David Rosenthal: evaluation

Transcript context

…Yeah, I thought so. I don't know why Williamsport was where they wanted to pipe this stuff too. They do end up piping it. Standard though fights them tooth and nail on this. A bunch of the execs want to hire thugs to go smash the pipeline and do all this stuff. Rockefeller, he reigns in his exuberant execs on this and says, no, no, we're going to fight it with every political leverage that we have, which they do. But they don't succeed. In 1879, the pipeline turned on and it worked. I think a bunch of people in Standard are probably pissed at John. They don't understand why he let this happen. Rockefeller is like, oh, don't worry, I have a plan. Remember, this is just one route that this new pipeline has opened up from Titusville to Williamsport. Rockefeller is like, I got all the railroads in my pocket. They go around to the railroads and they instruct the railroads to cut shipping rates so far down on this line that literally they're basically paying anybody who's willing to ship by railroad on this line to ship. It's actually the pipeline, even though they invested all this money in building it and it's so much more efficient, so much cheaper than running a rail car. Because at Standard Oil’s pressure, the railroads have now lowered prices so far in response, it's not economical to use the pipeline. They starve them out. This is like the Bezos versus diapers.com thing where Bezos is like, I can sell diapers at a loss forever, you don't understand.…

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