Making Sense - Sam Harris - #399 — The Politics of Catastrophe

00:00:00.000 rick caruso thanks for coming thank you sam thanks for having me anything happen in the

00:00:26.840 last two weeks that you want to talk about only a couple of things man been a tough couple of

00:00:32.340 weeks well so obviously we're going to talk about the the la fires and i think we'll probably also

00:00:37.520 talk about california politics and and maybe politics in general before we jump in wait can

00:00:43.260 you summarize your background as a businessman and as a political figure how do you come to have

00:00:50.160 any opinions about what we're going to talk about here well i've been really fortunate sam in my

00:00:54.180 life because i've been able to lead a life that is in business started my own business a number of

00:01:01.800 years ago i practiced law before that wasn't a particularly good lawyer but it was great training

00:01:07.680 and i was with a big law firm out of new york and i say that because the big law firm out of new york

00:01:14.300 after about six years imploded it went bankrupt and it forced me to make a decision about starting a

00:01:19.800 business and so from that standpoint it was really fortunate and a blessing and so i started my

00:01:25.520 company and you know one by one built it up in real estate and um we've done some really incredible

00:01:32.400 things because i've got an amazing team of people that are creative and innovative and imagine and

00:01:38.320 we like breaking a lot of the sort of the normal boundaries and rules and then at the same time

00:01:43.480 i uh was asked when i was 26 to be a commissioner when tom bradley was mayor i had no idea what that

00:01:50.780 meant but i had a a good friend that was a commissioner and said he would make an introduction

00:01:55.900 and he asked me what commission do i want to be on i didn't even know what to pick i said i love

00:02:02.420 business and he said well how about department of water and power it's the largest public utility

00:02:07.700 in the country and i said sure that one sounds good to me what do you do you just rent a copy of

00:02:11.400 chinatown and blockbuster at that point exactly but you know i did that and i served under tom bradley

00:02:17.160 i ended up becoming the president of that commission and then i left and then dick reardon became mayor

00:02:22.540 and he asked me to come back because that was the days of uh oil deregulation energy deregulation

00:02:27.960 enron was coming after dwp and dwp was at risk for going bankrupt so dick called me up and said you got

00:02:35.020 to come back and restructure lapd and i did i mean la dwp and i did and then i left there and i thought

00:02:42.600 my public service was done and jim hon asked me to come in and be the president of the police commission

00:02:48.380 because at the time the police committee the police department uh was under a federal consent decree

00:02:54.080 if you remember after the rodney king riots and it was just a mess crime was going out of control and

00:02:59.660 officers were leaving so i came in and redid that brought in bill bratton and we got crime down to

00:03:05.300 levels not seen seen since 1950 so i love public service and i've been able to do both so it's been

00:03:11.600 really rewarding to me yeah well so we're going to track through all of this but i can just say that

00:03:18.100 seeing the result of these fires and seeing the the response and uh the the leadership or lack of

00:03:25.560 leadership that we witnessed throughout certainly in the the early days are there many of us in this

00:03:30.620 town who if we could have built a time machine and gone back i mean after killing hitler and doing a

00:03:37.620 few other nice things we would have figured out how to get you uh in the mayor's office in this town

00:03:43.360 appreciate that we'll talk i guess i'll i'll ask you what could have been done differently given the

00:03:51.200 resources in place if you had been mayor and maybe the answer is not much at all apart from the optics

00:03:56.140 but the real concern is what we do going forward right how we rebuild how we use this opportunity to

00:04:02.040 make that's right los angeles one of the great cities of the 21st century because we really have

00:04:07.120 an unusual opportunity here we have a in some of the nicest parts of town we have a clean canvas

00:04:12.360 and that's i want to talk to you about how we respond to that so i'm just going to go through the

00:04:17.060 topics here briefly just to give listeners and viewers a sense of where we're headed

00:04:20.740 i want to talk about what happened and and what could have gone differently uh the challenges of

00:04:25.680 cleanup and reconstruction which uh everyone is is worried about and then i want to i want to talk

00:04:31.360 about the politics i mean the cynicism around government the sense that government really is

00:04:35.540 ineffectual and that and i'm especially concerned that a lot of very wealthy people feel that the only

00:04:42.160 response to the the fecklessness of government is to figure out how to pay less in taxes as though that

00:04:47.140 we're going to fix our problems i think we'll touch on the role that dei policies have played in

00:04:52.660 california politics and whether there's anything to worry about here uh they certainly have made

00:04:58.060 people cynical about government and then i want to talk about the problem of wealth inequality and

00:05:03.820 the perception that there's a stigma around great wealth right that there's really no way to have

00:05:11.040 become a billionaire ethically i mean that that is if you go left of center in our politics that's a very

00:05:16.460 commonly held intuition which i think is wrong um and i want to talk about the role that philanthropy

00:05:22.680 might play in performing an exorcism on all of this so that's where we're headed sounds good but

00:05:29.440 to start i just said this is kind of a sanity check question i have for you which is given the reality on

00:05:35.640 the ground let's say you had become mayor and you would have done all the mayoral things you would

00:05:40.900 have done in the immediate response to this emergency the infrastructure was what it was on

00:05:47.460 on january 7th we had 80 mile 80 mile an hour wind gusts coming across millions of acres of very dry

00:05:55.620 brush and you know all that land has kind of a clear run onto the city you know through all of our

00:06:02.000 canyons do you think that there's anything that could have been done differently given the resources in

00:06:08.840 place and and the infrastructure we currently have on january 7th that would have made a difference

00:06:13.700 absolutely there's no doubt in my mind and let me tell you why about six years ago there was a fire

00:06:20.680 in bruntwood along the 405 freeway so for the listeners that may not know the geography that's

00:06:26.480 about 15 minutes east of the palisades with a palisades fire and when that fire broke out it was put

00:06:34.100 out pretty quickly it maybe took half a day or so but it didn't travel much and at that time i had said

00:06:41.300 and i called people in the city there's 40 years of brush between bruntwood and the palisades and if

00:06:49.060 it starts traveling west to fire it will come right down into the alphabet streets that's the neighborhood

00:06:55.220 that backs up to the mountains there was no effort for 40 years to do anything about that brush

00:07:01.920 so that was a predictable problem and i'm a big believer that when things are predictable they're

00:07:07.920 preventable then on top of it some genius decided let's take one of the main reservoirs out of service

00:07:14.320 during what's typically known to be a peak fire season when the san anna winds come up

00:07:19.120 so we had a bad decision there we had a bad decision and not mobilizing the fire trucks into the area so that

00:07:27.100 they were already there and could respond immediately rather than a delayed response time there was a

00:07:32.540 whole series of things you could have done could it have been absolutely prevented because of the

00:07:37.740 catastrophic winds i don't know only god knows what i am very certain of there was a failure of

00:07:43.580 leadership at a lot of different levels and i've been very open about this including the mayors

00:07:49.340 to not be adequately prepared and i think there's a lot of tough questions that need to be asked and

00:07:55.260 people need to be held accountable but i just want to go back a little bit in time for a second

00:08:00.540 the head of dwp i don't know her she was an appointee of mayor bass clearly she made a lot 0.99

00:08:07.420 of really bad decisions and there was back in the day of tom bradley or a dick reardon or jim

00:08:13.740 hon that i worked for there was sort of this golden rule that you didn't politicize these critical

00:08:20.700 departments they had a sort of a life and death kind of function the department of water and power

00:08:27.980 is supplying all the water and all the power to la city and it really was an engineering marvel it was

00:08:35.500 known for the the greatness of the engineers in that department and as long as i was there for 13 years

00:08:42.140 the head of that department always was an engineer that came up through the ranks so that they really

00:08:47.340 understood the system that broke down some years ago with garcetti and the head of that department

00:08:54.940 became more of a political person and i think that's just a mistake and we're paying for that

00:09:00.540 mistake and a lot of others so yes i do think a lot of things could have been done better and people are

00:09:05.820 paying the ultimate price for it a lot of people lost their lives 28 people now between palisades and

00:09:11.180 altadena and lost their homes thousands of homes yeah just to uh remind people i think it's we're up

