Adventures in the New Economy

I lived in Hous­ton when oil went to less than ten dol­lars per bar­rel. So many peo­ple burned their homes, in attempts to get out from under their mort­gages, that mort­gage com­pa­nies took out full page ads plead­ing that their cus­tomers work with them and find other options. The arson squad was trained to get to the fires first. Thou­sands of oth­ers just walked away from their homes. The major­ity of homes in many nice neigh­bor­hoods had For Sale signs in the yards. Fast food places were boarded up. For Hous­ton, the oil capi­tol of the world, it looked pretty grim.

A few short years later, the city rebounded. It has always been a “boom and bust” city. It diver­si­fied its econ­omy. The price of oil went back up to a whop­ping twenty-four dol­lars per bar­rel. (You can only imag­ine what hap­pened there when oil went to one-hundred-and-forty-seven dol­lars per bar­rel.) The last time I changed planes in Hous­ton, the air­port had obvi­ously dou­bled in size. You could not tell that there had ever been a tough eco­nomic time.

Tech­nol­ogy evolves in a way that leaves a lot of unem­ployed peo­ple in its wake. When I lived in Hous­ton, the per­sonal com­puter was com­ing into its own. Entire busi­ness build­ings were being emp­tied. One desk­top com­puter could do what it used to take a dozen peo­ple to do. As the build­ings were emp­ty­ing out, other new build­ings were being built and moth­balled. For­ward look­ing con­struc­tion com­pa­nies knew that some­day new busi­nesses would need the build­ings, and that con­struc­tion then would be much less expen­sive than build­ing in the future. Their gam­ble paid off!

A lot of peo­ple move in and out of Hous­ton in the up and down eco­nomic cycles. It is an adven­ture for all. Early retire­ments, retrain­ing for new careers, wip­ing the slate and start­ing over — are com­mon in dynamic times. Peo­ple also come out of retire­ment, entre­pre­neur, make rad­i­cal choices, and find new selves that have been dor­mant dur­ing sta­ble times. At first, we resent the deci­sions and adjust­ments forced on us by ele­ments out of our con­trol. In ret­ro­spect, we see that the changes were the best thing that could have hap­pened. After all, the essence of life is adven­ture not security.