Making Sense - Sam Harris - #236 — Rebooting New York City

00:00:00.000 i am back with andrew yang andrew thanks for joining me sam thank you for having me

00:00:26.680 that this is going to be like a refuge of a conversation i think like uh i mean most

00:00:33.180 people listen to you because you make us smarter wiser more enlightened and i feel like i could

00:00:38.720 use some of that energy nice well i i hope to provide but um i'm very happy to talk to you first

00:00:46.240 but before we jump into all the uh topics of interest how are you feeling you you caught

00:00:50.820 covid right yes i have covid and i was hoping for the sympathy sans the suffering and it turns out i

00:01:01.620 got my share of the suffering where i've had the flu version so just imagine a very nasty flu bug

00:01:08.920 with some added wrinkles but i'm on the mend and i should be out and about in the next number of

00:01:16.780 days hopefully how long has it been when did you first get symptoms i first got symptoms

00:01:22.340 last weekend so we're recording this on wednesday so it's been about 10 full days now and uh

00:01:32.560 the symptoms started out mild and i was hopeful that i would skate and just be holed up in my room

00:01:40.360 but then i've had about a week of real fatigue and fever and flu-like experiences yeah well i guess uh

00:01:51.720 all things considered that still sounds lucky but sorry to hear it you know i i had an oximeter sam

00:01:57.520 i don't know if people know this but it's so helpful just to be able to take your blood oxygen level at

00:02:04.100 any moment because when you're you're there you're not sure how you're pairing and then you just

00:02:08.080 check and then you're like oh i'm fine so right anyone listening to this if you

00:02:12.900 want want to be prepared just get a blood oximeter measure uh mint tool it's only i think 20 bucks or

00:02:20.460 so yeah yeah you can get those on amazon or there was a time when you could get those on amazon i

00:02:25.860 assume they're they've been mass produced at this point so andrew you are running for office of mayor in

00:02:33.060 what is very likely the most important city on earth i love the idea of you being mayor of new york

00:02:38.940 let me just get my uh biases on the table and uh it's amazing to consider new york being a kind of

00:02:48.980 laboratory to experiment in in how we reboot society at this point it seems like there's so many things

00:02:56.140 are up for review and in just how we function collectively and and the idea that someone with

00:03:02.320 your um creative and uh modern take on things could be steering the fairly large ship of of new york

00:03:11.240 city is just it's amazing to consider so so i'm wishing you the best of luck brother well thank you

00:03:16.400 sam like i i do think that this is like a continuation of the arc that frankly you helped launch

00:03:24.040 back in 2018 when i was an unlikely presidential candidate and we made a really powerful case

00:03:33.680 around trying to advance and humanize the economy that i dare say ended up becoming mainstream popular

00:03:41.600 wisdom where as we're having this conversation the last i checked 85 percent of americans are for cash

00:03:47.980 relief during the pandemic and a majority are for cash relief and perpetuity otherwise known as

00:03:53.040 basic income and i'm really eager to take principles that i fought for on a national level and apply

00:04:01.260 them in new york city around fact-based governance and trying to get bureaucracies to work in a more

00:04:08.720 modern and technologically proficient fashion i can't wait to roll up my sleeves get some incredible

00:04:16.060 people on board and try to steer new york city in a positive direction and this race is also

00:04:24.720 different from the presidential race in that it's very like i'm the front runner which i don't think

00:04:30.340 ever happened at the presidential that's amazing so so there's an enormous opportunity here that i hope

00:04:37.880 we take full advantage of well so what's new york like now i mean we're still in the midst of this

00:04:44.400 pandemic i know you're probably doing a better job than california in rolling out the vaccine but

00:04:50.140 we're still under the shadow of this thing what's happening new york city is badly wounded sam it's been

00:04:58.340 devastated by the coronavirus on multiple levels and most of your listeners know me as a numbers guy

00:05:06.460 some of the numbers that reflect how bad it's been in new york city over 27 000 lives have been lost

00:05:13.660 over half a million have been infected over 700 000 jobs have been lost the unemployment rate is over

00:05:23.080 twice the national average in part because the city is missing 60 million tourists who used to support

00:05:29.680 over 300 000 jobs midtown manhattan commercial buildings are 82 unoccupied subway ridership is down

00:05:38.200 70 violent crimes are rising 300 000 new yorkers have left the city and in terms of filing for change of

00:05:47.820 address forms and just relocated so there's just a lot of pain and suffering right now over 10 000

00:05:55.240 small businesses and restaurants have closed and more are joining them all the time this is a city that

00:06:02.380 thrives based upon people coming together in large numbers on people visiting on people eating out