00:09:18.060 to over 12 000 structures i think it's 15 000 now okay it's yeah massive amount of buildings yeah so

00:09:26.700 given your experience at dwp what do you make of the fact that it was either a lack of water or water

00:09:33.180 pressure throughout the city at a certain point clearly there has to be some way to modernize our

00:09:40.780 infrastructure such that that wouldn't happen well there's no doubt but again the one main reservoir

00:09:46.300 i think it was like over a million and a half gallons or something that was empty for repairs

00:09:51.660 so that was one of the main problems the other two reservoirs that are smaller weren't being

00:09:56.220 replenished with water quick enough now part of that in fairness is the amount of water that was being

00:10:01.100 used but had the other reservoir been as a backup it would have kept it so the fire hydrants are all

00:10:07.660 gravity flow there's no pumps pumping the water out and i think it was about 10 o'clock i got the

00:10:13.500 call because we had one of our senior people up there embedded because we were obviously worried

00:10:19.340 about our downtown that we built and he called me about i think it was about 10 o'clock and said we ran

00:10:24.300 out of water and i said that's impossible how do you run out of water i was at dwp a long time

00:10:30.220 people have been in the city a long time when was the last time you heard about running out of water

00:10:34.220 and we've had some big fires this is one of the biggest but we've had some big fires and i'll give

00:10:39.900 you an answer to it in 1961 the same problem happened the bel air fire and that makes this

00:10:46.780 all the worse is that we had a situation in 61 where some of the hydrants ran dry and we didn't

00:10:52.620 do everything we could to fix it and prevent it from ever happening again yeah i know a guy in the

00:10:57.500 palisades who was very close to where the fire started i mean this was just a little fire up near the

00:11:03.740 highlands and i mean he told me and said so i have this this is i guess some form of journalism

00:11:09.820 here i'm talking to the homeowner who's telling me what his experience was when the fire department

00:11:14.380 showed up at his house to fight the fire near his house the hydrant closest to his house didn't

00:11:19.580 produce water so that's i haven't heard that that's crazy that's completely bonkers there was no pull on

00:11:25.020 the system at that point presumably yeah it was nothing yeah okay so but this goes back when you're the

00:11:30.780 the the mayor or the head of an organization and you know you have a potential crisis coming

00:11:36.940 when you bring every one of your department heads in and say run me through your protocols tell me

00:11:43.500 what your plan is and whatever your plan is multiply it times two so nothing bad happens right and be

00:11:50.460 eyeball to eyeball which with each of these department heads i don't think that happened maybe it did so

00:11:57.340 we'll circle back on some of these topics about what we should do but with respect to you you

00:12:04.060 mentioned the alphabet streets and and that that's the area of just hiroshima like devastation that

00:12:09.260 people have seen photos of yeah terrible we're literally virtually everything burned i mean there's a few

00:12:14.460 home standing but do building codes need to be changed and zoning change i mean we're going to talk

00:12:19.500 about the rebuilding there but is is do we have a problem of just density that's unsustainable with respect

00:12:24.140 to some of these areas yeah listen as you know people that know the area the homes are very close

00:12:30.060 to one another there but i wouldn't touch the zoning of the palisades i don't think this is the time

00:12:35.020 to reimagine the zoning of the palisades i think it's a time to reimagine the infrastructure of the

00:12:40.860 palisades to bring it into the 21st century to not rebuild the power lines that are running on poles

00:12:47.500 anymore that they're underground right to upgrade the water mains throughout you know upgrade the street

00:12:53.180 systems things like that but i would say i think people want their their neighborhood back and i

00:13:00.220 think it would personally i can't speak for everybody in the palisades obviously but i wouldn't support

00:13:05.260 rezoning and i know there's some efforts to do that and i would push against that okay we'll talk about

00:13:11.500 the construction building building codes in terms of the kind of materials yeah absolutely and fire

00:13:18.380 suppression systems or like sprinklers yeah absolutely well so as you said this was really

00:13:24.540 predictable and even the insurance companies obviously started predicting this years ago because

00:13:29.340 they started canceling policies in the palisades i mean how do you explain the fact that you have the

00:13:34.540 insurance companies pulling out and they're experts so you can go back to look at old podcasts i mean

00:13:40.620 joe rogan is recycling a clip of i think probably five years ago he was talking to some uh reporting a

00:13:46.380 conversation he had with some fire marshal who said that yeah we're going to get the right wins one day

00:13:51.500 and this whole city is going to burn i mean just this is a tinderbox given that people are anticipating

00:13:58.140 this what do you make of the fact that more wasn't done to prepare again sam it goes back to bad

00:14:04.700 leadership i mean i'm not trying to pick on somebody but somebody's got to be held accountable and that

00:14:10.220 person is at the top and i also think it goes back to eric garcetti why didn't you as mayor he was

00:14:15.980 mayor for 10 years clean out that shrubbery clean out the brush you know that would have been a very

00:14:21.340 different dynamic had that been thinned out and why was the fire department underfunded you know it was

00:14:28.620 one of the things i talked about in my campaign and there's been a video of that that's gone viral

00:14:34.300 where i said i will fully fund the fire department since 1961 i don't have my numbers completely

00:14:40.380 accurate because i don't have notes but since 1961 we have about two million maybe three million more

00:14:46.700 people in los angeles we have 10 times now 100 times the amount of calls but now we have less fire

00:14:52.540 stations and the same amount of firefighters i don't know if you saw the pictures because of the

00:14:58.300 underfunding of la fire department the boneyard full of equipment yeah i did see that yeah it's crazy

00:15:04.220 so we have the boneyard meaning these are these are trucks that are not serviceable right they're

00:15:09.100 just because we don't have enough engineers to keep them running right we don't have enough

00:15:13.260 firefighters to keep fire stations open so we've closed them it's insanity so the leadership has just

00:15:20.300 misprioritized the dollars it's not a lack of money it's where the money's going in my opinion and

00:15:26.780 i think government's number one duty is the the safety and the protection of the residents that

00:15:32.860 your budget should be organized around it okay so um some structures in the palisades were saved

00:15:39.980 and most conspicuously your your shopping center in the palisades was saved yeah through i'm told your

00:15:46.540 efforts with it with private firefighters to save it what what did you do there and i want to talk

00:15:53.180 about the ethics of private firefighting obviously but um what techniques were used and when is what

00:15:58.860 you did there scalable it is scalable i'll tell you that we learned a lot building the hotel the resort

00:16:05.020 that we were building up in montecito the rosewood miramar because when we were building that about

00:16:10.300 the same time as we were building the palisades they were both coming out of the ground about the

00:16:13.740 same time there was a massive fire in montecito if you remember and then after the massive fire

00:16:19.100 montecito there were massive rains and that's when the boulders came down destroyed a lot of homes and

00:16:24.220 people were killed it was just a terrible time but we were in framing up in montecito and what we knew

00:16:30.780 is the fire department up there up in santa barbara rightly so will put their resources to the

00:16:37.260 residential neighborhoods not the commercial and we didn't want to be pulling any resources from the

00:16:43.420 residential neighborhoods so our team wisely when the fires broke out contacted private fire departments

00:16:50.220 and some came in from colorado some came in from arizona and i'll tell you which i didn't realize

00:16:55.020 at the time 45 of all wildfires in this country are fought by private firefighters this is a very

00:17:01.900 large industry and we also brought in companies that had retardant and we brought in water trucks so 0.92

00:17:08.060 we weren't pulling on municipal water and we were able to protect the miramar and get it built it

00:17:13.900 it wasn't threatened to the same degree palisades so we had a playbook and we took the time over the

00:17:21.340 years i've got the head of what we call a rapid response team for any kind of natural disaster

00:17:27.100 we got a whole set of plans they go to that plan depending on the disaster the minute those when the

00:17:33.820 wind warnings came out they went into action and the same teams that we used up at miramar were called in

00:17:40.140 they were stationed up there water trucks were stationed up there the retardant company was 1.00

00:17:45.260 stationed up there but where it really started was when we built it we built all of palisades village

