The Oil Fraternity in Texas

Despite their self-proclaimed reputation as the "greatest gamblers" and the fiercest of free-enterprise capitalists, Edward W. 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. While 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. While their industry involves expensive machinery and seemingly complex practice, what oilmen do, what they own, how they use it, and how they think has been established in practice and defined in law by the emergence of an increasingly sophisticated and robust petroleum engineering science. This book explores the origin, character, and path-dependent coevolution of these seeming paradoxes, and along the way offers an alternative to orthodox accounts of economic behavior.