“They go from miners with pans to creating these industrial-sized hoses, hydraulic mining, capable of washing away entire hillsides. … San Francisco to this day is shallower than it was before the gold rush because of all the junk that's come down the rivers as a consequence of the California gold rush.”
The Daily Stoic · Ideas & Essays · October 2026
Philbrick describing how gold mining in California industrialised: a handful of men with hoses, working for corporations, replaced thousands of individual miners, and the silt they washed loose went down the rivers. He uses it as an example of what happens when technology moves faster than any elected government can respond.
Transcript
…the principle of creating instant wealth. And it's a crucible for all the dark impulses in humanity. And so people who come to California are immersed in this. And so it's a great opportunity for that dark energy. And I think it's fascinating to see how the light is never completely extinguished.
…do that at an industrial scale for us, right? Like it feels like maybe not a big distinction if you're one of those people on the ground, but it is a distinction, right? Like within the normal bounds and then the sort of untrammeled, unlimited direction that certain extremists want to take things.
…they go from miners with pans to creating these industrial-sized hoses, hydraulic mining, capable of washing away entire hillsides. And pretty soon you've got corporations with a handful of people with these hoses replacing what thousands of individual miners were doing. And in the process, you know, destroying the landscape. You know, you've got silt going down the rivers, clogging things up. San Francisco to this day is shallower than it was before the gold rush because of all the junk that's come down the rivers as a consequence of the California gold rush. And, you know, and if you just let it go, that's what happens. You need to balance things. The example of California is any kind of example. It takes time for government to catch up to what's happening. Things are happening so quickly that no elected democratic government can respond as fast as things change, particularly in California in the 19th century.
Yeah, I mean, one of the things I was so struck by in the book is just the past is prologue, just how much the themes of what was battling and going around in California, first in the gold rush and then in the boom of the railroads, which is the other fascinating part of the book. These are the…
After writing this book, it seemed to me that there's just such a through line from the discovery of gold to where we are today, whether it's Silicon Valley or whatever, because you have technology meets this lust for instant riches with this sense that just go ahead and do it. Don't wait for the…
Yeah, it's like you look back at whaling and you go, man, their interests eventually tends towards oblivion and sort of extremes, right? So it's like, hey, they can't regulate themselves. They can't help themselves, right? It's a collective action problem. And then the gold rush, it's the same…
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