00:17:51.660 without any combustible materials even things that look like wood are concrete right they're just

00:17:58.220 formed to look like wood so when those embers were hitting the building they were fortunately it

00:18:03.900 couldn't ignite anything if you go up there now and look at one of the back buildings serena and lily

00:18:09.500 the building is scorched because of the vegetation the plants but the building is standing and the

00:18:15.900 inside is untouched we also designed it where there's not a lot of vents a lot of people's homes

00:18:21.900 burned down because an ember went inside an air vent right inside the house so we designed it knowing

00:18:28.220 we're in a high fire risk area and we had plans to protect it because we knew that now i think that's

00:18:34.860 really good preparation and i do think it's scalable it goes back to as people rebuild their homes they

00:18:41.340 should be encouraged required i don't know which yet to use more non-combustible materials and we should

00:18:48.620 have more equipment in la fire department's arsenal that we can spray down neighborhoods with retardant 0.83

00:18:56.460 that we can be stationed in neighborhoods and closer so that our response time is a lot less that fire that

00:19:03.900 started i think you were talking about the friend you were talking to was two acres and because of

00:19:09.260 the winds and by the time the fire trucks got there it got to 200 acres yeah you know in almost no time

00:19:15.100 so i think our team did a great job and i absolutely have zero regrets of saving the village because we

00:19:21.740 saved hundreds of jobs all those businesses are going to reopen the majority of those businesses are small

00:19:28.940 businesses we have eight uh families living in the village we saved their homes we tried to save the

00:19:35.260 homes across the street we couldn't they were just too engulfed but it's absolutely the right thing to

00:19:39.980 do and it's going to be an anchor you know to give palisades hope to rebuild i guess the only ethical

00:19:47.340 criticism that makes any sense at all to me is if you're pulling from municipal water and there's a

00:19:54.380 zero-sum contest between what you're doing to save your center and what the fire department's doing

00:20:00.700 to save a nearby home is was that the case at all in no the majority of the water that was used was out

00:20:08.620 of our trucks was non-potable water right now the fire department responded but fortunately because we

00:20:15.100 had our own people there they were able to pull off and deal with the homes right right but let me just

00:20:21.420 add one more thing had the fire department been properly staffed nobody would need private

00:20:27.100 firefighters yeah right so this is no different that's happening on the fire side than what's

00:20:32.940 happening in the police side in la yeah you know we have an enormous detail of security on all of

00:20:39.020 our shopping centers because the resources of lapd are so thin we have to be able to take care of

00:20:45.740 ourselves yeah that's the perfect analogy i mean again leaving aside a tug of war between

00:20:52.780 scarce resources of water but the water shouldn't be scarce i mean there's a failure of infrastructure

00:20:58.140 and what's the inverse i always like when i posed a question on business like okay what's the inverse

00:21:04.140 let it burn down let it burn yeah yeah then that's a good thing and then you're of course not and then

00:21:08.860 i mean i would imagine the village alone probably employs directly and indirectly over a thousand

00:21:15.820 people and one of the real terrible side effects of this fire is the thousands of people that have

00:21:22.540 lost their jobs all these homes are gone yeah yeah they have no safety net and so i i feel very good

00:21:29.420 about the fact that life is going to come back into the village jobs are going to come back in and we're

00:21:34.460 going to be supporting people okay so let's talk about on that last point of people losing everything

00:21:41.980 and many of these people certainly many are not rich i mean this is widely believed that this is all

00:21:47.980 rich people you know justice however rough being visited upon the rich people of the palisades

00:21:53.900 many of the people in the palisades were in those homes for generations right they were only in those

00:21:58.060 homes because they were in them for generations that's right you know they bought their home for

00:22:02.460 forty thousand dollars at one point and they stayed there yeah so and many of these people were

00:22:07.580 underinsured or not insured at all because of the foregoing impressions of the insurance companies that

00:22:13.660 we spoke about what is the insurance solution here or the or the solution to the insurance problem

00:22:20.700 in this area and other areas of la i don't know exactly how you solve the insurance problem short

00:22:26.860 of and this is not something i normally propose because i'm not a supporter of big government but

00:22:33.260 i think the government the state and the federal government needs to step in because now you've got

00:22:38.220 all this rebuilding going on if insurance is even available it's going to be incredibly expensive we're

00:22:45.020 going through this now my son whose home was damaged is buying another home and got an insurance quote

00:22:51.180 and i couldn't believe it last night at dinner when you tell me what the quote was yeah and to your

00:22:56.300 point so many people in the palisades were house rich and cash poor because they had been there so

00:23:02.140 long they're not going to be able to afford to rebuild and they're probably very much underinsured

00:23:06.620 because they were smaller homes and then they're going to have to sell their lot their property in

00:23:11.100 order to financially survive but i think the on the insurance side the federal government or the state

00:23:16.460 government has to come in and backstop it i don't know another another way to do it yeah it does seem

00:23:22.460 like a market failure of some kind okay so before we rebuild we have to clean up what are you picturing

00:23:29.900 here for cleanup in the palisades i mean i guess we can talk about cleanup everywhere too but i mean you

00:23:35.260 have we have all of this toxic rubble and ash i mean for instance in the palisades there's only two

00:23:41.180 trucking routes out of there there's sunset i can't imagine them trucking all this ways to

00:23:46.220 cross town over sunset so that the other is pch so i'm imagining they have to take pch to the 10

00:23:51.980 and then to some dumps beyond yeah yeah it has to be a hazardous dump yeah so what what are you

00:23:58.460 picturing that cleanup to be like and how stringent are the safeguards that we're not going to spread

00:24:04.620 further contamination by moving the waste i mean i mean do they treat it like plutonium where literally

00:24:11.020 things have to be in sealed containers or are we talking about open trucks with just tarps

00:24:16.780 cinched across the top i'm not an expert on this sam i wish i was we're trying to learn about it

00:24:20.540 you know that's a fema operation yeah i wish it was already started it hasn't started so fema does

00:24:25.980 everything this is there's no local it's not a local well actually what we learned is as a private

00:24:31.500 landowner you can opt to clean it up yourself to the california standards and there's i think a

00:24:38.700 debate going on i don't know if it's been settled if it's going to be clean to california standards

00:24:43.100 or federal standards so that's got to get settled first and then generally fema will come in and as 1.00

00:24:49.420 i understand it they spray a bonding agent over the debris and that bonding agent prevents it from

00:24:56.700 dusting up right becoming airborne and then it gets put into sealed trucks not just with the canvas

00:25:02.620 over it and then trucked off it's a massive job has anyone estimated how long this is like when will

00:25:09.500 at what point will it start and how long i don't know when it will start i think we're gonna listen

00:25:14.220 i think the issue that's out there right now is you know the president is coming in tomorrow he's gonna

00:25:20.780 view the site i would imagine he's gonna see altadena also same problem in altadena and then he's got to

00:25:26.300 allocate federal funding to do it and you know there's seems to be a little bit of friction between

00:25:33.020 him and our governor and our mayor and yeah i i hope politics stays out of this because i think the

00:25:37.900 problems are too big for politics but i i don't know when it's going to start we keep asking questions

00:25:42.540 and haven't got an answer but it's got to start soon people need to they need to see hope and future

00:25:47.580 down the road they really do it's been two weeks now now how concerned are you about the health

00:25:54.540 effects of what's already happened i mean this is to tell people who haven't been paying attention

00:25:59.180 here there's a huge difference between what happened here and just an enormous forest fire

00:26:05.500 this was an urban fire right so we're not talking about wood burning we're talking about everything

00:26:10.140 burning this is this is paint and cans of pesticide and plastic and electronics and cars and electric

00:26:17.100 batteries yeah yeah so yeah and some some structures so certainly the older structures in the palisades

00:26:23.260 might have had asbestos in them right so we're talking about you know volatile organic compounds

00:26:28.220 like benzene and formaldehyde we're talking about um heavy metals lead and mercury and arsenic

00:26:35.180 you're painting a really beautiful picture yeah yeah asbestos has already been mentioned but there's

00:26:38.940 other contaminants like dioxin i mean all this stuff has already been liberated i mean we we the whole