00:06:10.700 every night and a lot of those things aren't happening right now so the adjustments have been

00:06:17.800 really painful for many many organizations and individuals and families here i know it's been

00:06:25.800 bad in california as well but i do think new york city has special dependence on people feeling like

00:06:34.340 they can come together in large numbers yeah it seems to me that it's really a perfect storm there with

00:06:41.100 respect to specific variables of density and dependence on tourism and retail and office space

00:06:49.860 going unoccupied and just the weather right you know there are many places in the country where

00:06:55.000 restaurants can start serving outdoors before they they open indoors and you know i know you guys

00:07:01.980 tried that but in the dead of winter it doesn't work very well let's go through these topics

00:07:08.420 somewhat systematically because i'd like to get your take on each the retail and office space problem i

00:07:15.120 mean 82 percent unoccupied i mean one thing that worries me is that there's the prospect that our

00:07:21.380 habits have changed enough under covid you know with remote work in particular that it's conceivable that

00:07:30.160 that office space will go unoccupied not because covid has lingered but because habits have changed

00:07:36.420 is that you think that's possible or likely or how do you how do you view using all the space in new

00:07:43.320 york if people's attitudes toward remote work have undergone a durable change i think we're in the midst of a

00:07:51.320 very significant cultural shift i think organizations are going to change how they schedule in-person

00:07:58.720 meetings and having people in the office i do think that there are a couple of forces that have cut

00:08:04.420 in different ways sam where right now pre-covid there was a tendency for companies to pile

00:08:11.780 employees on top of each other in new york as well because it was very expensive office space so you'd

00:08:18.940 say hey guess what guys like we're gonna like you know slam you into cubicles and bullpens and like 0.79

00:08:24.340 have people in very close quarters so i think there are going to be shifts in both directions

00:08:29.560 i believe that some of this space will likely have to change its express purpose but i do not think

00:08:41.340 it would be realistic for everyone to say look things are going to go back to the way they were

00:08:45.200 in terms of people using office space the same way and frankly in some cases paying the same premium

00:08:51.760 that they were paying there has to be very significant adaptation even as you're trying to accelerate the

00:08:59.940 comeback we definitely need to vaccinate everyone as quickly as possible and then give you the 0.95

00:09:06.840 confidence that if you come to the office building everyone there has been either vaccinated or tested

00:09:11.480 negatively so that you feel 100 secure those things are necessary preconditions and then even if you do

00:09:20.240 those things effectively there will still be some changes that likely happen throughout many of

00:09:27.040 these organizations and their lease commitments i think i'm just agnostic as to how durable these

00:09:35.240 these changes are in in the way we work it's hard to imagine the same degree of business travel for

00:09:42.320 instance you know now that we know a zoom call can actually fill the bill for what used to be a

00:09:48.840 getting on an airplane and spending two or three days round trip going to a meeting i mean i think

00:09:54.760 that has got to have been reset in some generational sense but i also think there's you know as you

00:10:02.780 point out there are forces that cut in the other direction and one will just be i think people will

00:10:07.640 want to have excuses to get together as well i mean i think if we if we can get covid truly behind us

00:10:16.120 i think it will be an amazing time to be opening a restaurant because people are going to be desperate

00:10:21.720 to be in restaurants and bars and good luck getting a table in a restaurant in new york once we fully

00:10:28.500 recover here and i guess the same could be true of certain approaches to office space and retail i don't

00:10:36.160 know i mean you know again so much shopping has moved online but you got to think a reinvention of

00:10:42.920 retail is also possible because you know most of us are getting sick of living like somebody out of

00:10:48.800 a dostoevsky novel and not leaving our houses so um once we fully get out from under the shadow of

00:10:55.840 covid how do you picture new york rebooting well street level retail in new york is often geared towards

00:11:05.240 some of the 60 million tourists and and i think that those experiences will still be very much

00:11:11.500 desired when if you visit new york city you want a memory you want uh something that commemorates and

00:11:19.580 documents documents or visit and people will want that experience in some way it could be that the

00:11:26.520 makeup of the retail changes there have been a lot of very significant brands that invested in time

00:11:32.560 square restaurants and whatnot in part because they they thought that it would be a worthwhile

00:11:38.700 branding expenditure and and i think that's moved to new york city because the thought is that you can

00:11:45.700 reach people from all over the country all over the world if you're investing in like a time square

00:11:51.440 restaurant or something along those lines so i i do think that retail for tourists will be a constant

00:11:58.840 there are are are going to be a lot of storefronts that need to get new tenants i mean right now if you

00:12:06.820 walk new york city streets there are a lot of empty storefronts and it's unclear whether they're going to

