20th Century Capitalism and Regulation in the United States

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US History Overview 1: Jamestown to the Civil War
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20th Century Capitalism and Regulation in the United States

20th Century Capitalism and Regulation in the United States Overview of cycles of regulation, de-regulation and government in 20th century US capitalism

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20th Century Capitalism and Regulation in the United States

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Regardless of your opinion of how much regulation or how much intervention the government should have
in markets and in capitalism generally, I think it's interesting to take a look at the various cycles
that have happened in the United States, both from a economic point of view and also from a regulatory
point of view. And if we start in the late 1800's and at the late 1800's we've had the Civil War, we've
had Reconstruction. You actually have a crisis -- kind of a depression after the Civil War, but then
after that depression at the end of the 1800's, the United States comes roaring back and it become a
major industrialized nation. And part of that industrializing process you have some gentlemen who become
very,very,very wealthy. You have Cornelius Vanderbilt -- his wealth was in the rail and the steamboats
-- John D. Rockefeller, known by some people as the wealthiest man in history. And that may or may not
be the case, but he was definitely the wealthiest man in American history -- Some accounts will say he had
1.5 billion dollars -- you might say "Well Hey! I know people who have more than 1.5 billion dollars."
But if you inflation adjusted the amount of money that John D Rockefeller has
at the turn of century
and comes out to 400 billion to
600 billion dollars so
this is a lot of more than anyone we know of at present times
You have Andrew Carnegie in the steel business
his net worth if you look at present value basis is approximately 300 billion
You have people like J.P.Morgan
And although his net worth also huge huge amount
But where his powers really in, since he was kind of a in control of the financial world
at that time
His financial power was tremendous maybe more
than the type of power that these gentlemen to wield that
the amount of power that he and his associates controlled through their various holdings
Some have said was amounted to the amount of wealth and
all of the U.S. west of the mississippi
So these are hugely powerful, hugely
wealthy man. The type of power and wealthy that we actually have not seen since
And you can decide what you think of these people
On some level, all of these people were, I'm sure they were good entrepreneurs,
I'm sure they were hard-working, I'm sure they were innovated in their own way
But they were also know for, back then, you know , this is a
this might be why would have given fuel to someone like Marx would look at people like this and say
Look, these people have so much power, Labor has no power comparing to them,
Some of the employees and some of these companies,
it hard to really say that they are independent human beings,
they are almost like slave labors, they live on the campus, they have no rights
People are dying while they were working for some of these organizations
So you can decide where you will, but the reality is these people were
hugely hugely HUGELY wealthy HUGELY powerful
Now you fast forward to the early 1900
and you start having a little bit of a backlash against these,
I guess the system in which these type of people can strive
And you have Teddy Roosevelt comes to power in 1901
And one of the things, he is famous for many things,
One of the things he is famous for is being a trust buster
And when he talks about Trust, a Trust is really a large corpotation
And the idea is that look standard oil, you have a sensory taken control of
the refining in the oil industry in America, you'll become a monopolist
you'll be broken up
This is anti competitive, Remember,
Capitalism, For the capitalism sake, is maybe not that good of an idea
What we want is competition, What we want is innovation,
What we want is incentive
In a few control everything and no one can compete
That's not helping anyone.
So Teddy Roosevelt, he, it didn't happen during his administration
But he kinda started the trust rusting porcess
And the next administration, in tax administration
You actually have standard oil being broken up
And get to get an idea of how big standard oil was
if you take Exxon, Mobil's, Chevron, Conical and pretty much every other major US oil company
put them together, And i not saying that is equivalent of standard oil
That's actually what standard oil was,
The standard oil was broken up during the tax administration
It was actually broken up into all of these corporations
And you can look into it more.
So you can imagine how much power someone like that would hold

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