00:26:44.300 city has been and even for points beyond have been blanketed in this stuff yeah in in the form of smoke

00:26:49.900 and ash i mean how concerned are you about the health effects of what's already happened and then

00:26:54.300 how concerned are you around the cleanup further exposure that is possible or just the fact that

00:27:01.180 it's sitting there now wind is blowing across these sites and ash is moving around you know it's it's not

00:27:06.460 the bonding agent whatever that is presumably you don't want that in your body either but that that

00:27:11.260 hasn't been sprayed yet no i'm very concerned about it and and because of that concern you know the

00:27:16.140 whole family moved out of the region and we've got our daughter-in-law you know who's pregnant and

00:27:22.940 that's high risk with these kind of vocs floating around so no i'm very concerned about it there has to 0.96

00:27:29.260 be incredibly high degree of care by anybody that's cleaning that up and that's why they've kept the area

00:27:36.220 closed out not to get in there but to your point as the winds are blowing that stuff is blowing all over

00:27:42.300 the place and it's a real concern and people have to be very careful about it so you know again i would

00:27:49.420 imagine it's no sooner than a year you know before new construction can start if there's work that's

00:27:57.500 being done with diligence which i hope it gets done in a year but the fact it hasn't even started

00:28:03.660 concerns me too because the longer all of those ashes are remaining the higher the likelihood they're

00:28:10.220 going to start being airborne right and traveling around right and one thing i think we need is a

00:28:15.980 a network of real-time air quality monitors that everyone can see and and scientists can study i think

00:28:24.060 it's a great idea and we we have this for smoke and and 2.5 micron particulates right and as i don't

00:28:31.260 know if you've seen the purple air network but it's just it's just a consumer driven network where

00:28:36.780 hundreds of people in cities all over the world have bought these 200 monitors unfortunately that

00:28:42.620 technology doesn't cover everything else we just talked about i mean it doesn't pick up lead and

00:28:47.100 asbestos and right vocs and but so i don't know i'm looking into this now i don't know how expensive

00:28:53.580 the technology is that gives you real-time readings of everything we're worried about but whatever it

00:28:59.420 is we need whatever it is all over all over town yeah so i absolutely agree because i think there is

00:29:05.900 a false sense of safety you know people look at their phone and they bring up the air quality in

00:29:09.900 a region and it's been perfect on days where you know the air smells like metal yeah so right exactly

00:29:16.300 it's it's not it's not what can be trusted yeah well i'm talking to the uh the purple air people

00:29:22.940 tomorrow oh good uh um let me know i'll keep you in the loop yeah let me know um okay so let's talk

00:29:28.620 about interesting name purple air yeah i've had one of these monitors for years and relied on it and

00:29:34.220 then was uh quite betrayed to see perfect air all over town while when i knew it was uh poison out there

00:29:43.020 so rebuilding we have a a massive coordination problem i'm trying to imagine conservatively

00:29:50.220 speaking like obviously businesses were burned too so let's say there are 5 000 structures in

00:29:54.700 the palisades that burned let's say there's you know 3 500 homes you know i'm just guessing but

00:30:00.460 how do those people as you said many won't want to rebuild or can't rebuild right so they're moving

00:30:05.500 away um so they're going to sell their land i don't know how all these individuals decide to

00:30:11.580 rebuild i mean it's easier for me to picture someone like yourself or some group of you know some

00:30:16.940 number of people developers like yourself buying up bigger tracts of land and building several

00:30:23.660 different types of homes say you know all at once and you know and getting some kind of economy of

00:30:29.260 scale and i just i just don't see how thousands of people independently do this and get their plans

00:30:35.420 approved but perhaps i'm just being naive is it no harder to do that than than what you would do if you

00:30:41.100 just had open land as a developer well if you just had open land as a developer it would be much easier

00:30:46.780 to your point for sure it's going to be complicated and it's going to be messy out there right you're

00:30:52.140 going to have a whole bunch of people building at the same time and and um and you're going to

00:30:56.700 have supply chain issues you know churches will be rebuilt and supermarkets and schools and yeah

00:31:01.820 that's right i mean again for people that don't know that the two supermarkets larger supermarkets

00:31:07.260 in the area both burned down many of the schools burned down the churches burned down yeah so it's

00:31:12.780 a massive effort the rec center burned down you know from the parks so that's got to get rebuilt i had

00:31:16.940 a call about that this morning with getting that started i i i think just to take a tangent for a minute

00:31:22.780 from my standpoint the priority needs to be getting schools and public spaces reopen and built quickly

00:31:29.900 so people can start coming back kids can get reunited with their friends those kind of things

00:31:35.340 but no it's going to be very messy and i think there will be developers that will go in there and

00:31:39.260 buy tracks try to buy a number of lots and build i my hope is that it doesn't look and feel like a

00:31:47.820 master plan community when it's done part of the charm of the palisades and i think altadena is the same

00:31:53.260 way because it was built over time there was a uniqueness to the architecture you know the size of the

00:32:00.140 homes the density the landscaping and if it looks like you know a master plan community i think would

00:32:07.740 have a very different field yeah i think there's a a halfway point though i mean maybe the developers

00:32:13.180 coming in and they're building five homes at a time or eight homes at a time i think that's going to

00:32:18.460 probably happen also but it's going to be it's going to be very messy and complicated but i'm i always run

00:32:24.620 really optimistic and i think once people start building and seeing the rebirth i think it's going

00:32:32.140 to catch on and it's going to take some time there's no doubt but i'm i'm pretty out of a first mover

00:32:39.180 problem because who wants to be the first person in a nice house living in where as far as the eye can

00:32:46.060 see there's nothing but construction yeah that's right i know so you sort of need you need a minimum

00:32:51.420 number of homes there already before anyone wants a home there you do and the huntington will grow back

00:32:59.900 quicker because of that because there's so much still left in the huntington that it still feels

00:33:05.260 like a neighborhood right the upper huntington has a lot of damage the lower huntington has almost none

00:33:11.820 so it's going to come it's going to come in in phases i think but i don't know sam it's there's a

00:33:18.620 a lot of people that aren't going to be able to go back they can't afford it financially there's going

00:33:22.220 to be people that are going to go get resettled somewhere else and not want to move their family

00:33:27.580 again but i really believe the majority of the people really love that quality of life of the

00:33:33.980 palisades and that's what's hurting them a lot is missing that so i i think it's going to come back

00:33:41.260 quicker than people expect all right well let's talk about the political implications of all of

00:33:46.860 this and how we move forward under the uh the current regime how might this be an opportunity

00:33:54.300 to completely reset california politics i mean so much has happened here it just seems that

00:34:00.220 everyone whether they're they're speaking this way or not has gotten the message that the future of

00:34:06.220 california politics has to be competence right i mean competence you know we need competence we

00:34:12.140 need compassion we need a few other things beyond competence but competence is absolutely the litmus test

00:34:18.700 especially when you're watching fire engulf everything in sight and so again this is not

00:34:24.620 this is not something that just hit people who don't have resources this hit everybody and this hit

00:34:30.780 people who you know who have through their wealth have done their best to immunize themselves against

00:34:36.700 you know every um species of dysfunction we see in our state right i mean this is something we'll

00:34:43.180 talk about when i when we talk about wealth inequality but it's just you know i i know there are a hundred

00:34:48.620 million dollar homes that burned down right i mean so like this is not something that you as a rich

00:34:53.820 person can say okay this is not my problem because i you know even with a private fire department i mean i

00:34:58.940 i know one case where there was a a home nearly worth a hundred million dollars that burned down

00:35:06.140 right next to two homes that had private firefighters and protecting them from the hundred million

00:35:11.980 dollar home that was burning down right so i mean i guess one lesson you could draw is that we needed

00:35:16.540 three private firefighters fighters there but it's crazy like this is it's obvious that every wealthy

00:35:22.620 person has a stake in the having valid infrastructure in this society and the optics of this that were so

00:35:29.820 you know again i i don't know we'll talk about dei i don't know that dei played any role here in the

00:35:35.180 incompetence that we're we're worried about or the lack of preparation we're worried about but

