Rockefeller & His Standard Muck

 John D. Rockefeller, the man who was known until recently as the richest person to ever live, has a backstory that might not be as reputable as his hundreds of charitable donations make his history seem. Standard oil, the company created by Rockefeller, started out as a simple startup oil company, but at the end of it's lifetime was forced to break up into around 34 separate companies due to several charges of all kinds of crimes and strikes. Throughout the lifespan of his company, Rockefeller's first tactic was to start buying out other competitors, making it impossible for any small company to compete against his massive oil tycoon, thanks to the growth of oil use. Later on, he would go on to start spontaneously lowering his prices, which would temporarily put him close to a loss in money, but would put other smaller competitors out of business because they simply could not afford to loose money. He used a number of other different tactics, but eventually, customers and other companies caught onto his schemes and sued him for federal antitrust, which his company lost and which caused standard to split up into the 34 different companies, some of which, like ExxonMobil and Chevron, are still around and big today. In the end, even though Rockefeller ended up loosing his booming business, he walked away the richest man to ever live in recorded history, with a staggering $285 billion dollars adjusted for inflation, which was only recently beat by Elon Musk who crossed $310 billion just two years ago.

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