I just finished reading two extraordinary books about America’s Gilded Age — The First Tycoon (about Commodore Vanderbilt) and Titan (about John D. Rockefeller Sr.).
What struck me in both stories wasn’t just the scale of ambition — it was the pattern.
Each man built an empire during a moment of massive transformation, and each saw how progress always brings a boom, a bust, and then a lasting change.
When railroads and oil first emerged, they reshaped the world. But before they stabilized, they went through a brutal cycle of overhype, oversupply, and collapse. Rail lines were overbuilt. Refineries were overproducing. Prices fell, stock valuations crashed — yet the underlying innovation kept advancing.
Eventually, consolidation and efficiency followed. The strong operators — like Vanderbilt and Rockefeller — used the downturn to strengthen their positions.
What began as chaos became the foundation of modern commerce.
Today, I see the same dynamic unfolding in the energy transition, data center build-out, and AI infrastructure boom. Capital is flooding into natural gas, renewables, and power delivery networks to meet unprecedented digital demand. Yet as new capacity races ahead of stable pricing and regulation, we’re already seeing early signs of the classic Gilded Age cycle — inflated expectations, overextension, and looming consolidation.
That’s not a failure of progress. It’s the cost of transformation.
Every era that changes the world must first overshoot its mark.
History doesn’t repeat itself exactly — but it often rhymes in ways that reward those who remember the last verse.