00:35:39.420 when you have the largest urban fire in american history and you see the evidence that the fire

00:35:45.980 department has spent some of its attentional resources if not its actual resources over the

00:35:52.140 years on dei and you know and you have interviews with people at various levels in the fire department

00:35:58.780 saying that you know this is you know what's super important is that you know someone looks like you

00:36:03.740 when they show up to save in your house and you have a a woman firefighter admitting that she couldn't 1.00

00:36:09.020 pull a man out of a burning building but it would be his fault for being in that building in the

00:36:12.540 first place and then you have elon musk send that clip to 200 million people right yeah whatever the

00:36:17.420 reality of the effect of dei the optics are terrible right and especially in a fire department all we

00:36:25.900 want is competence right and anything else is just masochistic insanity do you see the opportunity

00:36:31.740 for a political reset here i mean just in the process of reconstruction how we just bypass the

00:36:38.300 shibboleths and the interest groups and the the normal stalemate that comes out of that and just

00:36:44.300 say look this is what's going to work this is what is actually good for the state of california this

00:36:50.380 you have thousands of people lost their homes this is how you get insured we need a hard reset here

00:36:55.900 yeah i do and i think it was on its way and building that momentum before the fire hit and certainly the

00:37:03.900 fire i think changed a lot of people's views on it and there is an opportunity here that should be

00:37:10.460 taken advantage of where we start electing people to your point that are qualified that have experience

00:37:18.300 there's a competency level there's at least a competency level to know what you don't know

00:37:23.740 and surround yourself with people that fill in the blanks for you so you make good decisions that

00:37:29.980 understand running a complex organization like a city or a state isn't about you know how long you've

00:37:36.940 been in office or what party you're a member of i truly believe one of the big shifts we're going to see

00:37:43.340 is less of being concerned about what party you're serving and more about how you're serving the people

00:37:50.540 and i hope that's going to be the case because both of these parties are sort of closed loops

00:37:56.140 and you just can't run an organization that way and what we're seeing in los angeles that was building

00:38:02.940 up you've got people that are now on the council the dsa members that are the socialist group you know

00:38:10.780 still talking about defunding the police and closing the jails i mean this is insanity i don't

00:38:17.580 understand when you look down the future where does that get you what are you accomplishing

00:38:22.300 and i hope that certainly in the city of la and the state of california we're coming back to center

00:38:30.620 we went way far out and now we're coming back to center where there's a balance to it but sam i think

00:38:37.340 that people literally need to realize this sounds so corny but it's so true their vote really does matter

00:38:46.060 and so many people choose not to vote for whatever reason and to me the big wake-up call is get out

00:38:55.180 there and vote and make sure you're voting for the right person because those that like the dsa they

00:39:01.820 do that they're very good organizing they're very good getting their people out and now you've got four

00:39:07.660 dsa members on the council that's a serious problem yeah i mean so i'm glad you mentioned the

00:39:14.460 non-partisan aspect here because obviously the republicans can't quite take a victory lap here

00:39:19.900 in the sense that they're complaining about our lack of preparedness and our lack of interest

00:39:23.900 infrastructure but they're precisely the people who in years past would have not wanted to have spent

00:39:29.580 money preparing for anything they just want lower taxes right so it's like like you can't you really

00:39:34.460 can't have it both ways like this requires real investment which require which requires real money and

00:39:40.300 except i think a lot of people would say and i tend to agree with i don't mind being taxed but use my

00:39:47.500 money in the right way right i don't even mind i don't mind paying more tax but use it in the right

00:39:52.620 way that adds to quality of life that adds to the safety that creates better neighborhoods a better

00:39:57.580 environment all of those things yeah but don't waste my money yeah that means that that's what is so

00:40:03.500 there's a few things that are so socially corrosive here that leads to cynicism about government i mean one is

00:40:09.740 just the point you just raised we have so many activists and ideologues left of center in this

00:40:15.820 state with who will say things like defund the police even in the aftermath of you know arson and

00:40:22.060 eluding that gave us half the chaos we just lived through um i think the role of arson remains to be

00:40:28.060 seen but i mean what happened again last night the rest of the guy yeah i mean there's there there

00:40:32.940 has been arson i don't know if the the initial fire in the palisades was arson but there was certainly

00:40:38.220 arson there was arson from homeless people we've got this problem with with homeless people that

00:40:43.900 for which we have not found a solution i mean back in the during the george floyd riots you know that

00:40:49.980 it was not at all obvious that the police were going to stop people from going into homes in in places

00:40:55.420 like santa monica right it was just the police it seemed to me were much better and and the national

00:41:00.700 guard response came early in this crisis so that i think there's there was a noticeable change there but

00:41:07.580 the idea that in the especially during a public emergency that we don't have a stake in maintaining

00:41:14.060 law and order and that it's somehow a sign of compassion to just allow for a free-for-all of

00:41:20.940 looting i mean this is a you i don't know if you remember this or if ever crossed your desk this is

00:41:25.420 now four years old but i mean during the the george floyd riots there was a an editorial published by npr

00:41:32.060 our our uh uh most highest our highest brow um uh radio station that looting is is good and acceptable

00:41:40.700 right looting is a is a kind of new form of restitution yeah right and so it's that thing

00:41:46.620 needs to be purged from the conversation i mean the those people will still exist but the democratic

00:41:52.860 party in particular needs to understand that they don't have to be listened to ever again right like

00:41:58.300 this these are not voices that need to be responded to noticed worried about you know you can't be

00:42:04.140 defenestrated by these people if you don't care about them right it's just right and again this all

00:42:09.180 comes back to competence and sane compassion compassion that actually understands the causes

00:42:15.580 of human suffering and and goes to mitigate those you know if your house is burning the cause of your

00:42:21.260 suffering now are the flames right it's not the skin color or gender preference of the firefighter

00:42:26.780 is showing up that's right i would add though if you don't mind please i think competence needs to

00:42:32.700 be married with backbone and courage and one of the things that i've seen i think we've all seen

00:42:38.940 with elected officials their real priority is to get re-elected and so a lot of the decisions they

00:42:46.300 make they make through that lens that doesn't necessarily get you to the right decision usually it

00:42:52.300 doesn't sometimes maybe a well usually it doesn't and they have a time horizon over like to make a

00:42:57.660 long-term investment that's expensive right doesn't marry well to your time horizon where it's you know

00:43:03.180 two years or four years or six years or whatever you're whatever you need your soundbite for your

00:43:06.940 campaign that's right yeah i learned a lot when i was president of the police commission because i had

00:43:12.060 a situation i inherited a situation where we had a very very popular chief of police bernie parks who came

00:43:18.620 out of central casting looked great handsome guy wore the uniform great been with lapd years

00:43:24.700 he was just not the right manager a bad manager and he put in policies after rodney king that became so

00:43:32.060 draconian to the cops in terms of the system for filing any kind of grievance that it basically forced

00:43:41.180 the cops career to stop until that grievance was adjudicated which could take a year to two years

00:43:47.660 so what happened the cops aren't stupid they started not policing as proactively right because 0.96

00:43:54.540 they didn't want to get a complaint the gangs aren't stupid they started filing complaints against 0.99

00:43:59.900 cops so the cops wouldn't go into the gang's areas so we had the crime spiking we had an unhappy 0.74

00:44:06.540 workforce we had cops that were leaving because they didn't want to be part of that system and parks

00:44:12.700 wouldn't change it and we had a consent decree which he didn't want to follow so me and my fellow

00:44:19.100 commissioners made the tough decision that we're going to fire him you know and there's a whole

00:44:23.580 backstory on that and then my choice and and the commission agreed with me and jim hon agreed with me at the

00:44:30.300 time was bill brenton so now i'm going to remove this guy that has been part of the system for a long time

00:44:37.820 beloved by the city i literally had my wife would call me and say you know rick they're burning you

00:44:44.300 an effigy outside of city hall right now they were marching on the grove as we were under construction

00:44:49.420 to put pressure on me stopping construction it was just insane and i would say to tina i would say i'm

00:44:55.020 going to be home for dinner don't worry about it we're going to do what's right here and i called jim

