Depending on who you are I think he was a great business man. He would sit away from the table at meetings and let other people run the show. When people would be pissed and come raging into his office he would sit at his desk and listen calmly and after they vented he would say. Anything else? He was chill but pretty cut throat at the same time. Ruled by sitting back and thinking over the situation from all sides.
I don’t know that anyone can fault his business acumen- he was the worlds first recoded billionaire in a modern economy and while much of his business would be criminal today- and quite a bit was criminal at the time as well-
He was so good at working the system and finding ways to make profit that many of the laws we have today on business can essentially be traced to him directly or to him and his fellow barons. I speak from experience when I say that how a person treats the “office” isn’t a reflection of how they are in business however. JDR may have been calm and all manner of respectful with those he saw as of a certain footing- but he wasn’t known to be such with workers. His general philosophies were that a persons wages were based on their worth. As a two way street, that meant that he didn’t believe in living or minimum wage, he paid based on what he thought you deserved; but it also meant that a person who didn’t work their way up had shown their worth as a person was low.
He sent militias to massacre striking miners and their families with machine guns as they sat in their tent cities- killing women and children. Now- we didn’t ask if he was a great person, just a great business man. But that is where it gets a bit philosophical. In a larger sense we can ask if results are all that make a great business person or if to be a great business person one must be a great person. I’ll leave that for a moment and say this- many of his heavy handed tactics were not “great business” or even “business” in my view. Killing can be a business and is often part of the business world- crime is a business and drug dealers kill all the time. But is that “business” and should we consider that being a murderer is just one valid aspect of a good business person?
At some point we cross a line where we aren’t talking about business anymore. The concept that anything which generates profit is a business is erroneous. Commerce can mean the dealings of people- which can include murder and other things- but theft, graft, murder etc. aren’t really “commerce” especially in the sense of its other definition more apt to business- the buying and selling of goods. When JDR provided half a million to compete a rail line as “charity” and then on completion demanded 24 hour pay back of the money, and told the banks not to lend money to his debtors so that he could sized the rail line for a fraction of its cost and no work on his part- we COULD call that “buying” but it really isn’t by the definition of commerce. He acquired it. Putin is not a businessman who “bought” Crimea because it cost him $X million to acquire it. He took it by force.
That’s a bit like saying you’re an expert locksmith because you can open any door- but you use dynamite or stand outside holding the residents daughter hostage with a shotgun to the head and a threat the door or her head will be open on the count of 10.
JDR was good at making profit. He was good at getting his way. Was he a good businessman? Meh. He was a successful businessman. If we define being good at something as being successful then he was one of the best of all time. Of course- Michael Bay or any number of pop stars have made fortunes and empires. Kim K and her sisters turned a reality TV show into a multimedia empire and a fortune on top of their existing wealth- so Kim K must be one of the greatest entertainers of all time and Jennifer Lopez must be a truly amazing musical artist. Of course those things aren’t true. We can’t even say that many or most are good at business as usually their brands and business are managed in whole or part for them by others.
JDR gave coins to children and donated money to charity. His family helped eradicate US hook worm. Shrewd moves to engender public sentiments and help keep the weight of law and government out of his dealings. But… that’s our question from earlier on what it takes to be called a “good” business person. I could beat any sports team in the world at any sport. Guaranteed.
One on one with Jordan in his prime? I win. Am I that good or am I just full of shit? Neither. If I take a hammer to Jordan’s knees before the game- I win. If I rave Usain Bolt and I get a ZX10R motorcycle and he’s on foot- I win. If a college kid plays little league ball and breaks every record with a perfect win season- are they a great player or is everyone else that bad?
So I do think when we call someone good or great at these sorts of things we need to look at these things and more than results. Tom Brady wouldn’t be considered a great quarter back if he machine gunned the other teams locker rooms and held their families hostage to win games. He’d still have undeniable skill at the game, but his legacy would be a lot different if his first super bowl win was at the end of a machine gun to the other team. That’s a big part of why we have rules in sports. How can we judge a players ability or even call it competition if a viable stat to win is to murder or cripple opponents? A question we can’t ever answer is- how would JDR do starting from a similar position in the market today? I mean- let’s be honest- the brain power to figure out gravity exists and the brain power to figure out quantum teleportation aren’t the same.
The man was alive and in a position of advantage at a time where opportunity abounded and growth was everywhere and there were few rules and lots of ways to get around following the few there were. And that’s where that philosophical thing comes in to play- if we say he was a great business man- we are saying that our concept of business is profit regardless of means. He was great at exploiting- which led to profit and business success. What if we define being good at business as being able to profit while having high worked and consumer satisfaction across the board on average? “The most hated man in America,” JDR, would be a failure. If we add ethics as a criteria it gets murky since ethics are relative, but by any modern concept of humanitarian ethics he’s a failure.
