Boom psychology

Perhaps every boom is expected to last forever. Every boom contains within it some skewed logic in which the impossible growth and rapidly amassed wealth undergo a transition from fantastically fluid to some simulacrum of a solid state. The careening boom logic becomes the norm. Luck becomes a strain of genius, and opportunism starts to resemble a chess master’s grand strategy. The boom was built on stuff as solid and true as glass and steel, crafted from the technological brilliance and entrepreneurial daring of a generation of the smartest engineers the nation has ever known, its credibility renewed daily at a rate of 2.4 million barrels. With such lofty heights near enough in the Patch’s collective memory, even the deepest troughs can seem like mere hiccups on a journey headed ever upward.

Turner, Chris. The Patch: The People, Pipelines and Politics of the Oil Sands. Simon & Schuster, 2017. p. 107–8

Author: Milan

In the spring of 2005, I graduated from the University of British Columbia with a degree in International Relations and a general focus in the area of environmental politics. Between 2005 and 2007 I completed an M.Phil in IR at Wadham College, Oxford. I worked for five years for the Canadian federal government, including completing the Accelerated Economist Training Program, and then completed a PhD in Political Science at the University of Toronto in 2023. View all posts by Milan