Opinion of the "Robber Barons" of the 19th Century?

[CatoMinor]

I know the automatic knee jerk response to say they are awful, and certainly as individuals men like Vanderbilt and Rockefeller were mega douches, but its pretty hard to deny the serious contributions their greed ended up having in addition to the obvious bad that came with.

And before someone comes in with "But they didn't build anything, teh workers did!", how many of those Pittsburgh workers were able to fund the creation of the steel industry that they worked for? The rise of steel in the US literally couldn't have happened without rich guys like Carnegie simply wanting to get even richer.(Please note: I am not defending the awful working conditions or any of that nonsense)

[TNF]

Those Pittsburgh steel workers did fund the creation of the steel industry that they worked for, given that they produced the surplus value which allowed for the accumulation of capital in the first place.

[AggregateDemand]

They were not good or bad. They were industrialists with a simplistic understanding of economics, which compelled them to exert direct-control over assets, labor, and intellectual property. They also pursued business deals as zero-sum games, with a winner and a loser, and they had no understanding of cost-shifting or negative externalities.

Thanks to people like John Maynard Keynes, industrialists and governments began to evolve. Monopolies, like Standard Oil, were broken, which improved capital allocation throughout the economy. New industrialists, like Henry Ford, paid higher wages to create middle-class demand for their products.

[CatoMinor]

Those Pittsburgh steel workers did fund the creation of the steel industry that they worked for, given that they produced the surplus value which allowed for the accumulation of capital in the first place.

The hard work of the workers grew the steel industry, but it would not have been made possible without the initial push by the people like Carnegie.

[Deus Naturae]

"Robber baron" is often used to refer to completely different things. There were two kinds of industrialists in the second half of the 19th century: Market industrialists ("captains of industry" like Vanderbilt, Carnegie, etc.) and political industrialists (ex: railroad tycoons who lobbied the government to fund incredibly wasteful national railroad projects). Some people like to group them together as "robber barons" but in reality they couldn't be more different.

Here is an excerpt from Thomas DiLorenzo's book. It's a great explanation of the different roles and characteristics of price-slashing, innovating market capitalists and cronyist, monopolizing political capitalists.

[CatoMinor]

"Robber baron" is often used to refer to completely different things. There were two kinds of industrialists in the second half of the 19th century: Market industrialists ("captains of industry" like Vanderbilt, Carnegie, etc.) and political industrialists (ex: railroad tycoons who lobbied the government to fund incredibly wasteful national railroad projects). Some people like to group them together as "robber barons" but in reality they couldn't be more different.

Here is an excerpt from Thomas DiLorenzo's book. It's a great explanation of the different roles and characteristics of price-slashing, innovating market capitalists and cronyist, monopolizing political capitalists.

There is a reason I used quotation marks when I wrote that.

[Cassius]

Generally very favourable...

[politicus]

Generally very favourable...

How does it feel to be a stereotype?

[Cassius]

Generally very favourable...

How does it feel to be a stereotype?

It feels no different to being a normal person, since we all, as ordinary people, inevitably end up fitting some stereotype or another.

Anyway, just to elaborate upon my opinion of the so-called 'robber barons' (terrible term of course), of course, they weren't white knights... nobody is or has been totally good. Many committed actions and held views which could, to some extent, be viewed as questionable. However, these are the men who made much of what America is (think of all the endowments left and institutions established under the aegis of men like Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller and others) today. Their philanthropy has been of aid to many a man and woman. Of course, it can be argued from a left-wing perspective that these were awful men. However, I'm not a left-winger, and, from my perspective at least, I regard the so-called 'robber barons' as having been a fundamental force for good.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Those Pittsburgh steel workers did fund the creation of the steel industry that they worked for, given that they produced the surplus value which allowed for the accumulation of capital in the first place.

The hard work of the workers grew the steel industry, but it would not have been made possible without the initial push by the people like Carnegie.

It just so happens that I just read "Meet You in Hell: Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick and the Bitter Personal Rivalry that Transformed America" by Les Standiford.

A good example would be the very Homestead plant that would became legendary example of their suppressive treatment of Labor a decade later. That company that owned it was practically bankrupt and Carnegie managed to buy up the company owning of the one of the most modern plants in the world for essentially little more then the cost of the plant and transform it into the center of his empire.

A similar example comes from the old saying that for every successful railroad there were four bankrupt ones. It was not inevitable that Carnegie Steel or the New York Central and Pennsylvainia Railways came into existance in spite of liquid gold pouring out of America, dirt cheap materialis and labor and so forth. Carnegie, Frick, Thomas Scott, Edgar Thomson (who though a Pennsy President later had a Carnegie Steel Mill named after him), Cornelius Vanderbilt (who hated trains and only late in life got into the business) were essential factors to making that happen.

[Mechaman]

Good reasoning JBrase, but they are still pretty horrible people, lol.