Prosperity from their own sheer brilliance
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I've been reading Marcus Luttrell's Lone Survivor, a tale of Navy Seals and the tragic Operation Redwing in July 2005 on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.
And I was struck by his account of his childhood in the late 1970s/early 1980s in Texas and the boom and bust of his own family as oil fortunes were made and lost.
It makes one consider the current shale boom in North Dakota and Texas and what will happen to those communities left holding the ball when the easy money vanishes in a flash.
“I have long since worked out that when the crash came in Texas, its effects were magnified a thousandfold, because the guys in the oil industry sincerely believed money had nothing to do with luck. They thought their prosperity came from their own sheer brilliance.”
