[Jensson]

The government didn't tell them to kill or enslave people, they did that on their own since that was more profitable than not doing it. The government then stepped in and forced them to stop killing and enslaving, which made the world a better place, today we don't have many companies that kill or enslave thanks to governments.

[lazide]

Do you want someone to add up the gov’t direct death tolls so we can compare?

Just off the top of my head; holodomir, the Great Leap Forward, the holocaust, the Khmer Rouge are at least 10x the East India companies death toll. We should probably add in war casualties too - at a minimum WW1 and WW2. I think I could list off probably 10 more with about 5 more minutes of work.

People can be terrible. More direct power usually means more terrible.

Gov’ts usually have the most direct power.

East India company was an odd case because they were granted defacto delegated gov’t power over a region that was full of ‘others’.

Considering the factors involved, it’s amazing they weren’t worse. Like the French Congo [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Congo].

[astrange]

Slavery isn't profitable, people do it for emotional or ideological reasons, or because they're not competent enough to run a business that has to actually trade.

This is literally why economics is called "the dismal science". Slaveowners called economists that when the economists told them to stop doing slavery.