Learn From History, Not The Hard Way by Dave Harbour An oil patch can become so proud of itself that it loses the competition, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. How does it do this? A fossil fuel producing area becomes uncompetitive by jacking up taxes and royalties to the maximum.  Then it uses that largess taken from hapless investors to build great bureaucracies and entitlement systems. Politicians, socialist and environmental activists use "community organizing techniques" to form movements against big bad (wealth producing) fossil industries. [...]