By now Vanderbilt, a steamboat captaindefying jail, slashing fares and pushing his boilers ever harder totravelmore speedily, was fastbecomingthe “commodore” ofthisanti-monopolistic vanguard.
The grain of truth here is that, yes, changes in technology and the economy have meant that, say, clever financiers or computer programmers can make billions of dollars almost overnight in a way that would have been inconceivable to the strenuously materials-based wealth accumulation of Andrew Carnegie or CommodoreVanderbilt.