00:12:14.680 end up reopening on their own naturally that there have been some some suggestions around having vacancy

00:12:22.620 taxes for landlords to try and give them some sort of spur to make sure that there is a tenant

00:12:30.820 trying to fill that storefront because it's going to be an issue for a while well let's talk about crime

00:12:36.760 and homelessness because these are obviously not just problems for new york cities all over the country

00:12:43.420 are seeing a spike in both you know the stories out of san francisco are uh testifying to something

00:12:51.720 like a free fall condition there with respect to quality of life again with with respect to both

00:12:57.820 variables crime and homelessness let's take homelessness first just what what is the reality of

00:13:04.680 of homelessness now in new york and what would be a response to it that could fundamentally change the

00:13:10.440 picture well the first thing you want to do is try and keep the problem from getting worse

00:13:14.340 because there are many new yorkers who are in position to potentially get evicted if the moratorium

00:13:22.180 isn't extended or if they don't have legal representation it turns out if you have legal

00:13:27.080 representation the odds of your staying in your apartment go way way up so one thing the city should

00:13:33.560 be doing is making sure that any tenant who wants a lawyer can have one we should be trying to keep

00:13:38.800 people in their homes the city has had a program for a while around emergency rent assistance that makes

00:13:45.860 perfect sense where you spend a little bit of money trying to keep people in their home it ends up saving

00:13:52.380 the city a lot of money on homelessness services and the homelessness problem is growing in new york city

00:13:59.900 order of magnitude you have about 57 000 people in shelters right now in new york and

00:14:07.960 in some cases new york is spending tens of thousands of dollars ahead per year on providing shelter to

00:14:16.560 folks because of the overburdened shelter system in some cases even buying hotel rooms because that 0.92

00:14:24.540 that was the only shelter that could be found so this is a situation where you want to try and keep

00:14:32.380 the problems getting worse number one and then number two we need to develop more sustainable

00:14:39.400 affordable housing which has been a constant problem in new york city because no one actually

00:14:44.240 has wanted affordable housing to be developed in their neighborhood when the proposal comes up

00:14:48.760 they're all for it in the political abstract but then when it was like hey like how about your

00:14:52.980 your district and people didn't like it so one big opportunity here there are a few things one can do

00:14:59.700 one is we should be expanding something called safe haven beds which are beds that are provided by

00:15:04.940 non-profits in some cases religiously affiliated non-profits that in many cases homeless people

00:15:11.280 prefer to homeless shelters some homeless people really do not want to go to a shelter but they'll go

00:15:16.060 to a safe haven bed so any of those beds are worth their weight in gold and we should be trying to expand

00:15:21.740 capacity but the other big move would be to quickly repurpose some of these vacant hotels that are

00:15:29.560 going out of business right and left frankly right now in in new york city if you can imagine being a

00:15:34.940 hotel operator right now you're looking at 90 of your business drying up for at this point 10 months in

00:15:42.600 a row and so a lot of hotel operators are throwing in the towel and the city should actually be catching

00:15:48.900 that towel and saying we'll take it off your hands and then repurpose some of those hotels 0.98

00:15:55.380 to become ongoing affordable housing for folks they're actually in many ways ideally set up for

00:16:00.840 it already they have the plumbing the fixtures the infrastructure so this is one of the only golden

00:16:07.700 opportunities of the pandemic age for the city of new york there are many of these hotel operators that

00:16:13.960 actually at this point uh would take a deal just to walk away hmm interesting how how do you stop

00:16:22.120 a hotel like that converted to affordable housing from becoming a kind of circus of dysfunction of the

00:16:30.840 sort that i imagine explains why homeless people often don't want to go to shelters because they're either

00:16:36.920 perceived to be unsafe or they're just many of the reasons why people are homeless are you know now

00:16:42.840 concentrated in a building right you know mental illness and substance abuse being the primary ones

00:16:50.280 i mean obviously people become homeless for other reasons of the sheer bad luck of economic emergency

00:16:57.720 or illness you know plus eviction but there's so many people who are on the street who are you know

00:17:03.480 chronically on the street due to substance abuse or mental illness how could we make these places

00:17:10.360 places where people can get the kinds of services they need and have the the result be something

00:17:16.920 like a remedy for the problem of homelessness well number one would be to have a mixture of

00:17:25.400 types of residents and families so that you could have people who just would be really thrilled

00:17:30.280 about an opportunity to live in a repurposed hotel alongside maybe some folks who are struggling and

00:17:35.640 so you wind up without a very high density of folks who might be struggling with substance abuse or other

00:17:41.800 issues um there's also something called supportive housing where you actually have some of those

00:17:46.200 services built in and so you could have social workers or addiction counselors actually even