00:44:59.580 han and i said i'm going to tell you that i'm going to select bill bratton and he has to approve

00:45:06.060 that as a mayor and i said i also want to tell you you can fire me at any time you want but i'm

00:45:12.060 going to bring you who i think is the best and that's going to be bill but it's going to be a

00:45:16.460 political hot potato i forget did bratton come from the nypd or is that nypd yeah yeah so you take

00:45:22.060 this guy not from lapd you take a guy with the boston accent doesn't look like you know whatever

00:45:28.940 brilliant cop by the way and to jim han's credit he says just do what you think is right

00:45:34.780 what i learned from that exercise it is so liberating when you're in a position to make

00:45:40.380 a decision where you're not worried about the consequence of the decision you're just worried

00:45:44.860 about is it the right decision and that decision did result in crime in la getting back down to

00:45:52.700 levels not seen since 1950 leadership matters good decisions matter backbone matters also bad

00:46:01.740 incentives are so corrosive right yes but what you just named there was this this perverse wheel of

00:46:09.340 essentially stigmatizing policing right where the police don't want to be complained about because

00:46:15.020 it causes consequences for them right everyone knows this so you can complain about the police to

00:46:19.180 keep them out of your neighborhood that's an incentive problem that needs to i mean there's

00:46:22.460 probably a hundred of those that need to be recognized and that's right it's also an insanity

00:46:26.380 loop yeah because you're just creating your own insanity over and over again yeah and we have that

00:46:30.940 now that's why we're so short of cops because so many of the cops in los angeles are under such

00:46:36.780 constrained rules that they're just they don't want they don't feel like they're being police and i'm not

00:46:41.820 talking about cops that want to go do bad things or take advantage of people i'm talking about

00:46:45.980 cops that take great pride in being proactive and protecting a community right but the rules that

00:46:52.140 garcetti has put put him when he was mayor that have remained under bass allow crime to rise because

00:46:59.660 police are not allowed to be proactive yeah yeah well so um how do we change that i mean how can we use

00:47:08.540 this moment of rebuilding to solidify some gains in in political sanity here i'm not uh i'm not sure i

00:47:18.700 know the answer to that i'm sure i don't know probably the answer to that i hope i really hope sam

00:47:24.380 that people have you know from all different backgrounds and political beliefs and whatnot woken

00:47:29.740 up to what you're saying is let's just hire competent people for the quality of life that we want

00:47:35.020 and and and and not worry about this whole ideology system that we were so married to for such a long

00:47:44.140 time and um my feeling is that so much of this is a um while it's often not explicit so much of it is

00:47:52.700 responsive to the problem of wealth inequality i mean so so much of the concern about identity politics

00:47:59.020 is being driven by a perception of class difference right because because there's a obviously a

00:48:04.860 significant correlation between class difference and difference in racial outcomes right because of

00:48:10.700 the way wealth is is spread around uh and all of that class difference correlates with you know

00:48:16.460 academic outcomes and and health outcomes right so there's just a lot of there's a lot that's

00:48:21.980 that's attached to this issue of the uh inequitable spread of resources in our society and i feel like we're

00:48:29.500 reaching some kind of tipping point if we haven't reached it already i mean

00:48:32.380 that where rich people seems to me are just they're worried about class war right they're worried about

00:48:39.180 themselves they want it they just they want their freedom to make money and freedom to live beautiful

00:48:43.580 happy creative lives they want to be insulated from the chaos of the world they don't trust government

00:48:49.020 as you say to successfully insulate them because they're worried that if they pay more in taxes

00:48:54.300 they're not going to see a better fire department they're going to see a government that wants to spend

00:48:58.780 that money on dei initiatives for lumberjacks or whatever it is like it's going to be just pissed

00:49:04.860 away on some insane and ideologically driven program clearly what we need is a system where

00:49:12.140 rich people understand their connection to the common good and can see when they pay taxes that

00:49:19.580 the money is spent sanely so that we have you know clean streets and orderly neighborhoods and beautiful

00:49:25.020 schools and beauty and just you know all of that should be possible right yes it should but when i

00:49:31.020 ask myself how we get from where we are to a fundamentally different relationship to you know

00:49:37.500 from the people who don't have much their relationship to the reality of inequality the reality of the rich

00:49:44.220 people in their midst and from the the side of the rich people i see a role for philanthropy here that i

00:49:50.460 i think i don't see how we get around because i mean one of the so on the side of the people who

00:49:56.940 don't have much right i mean i see a tremendous amount of resentment of wealth right and some

00:50:02.780 delusional notions about economics i mean just this the notion due to that the writer balzac

00:50:08.780 behind every fortune there's a great crime right i mean or but you have people like elizabeth

00:50:13.420 warren and bernie sanders and other people at the national level talking in these terms and i'm

00:50:17.660 sure we have local politicians you know certainly your socialist friends will be talking this way

00:50:22.620 just that there's there's no way to get really really rich without perpetrating some kind of

00:50:27.980 fraud right and that the capitalism is broken is if it's producing billionaires now we could go into

00:50:34.060 why that's not true or not likely to be true but one thing is obvious we don't want to create an

00:50:39.100 environment in california where rich people just decide well it's better life is better elsewhere this

00:50:45.180 this is this environment is hostile to wealth right we have i think it's still the fifth largest

00:50:51.500 economy in the world it is right that's right and yet we have these two cities la and san francisco

00:50:56.860 which to one or another degree can be viewed as almost failing cities i mean they're like yeah and

00:51:03.020 and they're and they're the engines of wealth in the fifth greatest economy in the world right

00:51:09.020 here's a here's one moment this is not um i could be reading too much into this but when i was

00:51:12.780 online during the height of the fires and i saw it reported that steven spielberg's house was saved

00:51:19.500 i saw all of these cynical comments and even a cynical article and even even journalistic efforts

00:51:24.860 that were expressing cynicism basically saying well look see look it must be nice to be rich right

00:51:30.060 look at his spielberg's house was saved and i knew that most of these people had probably bought

00:51:35.340 a ticket to every one of spielberg's films for the last 50 years right so like so that that level

00:51:41.260 of resentment and schadenfreude and and the stigmatization around wealth seems to me to be

00:51:47.020 so unhealthy and and illogical because all these people want to be wealthy right i mean they they

00:51:53.980 would want to be living like spielberg i think if they take 10 seconds to think about it they want to

00:51:59.340 live in a in a society that is just pulling abundance out of the ether right they they want

00:52:05.260 all boats to be rising with a tide of of great abundance and so there's something aspirational

00:52:11.020 about wealth that in you know in another mood they they can tap into right but there's this sense that

00:52:18.220 the system is rigged and people are just in it for themselves and what i see from the wealthiest

00:52:25.900 rather often is yeah a sense that you can't trust government right so they see the dysfunction of the

00:52:31.340 the government and it just looks like an argument for paying less in taxes where in my view the

00:52:36.780 dysfunction we see in government is an argument for better governance right we should want the

00:52:40.540 government they could spend our tax dollars absolutely but there's a sense that yeah yeah

00:52:45.100 you you can live behind your walls and you can fly privately and you can you know you can get your

00:52:49.420 private security force and your private fire department and you're good but the reality is is that

00:52:55.500 again i just i told you about a billionaire who lost his home because he didn't have his private

00:52:58.780 fire department perhaps but no matter how wealthy you are no matter how immunized you are if you have

00:53:04.380 to step over a homeless person to get in the door of your favorite restaurant in this town yeah your

00:53:09.420 quality of life is diminished right absolutely and if you're living in bel-air right now you're breathing

00:53:14.860 the asbestos and the arsenic and the and the vocs that are wafting all over this town right now you 0.93

00:53:21.820 don't have your own air we have to solve this problem together and so yeah i don't know if you saw this

00:53:27.500 pitch i made on my blog but i find i realize i'm i'm giving you a lot to get your chance to react

00:53:33.580 but uh let me just vomit my socialism on you for a moment i mean it occurs to me that you know you

00:53:38.620 i know you're very philanthropic and and i am at my level and you know we're surrounded by people

