Shane Parrish
speaker
20,679 appearances
49 recordings
3 series
first heard May 2025
last heard 15 Sep
Shane Parrish’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 30 in all, peaking in Jan 2026 with 4.
Appearances
To him, it was simple.
The industry was overbuilt.
He was offering them a way out of the failing businesses.
The only way out as he saw it.
He later described Standard Oil in biblical terms as an angel of mercy, reaching down from the sky and inviting the struggling refiners into the arc he had built.
All of these purchases of refineries he wrote in his memoir were conducted with the utmost fairness and good faith on our part.
Decades later, when he was no longer in the business, Rockefeller was asked to reflect on those moments.
He had no regrets.
It was right, he said.
I knew it as a matter of conscience.
It was right before me and my God.
If I had to do it tomorrow, I would do it again in the same way.
Do it a hundred times.
The interviewer next asked him an obvious question.
With all of Standard Oil's advantages, why bother taking in the weak firms it competed with?
Why not just let them fail?
His answer is the plainest account he ever gave of his own logic and reveals something about competition that a lot of people miss.
It is to be remembered that oftentimes the most difficult competition comes not from the strong, intelligent, conservative competitor, but from the man who is holding on by the eyelids, is ignorant of his costs, and anyway has got to keep running or bust.
Oftentimes, if a man is doing business to his disadvantages, where to close down his works and throw up his hands, it would be a notice to his bankers and other creditors that he could not do business anymore at a profit.
He must keep up or they would close in on him.
Showing 1501–1520 of 20,679 · page 76 of 1034
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