you're using. The $111 billion quoted
number for net income does not include the $55.6 billion in royalties to the
Kingdom that Aramco records as an expense.

Yes, the royal family is the only shareholder _and the government_ , so it's
splitting hairs in the sense they're getting the money from those mineral
rights, on the other hand its even more money. But if they sold the whole kit
and kaboodle last year, whoever owned it would make $111B and the Kingdom
would get $55.6B.

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rhizome
That sounds like an arrangement very similar to Venezuela's oil industry,
except with a level of personal enrichment far beyond the structure of
Venezuela's industry, which has enjoyed constant opprobrium as the work of a
dictator.

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yingw787
This isn't terribly surprising to me. Pulling money out of the ground is a
high-margin, low (relative) cost deal. Like selling $1 for $2.

I do wonder how many people know that the wealthiest companies are private,
just like how the wealthiest people/families/syndicates do not publish nor
reveal their wealth in any meaningful way. It's like the universe's dark
matter. At some point, money becomes power, and power always whispers.

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OldFatCactus
what other private companies are known to be significantly more profitable
than Apple?

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walterbell
What private organizations have assets which compounded in value over
centuries?

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reaperducer
European insurance companies. The Hudson Bay Company, maybe?

There are restaurants in the U.S. that are a couple of centuries old. They
might own the building by now.

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joelthelion
It's not hard to be profitable when you're not paying for your
externalities...

~~~
markdown
In being the factory of the world, it's the Chinese who pay while we all enjoy
our shiny new phones.

~~~
rcMgD2BwE72F
What externalities are you talking about? Sure these poor workers are
suffering for our comfort, but there must be poor neighbors closer to you that
are more to be pitied (they depend on you more than the Chinese). Also, the
externalities of Saudi Aramco are mostly about the environment (climate, air
pollution, war, terrorism, dictatorship). That's a whole different story,
isn't it?

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moultano
Either it stops being profitable because we stop using its product and
civilization survives, or it stops being profitable because we stop using its
product because civilization collapses. Either way, the long term outlook
isn't good.

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tetrep
I don't think the latter is true. Crude oil is still a great source of fuel
and even in the worst case society collapse people will still need fire.

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revscat
That's making the rather bold assumption that the climate will be habitable
for humankind.

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londons_explore
I can see a potential future where we destroy the environment so badly we
decide to permanently live indoors with artificial atmosphere, yet we still
burn oil outdoors...

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Talyen42
If aramco is a company, so is the united states IMHO

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cphoover
Right... if we are counting nationalized entities it's not a fair comparison
really.

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gcbw2
And where do you draw the line?

Most US based telCos today are based on a government backed monopoly of
wireless spectrum and all of them received several billions dollars until last
year to improve infrastructure (which none of them did, and had zero
consequences)

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dajohnson89
source please?

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coldtea
For what? Both are widely known facts.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Service_Fund](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Service_Fund)

[https://www.wired.com/story/the-dangers-of-big-city-
subsidie...](https://www.wired.com/story/the-dangers-of-big-city-subsidies/)

[https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/08/isps-want-to-
be-...](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/08/isps-want-to-be-utilities-
but-only-to-get-more-money-from-the-government/)

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return0
> Somewhere around two-thirds of Saudi nationals work for the government. Many
> of these people do virtually nothing, they are employed simply for social
> purposes, to keep the population happy. Thus, their incomes are very similar
> to universal basic incomes. The Saudi government gets 90 percent of its
> income from oil revenue, which given the ease of producing oil in Saudi
> Arabia and the use of foreign partners to do much of the producing makes
> this revenue source pretty similar to simply printing money. In Saudi Arabia
> money doesn’t grow on trees, but it does bubble out of the ground.

Saudi has been running a real large scale UBI experiment for decades, showing
how you end up a stagnant, backwards and authoritarian society.

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffreydorfman/2016/10/03/saudi...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffreydorfman/2016/10/03/saudi-
government-budget-cuts-prove-basic-income-is-no-solution-to-slow-economic-
growth/#3d440ead4bbe)

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joosters
'End up?' What do you think the Saudi economy/society was like before the oil?

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return0
> Until the 1960s, most of the population was nomadic or seminomadic; due to
> rapid economic and urban growth, more than 95% of the population is now
> settled.

you would expect that the massive population explosion, enrichment and
urbanization would empower at least some liberalization some 3 generations
later, or at least catch up with average middle east culture

~~~
joosters
Your quote describes a rapid economic growth, yet you were telling us the
country had stagnated and gone backwards since the oil revenue came, in your
first comment?

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return0
i said society, not economy

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evancox100
I'm very puzzled, if they're generating $25 billion in profit/quarter, why do
they need to get a loan? They could just pocket the earnings for a couple
months.

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amelius
But for how long?

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jak92
Right? Didn't all the peak oil fanatics say we'd run of oil years ago?

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rcMgD2BwE72F
Peak "conventional" oil has been reached years ago. The reason why oil
production keeps rising is because Big Money finances shale oil and tar sands,
both of which are highly unprofitable.

For some reasons, peak oil fanatics never thought Wall Street (or the Fed?)
would lend free money to money-losing ventures that are literally ruining our
planet. Tell me, who are the fanatics again?

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pembrook
They are not “highly unprofitable.”

Trust me, oil companies are not doing this for charity. Of course, when the
price of oil is driven downwards on purpose by the Saudis ramping up
production (as it was a few years ago), these higher cost methods of
extraction _can_ become unprofitable. But the price of oil is again in a range
where these methods are profitable.

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gandalfian
Weirdly behind very closed doors it's said to still be run as a modern
American western company. No body wants to mess with what works.

Of course the trillion dollar question is how much oil is truly left?

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glbrew
If those are rules we are playing by I would say the US Mint is the most
profitable company.

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DeonPenny
To bad they will never publish their books.

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tw04
Fortunately Apple doesn't use their wealth to assassinate detractors...

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qaq
for now, but who knows how things will look like in a 100 years

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stcredzero
Even in 2019, one mostly doesn't assassinate detractors in the US. Instead,
they're bought off or discredited.

