Standard Oil's predatory business practices included temporarily operating at a loss to drive competitors out of business

Modern antitrust law was created to combat the Standard Oil Trust

John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil Trust enabled him to evade laws against a single corporation buying stock in another. His centralized board of directors held stock in many different oil companies under his control, allowing Rockefeller to eventually monopolize the oil refining industry. Efforts to regulate and prevent the Standard Oil Trust's monopoly became known as "antitrust" laws.

How the Rockefellers' wealth evolved over time

The Rockefellers built one of the most powerful business empires in US history. By the early 1900s, their company, Standard Oil, controlled over 90% of the US oil market.

The winding journey from Standard Oil to the modern oil industry

Standard Oil’s impact on the business world can be clearly seen today in oil giants like Exxon and Chevron. But the journey from the Rockefellers’ trust to the modern firms was a windy road. After the Supreme Court ordered Standard Oil’s break up, the first step saw it separate into many state-based companies like Standard Oil of California and the Ohio Oil Company. Visualize it here.

Standard Oil used vertical integration to create an empire

“Vertical integration” is a modern business phrase that refers to a company taking on multiple stages of production—but John D. Rockefeller pioneered it with his Standard Oil company, employing its own plumbers and handling its own oil transportation.

How John D. Rockefeller became the world's first billionaire

From a young age, John D. Rockefeller knew he was interested in business. He worked as a bookkeeper and sold candy prior to starting the business empire that would help cement the Rockefeller name in history: Standard Oil.

John D. Rockefeller’s father had a nefarious past

William A. Rockefeller Sr. earned his money via various schemes that included pretending to be a doctor to sell “herbal medicines” and posing as a deaf person to peddle for money.

How famed investigative journalist Ida Tarbell took on Standard Oil

After watching her father lose his oil refining business to Standard Oil, Ida Tarbell began to focus on unfair business practices in the US, writing a series on the oil giant's transgressions.

In 1931-32, JP Morgan Jr. paid no income taxes due to his company’s losses

This legally reduced his taxable income under existing laws. Similarly, the Rockefellers leveraged charitable foundations to minimize taxes, allowing them to preserve wealth while directing funds to their preferred causes.

Robber barons, the monopolistic business people of the 19th century, explained

“Robber baron” was a term used to describe 19th-century businesspeople who engaged in monopolistic business practices and didn’t face much business regulation, resulting in significant wealth.

Large oil companies knew about the impact of carbon emissions since the ’70s

PBS Frontline’s The Power of Big Oil reveals how industry giants like Exxon and Shell were researching climate change in the 1970s but then funded denial campaigns—using internal science to sow public doubt for decades.

OPEC’s 1973 embargo sparked the first global energy shock

In October 1973, Arab OAPEC countries stopped or significantly reduced oil exports to nations backing Israel during the Yom Kippur War. Crude prices nearly quadrupled, sparking global shortages, economic recession, rationing, and major energy policy reforms.

Utility companies are often considered 'natural' monopolies

Natural monopolies occur in industries where the upfront costs of entering the market are high, making competition unrealistic. Investor-owned power companies, like Duke Energy, often have natural monopolies, as building alternative power grids and transmission lines is too expensive and impractical for competitors.

Soybean oil fraud almost decimated American Express in 1963

A New York commodities trader who had defrauded the American government over uninspected meat for school lunches, Anthony "Tino" De Angelis, used American Express warehouses to sell soybean oil. However, Angelis had actually filled the tanks with water and placed just enough soybean oil on top of the tanks to pass inspection. American Express was liable for many of the tanks and its stock faced a huge downturn, opening the door for a then 33-year-old Warren Buffett to make his first purchase in the company.

'Profits made out of the distress of the people are always much smaller than profits made out of the most lavish service of the people at the lowest prices that competent management can make possible.'

- Henry Ford

Thomas Edison publicly executed animals with AC to convince the public of its dangers

J.P. Morgan first backed Thomas Edison's direct current system, seeing electricity's potential to usurp John D. Rockefeller's kerosene empire. Despite the investments and smear campaign against alternating current, alternating current ultimately won public support after lighting the 1893 World's Fair, after which Morgan would fund Tesla's wireless transmission tower.

Federal subsidies have boosted US fracking profits

Between 2000 and 2020, the US government invested tens of billions of dollars to facilitate the extraction of shale oil and gas reserves. These subsidies helped make new projects viable and kept fossil fuel companies afloat while global energy prices and renewable energy startup costs have fallen.

Bear raiding is a manipulative tactic to bring a stock price down—and part of why short selling can be controversial

Bear raids occur when short sellers use manipulative tactics—like spreading false rumors or coordinating trades—to artificially drive down a stock's price and profit from short positions. Although bear raids are an illegal form of market manipulation, they can spook investors, prompting large selloffs of shares and causing a company's value to plummet. As a result, investors may be hesitant to invest in the company in the future, creating a feedback loop of stock downturn.

BP only makes up about 1% of global oil production after many missteps

BP’s market cap has never recovered from the dive it took following the 2010 Deep Water Horizon oil spill. This video details some of BP’s corporate missteps along the way.

'Rocky Road' was designed to help people cope with the stock market crash

In 1929, ice cream maker William Dreyer marketed Rocky Road as a sweet treat intended to distract consumers from the poor state of the economy. (Some readers may experience a paywall.)

