The search for `why’

For the past two years, I’ve been working on a biography of Texas oilman George P. Mitchell, sometimes (erroneously) called “the father of fracking.” Biographies are stories of people’s lives, but they really aren’t about the “who.” “Who was George Mitchell?” is a relatively straightforward question to answer.

Many people may be drawn to a book because they want to know the “how.” “How did George Mitchell change the world by developing fracking?” is an interesting question, but if you spend two years explaining it, you realize every biography attempts to answer the far bigger and more daunting question: why? “Why did George Mitchell develop fracking?” “Why did he pioneer sustainable development at the same time?” “Why did he believe these two seemingly disparate goals went hand-in-hand?”

The why is always the most difficult question, and it’s the question that most often gets lost in shorthand discussions on social media. I don’t post a lot of political stuff for the simple reason that very rarely are we given a chance to understand the why. Too often, the why of politics is drown out by posturing, platitudes and pablum (and, more recently, pugilism).

But I recently got around to reading Jeffrey Goldberg’s excellent piece on President Obama’s foreign policy, which was published in The Atlantic back in April. It’s extremely long but incredibly insightful,thoroughly research and reported, and well-written. Rather than deal with the politics, Goldberg focuses on the policy, on Obama’s thought process and on why he’s made the foreign policy decisions he’s made. Goldberg acknowledges the criticisms, but the piece is really designed to get inside Obama’s logic. In short, it’s all about the why.

You don’t have to agree with Obama’s decisions to be interested with how he came to them. Indeed, the piece points out that even many Democrats within his own administration disagreed strongly with the president. And you might decide, after understanding his logic, that’s he dead wrong. But the point is that at least you’ll understand. Foreign policy is complicated, and the answers aren’t short or easy. The beauty of the “why” lies in unraveling the complexity.

 

Bitcoin Bonanza: Why Texas Can’t Get Enough of Virtual Currency

ILLUSTRATION BY ROCCO MALATESTA

In my latest Texas Monthly column, I take a look at the state’s hottest new cottage industry: Bitcoins. The virtual currency took the online world by storm a few years ago, and while it still has plenty of skeptics, Texas has become one of the leaders in developing rules and applications for virtual currency.

Texas,” says Jeremy Kandah, “is the most Bitcoin-friendly state in the union.” Kandah, a member of the Austin venture capital group Bit-Angels Network, has his reasons for asserting that the Lone Star State is bullish on the headline-making virtual currency. BitAngels, after all, is in the business of convincing Bitcoin-related start-ups that Texas is where they should be turning for capital. But once you start paying attention, you notice that Kandah’s enthusiasm is more than just your typical chamber-of-commerce boosterism. Texas dwarfs even Silicon Valley as a Bitcoin pioneer, which is one reason Kandah, like many others who want a piece of tech’s new big thing, recently moved here from California. “We have one of the biggest concentrations in the country of Bitcoin users and Bitcoin technology companies,” says David Johnston, the managing director of BitAngels’ sister company, the Decentralized Applications Fund.

Though Kandah notes that New Jersey is gaining on us, there are plenty of signs of Bitcoin’s unusually heavy presence in Texas. In April the state’s Department of Banking became the first state regulator in the country to issue guidelines for virtual currencies. That same month Steve Stockman, the Republican congressman from Clear Lake who was one of the first politicians in the country to accept Bitcoin donations, introduced a bill that would require the Internal Revenue Service to treat Bitcoins like any other currency. Even the Second Amendment contingent is getting in on the game: in January Austin’s Central Texas Gunworks began accepting payment in Bitcoins, making it the first firearms shop in the country to do so. A month later, after the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission approved the use of Bitcoins to buy booze, downtown Austin beer and cocktail joint the HandleBar installed the country’s first Bitcoin ATM.    

Why is Texas so attached to Bitcoin? Our hands-off regulatory philosophy, which could encourage entrepreneurs to take a chance on a virtual currency, likely has something to do with it. And there’s no doubt that the state’s libertarian leanings play a role; embracing Bitcoin is the ultimate statement of disdain for the Federal Reserve, the bête noire of Texas’s Libertarian party standard-bearer Ron Paul. As Stockman said in an online video, “Digital currency’s more about freedom. . . . Freedom to choose what you do with your money and freedom to keep your money without people influencing it by printing money or through regulation.” Texas Bitcoin Association president Paul Snow likes to throw around libertarian boilerplate phrases like “the crumbling, diminishing dollar.” 

Read more here.