
10 Richest People of All Time and How They Made Their Fortunes - prakash
http://www.neatorama.com/2008/07/09/10-richest-people-of-all-time-and-how-they-made-their-fortunes/
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anewaccountname
The part about Carnegie doesn't mention how he basically went to England and
took a new process for making steel 10x more efficiently from some other guys,
came back and invested $100000 in a factory using the new process, and then
had congress pass laws enacting tariffs on British steel. He wouldn't have
gotten nearly so rich without those tariffs.

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byrneseyeview
Probably because that's a myth. Read Joseph Frazier Wall's biography of
Carnegie -- he went to Britain and saw the new steel-making process, but so
did many other Americans. Like Carnegie, they were unimpressed, because it
made small batches of steel for which there wasn't a ready market.

He got into the steel business about a decade later.

 _But_ that story isn't as fun as the legend of the rapacious rapscallion, who
only got rich stealing an idea nobody wanted and everyone knew about, ten
years later.

The tariff point is correct, though. He would not have been so rich. But he
was the low-cost producer, anyway, so he wouldn't exactly have been hurting.

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dangoldin
A cool quote: "Gentlemen: you have undertaken to cheat me. I won't sue you,
for the law is too slow. I'll ruin you. Yours truly, Cornelius Vanderbilt."

Reminds me of the advice to not rely too much on patents but on the business.

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JacobAldridge
You can copy IP in 6 minutes IT in 6 months But to re-create a culture takes
years.

When the owner drives a culture of ruthless business excellence (or
otherwise), replacing the owner is not a wise business decision.

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bprater
Well said.

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hugh
It could really use some more details on how they're coming up with these
numbers. I can imagine how they might infer the wealth in current dollars of,
say, Carnegie or Ford. But Crassus?

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avner
There is a lot more to John D. Rockefeller than the article can ever
summarize. I would suggest to anyone who wants to find out about the entire
history, politics, discovery and wealth surrounding Oil and oilmen to read
Daniel Yergin's The Prize.

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augustus
To read about Rockefeller try "The Titan". Ever since this book came out in
1997, it has been my favorite business biography followed by Icon "Jobs".

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augustus
One of Rockefeller's greatest achievements which is not mentioned is the
creation of the modern corporation. Rockefeller and his partners were the
first ones to pioneer the management of a huge enterprise much of what is
taken for granted in today's S&P 500 companies.

Standard Oil came up with the idea of owning a wide variety of companies
through trusts.

Also, the idea of management by being first among equals, running the company
by consensus (in most cases) by a group of executives without exerting
authoritarian control was new.

Finally, Rockefeller help write much of anti trust law. I will leave it at
that.

