Texas Got It Right!. Sam Wyly

wisdom, I decided to shoot most of it back in

      L.A., figuring that’s where so much of the skilled talent

      in the industry was concentrated. I quickly learned,

      though, that L.A. is a terrible place to shoot a movie. It

      is a nightmare of endless paperwork, unscrupulous

      contractors, and property owners trying to milk extra

      dollars out of their burdensomely expensive real

      estate. A common exchange would go like this:

      “Hello, I would like to rent your parking lot for a

      week.”

      “Sure, it’s $100 a day. What do you need it for?”

      “I’m making a movie.”

      “Oh, in that case it’s $200 a day.”

      Months after we finished principal filming, I

      returned with my crew to Texas to shoot some pickup

      scenes. I was shocked at how much easier it was.

      Above: Andrew Wyly poses for David Wright’s painting The

      Alamo in Dripping Springs, Texas. Opposite: The not-in-my-

      backyarders in other states fight against expanding offshore

      drilling, but that attitude doesn’t fly in Texas.

      TEXAS GOT IT RIGHT!

      10

      Obtaining licenses was a comparative breeze, and the

      costs for everything, from equipment rentals to

      meals, were much lower. People were just friendlier.

      A hotel even let us shoot on its rooftop for free.

      What is it that makes Texas so special; what

      makes it such fertile ground for entrepreneurs? An

      argument could be made that we have a lot of land

      and that we are mineral-rich. But Alaska is even

      bigger, geographically, with a wealth of minerals,

      and it is not growing like Texas. The fact is, a big

      part of what makes Texas great is not what it has but

      what it doesn’t have. Namely, it doesn’t have a

      bloated government bureaucracy with a vast regula-

      tory system that impedes the launching and growth

      of businesses. Our state constitution limits state leg-

      islative sessions to 140 days every other year,

      making for highly efficient, streamlined lawmaking.

      And yet the government we do have protects indi-

      vidual rights and private property fiercely. Texans

      have always taken justice very seriously, and we

      have some of the toughest penalties for lawbreakers

      in the country. We also have the Texas Rangers, one

      of the most illustrious law-enforcement units in

      the world.

      Actually, one of the only apprehensions I did have

      about moving to Texas was that I’d be miles away from

      my favorite burger joint, In-N-Out Burger, a Califor-

      nia-based, family-owned chain that prides itself on its

      ultrafresh, high-quality ingredients. For years the com-

      pany has resisted expanding beyond the reach of its

      California-based meat-processing facility, meaning that

      if you wanted an In-N-Out burger, you would have to

      live in either California or a nearby state such as

      Nevada, Arizona, or Utah. But in 2010, to my delight,

      In-N-Out announced that it was restructuring its

      system and opening a second processing facility just

      south of Dallas. It’s no coincidence that In-N-Out

      chose the Lone Star State for the company’s first-ever

      expansion outside its home region. It selected Texas

      for the same reasons that Chief Executive magazine has

      rated our state the number-one place to do business in

      the country (and California the worst) eight years and

      running. When it comes to being business-friendly,

      Texas puts its money where its mouth is.

      TEXAS GOT IT RIGHT!

      11

      One day I was discussing the theme of this book

      with a friend from Venezuela. I explained to him

      that a big chunk of Texas’s prosperity owes to two

      simple things: low taxes and few regulations (the

      very same factors Chief Executive magazine most

      consistently cites in its rankings). “What about all

      your oil?” my friend challenged. “Your state must

      get a lot of wealth from its oil revenues.” His

      assumption reflected an understandable confusion,

      given where he grew up. Venezuela, like many other

      countries around the world, has nationalized its oil

      industry to finance its government, to the enormous

      detriment of the private oil companies that had

      developed the infrastructure and technology for

      extracting all that oil. We Texans wouldn’t do any-

      thing like that, I explained, because from the

      beginning we’ve recognized the primacy of private

      mineral rights. Texas will prosper only by working

      together with oil companies and individual property

      owners to mutual benefit. Judging from Venezuela’s

      present-day economic and social problems, nation-

      alization, if anything, has failed the very people it

      claimed to benefit.

      Indeed, that’s something that sets Texans apart: a

      sense that private energy development goes hand in

      hand with every other kind of development. I

      recently attended an environmental conference

      hosted by the Aspen Institute. At one of the forums a

      young woman from California received an award for

      leading a successful effort to shut down a gas-to-

      liquid processing plant—essential for converting nat-

      ural gas into clean-burning fuel for combustion

      engines—that was slated to be built near