00:17:53.880 uh staffing some of these these centers so that there are some countermeasures in place the the goal would

00:18:02.040 not frankly be to turn these hotels into shelters in the way that would be a concentration of some of the

00:18:11.720 issues that shelters right now face it would be so that there's a whole mix of families and

00:18:18.680 people have have found that actually to be a way for folks who are struggling to

00:18:23.880 have a social context and be in better position to improve right right so what about

00:18:30.600 crime in the city what's happening there i mean there's a spike in many cities of 50 or so

00:18:37.800 in the last 10 months it's a bit higher here unfortunately and also discouraging the rates of resolution which is

00:18:47.400 that the perpetrator gets caught have been going down that to me is a very nasty combination you want

00:18:55.080 the rates of resolution to be going up or staying constant worst case so we need to invest resources

00:19:03.000 in trying to stem the rise and also catch perpetrators one of the the things that i always have this working

00:19:10.680 theory on is that if there are let's say 10 robberies that might not be 10 robbers that could be like

00:19:18.360 two robbers you know who just are going around you know robbing multiple people so when i see these

00:19:25.480 rises and the fact that many of the crimes haven't been resolved i think to myself well there are some

00:19:31.480 very bad actors who are in position to strike again and that that to me has to be where you focus your

00:19:39.800 resources is that that a relatively small number of people being apprehended could end up being like a

00:19:46.440 significant factor in some of these rates i'm going to tell a dumb story but like it was you know this is

00:19:55.160 just an experience i had um i ride my bike around new york city a lot not not a motorbike like a normal

00:20:01.560 i've done right i've not you're campaigning on a harley i have i've not enough of like an 80s action

00:20:07.080 hero to be running out on a motorcycle so being safety conscious i bought a blinker to attach to

00:20:15.240 my to my bike because my blinker had run out of juice and i was kind of lazy and decided i had to buy

00:20:21.080 a new one even though there was a way to recharge the original and uh so i bought this blinker very nice

00:20:27.800 very shiny and i put it on my bike and it was actually taken off my bike within a day

00:20:34.600 like i you know i parked my bike and locked it and so my bike was locked so you know it was a little bit

00:20:40.200 difficult to just take but someone saw the blinker and decided to take it off my bike

00:20:45.080 like that was the kind of thing that i don't think necessarily would have happened in another

00:20:51.320 time in new york's history i think right now is like a time when people are feeling kind of

00:20:57.720 desperate and so if they just something as dumb as like a blinker on a on a bike like that they might

00:21:03.720 take it now when they might not have before obviously the the topic of law and order 0.86

00:21:08.520 brings us up against issues of uh social justice here that that are both understandable and i i also

00:21:17.000 think are deeply misconstrued by many people you know on both the right and the left but i do think

00:21:24.840 we're you know post george floyd so now coming on i don't know what that would be nine months or so

00:21:31.880 we're living through a the kind of aftershocks of a kind of moral panic around policing police violence

00:21:41.400 issues of lingering racism uh notions of of equality in this space that don't actually make sense when

00:21:50.840 you're talking about the demographics of crime a belief that in particular the black community is

00:21:56.840 is over policed whereas if you ask members of the black community living in the most crime-ridden 1.00

00:22:04.120 neighborhoods that's certainly not their perception you know arguably they're over policed with respect

00:22:09.240 to petty crime and under policed with respect to serious crime and in the starkest case you have

00:22:16.440 the problem of murderers just going free you know crimes being unsolved the worst kinds of crimes

00:22:23.480 being unsolved disproportionately in certain neighborhoods and yet any seemingly rational

00:22:29.800 approach to fighting this sort of crime you know directing cops preferentially into places where

00:22:37.320 more of the crime happens can be spun as as racist or you know otherwise optically horrific

00:22:46.440 sort of any time you want you know and people are so sensitive to this that i think we're right

00:22:51.960 to fear that in many cities i don't know if new york is an example but in many cities there's something

00:22:56.120 like a ferguson effect that has happened here which is you know you know where cops kind of stop policing

00:23:03.560 in areas where the inconvenient youtube video leads to the reputational destruction of of the cops involved or the

00:23:14.280 police force uh that's supposed to be solving crime in these neighborhoods so it's a hard problem to

00:23:20.360 to solve and you know just from a pr point of view whatever is rational to do in terms of fighting crime

00:23:26.600 and improving people's lives and as you know michael bloomberg had his own adventures with stop and frisk

00:23:33.320 how do you view solving this problem or ramming through it or ignoring it i mean what is the approach

00:23:40.280 to fighting a resurgence in crime in new york in a way that actually fights it as efficiently and as

