Landman Understands Economics Better Than Many Economists

Landman is not just a show about wealth and power. It’s a show about the costs of wealth and power, and the costs apply to rig workers and executives alike.

As Landman concluded a riveting second season, it offered a reminder of why it was the most popular show on television in 2025.

For those unfamiliar with Landman, created by Taylor Sheridan of Yellowstone fame, it stars Billy Bob Thornton as Tommy Norris, a crisis manager navigating the modern oil patch in Midland, Texas. If your tastes run to shows about wealth, power, ambition, and a dysfunctional family at the center, this show is for you. Think Dallas meets The Sopranos (with a twist of Nip-Tuck).

The weaknesses are familiar. Some of the writing recalls the weaker stretches of Aaron Sorkin: long monologues that are clever but don’t sound like real people talk. Critics have also taken aim at the show’s depiction of women. They’re not entirely wrong, as several female characters are exaggerated to the point of caricature, particularly Tommy’s ex-wife and daughter. But this is not what Landman is really about.

One of the things that sets the show apart — and makes it worth discussing — is its grasp of economics.

The economist Thomas Sowell once observed that there are no solutions in life, only tradeoffs. Landman understands this idea and returns to it repeatedly.

The clearest example comes when Tommy explains to the company’s new hotshot lawyer, Rebecca Falcone (Kayla Wallace), that M-Tex Oil powers off-grid wells using wind energy. She seems puzzled and a little angry by this, and asks Tommy why M-Tex would use “clean” energy to produce oil.

“They use alternative energy,” Tommy says. “There’s nothing clean about this.”

When Falcone scoffs, Tommy walks her through the inputs required to build and maintain wind turbines: diesel, steel, concrete, transport, lubrication, and winterization. He goes on to explain that even if the world wanted to go fully electric overnight, the transmission infrastructure doesn’t exist. It would take decades to build. Meanwhile, society rests on a petroleum-based foundation that touches nearly every product imaginable — from roads and cars to plastics, medicines, and consumer goods.

Fact-checkers pounced on the scene, contending that wind turbines typically offset their carbon footprint within a few years, not decades. But focusing on that claim misses the larger point.

Tommy is not arguing that renewables are useless. He’s pointing out that scaling any energy system comes with costs — material, financial, and environmental. Turbine blades are difficult to dispose of. Solar panels generate tons of toxic waste. Mining and processing raw materials consume vast amounts of resources. Capital spent on these projects cannot be spent elsewhere. These are opportunity costs, and they are real.

Every energy choice has consequences, Landman tells us — oil included.

“Getting oil out of the ground is the most dangerous job on earth,” Tommy says. “We don’t do it because we like it. We do it because we run out of options.”

Tommy is not wrong about this. Fossil fuels like oil keep the world’s lights on.

Meanwhile, real-world examples show the “green” energies favored by Ms. Falcone are not the panacea many believe them to be. Countries such as Germany have poured hundreds of billions of dollars into alternative energies. Yes, this has resulted in fewer CO₂ emissions. And yes, Germany is producing the bulk of its electricity from renewable sources.

But Germany is also producing less electricity than it was in 1990 and has the fifth-highest household electricity prices in the world.