John D. Rockefeller, every mention

Standard Oil Part I · Acquired Sep 22, 2021 · 76 mentions

• ▶ 57:58 Ben Gilbert Oh, Mr.
• ▶ 58:03 Ben Gilbert And of course, Rockefeller is like, jackpot!
• ▶ 1:00:15 David Rosenthal Oh, and he was really like, he was like, you know, Rockefeller, he's driven by this divine calling.
• ▶ 1:00:38 Ben Gilbert Cause Rockefeller needed to, you know, he needed to preserve the,
• ▶ 1:00:57 David Rosenthal Although he would, Rockefeller was for sure the one pulling the strings.
• ▶ 1:02:22 David Rosenthal Uh, when Rockefeller was running negotiations with the railroads, uh, he always was able to get pretty good rates, uh, shipping rates because he had a BATNA.
• ▶ 1:07:45 David Rosenthal And Standard, and Rockefeller, and Flagler, they're like, they're like the, they're like the godfather.
• ▶ 1:08:20 David Rosenthal Um, but you know, that's not enough for young Rockefeller.
• ▶ 1:11:34 Ben Gilbert And also this, like, selling shares to raise equity capital thing, Rockefeller is like, my god, that is brilliant.
• ▶ 1:14:36 David Rosenthal So Rockefeller comes up with the idea.
• ▶ 1:15:58 David Rosenthal Uh, Chernow writes, whatever the debates about his ethics, economists and historians have unanimously extolled Rockefeller's role as a pioneer of the modern corporation.
• ▶ 1:16:09 David Rosenthal Uh, and then quoting from, uh, another biographer of Rockefeller, Rockefeller must be accepted as the greatest
• ▶ 1:17:06 Ben Gilbert And let's talk about this, uh, Rockefeller's argument to the societal benefit for a moment, which is like,
• ▶ 1:17:37 Ben Gilbert And his argument is really like, this is for the betterment of
• ▶ 1:17:50 David Rosenthal And he's right.
• ▶ 1:17:53 David Rosenthal He's totally right.
• ▶ 1:21:39 David Rosenthal And in fact, later in life, when, uh, Rockefeller would be getting grilled in, in federal depositions, uh, he would be asked if he was ever a director or involved in the Southern Improvement Company, uh,
• ▶ 1:23:50 Ben Gilbert And so, if there's, like, a cooperation opportunity for the railroads and, you know, Rockefeller's offering them, I can kind of solve your problem here and we can sort of smooth out business.
• ▶ 1:28:06 David Rosenthal Yep, yep, and, and the railroads and Rockefeller, like, like this, this, this is the point where public opinion really starts to, uh, uh, start to get concerned about Standard Oil.
• ▶ 1:28:29 David Rosenthal Uh, so the railroads, they, they know they've maybe gone a little bit too far, and they're like, uh, guys, I don't know that we can actually do this, and, uh, Rockefeller and Flagler, they're like, ah, it's okay,
• ▶ 1:29:00 David Rosenthal Flagler and Rockefeller go around to all the other refiners in Cleveland.
• ▶ 1:29:36 David Rosenthal So now Flagler and Rockefeller go to them and say like, you know, that great rate that we organized for you.
• ▶ 1:30:15 Ben Gilbert And there's something Larry says, like Rockefeller says, own shares of Standard Oil, and your family will
• ▶ 1:31:20 Ben Gilbert Yeah, what, what they, what the refiners even paid to build the factories in the first place, and, and Rockefeller's argument is like, well, we're just gonna shut most of these down anyway.
• ▶ 1:34:45 David Rosenthal You know, Rockefeller and Flagler and this whole crew, like these guys are paranoid as well, right?
• ▶ 1:40:41 David Rosenthal Rockefeller is like, he, he reigns in his, his exuberant execs on this and says, no, no, we're going to fight it with every, like, you know, uh, political, you know, uh, leverage that we have, which they do, but they don't succeed.
• ▶ 1:41:01 David Rosenthal And I think a bunch of people in standard hill, like probably like pissed at John or like, don't understand why.
• ▶ 1:41:09 David Rosenthal And Rockefeller's like, oh, don't worry.
• ▶ 1:41:21 David Rosenthal Rockefeller's like, I got all the railroads in my pocket.
• ▶ 1:44:39 David Rosenthal I mean, this was kind of Rockefeller's style and Standard Oil's style.
• ▶ 1:45:05 David Rosenthal Like, Rockefeller, Standard, like, they have won.
• ▶ 1:47:12 David Rosenthal As, uh, as, um, turnout rates by this point in time, Rockefeller's creation could only be discussed in superlatives.
• ▶ 1:47:30 David Rosenthal In 1883 official Standard Oil headquarters moves to Manhattan to New York City and Rockefeller himself.
• ▶ 1:48:16 David Rosenthal But, uh, so Rockefeller and, uh, you know, his brother and all of his, their lieutenants, you know, they moved to New York also around this time.
• ▶ 1:48:27 David Rosenthal Uh, so, uh, they, Rockefeller moves, uh, to right off Fifth Avenue, uh, in the fifties.
• ▶ 1:49:17 Ben Gilbert Well, part two, I mean, we'll have a lot to say about, um, universities and Rockefellers in New York, and, um, I, we haven't touched a lot on the personal side of Rockefeller, other than saying he was deeply, deeply religious and, um,…
• ▶ 1:50:42 Ben Gilbert as “Rockefeller”
• ▶ 1:53:04 Ben Gilbert Uh, Rockefeller?