00:23:50.520 sanely as possible i mean the nypd has had a number of real issues that predated george floyd in the summer

00:24:03.800 there was a gentleman named eric gerner who was publicly choked out and lost his life

00:24:13.240 and i don't know if you remember this was a number of years ago but that there were nba players

00:24:19.560 yeah wearing like i can't breathe a number of years ago for eric gerner that that was new york

00:24:27.640 like the nypd spends hundreds of millions of dollars a year settling civil lawsuits

00:24:34.200 against it which i i take as a very very terrible data point on so many levels one because if you

00:24:44.600 can imagine the city of new york spending hundreds of millions on anything like the last thing you'd

00:24:49.000 want to spend it is on settling lawsuits against cops who've done something wrong the the second

00:24:55.560 thing is that if you're losing a couple hundred million dollars worth of lawsuits a year that probably

00:25:02.920 means that the level of harm might even be a multiple of that because a lot of the times i'm

00:25:07.880 sure no one's actually getting sued for something that that they're doing wrong so there is a genuine

00:25:17.400 cultural problem where where the nypv is concerned that i think extends to someone not all of the

00:25:25.720 officers when when i talk to officers on the street some of them frankly seem like exactly the kind of

00:25:33.720 people that you want policing their community um when i was in the bronx there was a team it was like

00:25:40.680 a latina woman and a black male cop patrolling and like you know like it made you feel like okay like

00:25:49.400 these are people i actually even represent this community there has to be an ability to focus on

00:25:59.160 lowering rates of violent crime and bringing up resolution rates and simultaneously not incurring

00:26:10.120 hundreds of millions of dollars of lawsuits for civil rights abuses or having

00:26:18.600 well-publicized issues where your officer did something that people would find objectionable

00:26:28.280 and i do not think that it is impossible to do two things at once which is bring down violent crime rates

00:26:36.520 and try to address and reform a culture that has definitely demonstrated some excesses

00:26:45.320 and that the excesses have been demonstrated like very very recently you know like that there's that

00:26:53.960 there were issues around nypd responding excessively to various protests you know just a number of weeks or

00:27:03.000 months ago so that it is a complex issue but you have to be able to to tackle both the things at once

00:27:11.560 and i think they go hand in hand because if the public knew that police were bringing down rates

00:27:20.680 of crime and catching perpetrators like i think public trust would approve

00:27:24.520 yeah i mean there's just so much confusion on this issue that it's very difficult to sort out people's

00:27:31.880 intuitions here i mean you just take the eric garner case and the thing that was so obscenely wrong

00:27:38.040 in that instance was that the cops were trying to enforce that law in the first place right i mean just

00:27:44.440 the effort to enforce a don't sell cigarettes on the street law led to an escalating violence that

00:27:53.880 he was absolutely resisting arrest i mean once you try to arrest somebody and they say you're not going

00:27:59.240 to arrest me and they're going to physically resist well then the cops are all of a sudden in this

00:28:05.080 escalating use of force scenario where things can obviously go wrong and if somebody just reaches

00:28:10.360 into it into his pocket at that point you know then you have a cop having to make a split-second

00:28:14.280 decision whether this person is going for a gun or a knife or it's just it's chaos and so you can't 0.99

00:28:19.640 have idiotic laws that put cops on this continuum where decisions are being made about whether to 0.99

00:28:26.440 effectively kill someone and you know the war on drugs generally has put us in this spot for 1.00

00:28:33.880 now decades where cops are executing no-knock raids and then sometimes they get the wrong

00:28:39.640 address and you probably don't have this problem as much in new york because i would imagine the rate

00:28:45.240 of gun ownership is you know legal gun ownership is almost non-existent so there's not the same

00:28:51.400 problem with people with cops kicking in the wrong door and then getting into a shootout with somebody who

00:28:56.520 thinks he's defending himself but it really does start with having some bad laws being enforced

00:29:04.200 in many cases and i mean why can't we simply focus on the problems that are that are totally

00:29:11.720 uncontroversial like violent crime and including things like robbery i mean it has to be at the top

00:29:19.080 of everyone's list of things that need to be enforced and and that is something that i believe

00:29:24.840 i'm going to help effectuate as mayor that we can decriminalize or frankly relax enforcement around

00:29:35.560 certain forms of recreational drug use i've already targeted opiates as an example of something that i don't

00:29:44.040 want to be prosecuting i've also championed decriminalizing sex work because to me like

00:29:52.920 police should be dedicating energies to more serious crimes that actually concern the you know

00:30:00.920 the public to a higher level and so you're exactly right sam i mean these are things that we may be

00:30:05.960 able to make happen in new york city as early as next year yeah it would be amazing again it's useful