How Netflix battled Blockbuster

The most consequential business stories involve intense rivalries. The story of Netflix versus Blockbuster is one of those: an agile upstart versus an entrenched incumbent. This nine-part podcast explores the key strategies and pivotal moments in the rivalry that upended the entertainment business, setting the stage for the streaming wars.

Multiple business choices may have hindered Sears’ financial success

There’s no shortage of potential culprits for Sears’ death, from hedge fund manager Eddie Lampert, to Amazon, to the 2008 stock market crash.

'The Great Onion Corner:' Hear how short-selling onions ended with a ban on onion futures

In the early 1950s, onion farmer and produce trader Vince Kosuga cornered the onion market, resulting in a 1958 ban on onion futures from Congress. After stockpiling onions and buying onion futures, Kosuga then began shorting them. Then, he released his accumulated surplus of onions, driving the price down to essentially zero, and cashed in his short positions.

Domino's Pizza's 30-minute guarantee was discontinued after a string of delivery-driver accidents

The chain's promotional gimmick offered customers free or reduced pizzas if their pizzas weren't delivered in 30 minutes or less. That policy led to the chain's popularity, but it also led to reckless driving: In the late '80s, the National Safe Workplace claimed its drivers had the same death rate as miners. After Domino's was found liable in 1993 for nearly $79M in damages, it discontinued the policy.

CostCo's low-cost hot dogs: The strategy of 'loss leaders'

Wholesale food distributors like Sam's Club, BJ's, and CostCo place a premium on cutting costs for their consumers to cultivate brand loyalty. Enter CostCo's enduring $1.50 hot dog and soda combo. It's a classic example of a so-called "loss leader," a product a company loses money on but which keeps customers coming back for more. Learn the history of wholesalers and how selling over 200 million hot dogs in a year builds CostCo's brand.

'Usury' is the act of lending money at an excessively high interest rate

Laws regulating predatory lending are called usury laws and vary from state to state. Payday lending has historically been exempt from some states' usury laws, and some lenders have found loopholes in state laws or business structures that allow them to provide short-term loans with high interest rates.

Domino's Pizza's 30-minute delivery guarantee was responsible for the chain's 1980s surge, but it was discontinued after the company was found liable for delivery driver accidents.

The distributor behind 'Rocky Horror' pulled the film from its scheduled national release, believing it would be a failure, though it eventually amassed a dedicated fanbase through midnight showings, a trend that continues over 50 years later.

The price of gas is a composite made up of several different factors, with the federal gas tax making up less than 20% of what drivers pay at the pump.

Netflix profits when you're not watching, and its movies are designed that way—read a detail-rich critical essay exposing lesser-known Netflix takes

Dozens of S&P 500 stocks, including Coca-Cola and Walmart—known as the dividend aristocrats—have increased dividends every year for 25 years

At the beginning of the 20th century, a group of young men ate standard American food—replete with food additives like borax and formaldehyde—as part of government research to better understand food safety.

When a Paris department store hesitated to sell Estée Lauder's perfume, she 'accidentally' broke a bottle, causing the smell to spread throughout the store and shoppers to start asking to buy the scent.

Louisiana's 'Cancer Alley' is infamous for having some of the highest industrial pollution, toxic air emissions, and cancer risks in the US.

In 1984, Operation Smash Hit intentionally crashed a 239-ton train into a nuclear waste canister at 100 miles per hour to prove the canister's safety, which remained completely intact and lost just 0.29 of its 100 pounds of pressure.

Sony set the standard for cylinder-shaped batteries when it repurposed manufacturing equipment used to make rolls of magnetic recording tape.

How Amazon operates a 'flywheel' business model, a self-reinforcing cycle that drives continuous growth

Some renewable energy sources may weaken the resiliency of electric grids by removing outage buffers provided by coal- and natural gas-fired plants, which provide the system with more time to find a new power source if a plant goes down.

A Yale student wrote a profound essay about the consulting industry's influence on elite college students that was published in a book of her writing after she died in a post-graduation car accident.

Gerrymandering works through two techniques: cracking opposing voters across districts to dilute their power, and packing them into a few to waste their votes in lopsided majorities.

Poison ivy's characteristic rash is caused by an allergic response to an oily compound in the plant called urushiol.

Warren Buffett's former professor Benjamin Graham is known as the 'father of value investing,' a strategy in which investors seek to buy stocks trading below their intrinsic worth.

The Beatles' US label rejected the band's first two singles, 'Please Please Me' and 'From Me to You,' with one executive calling the band 'dead in the water.'

Learn how to read a prospectus, the juicy document that any company must file with the SEC before going public.

Mark Twain spent decades feuding with the US Postal Service, convinced its costs and regulations were bureaucratic overreach.

Art theft is the third-largest source of criminal revenues worldwide, thanks in part to the subjective nature of valuing a work of art.

Watch how deep-sea mining equipment collects and processes polymetallic nodules—metal-rich, potato-shaped rocks—from the ocean floor and creates environmentally damaging plumes of sediments.

Some coin denominations have ridges etched on their sides, partly to prevent counterfeiting, in a practice called 'reeding.'

Volcanic activity may have triggered the Black Death by spewing gases that led to crop failures in Europe, thus forcing the import of grain ships with plague-infested fleas.

Learn how monoclonal antibodies, which mimic the body's antibodies, can fight diseases like Ebola.