Friday, September 15, 2017
The Vanderbilt Mentality
Throughout the beginning of the industrial revolution in America there were many questionable things that people did, in particular, richer and more wealthier business men. For example, Vanderbilt was a sailor who ran several trade routs throughout his life. In his earlier days, he ran a sailing business which was extremely rough and functioned even in the worst weather. Vanderbilt was also well known for physically beating his competitors off of his trade routs either directly or indirectly. When the steam ship first came out, Vanderbilt was one of the first ones to buy into the business and start running several routs around his area. He built up such a reputation that the government even came to him with a contract that would ask him to ship military supplies during the civil war. However, Vanderbilt didn't only buy into the boating business, he also was one of the first investors to buy into the railroad business. In fact, he was one of the biggest investors in that industry. But, the Vanderbilt industry did not stop there. Vanderbilt's son continued his fathers business and tippled his fortune in just 3 year.
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I agree with your statement to some extent. When people start out as an honest business it's alright, genuinely beating out their competitions fair and square. However they start to become evil when they exploit human labor and start using sneaky tactics like the trust tactic and getting as cheap labor as possible. Many businesses start out as small and honest but as they grow they become monopolies, leaving everyone else struggling.
ReplyDeleteWhile I agree that this was ethically questionable, the issue that this poses is that there were no laws preventing this at the time. Nowadays, there are certain regulations on business that prevent such immoral business strategies and there are required business ethics classes at many levels of education. Although Vanderbilt's techniques caused harm to many other businessmen of his time, his exploitation of monopoly has allowed us to prevent it in today's America.
ReplyDeleteI agree that Vanderbilt twisted the borders of what was ethnically acceptable, but at this time everyone was doing it to be able to gain as much power and wealth as they could. John D. Rockefeller, J.P. Morgan, Andrew Carnegie were all big monopoly owners as well. These three were in charge of three of the biggest monopolies in America. They too, twisted and undermined around other competitors and certain laws that were placed all so that they could get as much power in society as possible.
ReplyDeleteI agree with your statement that what Vanderbilt's motives were not moral, there were many other people during this time period who did similar things for the same reason. The biggest motivator for people to dominate such businesses was wealth and power. At this time period specifically, there was a big difference between who was rich and poor, and there was not really a middle class. For this reason, Vanderbilt along with others were motivated to do whatever they could to maintain that status.
ReplyDeleteNot to say that agree I with the exploitation of workers and the lower class, but why should it be considered "evil" for business leaders to take advantage of the resources provided to them? On a purely intellectual level, couldn't some argue that if someone is able to amass the fortune in which they are able to control a market they should have the right to? The morality of business dealings gets to the fundamental thought that morality applies to all humans the same because of their intellect and the level of suffering they can endure, but it is true that even today some would consider this to be negligible because big business "deserves" to act as they please. Is this mentality destructive and if so, how can it be combated culturally and legislatively as we still see strains of these practices happening today, just in different ways and on a different scale as business has changed? **
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