This isn’t just socially important- the definition of business and what success looks like- wether success is in results. Profits and progress and production or in things like satisfaction, providing for human needs and comfort, sustainability etc. as we move towards AI it’s actually a major issue of discussion and considered paramount for the survival of humanity and safety of AI. There is a famous thought track on AI that uses absurdity to illustrate the problem. Imagine you create an AI for a paper clip factory. You program it to increase efficiency in production. So you need a way for it to learn and to guide it. You use a “reward” system- like giving it points to improve efficiency and subtracting points for decreasing production. So maybe the AI determines theft or slavery is the most efficient means. Maybe it runs out of materials or determines it can use humans as materials and that’s more efficient. The thought ends with an empty solar system except for a Dyson sphere around
the sun puking out paper clips that no creature is alive to use. A computer has no “common sense” and no reference to the world except what we give it. It had no instinct except what we program or it develops. Even if we try to list every single thing that we wouldn’t want it to do- it may think up something we didn’t, or it may find an ambiguity in the program. If you say you can’t hurt humans or kill humans- those words mean nothing. You must tell it EXACTLY what “hurt” or “kill” mean. That’s still potentially ambiguous. If I am shot, did the person kill me or the bullet? Arguably neither- loss of blood or disruption of my systems killed me. Of course WE can argue the “killer” needs to have autonomy. The knife doesn’t stab the victim on its own if someone is holding it and plunging it into you with intent to harm. But how do you define to a computer what is intent or what is capable. We struggle to define these things ourselves. Most would argue an AI would by definition be free from
true consciousness and intent unless we granted AI “personhood” and it could be tried in court and had all the freedoms of a sentient being and so forth. So by the definition that makes the shooter the killer and not the gun or the bullet or your own body- the AI couldn’t be considered the killer either, therefore telling it that it cannot kill could be useless since as an “inanimate object” it can’t kill anyone- it follows programming and if a “robot” kills someone the robot isn’t considered a murderer- just an object like a factory press that someone got in the way of or a gun someone pointed and shot or a drone someone sent on a mission. That question and uncertainty is a major reason we don’t have fully autonomous weapons systems in wide acceptance. Who is responsible when a machine kills but no one had direct control or no one told it to kill the particular entity that it killed? How do you punish or correct it if it does “wrong?” Much the same as self driving cars lag…
… there are questions of liability and how to properly codify a value for human life let alone how to express that value. If a self driving car is going to hit a pedestrian, a mother and child, and the only way to avoid is to drive off a cliff to almost certain death to its occupants- how should the car react? What if the car itself has a mother and child? What if the car has 4 people who are adults, are 4 adults “worth” more than a mother and child? As a society we can’t even agree or define these things among humans with a wealth of intuition and instinct and context and the lived experience of being human and existing in the world. AI is taking time for many reasons but the complexity and logistical challenges of giving the AI all the context it needs to understand seemingly simply concepts is a HUGE reason, and from there safety demands we give it enough context or somehow limit it’s capabilities in ways to mitigate potential harms from an inline intelligence.
So as we move towards AI, which will inevitably become part of the foundations of commerce if we achieve it and live long enough- how do we define what success in business means to a newly formed intelligence that has no context of the world, no ethics or human emotions? An intelligence that only sees what we tell it? If we tell an AI to build a world without war or suffering- the cliché is that it eliminate all people, but that is logical. If we program it to prevent that obvious ambiguity, it can still theoretically develop literal mind control, it could lobotomize, use drugs, create a system of indoctrination and propaganda coupled with other means to achieve a world where living people have families and hobbies and are happy and content in all ways because they’ve been manipulated or modified so that it is easier to achieve contentment or they have no will or drive beyond certain controlled desires.
TL:Dr It’s a whole can of worms. So when we teach AI how to “do business,” we hopefully will not be teaching them that results are all that matters, that profit is their ultimate goal, that murder and theft and exploitation are considered avenues of business. Hopefully we won’t teach them that people of a certain class or standing or productivity are deserving of reward and some level of respect or consideration and any who fail to reach that are expendable and deserving of whatever fate they make or come to. I don’t think that if we make a business AI we would want it to be the ultimate expression of JDR’s business acumen and philosophy. In that sense I don’t think he’s a great businessman as much as he was greatly successful in business.
He was so good at working the system and finding ways to make profit that many of the laws we have today on business can essentially be traced to him directly or to him and his fellow barons. I speak from experience when I say that how a person treats the “office” isn’t a reflection of how they are in business however. JDR may have been calm and all manner of respectful with those he saw as of a certain footing- but he wasn’t known to be such with workers. His general philosophies were that a persons wages were based on their worth. As a two way street, that meant that he didn’t believe in living or minimum wage, he paid based on what he thought you deserved; but it also meant that a person who didn’t work their way up had shown their worth as a person was low.
JDR was good at making profit. He was good at getting his way. Was he a good businessman? Meh. He was a successful businessman. If we define being good at something as being successful then he was one of the best of all time. Of course- Michael Bay or any number of pop stars have made fortunes and empires. Kim K and her sisters turned a reality TV show into a multimedia empire and a fortune on top of their existing wealth- so Kim K must be one of the greatest entertainers of all time and Jennifer Lopez must be a truly amazing musical artist. Of course those things aren’t true. We can’t even say that many or most are good at business as usually their brands and business are managed in whole or part for them by others.
One on one with Jordan in his prime? I win. Am I that good or am I just full of shit? Neither. If I take a hammer to Jordan’s knees before the game- I win. If I rave Usain Bolt and I get a ZX10R motorcycle and he’s on foot- I win. If a college kid plays little league ball and breaks every record with a perfect win season- are they a great player or is everyone else that bad?