Evidence receipt / belief
Published · transcript-backedDavid Rosenthal: belief
22 Sept 2021 Acquired Standard Oil Part I
“I think the Chinese political-economic philosophy is really aligned with the Standard Oil view of the world, which is that unfettered competition is fine in the early days of an industry.”
Source trail
Everything needed to verify it.
- Speaker
- David Rosenthal
- Attribution
- Verified speaker
- Claim type
- belief
- Recorded
- 22 Sept 2021
- Publisher
- Acquired
- Episode
- Standard Oil Part I
Transcript context
…Which, of course, is a counterfactual that we have no idea, but how can we get a sense of what the shape of that could have looked like? It's interesting. This makes me think about China and what's going on in China right now. I think the Chinese political-economic philosophy is really aligned with the Standard Oil view of the world, which is that unfettered competition is fine in the early days of an industry. But then you got to come in and you got to consolidate it. You can consolidate it through the government's hand, in the case of China. In this case, it was through Rockefeller’s hand. But that's what you need to enter a phase of maturity in an industry. As we were just saying, Rockefeller's argument is that all of this was good for consumers. This was great for consumers. This was great for America. In the most recent Amazon letter to shareholders, when Jeff Bezos calculates the amount of consumer surplus. He's like, if you look how much Amazon shareholders have profited on us existing, Amazon employees have profited, and Amazon customers, it's by far the customers who have won.…
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