00:53:43.660 who give a lot of money away i think you just gave five million dollars to the fire department right

00:53:48.540 which is wonderful but the reality is that i mean we know people we know single individuals

00:53:54.380 who could take away all of the financial concerns of this whole area literally make everyone who lost

00:54:01.260 their home and wasn't insured whole they could find everything that's not covered by insurance

00:54:05.740 right and i think i think this is estimated to be a 50 billion dollar problem and there's 20 billion

00:54:10.220 coming from insurance perhaps we know people who could lose 30 billion dollars and nothing would

00:54:17.500 change about their lives and they could lose 30 billion more and nothing would change and even 30 billion

00:54:22.540 after that and nothing would change right i mean we know those people right and what and so they're

00:54:27.660 obviously there are things like the giving pledge where you have a lot of rich people who who have

00:54:32.140 vowed to give you know at least 50 of their wealth away at some point but in most cases this means upon

00:54:39.020 their death right the pledge i'm imagining is uh more aggressive than that and it's based on this

00:54:44.700 recognition that at whatever level of wealth you're at right let's say you have a billion dollars

00:54:51.420 there's some amount of money that truly wouldn't matter to you that if it went missing nothing

00:54:59.580 would change about your life right you're like you know how much your kids are going to get you know

00:55:04.380 how you want to live you know how many homes you have and this is true so this is certainly true if

00:55:10.060 you have a billion dollars or two billion dollars you are living exactly the way jeff bezos lives

00:55:15.900 right or elon musk's lives i mean like like there's there's no i mean you correct me if i'm wrong but

00:55:21.100 i think that the you know the only thing that changes is that maybe you have a bigger boat

00:55:25.740 if you know maybe you don't spend 500 million on a boat if you only have a billion dollars right

00:55:30.620 most likely not yeah but you're i mean that you know we're talking about p the difference between

00:55:35.900 a billionaire and someone who has 10 billion or and certainly the difference between someone who has

00:55:40.140 10 billion and someone who has 100 billion that's not reflected in the style of a person's life they

00:55:45.980 have all the same homes they have all the same planes i mean it's just it's all the same right and so

00:55:52.860 one could recognize that there's a certain amount of money that will only ever be just a number in a

00:56:00.140 spreadsheet right for as long as you live and for as long as your kids live right there's just it is

00:56:05.340 just an idea of how wealthy you are it's a way of keeping score between yourself and the other

00:56:11.420 wealthy people what i imagine is that you know and this is me trying to however ineptly and

00:56:18.140 sanctimoniously trying to move the overton window around philanthropy where we get you know all the

00:56:24.780 rich people and again this this is not just billionaires this is because there are other sort of

00:56:29.340 valleys here where if you have a hundred million dollars and you're you know at the level of a hundred

00:56:34.300 million dollars you're not saving up to buy a 75 million dollar gulf stream right so there's certain

00:56:38.300 things that are just off the menu for you right and then and you might recognize that you would

00:56:42.460 live no differently if you only had 90 million dollars say right but so the argument runs through but

00:56:47.500 what i'm trying to argue for is that we have a lot of very very wealthy people and you and i know

00:56:53.100 many of them by name and have relationships with any of these people they could pledge to use their money

00:56:59.580 they could start using their money now on problems like this and their lives would be completely unchanged

00:57:05.580 and yet the default norm is to just hold on to it right just to hold on to it till you die

00:57:11.420 and you will know on your deathbed that you had that amount of money and whether it's going to your

00:57:15.660 kids or not you know you went for decades without relieving all of the suffering and building all

00:57:22.540 the beautiful things that could be built with that money and you know in my view this wouldn't take

00:57:27.820 this this isn't a matter of people selling their interest in their companies this is just you could

00:57:31.900 be giving some charitable at active charity and interest in your company right so anyway i mean

00:57:38.460 that's my pitch for much more aggressive philanthropy okay so this is like the the the ultra pledge you

00:57:45.100 know this is the the extra pledge the part which you could even you whatever that number is

00:57:50.140 you could cut it in half just in case you thought you needed the other for a rainy day on your on your

00:57:54.700 yacht whatever that number is there's some number and in the case of truly wealthy people the number the

00:58:01.820 number is so much bigger than anyone actually gives because i i you know i know what people give and

00:58:07.820 even the people who are give a tremendous amount of money it is in almost every case it's nowhere near what

00:58:14.780 could possibly show up as a sacrifice of anything in their lives and what i'm arguing for is not

00:58:20.620 sacrifice i'm i'm defining this in terms of the portion you you know couldn't conceivably impose

00:58:26.940 a sacrifice on you right it's still enormous right so this is the this is the kind of arm twisting you

00:58:32.940 get on this podcast okay no it's an interesting idea i have what what's what's wrong with it well let me

00:58:39.820 just start out by saying i think it's always good for people to be generous to the point that

00:58:46.620 it's a little bit painful so i take a little bit different point of view i think i think you have to

00:58:51.180 have everybody has to have great generosity especially people with means there's no doubt about it people

00:58:57.340 that i know and i certainly know how my wife and i run our lives we give a lot away we give a lot of

00:59:04.300 money away we give a lot of our time our kids are all involved and we take great joy in that

00:59:11.100 it brings us a lot of joy but i also believe that you've got to be so careful in philanthropy

00:59:18.060 because just giving away money depending on where it goes what it's used for doesn't solve a lot of

00:59:24.380 the problems it's hard to do it it's hard to do it well and it's and it can have perverse effects

00:59:28.780 it doesn't even mean like tina and i spend an enormous amount of time and money with children

00:59:35.740 who are at or below the poverty line who are living in the toughest circumstances living in

00:59:42.060 the housing projects of los angeles nickerson gardens that need to sleep on the floor because

00:59:49.180 the worry of night of bullets coming through your window and they're probably maybe that family's

00:59:55.820 making 20 000 a year and trying to survive dear families great families our money goes to educating

01:00:04.380 those kids right supporting the kids educating the kids bringing an ecosystem around those children

01:00:10.300 and it's amazing how they take off in the success that we've got kids that have been on our program

01:00:17.900 called operation progress it goes from third grade all the way through college and there's kids now in

01:00:23.100 harvard and columbia and sc and ucla and mit that to me is solving a problem and then those kids

01:00:30.860 hopefully come back into their neighborhoods and they give back and everything i mean i think that's

01:00:35.180 fantastic but that problem is being under resourced you're doing what you're doing but what would you

01:00:41.020 do with a blank check it is under resource sam but i was just trying to respond to the idea of giving

01:00:47.900 away a lot of money like going and giving away a lot of money i think a lot of times creates more of

01:00:53.980 a problem or makes the problem last longer than solving the problem we have bad incentives we have

01:01:00.700 bad incentives so listen i i don't know most people that i know are really generous and they're not

01:01:07.260 they're not no no no no okay i think they are no well no so i think it's easy to give away other

01:01:12.540 people's money too the people the people who you don't know the demands the people who are middle

01:01:17.980 class or just like moderately wealthy when they give money they're they're often giving a much

01:01:23.660 bigger percentage of their wealth than billionaires are but you don't know the demands listen there's

01:01:28.860 people that are not generous or there's people that don't give as much as they should of course there

01:01:32.780 are but it's easy to sort of generalize you look at you know my wealth is very different than

01:01:40.060 somebody else's wealth that has a public company right my my wealth is very illiquid somebody that

01:01:48.140 has a public company is very liquid so the constraints on me giving something away are

01:01:53.580 very different than the constraints on somebody giving away shares in a company right i can't give

01:02:01.020 shares of the grove it doesn't work that way right right so there's always different levels to it also

01:02:07.740 but i think but anyone could give whatever percentage of their income stream to this new entity

01:02:15.100 right i mean like they could i mean we give away on average about 20 percent i think that's a very

01:02:21.020 large number well so but this but again this is me pushing on the overton window i mean because i'm

01:02:26.460 not i'm twisting your arm it's a perverse irony that i'm twisting the arm of already a spectacularly

01:02:33.020 generous person that's okay by by buying and i'm not trying to be the defending agent of billionaires