00:30:13.320 for people to consider how much bigger than a city new york is really i mean it is a well one of the

00:30:20.600 things i i tell people sam all the time is that if new york metro area were a country it would be the

00:30:28.200 11th biggest economy in the world right after canada so so the amount of impact that we can have

00:30:38.200 is really vast it's important to get right because you know the failure of new york you know for that

00:30:43.240 very reason would be a very bad sign right i mean the failure of new york on some level is the failure

00:30:48.920 of civilization i mean given how important it is culturally and economically a proper renaissance

00:30:55.080 in new york where we um connect all these dots correctly and reboot as as quickly as possible

00:31:02.840 that would be amazing and it would be amazing to generalize those lessons to other places how where

00:31:09.400 does ubi fit in here now people will be familiar with i think you're campaigning for president on this

00:31:17.000 plank perhaps you you might want to say something about it for anyone who isn't but is there a scope

00:31:23.080 for a a ubi experiment in new york a universal basic income i think most of your listeners are familiar with as

00:31:32.840 a policy where everyone gets a certain amount of money to meet their basic needs

00:31:37.160 i was championing a thousand dollars a month during the presidential campaign which now

00:31:41.400 doesn't seem like enough like given the pandemic i think people are now advocating for two thousand

00:31:46.920 dollars a month for everyone which seems very reasonable to me new york city is going to be facing

00:31:54.600 budgetary shortfalls for the foreseeable so we're going to have to be very targeted

00:32:00.680 i've proposed a cash relief program to alleviate extreme poverty among the half a million or so new

00:32:11.320 yorkers who right now are at that level and we can lift them up out of extreme poverty and do so in a way

00:32:21.320 that i believe is going to end up saving the city hundreds of millions of dollars because of the

00:32:32.280 expenses that the city incurs when people end up in our institutions in various ways whether those be

00:32:38.360 shelters or other forms of safety net that sometimes people find themselves in worst case scenario

00:32:46.040 you know you know like a prison or another institution so this billion dollars in cash relief i believe

00:32:55.400 could serve as a template because it's going to be the biggest program of its kind and my hope is that

00:33:01.960 we can augment it with private philanthropic resources among folks who are looking for innovative

00:33:10.600 ways to fight poverty i also want to take some of the monies that we put into people's hands through

00:33:16.200 something called the ibnyc program and have it be funneled through locally owned small businesses

00:33:23.240 because of the scale of the new york city economy i think that there are ways that we can actually

00:33:29.800 have more of the value flow through the hands of folks that we're also trying to help recover

00:33:35.480 or in some cases stay open yeah what is the role for philanthropy here we were talking about a winner

00:33:43.560 take all kind of economy before covet but you know covet has certainly accentuated that in ways that that

00:33:51.160 i guess are unsurprising but were probably unforeseeable because no one was really thinking

00:33:55.800 about the consequences of a pandemic so i mean we've seen some businesses absolutely decimated through no

00:34:03.080 fault of their own as we've mentioned restaurants no matter how successful they were before covet just

00:34:09.640 got crushed but um there are people who have made tens of billions of dollars and individuals who have

00:34:16.760 made tens of billions of dollars even hundreds of billions of dollars in a couple of cases over the

00:34:21.880 last 10 months and uh i'm just wondering it just it just seems like again new york is is a singular place

00:34:29.880 i think you you really could make a pitch to some of the wealthiest people in our society who you know

00:34:35.160 whether they have roots in new york or not to um make a major philanthropic push to do something

00:34:43.880 amazing there yeah that's very much the the vision and the plan where if you want to try to address

00:34:52.120 poverty in the biggest city in the country in one of the most important cities in the world and you want

00:34:57.720 to work hand in hand with the city then this is your opportunity and the city is going to put forward

00:35:04.920 a billion dollars but in my mind that should be just the beginning and you can easily imagine individuals

00:35:12.920 stepping forward and saying i want to demonstrate that poverty is something that we can defeat if we

00:35:20.600 decide to do so and i have a number of other anti-poverty plans that are related one is trying

00:35:29.560 to get people high-speed internet uh 29 of new york city residents don't have high-speed internet right

00:35:35.880 now and so you can imagine some of them trying to have their kids learn from home 12 don't have a bank

00:35:42.920 account so they're subject to check cashers money lenders and pawn shops which sometimes charge you serious

00:35:50.040 rates so there are different ways that we can combat poverty and i i hope to make new york city

00:35:58.520 the proving ground for a lot of these ideas you said before sam that new york's comeback is vital

00:36:06.920 i don't have any illusions and that there is no guarantee that new york comes back the way that

