The Oil Fraternity in Texas
Moral Economy and Petroleum Engineering Science
Seiten
2024
Texas Tech Press,U.S. (Verlag)
978-1-68283-220-2 (ISBN)
Texas Tech Press,U.S. (Verlag)
978-1-68283-220-2 (ISBN)
Despite their reputation as the ‘greatest gamblers’ and the fiercest of free-enterprise capitalists, Edward Constant II argues that we’re telling the story of the Texas oil fraternity - his term for the cohort - incorrectly. In fact, this group is defined by a moral economy that sustains remarkable altruistic cooperation among them.
Despite their self-proclaimed reputation as the "greatest gamblers" and the fiercest of free-enterprise capitalists, Edward W. Constant II argues that oilmen in Texas quickly evolved a closely-knit fraternity defined by an altruistic, cooperative moral economy.Yet what oilmen did, what they owned, how they used it, and how they thought about it was transmuted in practice and transformed in law by the emergence of an increasingly sophisticated and robust petroleum engineering science.
Although savage in their criticism of and opposition to any form of "regulation" or government meddling, since the early 1930s the oil fraternity has thrived and prospered mightily in one of the most highly regulated businesses in the United States. But this regulation, by the Railroad Commission of Texas (itself part and parcel of the oil fraternity), was fraternal self-regulation: however fraught, it was both science-based and protective of the oil fraternity and its moral economy.
This book explores the origin, character, and path-dependent coevolution of these seemingly paradoxical features and offers an alternative--moral economy--to orthodox, purely egoistic-incentive based accounts of economic behavior.
Despite their self-proclaimed reputation as the "greatest gamblers" and the fiercest of free-enterprise capitalists, Edward W. Constant II argues that oilmen in Texas quickly evolved a closely-knit fraternity defined by an altruistic, cooperative moral economy.Yet what oilmen did, what they owned, how they used it, and how they thought about it was transmuted in practice and transformed in law by the emergence of an increasingly sophisticated and robust petroleum engineering science.
Although savage in their criticism of and opposition to any form of "regulation" or government meddling, since the early 1930s the oil fraternity has thrived and prospered mightily in one of the most highly regulated businesses in the United States. But this regulation, by the Railroad Commission of Texas (itself part and parcel of the oil fraternity), was fraternal self-regulation: however fraught, it was both science-based and protective of the oil fraternity and its moral economy.
This book explores the origin, character, and path-dependent coevolution of these seemingly paradoxical features and offers an alternative--moral economy--to orthodox, purely egoistic-incentive based accounts of economic behavior.
Edward W. Constant II, a longtime historian of technology, retired from Carnegie Mellon University in 2002 as an associate professor in the department of history. He lives in Little Elm, Texas.
Erscheint lt. Verlag | 18.6.2024 |
---|---|
Verlagsort | Texas |
Sprache | englisch |
Maße | 152 x 229 mm |
Themenwelt | Naturwissenschaften |
Technik ► Elektrotechnik / Energietechnik | |
ISBN-10 | 1-68283-220-1 / 1682832201 |
ISBN-13 | 978-1-68283-220-2 / 9781682832202 |
Zustand | Neuware |
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