Last year, Charles Payne proudly praised the Robber Barons of the early 20th century as if they deserved our awe and respect. Proud investor and Shark Tank cast member Kevin O’Leary complained of being “tired of being ripped off by China.”
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon him not understanding it.” – Upton Sinclair, The Brass Check, 1928.
For Fox Business, Charles Payne, and all the wealth worshipping panderers who appear on Newsmax and Fox News shows, I direct your attention to two works exposing the true nature of how those appropriately named “Robber” barons acquired their wealth:
– History of the Great American Fortunes by Gustavus Myers, 1907; 712 pgs. Within the pages of this book are contained the origins of the wealth of all the earliest American wealthiest to the early 20th century Robber Barons:
“The biggest lawbreakers are the richest money makers controlling the highest lawmakers – always at the expense of the average tax payer.” p. 107
“Honest men have been excluded from the purchase of these lands while the dishonest and unscrupulous [wealthy] have been permitted to enter, steal and exploit them by means of false oath, fraud, debauchery and even murder.” p. 109.
“Every stratum of commercial society was permeated with fraud tolerated by Congress.” – p. 113
According to David A. Stockman, Reagan’s CBO and the Commission Report on the 2008 Mortgage Crisis, things haven’t changed since.
Also on pages 109-110 are a litany of authors, scientists and inventors who filed lawsuits in federal courts against several wealthy industrialists who were routinely – and, in many cases, with impunity – infringing on their patented rights.
– The History of the Standard Oil Company by Ida M. Tarbell, 1904; 504 pgs. Tarbell’s precedent setting investigative journalism into the source of J.P. Morgan’s wealth and his corrupt business practices is credited with hastening the breakup of Standard Oil in 1911 when the Supreme Court of the United States found it to be violating the Sherman Antitrust Act. (see also: Trading with the Enemy: An Expose’ of the The Nazi-American Money Plot: 1933-1949 by Charles Higham, 1983; 280 pgs.
“[Businessmen and economists] not only do not disapprove of the crimes of their own [enterprises], but have the remarkable capacity to not even see them.” – George Orwell
If Kevin O’Leary knows anything of American business history he can’t be a surprised to hear that China isn’t the only country that “rips U.S. businesses off”:
– “Our allies are robbing us blind.” – Raymond Rocca, former Deputy Chief, Counterintelligence, CIA
– “Countries such as Japan, Germany, France, South Korea, and Israel may be U.S. political allies, but they are also our economic rivals, and their intelligence operations reflect that reality.” – Peter Schweizer, Friendly Spies: How America’s Allies are Using Economic Espionage to Steal Our Secrets, 1993.
And what is not pirated by our allies is actually sold to our enemies by our own government as when President Bill Clinton authorized Commerce Secretary Brown to sell the Chinese the computer systems enabling their intercontinental ballistic missiles to narrow down the target area they could hit from several miles to the pitcher’s mound of the New York Yankees.
But American capitalists have many times proven to be cannibalistic against their domestic competitors as well. In addition to the Robber Baron corruption:
– Eli Whitney, inventor of the cotton gin in 1793 , was defrauded of his patented invention by wealthy American industrialists and bankrupted from legal battles over patent infringement. (see: Kings of Fortune by Houghton, p. 337; Myers, p.107)
_ Edwin Howard Armstrong invented “high-band” FM radio and five other associated FM “radar” inventions and obtained patents for them on December 23, 1933. Because RCA president Sarnoff was heavily invested in AM radio he “law-fared” Armstrong into bankruptcy over several years. The struggle also ruined his marriage. Bankrupt and brokenhearted, he jumped to his death from the 13th floor of the River House in Manhattan on January 31, 1954.
Sarnoff, in a Hamlet-esque comment oddly proclaimed “I did NOT kill Edwin Armstrong!”
– Charles Goodyear was robbed of his patent for vulcanized rubber by England and France and, while fighting for his patent rights in those countries one of the French companies using his process failed and Goodyear was imprisoned for debt in Paris. While in a French prison, wealthy industrialists in the United States continued to infringe upon his patent. “Although his patent made millions for others, at his death he left debts of some $200,000 trying to recover royalties due him.