00:36:11.560 we want it to i think there's a lot at stake i believe that i can help dramatically increase the odds

00:36:18.040 of new york coming back but one of the ways it's going to come back is if we're willing to

00:36:23.800 invest in innovative ways in programs that get people excited and that we're able to access

00:36:31.080 resources that don't fall directly under city agencies that's one reason why i'm excited to run for

00:36:37.800 mayor is i i want to present a vision of new york city that different types of people will get excited

00:36:43.560 about uh that frankly would not ever set foot in city hall yeah innovation is really in your dna so

00:36:53.960 it's great to think about taking a um a non-standard approach to so many things uh here and non-standard

00:37:02.920 in a way that's not the mere wrecking ball of you know being a trumpian outsider right we've tried that

00:37:09.560 on a national scale but non-standard in not being captured by you know all of the uh the legacy code

00:37:18.440 that is making it impossible to innovate to have a truly fact-based and well-informed discussion about

00:37:25.640 how we move forward on all these fronts i think you're the guy to do that and um yeah so wait wait

00:37:31.720 when's the election is the end of june this is the uh primary june 22nd yeah is the is the democratic

00:37:36.920 primary which is essentially the whole kit and caboodle given that it is new york city and we

00:37:43.560 are in great position to win but we could certainly use people's support this is a very fast race to

00:37:49.480 sprint and uh we need to raise as much money as possible by the march 11th filing deadline which is

00:37:57.080 when we're going to file our first fundraising so if anyone wants to support you can go to andrewyang.com

00:38:03.560 which will direct you to the the campaign website any contribution would be enormously helpful

00:38:10.440 we're in a very fast fight for the future of new york city and i gotta say that uh i anytime i i'm on

00:38:20.920 your podcast and which hasn't been that many times but like it it does feel like another another

00:38:27.560 benchmark or another chapter it's like i i feel like i'm this political figure that you helped

00:38:34.520 cultivate and create and and i'm still fighting you know it's like the the vision is still very

00:38:42.520 similar even if the context is changing from the white house to in this case uh gracie mansion in new

00:38:49.720 york city i certainly hope that uh when you become mayor of new york that you take advantage of the

00:38:57.400 national spotlight there because again the the success of new york this really is a unique

00:39:03.160 moment we have been reset so fundamentally as a society and are just grappling with

00:39:10.440 what that means and you know new york is the the fulcrum of our swing into um you know a full recovery or

00:39:19.480 into the failure of that right it's just you know i'm old enough to remember that it was possible to

00:39:26.200 have a new york that was really screwed up i mean back in the 70s and 80s and i forget what year new

00:39:32.920 york really turned around with respect to violent crime and just kind of infrastructure sanity i mean

00:39:39.560 just like you know picking up the trash but there were years there where new york really had just

00:39:45.640 fallen off a cliff and you're you know you have these bad movies you know you know charles bronson

00:39:50.440 movies being inspired by how grim urban life had become there so it's possible to screw up

00:39:59.160 and there's no question this is an inflection point so we need smart people like yourself to um

00:40:06.120 figure out how to reboot from here and so um yeah i i wish you the best of luck and i hope people

00:40:11.800 will support your campaign immediately i just but before we close andrew i want to ask you a couple

00:40:17.000 of kind of big picture national global questions just to get your take because i went out on twitter

00:40:22.360 and and asked for questions and and we got a long list but uh there were many on the point of just

00:40:30.600 what you think we should do with respect to big tech now i mean how do you view regulating big

00:40:35.640 tech and our public conversation and all the all the anguish we've experienced pro and con on that

00:40:41.000 topic uh i think that we need to regulate big tech much more intelligently and i've been very frustrated

00:40:50.520 that a lot of politicians have just gotten accustomed to grandstanding and trying to score points

00:40:59.320 for cable news while the essential issues just remain completely unaddressed the the insanity of

00:41:09.320 having at this point like a near trillion dollar industry being regulated by section 230 of the

00:41:18.280 telecommunications indecency act that was written in 1996 before facebook even got started and then in dc

00:41:27.720 they're still looking at it like like fighting over what it means and it's like no one could possibly

00:41:35.720 have known what the internet was going to look like in 1996 you know it's 25 years later instead of

00:41:43.720 yelling at tech companies for not doing something you you like or don't like try and come up with like

00:41:50.120 a genuine regulatory framework that balances what you think the the public's interests are

00:41:55.480 uh one aspect of that should be trying to respect our data rights as human beings because right now

00:42:03.320 our data is getting sold and resold for hundreds of billions of dollars a year and that cost is not

00:42:10.120 just economic it's actually in human agency it's in public trusts we're getting packetized ourselves and

