NY Times Book Review on Texas, Its People and Institutions
Today’s NY Times has a book review of Big, Hot, Cheap and Right: What America Can Learn from the Strange Genius of Texas, by Erica Greider. Since Ed and I are Texans, we think the state has a lot to offer. The NY Times review argues that this book has a lot to offer, too, including analysis of an evolving political economy. Such as this:
I tend to look askance at an analysis that attributes a company’s or a state’s success to events two centuries ago, but Ms. Grieder’s history lessons are persuasive. Texas’s laissez-faire mix of weak government, low taxes and scant regulations is deeply rooted in its 1876 Constitution, which was an attempt to vehemently dismantle an oppressive post-Civil War government of radical reconstructionists. Texas business interests flourished after turn-of-the-century legislators passed an early antitrust law, which kept much of its oil and natural resources squarely under local control.
And this:
Systems and laws aside, Ms. Grieder emphasizes, the crucial component in the Texas boom has been its people, who tend — forget stereotypes — to be tolerant, optimistic and results-oriented.
As Ed and I argue in Madmen and on this site, to understand a society we need to understand both the people who live in it — their ideas, shared beliefs, opinions — and the institutions in which they operate.
All the better to see a book try to build our understanding of a people and their institutions.