lol so they took snake oil, and turned it into real oil?

:1orglaugh:1orglaugh

:1orglaugh

I was just thinking about how kids rebel...

My family are total redneck bible thumpers. They owned orange groves and cattle pastures down in Florida.

Wanted me to be just like them.

When I was 17 I left home and formed a rock band. Long hair, loud guitar. Toured for the next 15 years. Then I got into the adult industry in the early 1990's.

It's not unusual for kids to go the exact opposite way of their parents.

Not always, but a lot of times they learn from their parents what NOT to do. Sounds like that's what John D. and his brother did. They learned what NOT to do from their shyster dad.

i suppose the apple fell farrrr from the tree :)

Yeah, and my kids are probably gonna end up conservative and religious. :1orglaugh

One of the amazing things here is that ALL of these men lived in the same time period.
It's not like they had an empty canvas to simply dominate all to their own, they were competition to each other. You want to talk about wealth, add up the wealth and innovation of the list below!!!!!!!

Rockefeller
Vanderbilt
Carnegie
Morgan
Ford
Edison

Yeah, it seems that there are just periods of time that produce that kind of thing.

For instance...look at the 1960's for rock music: Beatles, Stones, Doors, Who, Hendrix, Joplin, the list goes on.

Then it seems like we go through decades of...nothing. lol

It's weird how that happens.

Good, within limits greed is indeed good for all, it's the Standard Oils, US Steels and Fords that made America an economic powerhouse 100 years ago and today it's the Googles and Microsofts.

I'm gonna buy that right now and read it next...

That is not correct INHO. Competition and "greed" are functions of a free market. Corporatism stifles competition, innovation, and increases prices to consumers in order to benefit a few friends of the politicians and regulators. If it wasn't for corporatism, a free market would have allowed much faster and more wide-ranging innovation in the name of competition and "greed". America became an economic powerhouse in spite of creeping corporatism, not because of it.


.:2 cents:


.

Show me an industry that has been stifled by corporatism and give examples of this stifling in action. Google came out of nowhere, there was Yahoo, AltaVista and others - Google grew into a behemoth by putting out better products, and now they are so dominant that it is not easy to compete with them. Nobody stifled Google. We do have anti-trust laws to keep some competition going even when the monopolist has not done anything egregiously wrong.

As for less regulation, that sure worked out well in the banking industry.

Bankers and businessmen need to be regulated, they are unable to control their urge to make as much money as possible with no regard for the harm they cause. We want alpha dogs like them, we just need to keep a leash on them and yank hard when they cross the line.

50 Rich Fuckers!
I always think of Rockefeller watching this.....great movie if you have never seen it!

He trully rocks!