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Billionaires: John D. Rockefeller

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Billionaires are an anomaly of society. These individuals manage to accumulate mass amounts of money in the few years life provides us with. One of the most famous billionaires to ever live was John Davidson Rockefeller. In 1870, John D. Rockefeller along with a few of his associates created the Standard Oil Company (The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica). Over the years Standard Oil flourished, and eventually rose to the top of all oil refining companies. Although Standard Oil was eventually disbanded, it made JDR not only a billionaire, but supposedly the richest person to ever live. Nearly 120 years after the founding of Standard Oil, a new company was established called Amazon. Amazon was founded on May 15, 1997 by Jeff Bezos (Hartman). Amazon began as an online bookstore, but is now known as the website that sells all products “from A to Z” (Hartman). After expanding, Amazon has topped almost all markets, making Jeff Bezos a billionaire to rival Rockefeller. The reality is that the tech giants of today are the same as the robber barons of the past. Many parallels can already be drawn between Jeff Bezos and John D. Rockefeller, as …show more content…

In the 1860’s the oil industry was divided (Marshall). Within it, there were four independent industries; producers refiners, shippers, and distributors (Marshall). However, there was no coordination between these industries. Rockefeller saw this as a business opportunity, and ran with it. Standard Oil acquired many companies that each controlled different aspects of the oil industry (Marshall) Some of these acquisitions were of pipeline-based crude gathering oil facilities, tank storage farms, tank-car-loading facilities, domestic and overseas wholesale shipping operations, along with many more practices that allowed Standard Oil to dominate vertical integration in the oil industry

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