00:42:19.800 sold to various advertisers in ways that also undermine the public good and our government has

00:42:27.240 been completely absent on this i think california's privacy laws are some of now the best in the country

00:42:35.880 that the newest rule is for there to actually be a dedicated privacy protection agency in california

00:42:44.840 it's almost like some kind of data cops it makes me very happy i hope they get a really cool uniform

00:42:50.520 and sigil but other states should be following suit and the feds should be following suit california

00:42:57.320 actually is ahead of the curve on this and what about with respect to our politics how do you think we

00:43:03.880 could improve a system that is now it's hard to characterize how ramshackle it appears first of all the fact

00:43:12.360 that we can't seem to hold an election that the country can trust the outcome of how do we even

00:43:19.320 approach a national conversation about improving our politics and the actual the infrastructure that

00:43:27.560 allows us to deliver political results going forward sam i'm so glad you asked this because

00:43:34.200 i actually worked on a book um that's on this topic that's going to come out in the late summer

00:43:39.880 oh nice but i and i'll i'll send you the manuscript because it's been on my mind but i'll let your

00:43:48.680 listeners know what one of the key takeaways is which is rank choice voting uh we need to get rank

00:43:55.160 choice voting adopted around the country because it will help reduce polarization it will free legislators

00:44:03.480 up from the fear of being primaried which right now is guiding some very extreme decisions right now over

00:44:10.440 80 percent of elections are predetermined in terms of whether it's going to be democratic or republican and so most

00:44:18.440 voters don't actually have a genuine choice in their representation if you have rank choice voting it decreases

00:44:27.080 negative campaigning it gets rid of the spoiler effects so no one can be accused of wasting your

00:44:32.760 vote andrew maybe explain how rank choice voting works because i think many people won't be familiar

00:44:39.320 with the logic of it oh yeah i'm sorry like i got so excited yeah yeah no you know new york's mayoral

00:44:45.160 races rank choice voting for the first time too so this is very relevant but the way rank choice voting works

00:44:51.080 is that the winner has to get over 50 percent of people's votes which use that as like a starting

00:45:00.280 point and the second thing is that you can rank more than one candidate as someone that you'd like to see

00:45:06.840 win so use the mayoral race as an example let's say there are seven candidates you can rank me first and then

00:45:17.240 scott stringer second and then my wiley third and then what happens is when they count all of our votes

00:45:24.360 if no one gets up to 50.1 percent at the top line then they get rid of the bottom most candidate and then

00:45:35.720 they reassign that candidate's votes based upon the that person's second choice or the that candidates

00:45:43.480 you know second choice votes so then that person's votes get reassigned and you repeat the process

00:45:51.400 over and over again until someone gets past 50.1 percent so in this way you can actually vote for

00:45:57.480 whoever you want as your first choice and have no fear that it's somehow going to result in someone you

00:46:05.080 detest winning because you can just rank you know your second choice person and then if your person ends

00:46:11.000 up being one of the bottom performers your votes just flow through to your second choice right right

00:46:15.960 which is a huge deal i mean because the the ralph nader effect is a problem and um to be able to

00:46:23.880 completely circumvent that issue of there being a spoiler and a way a wasted vote would uh change a lot

00:46:31.560 you know if nothing else changed and here's the wild thing sam is that in 25 states around the country

00:46:39.720 you can actually activate a referendum for ranked choice voting simply through a ballot initiative

00:46:46.520 that requires a number of signatures and in some states it's actually a relatively modest number of

00:46:51.800 signatures two states have already adopted ranked choice voting and open primaries and those two states

00:46:58.440 are maine and alaska but there are another 23 states that have ballot initiatives where all it takes is

00:47:06.760 some animated citizens and a bunch of signatures and you could actually transform democracy for the

00:47:12.920 better it's very exciting that this to me is something that has enormous potential to decrease

00:47:19.560 the polarization that is making us less and less functional well andrew i will let you go i i wish you a

00:47:26.520 swift recovery from covid and a thoroughly successful campaign and i look forward to on the other side of a

00:47:34.600 vaccine being in a crowded restaurant with you when you are mayor of the city of new york it's a date i

00:47:42.040 will host you we will go to whatever show that that you had a hankering to see we'll have the best uh

00:47:48.760 cuisine in the world and then we'll have uh after dinner drink at gracie mansion to to celebrate the

00:47:57.720 renaissance of new york city like that this is a beautiful vision sam and i'm i'm definitely going to

00:48:02.120 fight for it nice wouldn't that be something well yes i will get it thank you so much sam

00:48:20.280 you

Making Sense - Sam Harris - February 11, 2021

#236 — Rebooting New York City

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