Could Amazon buy a country?

Last year, Roger Ver and a few others announced a project called FreeSociety, with the aim of purchasing sovereignty from an existing country. They haven’t announced how much money they have, but it will likely be in the low single-digit billions. As of Q1 2017, Amazon had $22 Billion cash.

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I don’t know what the P/E ratio of a country should be, but $22B is 15 times the GDP of Saint Kitts and 50 times the GDP of Sint Maarten. They could legitimately find a government that is struggling with debt and offer to buy half the land in the country with a condition of being recognized by the government as a sovereign nation.

It seems crazy to think about, but it would save Amazon a ton of taxes if they could set their own tax policy for a headquarters, and even if it’s not Amazon, there are a handful of other companies that are big enough to make it happen—Apple had $256 Billion in cash as of Q1 2017.

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