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Non-Tech : Kirk's Market Thoughts -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: Chip McVickar who wrote (3184)6/15/2015 11:09:31 AM
From: Sam1 Recommendation

Recommended By
Blasher

  Read Replies (2) | Respond to of 26710
 
I have no idea what you are talking about. There is no reference to Carnegie in either of the articles that you pointed to.

If you read the piece that I pointed to, you would see that Carnegie talked about giving his money away when he was a young man in his 30s. Well before any anti-trust acts were passed in Congress.

Here is the excerpt I posted before, for your convenience:

As early as 1868, at age 33, he drafted a memo to himself. He wrote: "...The amassing of wealth is one of the worse species of idolatry. No idol more debasing than the worship of money." [45] In order to avoid degrading himself, he wrote in the same memo he would retire at age 35 to pursue the practice of philanthropic giving for "...the man who dies thus rich dies disgraced." However, he did not begin his philanthropic work in all earnest until 1881, with the gift of a library to his hometown of Dunfermline, Scotland. [46]

Carnegie wrote " The Gospel of Wealth", [47] an article in which he stated his belief that the rich should use their wealth to help enrich society.

The following is taken from one of Carnegie's memos to himself:

Man does not live by bread alone. I have known millionaires starving for lack of the nutriment which alone can sustain all that is human in man, and I know workmen, and many so-called poor men, who revel in luxuries beyond the power of those millionaires to reach. It is the mind that makes the body rich. There is no class so pitiably wretched as that which possesses money and nothing else. Money can only be the useful drudge of things immeasurably higher than itself. Exalted beyond this, as it sometimes is, it remains Caliban still and still plays the beast. My aspirations take a higher flight. Mine be it to have contributed to the enlightenment and the joys of the mind, to the things of the spirit, to all that tends to bring into the lives of the toilers of Pittsburgh sweetness and light. I hold this the noblest possible use of wealth.[48]
en.wikipedia.org

I am sure you can find some industrialist from the Gilded Age who you can point to as agreeing with your view. But Carnegie is not one of them.



To: Chip McVickar who wrote (3184)6/15/2015 11:48:31 AM
From: Kirk ©  Respond to of 26710
 
I am not sure I understand the disagreement, perhaps it is a carryover from arguments on other forums. But you are both valuable here and I welcome the discussion.

I'm pretty sure the far left thinks anyone not crewing rubber Greenpeace boats or occupying Wall Street or just Oakland, is a "robber baron" but I believe many who used the system to their advantage "saw the light" and atoned for it in some way later.

Bill Gates was deemed to have used his monopoly powers to amass great wealth illegally but his foundation now is giving most of it back to worthy causes that only the far right seems to hate since a big part of what he is doing is protecting reproductive rights for poor women. From what I can tell, the far left doesn't have "robber baron issues" with him these days yet he was CLEARLY the biggest of my generation.

Stanford university was named for the son of a famous robber baron and I think the University has done a TON of good for society from educating and mentoring the founders of HP to the founders of Google...

Carnegie seems to have taken a page from the Stanford book and "copied" Stanford a generation later.
cmu.edu
Carnegie Mellon Through the Years
Since its founding in 1900 by industrialist and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie, Carnegie Mellon University has focused on finding real solutions to the problems facing society.

Whether they attended Carnegie Technical Schools (1900-1912), Carnegie Institute of Technology (1912-1967) or Carnegie Mellon University (1967-present), our alumni became the innovators of their generation who made a difference in the world.

Learn more about Carnegie Mellon by reading about the values and mission of the university, and the advancements made under each administration.