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Rockefeller’s Lesson
I am reading “Titan,” the biography on John D. Rockefeller. Matthew McConaughey recommended it once, so why not?
This is after 200 pages of details about Rockefeller’s harsh business tactics, buying out competitors and monopolizing the industry, leading the author to draw this conclusion. I think these teaches us the fragility of our economic system, and if this isn’t too philosophical, the fragility of the human integrity. If left to our own devices, we often create inequality and disarray.
What say you?
What I find super interesting is that in 1911, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Standard Oil was an illegal monopoly— Standard Oil's dissolution into 34 smaller companies is cited as one of the catalysts that made Rockefeller became the richest person in modern history, because the initial income of the individual enterprises was much bigger than that of a single larger company.
This is why I think when people get scared about Facebook, Amazon, or Google getting split up... in all likelihood this would be good for shareholders.
Whether this is good for human integrity... that am am not sure about.
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