Standard Oil

“Standard Oil controls 90% of the oil business in America.”

“Rockefeller got so much richer in his retirement from his shares of Standard Oil, which became, you know, the things that powered us moving around the country in cars than he ever got from kerosene.”

“I think the world would end up in no no different of a place. I think it would have been totally net even. And the only difference would be that the, you know, Rockefeller family foundation wouldn't be as large. I think give or take a few years, I think the wh…”

“Also, they will receive a little dividend, a little kickback. They call it technically a drawback. From any revenue that anybody, any other oil producers that are not part of this, that ship on the railroads, part of that revenue from the really high price tha…”

“So over a period of six weeks, from February, 18, 72, to April, 18, 72, Standard Oil buys 22 of the 26 other refineries that are operating in Cleveland.”

“And certainly any of the, you know, competitors or suppliers or partners or the like who ended up taking standard oil stock got fabulously wealthy by doing so.”

“And he's right. He's totally right. Just like you know, Jeff Bezos would probably say the same thing today or with Amazon or the like.”

“It wasn't until the rise of the Fang era in the last 10 to 15 years before that Exxon mobile was by far the largest market cap company in the world.”

“Cleveland was actually the number two largest center for oil refining behind Pittsburgh at this time. Once they do this deal, Cleveland is like fast tracked and becomes number one.”

“Well, so by the very next year in 1866, the fledgling standard oil company is already selling two thirds of their kerosene overseas, primarily to Europe.”

“So standard oil in 1900 produced sixty million dollars in earnings. And rather than inflation adjust that, let's look at it relative to the total GDP, which was twenty four billion dollars. Ok, so, sixty million dollars divided by twenty four billion dollars. …”

“Rockefeller and standard oil as a organization, but Rockefeller as a person is really like the prototype of so much of American culture today. Like he is, he was simultaneously viewed as this like, you know, sinister villain and as this great hero. And like pe…”

“And this is just like, I think more than anything we've covered on this show, like Standard Oil wrote the rules, like all the rules that we are assume, that we just assume are the rules.”

“Standard Oil in the mid-eighteen eighties employed a 100,000 people, which that's probably the first time a company ever employed a 100,000 people.”

“There's so much tied up here, but one of them is this is kind of the first venture capital business. Like we talked a lot on the TSMC episode about these massive fixed costs... And then it's all a volume game. Like how much can you get the plants at full capac…”

“They send out a letter to all the grocers in Mississippi. They say, if you do not buy our oil, we will start a grocery store chain to compete with you and sell goods at cost and put you all out of business. This is in writing sent to all of them.”

“Remember there's one million dollars in total capital that gets put into this, into the structure. They pay a 105% dividend at the end of the year. Including also reinvesting tons of cash flow back into the business and, you know, expanding and buying other co…”

“So yeah, John Dee becomes the wealthiest person in like, you know, modern human history before gasoline.”

“When you look at a gas station, you are probably looking at some remnant of Standard Oil.”

“Archibald was, he was like, he was really somebody, ah, he, when he took over, he actually put legislators on the payroll. Like, not campaign donations, just like, you get 15,000 dollars a year. You get 20,000 dollars a year, like, to do what we want in perpet…”

“Standard Oil controlled 91% of oil refinement in 19 oh four and 85% of even the final sales.”

“Standard contributed a cool quarter million dollars to his campaign.”

“Precisely because he lost the antitrust suit, Rockefeller was converted from a mere millionaire with an estimated worth of net worth of three hundred million in 1911 into something just short of history's first billionaire.”

“Exxon and Mobil together accounted for more than half of the whole Standard Oil business prior to 1911.”

“When things go down, which I'll just leave there for a second, their market share had eroded to 64%. There were at least 147 other refining companies competing with it in the United States.”

“Like, up to a certain point, saying something makes you look guilty, but then past a certain point, not saying something makes you look guilty, and standard past this point.”

“Where, like, Apple's keeping the take rate where it is, they're gonna take an insane amount of the profits of the work of these partners, but they want to keep the partners around. Like, Apple's not gonna, they're like, well, we don't want to go build every ap…”

“In the 18 nineties, the entire Justice Department staff in Washington was 18 lawyers.”

“Facebook buying Instagram and WhatsApp is a lot like Standard Oil's Cleveland Massacre and you know, the subsequent roll-up of all these other refiners elsewhere.”

“He levies a twenty nine million dollar fine on Standard Oil which is like, by like an order, like two orders of magnitude, the highest fine ever given to a company ever at this point.”

“He really just has this, like, self-perpetuating wealth because he owns 257,000 of the 973,000 shares of Standard Oil. So he owns a quarter of Standard Oil”

“And I think about not all the big tech companies, but, again, to pick on Facebook, like, this really seems to, on the outside, to be the case with Facebook right now and, like, the Facebook files and everything going on with the Wall Street Journal, like, it r…”

“90% market share. Like, the whole kerosene market, 90% belongs to them.”

“Sam and the Walmart story is like the bridge between the business America that was John Rockefeller and Standard Oil and Amazon and Jeff Bezos. Like, this is the connective bridge between those two realities.”