Gilded Age industrialists invoked natural laws to justify opposing state regulation

Evidence

Imbued with the conviction that “the state had neither right nor reason to interfere in the workings of the economy,” the Gilded Age millionaires joined forces to defend the “rights of capital” and limit the role of elected representatives in setting policy or developing legislation. There was no need for law, they argued, when one had the “law of evolution,” the “laws of capital,” and the “laws of industrial society.” John Rockefeller insisted that his outsized oil fortune was the result of “the natural law of trade development.” Jay Gould, when questioned by Congress on the need for federal regulation of railroad rates, replied that rates were already regulated by “the laws of supply and demand, production and consumption.” — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 342

Categorization

• XREF: Parallels the reader’s existing knowledge of how new industries rhetorically legitimate themselves by appealing to natural law or market self-regulation. — connects to: Gilded Age tycoon ideology rehearsed Silicon Valley’s survival-of-the-fittest rhetoric. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1916; Gilded Age social Darwinism and ‘network effects’ both excuse capitalist concentration as fate — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 340; Gilded Age elites circumscribed democracy to protect their economic regime — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 343 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Surveillance capitalists parallel Gilded Age industrialists in exploiting law to escape constraints #expands (0.85) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 341