A Monopoly Isn’t the Same as Legitimate Greatness

Competent monopolists aren’t good monopolists

Cory Doctorow
Marker
Published in
8 min readJun 13, 2021

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Ida  Tarbell’s uses her writing to kindle a fire on a tree labelled “Standard Oil Traditional Policy of Silence.” A panicked John D Rockefeller peers out of a squirrel-hole, screaming in alarm.

If you do much reading about antitrust, you’re sure to come across Ida Tarbell, the campaigning investigative journalist whose masterful 1904 book, The History of the Standard Oil Company (free ebook, free audiobook), brought down John D. Rockefeller and his monopolistic Standard Oil Company, which was…

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Cory Doctorow
Marker

Writer, blogger, activist. Blog: https://pluralistic.net; Mailing list: https://pluralistic.net/plura-list; Mastodon: @pluralistic@mamot.fr