Ben Gilbert: belief

Transcript context

…I feel like it must be. Well, I mean, Jay-Z would name his label Rockefeller Records. There's a reason for that. I feel like the public feels about Bezos, Zuckerberg, and Musk—all these billionaires today—this was the prototype. This was the first time that Americans felt this way. There's this great quote in Titan. It says, "The general public was of two minds and viewed the new entrepreneurs," of which Rockefeller was foremost, "as alternately sinister and heroic. By 1888, Rockefeller began to pop up in fawning magazine features about rich Americans, but he was also singled out as a notorious trust king in Joseph Pulitzer’s World and other papers. The Press kept up an editorial drumbeat against Standard Oil, demanding vigorous state and federal antitrust action." At the same time, he's in the equivalent of Vanity Fair as the new elite. I think he started embracing that later. For a while, his policy was don't talk to the press, then later started opening up to this idea of like, geez, maybe it's probably a good idea for me to have a positive image out there. Silence is not doing me any favors. Yeah.…

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