– Robert William Kearns obtained a patent for the first intermittent windshield wiper on December 1, 1964. Ford Motor Company stole his patent and Kearns spent 12 years (1978-1990) fighting Ford Motor Company, and 10 years (1982-1992) fighting Chrysler Corporation for royalties in court. That struggle destroyed his marriage as well.
Brian Kilmead confidently challenged his listeners to “show him proof of [corporate] price gouging – which I only touched on in my blog: Memo to Brian Kilmead: Show Me Proof of Corporate Price-gouging” dated 2024/06/06 citing among other things the economic support given by American industrialists to Hitler’s rise to power and execution of WW II.
“If anyone believes employers will increase wages as profits increase, then they believe the leopard can change his spots. They should know that increased profits only increases the appetite for more profits. The desire for the accumulation of wealth seems like a disease, and disease has never been cured by increasing its’ virulence.” – Jim Maurer, 1938.
William Edwards Deming (October 14, 1900-December 20, 1993). Deming can correctly be considered America’s first “Musk.”*
Before he died of cancer at the age of 93, Deming was asked how he thought he would be remembered. He replied “I don’t think I’ll be remembered at all. . . Or, perhaps, as the guy that kept America from committing suicide.“
Among other things, Deming’s engineering expertise reduced the number of anti-aircraft rounds required for ships to hit attacking Japanese Zero airplanes from over 1,100 to less than twenty due to his invention of the proximity fuse. Deming offered his Total Quality Management concept increasing efficiency to the American automobile industry after WW II. They ignored him. They were too busy manufacturing cars on the “programmed obsolescence” model. During lunch on a business trip to Japan, he was overheard discussing his concept by several Japanese industrialists who invited him to give them a seminar. Among the attendees were representatives from Toyota and Honda – who subsequently produced better quality, more efficient cars that took one quarter of the American auto sales in a few years. The American auto industry was more concerned with quick profit over quality and the United Auto Workers were more concerned with preserving poor employees’ jobs and exorbitant wage demands.
Thus began the migration of manufacturing industry’s overseas. Americans’ short-term memory forget that unreasonable demands from unions, and profit-gouging from manufacturers controlling [monopolizing] their markets were the reason jobs and manufacturing went overseas in the first place.
Trump’s demands for returning manufacturing and jobs to the U.S. can possibly result in the same attempts at manufacturing monopolization and union demands increasing costs for consumers again.
Claude-Frederic Bastiat (June 30, 1801-December 24, 1850) is considered the “greatest economic theorist who ever lived.
“Bastiat’s brilliant, lucid and witty essays to this day are remarkable and devastating demolitions of protectionism and of all forms of government subsidy and control. He was an advocate of unrestricted free trade although he said only under extraordinary circumstances should subsidies be available.” – Joseph Schumpeter
“Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all. We disapprove of state education. Then the socialists say we are opposed to any education. We object to a state religion. The socialists say we want no religion at all. We object to state-enforced equality. They say we are against equality. And so on, and so on. It’s as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain.”
Today’s media on both ends of the political spectrum do exactly the same thing today.
“Tariffs are a tax on the people. It benefits manufacturers to the detriment of the consumer.” – Claude-Frederic Bastiat, Economic Sophisms, 1847.
Other works:
– The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in America by David A. Stockman, 2014; 768 pages.
– The Creature from Jekyll Island: A Second Look at the Federal Reserve by G. Edward Griffin, 1998; 608 pages.
– The Shame of the Cities by Lincoln Steffens, 1904; 214 pages
– Island of Vice: Theodore Roosevelt’s Quest to Clean Up Sin Loving New York by Richard Zacks, 2012, 464 pages
* Elon Musk’s many contributions to the betterment of the world should be at the least recognized with his name added to Merriam Webster Dictionary:
“Musk:
1. noun: a person who contributes to the betterment of mankind for no other reason than he cares. (see: Madam Curie and Jonas Salk)
2. verb: “to musk it” or “musking it” as in driving through to accomplish the task regardless of bureaucratic obstacles. slang: “Musk it”; antonym: “F@#k it”