• ▶ 1:53:13 David Rosenthal Uh, and, uh, so the act, you know, does pass, but, but Sherman makes the political gamble that, like, the, the political power and stature that he's going to get from doing this is going to be worth more than the money that he's going to…
• ▶ 1:54:10 David Rosenthal They were like, oh, great.
• ▶ 1:54:36 Ben Gilbert Is it Rockefeller again?
• ▶ 1:54:38 David Rosenthal It is John D.
• ▶ 1:55:09 David Rosenthal And, uh, in 1896 Rockefeller is like, well,
• ▶ 1:58:10 Ben Gilbert I want to talk about like the public sentiment versus Rockefeller's defense.
• ▶ 2:00:41 Ben Gilbert And of course, Rockefeller's defense to all this is saying, look, social Darwinism is bad.
• ▶ 2:01:18 Ben Gilbert And so the way he sort of makes this argument is it was a cooperative success.
• ▶ 2:01:44 Ben Gilbert He really seems to have deeply believed that this, like, invisible hand, the Adam Smith concept of, you know, the, the invisible hand that sort of guides the, the free market, that it kind of just takes too long, and there's a lot of bad…
• ▶ 2:02:15 Ben Gilbert Like, he, he very much, it's not communist, like, and it's not real, it's not social, it's, it's this interesting, like, uniquely American viewpoint on actually social Darwinism and free market capitalism is a bad thing, and everybody just…
• ▶ 2:02:41 David Rosenthal And, you know, um, Chernow even, even talks about this, like in, in some ways, uh, what, what Rockefeller was trying to do and what standard became shared just as much, um, you know, intellectual grounding as with like Marx and communism,…
• ▶ 2:03:29 Ben Gilbert Yeah, and the place where it kind of falls down is where he sort of says, like, look, if we just knife fight to the death, someone's gonna win, and ultimately, that one is gonna be me, because I'm the best at this, and like, he's probably…
• ▶ 2:03:58 Ben Gilbert You know, and, and bring them into my business church is, is very much how he sort of thought about it.
• ▶ 2:04:04 Ben Gilbert And he come into the light and, and embrace the standard oil.
• ▶ 2:04:26 Ben Gilbert Him accelerating the death of all of these businesses and saying, eh, it was inevitable, and at least they're getting some upside now.
• ▶ 2:05:02 Ben Gilbert There, there are places where, like, it, it made sense for him to exert his power to reorganize the industry for the betterment of all the producers involved and all the consumers, but those places are far more limited than the number of…
• ▶ 2:06:26 David Rosenthal The other thread I want to talk about here in narratives is Rockefeller and standard oil as a organization, but Rockefeller as a person is really like the prototype of so much of American culture today.
• ▶ 2:06:45 David Rosenthal Like he is, he was simultaneously viewed as this like, you know, sinister villain and as this great hero.
• ▶ 2:06:56 David Rosenthal And like people, you know, people hated him, but people wanted to be him.
• ▶ 2:07:28 David Rosenthal There's, um, there's this great quote in, in Titan, uh, it says the general public was of two minds and viewed the new entrepreneurs of which Rockefeller was the foremost as alternatively sinister and heroic.
• ▶ 2:07:43 David Rosenthal By 1888, Rockefeller began to pop up in fawning magazine features about rich Americans.
• ▶ 2:07:50 David Rosenthal But he was also singled out as a notorious trust king in Joseph Pulitzer's world and other papers.
• ▶ 2:08:07 David Rosenthal At the same time that he's in, like, the equivalent of, you know, like, Vanity Fair as, like, the new elite.
• ▶ 2:08:12 Ben Gilbert And I think he started embracing that later.
• ▶ 2:08:14 Ben Gilbert Like, for a while, his policy was don't talk to the press.
• ▶ 2:12:18 Ben Gilbert And this is in particular around the period where lots of, uh, there's a lot of fluctuation in prices, there's a race to the bottom, lots of people are going out of business, and this is sort of Rockefeller, um, you know, sort of, uh,
• ▶ 2:12:38 Ben Gilbert What made an expeditious shutdown of outmoded rivals vital to Rockefeller was that he borrowed heavily to build gigantic plants so that he could drastically slash his unit costs.
• ▶ 2:12:58 Ben Gilbert Early on, Rockefeller realized that the capital-intensive refining business
• ▶ 2:18:25 Ben Gilbert It was mostly Rockefeller and his partners.
• ▶ 2:22:18 Ben Gilbert I was thinking about this more in the context of, uh, Rockefeller's personal wealth, which we'll dissect in depth on the next, uh, the next installment here.
• ▶ 2:25:10 David Rosenthal In this case, uh, it was through Rockefeller's hand.
• ▶ 2:25:22 David Rosenthal We're just saying, you know, Rockefeller's argument is like, all of this was good for consumers.
• ▶ 2:25:56 Ben Gilbert But yeah, Rockefeller is making the same point here.
• ▶ 2:27:20 David Rosenthal I mean, Rockefeller was a genius in so many levels.
• ▶ 2:27:53 Ben Gilbert I, I, I think, uh, Rockefeller made a lot of arguments that served his purpose, and as fun as it is to sort of imagine and, uh,
• ▶ 2:29:22 David Rosenthal You know, other people might've, but like Rockefeller did it, uh, and in the absence of somebody doing it, uh, that it might not have happened.
• ▶ 2:30:46 David Rosenthal but like you need Rockefeller, like no Rockefeller.
• ▶ 2:36:05 Ben Gilbert And I think with that, thank you to pilot.com, the greatest bookkeeper since John D.