Robber Baron

Robber baron is a derogatory term of social criticism originally applied to certain wealthy and powerful 19th-century American businessmen. The term appeared as early as the August 1870 issue of The Atlantic Monthly[1] magazine. By the late 19th century, the term was typically applied to businessmen who purportedly used exploitative practices to amass their wealth.[2] These practices included exerting control over natural resources, influencing high levels of government, paying subsistence wages, squashing competition by acquiring their competitors to create monopolies (monopoly) and raise prices, and schemes to sell stock at inflated prices to unsuspecting investors... Burton Folsom argues that the robber barons were either political entrepreneurs (who lobby government for subsidies and monopoly rights), or market entrepreneurs (who innovate and reduce costs to provide the best good or service at the lowest price). Political entrepreneurs do long-term harm to the economy with their monopolies and subsidies. This provides politicians with a pretext to insist that increased planning and increased regulation is the appropriate remedy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robber_baron_(industrialist) cf Gilded Age

cf Cornelius Vanderbilt, Henry Clay Frick, Jay Gouuld, E.H. Harriman, Andrew Mellon, JP Morgan, John D Rockefeller...