01:02:39.020 yeah it's not that's not where i want to that's not where i want to be or i intended to do that no

01:02:43.740 but i just think it's very few people see wealth as i mean one of the great things you get to do once

01:02:52.700 you're rich is solve problems for which money is the solution right i mean like that is just it's

01:02:58.940 incredibly rewarding i mean to come back to the point you made like the incredibly rewarding it is

01:03:04.060 a source of a genuine source of happiness right to be able to help people i agree and there's just

01:03:09.100 and the targets the appropriate targets for that help are practically numberless right i mean and this

01:03:15.740 is a you know we're i'm talking we're talking about the rebuilding of los angeles which i think is

01:03:19.340 an important project but you know obviously the the need at a global scale is absolutely enormous but

01:03:25.740 the point i want to make is that you and there's there's no person who wants to feel like they're

01:03:33.580 making a pointless and painful and solitary sacrifice right like like like the retort to much of what i'm

01:03:41.180 saying is like okay you can volunteer to pay more in taxes that's right like like no one's stopping you

01:03:45.660 sam go out there and just double your tax burden right right but the sense that that will be ineffectual

01:03:51.500 the sense that that's not going to matter in the end that's what makes that just a non-starter but

01:03:57.740 there really is i just do see that there's a new norm that we could have around wealth where we

01:04:03.740 recognize that one of the great things you get to do when you become not just a billionaire but a

01:04:08.780 million you know multi-millionaire someone who just has more than than they need at any stage

01:04:14.620 you get to solve problems you get to help people and and it feels fantastic and i feel like we're just

01:04:21.340 just where there's a landscape of possible kind of social and psychological attitudes toward all of

01:04:26.700 these things we're talking about and we have found a low spot you know culturally where there's just

01:04:32.460 like a a ridge line of cynicism we have to get over in order to find some happier spots on this

01:04:37.740 landscape and we're in this low spot where most people think okay it's just virtue signaling you know

01:04:42.380 you're talking about giving money away and you're just trying to cover the fact that you've just

01:04:45.340 hoarded so much for yourself and it's like it's not you know you can talk about it being important to

01:04:49.340 you but we just know that you're holding on to how do you solve the problem right how do you get

01:04:52.860 people to do that you actually just well i think you can demonstrate that it is genuinely rewarding

01:04:58.860 and i think but the thing i think it's a coordination problem i think the culture of very wealthy people

01:05:05.660 you know the kinds of conversations we have in private the kinds of things we say we're doing we need

01:05:12.140 to inspire each other and we need to and and there needs to be the kinds of things we would we when

01:05:19.020 i'm around a lot of wealthy people the conversation turns to just like what what are the where are the

01:05:24.060 great places you're you're vacationing right and how fun is it to talk about that and it's like with

01:05:28.380 like what's that hotel like and they're like it just and it's fun to just we want that information

01:05:33.340 and it's just fun to hear about it and i want to go there and that's all great there's nothing wrong

01:05:36.780 with that that's one great thing that money is for but what i'm not hearing so much when i get into a

01:05:41.660 room filled with super wealthy people are just the amazing things they were able to do to solve

01:05:47.900 people's needless misery because they had the money to do it right and and it would it sounds like a

01:05:53.660 strange there's this maybe it's a quasi christian ethic but the idea that you should do this you

01:05:58.620 shouldn't wear that on your sleeve you should do this in silence because otherwise you're you're

01:06:03.340 encouraging the sin of pride or or something right right but i really think we actually need to

01:06:10.220 be honest about how good this feels and about how this is one of the good things in life

01:06:16.140 and i mean honestly you're like i remember you and i don't know you and i've had exactly one lunch

01:06:21.340 you know before this conversation but just being at lunch with you and hearing something about your

01:06:27.340 philanthropy i forget even how we spoke about it i mean we talked about the the giving you you do

01:06:32.380 around homelessness and in downtown la it just inspired me to give a bunch of money away you

01:06:38.300 gave yeah very generous and it was and and so at my level that was like a a lot of money to give

01:06:44.220 away but it was purely based on being inspired by you right i appreciate that not enough of that is

01:06:51.180 happening and how do we do more of that i mean i love that idea actually well i mean i don't know if

01:06:56.060 you saw the so i i singled out the resnicks in this in this blog post because as i think you probably

01:07:02.140 know they're being vilified online as some of the major water users in the state and as you know i

01:07:08.300 don't think there's a direct connection between the water they use and the water that didn't come out

01:07:11.580 of the tap when we needed it but not at all but i just in as a way of kind of resetting people's

01:07:17.660 sense of this i just imagined what linda resnick or stewart resnick could do if they were you know feeling

01:07:23.980 the epiphany that i'm trying to urge upon them should go knock on their door yeah well i i could

01:07:29.900 i might have done it with this blog post but um yes i guess you did they could easily say you know

01:07:35.340 listen we're we're incredibly fortunate to have lived in los angeles for 50 years we've built amazing

01:07:40.860 businesses here we've made amazing friends you know we have we have given back to the community

01:07:45.100 in all kinds of ways you'll notice that there are buildings in this town that have our names on them

01:07:48.780 but we recognize that this is a totally new moment and we're in our 80s and we we know we're not even

01:07:56.140 going to live to see the thing we now want to build but we want we want our grandchildren to live in a in 0.99

01:08:01.820 in the most beautiful city in the world for the rest of this century so we're going to give 90 of

01:08:08.060 our resources away right now for the reconstruction of this city and we're not going to just hand it over to

01:08:13.740 the the government for dei initiatives obviously but we're going to pull together a team of the best

01:08:19.580 advisors we we can pull together and in concert with with the same administration yeah amazing and

01:08:27.020 we invite all of our rich friends to join us you know we've got 12 billion we're going to give 10

01:08:31.820 billion right now you know so that the 10 billion share in all of our enterprises is now going to this

01:08:37.340 project and we've still got 2 billion we're going to drive the same cars and live in the same house

01:08:42.460 we've got no problems obviously but this is what we're doing and this is this brings us joy now i

01:08:50.060 don't see how it's possible to be cynical about that that just seems like an intrinsically good thing

01:08:55.180 and it just seems like if they did that i think it would be so obvious to everyone that okay this is

01:09:01.740 why you get rich this is what wealth is for this is the best game you could play it would be an amazing

01:09:07.180 thing no doubt it'd be an amazing thing and i wish more people would do that and some people have

01:09:13.820 given away you know the majority if not all of their fortunes i mean you read about that so it does

01:09:19.900 happen but i would also say on that just reflecting back as you were talking and i i would imagine the

01:09:26.780 resnicks are very generous on their own but it takes again it's a role of a city leader to help do that

01:09:35.180 and a guy who was really great at that was dick reard and dick reard and his mayor he wanted to get 0.97

01:09:43.100 certain things built or certain cultural institutions stronger and on and on and on and he would call 0.89

01:09:49.980 around and he would start out by saying i'm putting up x and i'd like you to match x and he did that

01:09:58.140 until he raised the money and i was usually often the recipient of that call but i always admired him for

01:10:03.580 doing that that's good leadership and i i do hope that happens more but here's what i see teen and i

01:10:10.780 did do that lead gift you mentioned for the fire department we didn't do it for publicity we did it

01:10:16.300 because the fire department has been so underfunded it needs the equipment and we wanted a challenge to

01:10:22.460 raise 20 million dollars teen and i were convinced that this city there's enough people in the city that

01:10:28.700 will rally around it we raised the 20 million dollars in less than a week it's pretty remarkable

01:10:35.420 right yeah the fire department told us their ability now to do things is forever changed they

01:10:42.060 didn't have like bulldozers to move earth during these fires it was crazy so what we plan on doing

01:10:49.020 is rinse and repeat rinse and repeat to help the area in the palisades and in altadena also and

01:10:57.420 hopefully more people will do that now i'm not saying i'm going to go give away 90 of my net worth

01:11:04.540 because if i gave away 90 of my net worth i wouldn't be able to keep my businesses going

01:11:10.220 well i i think there's i mean correct me if i'm wrong but there's got to be a way to do

01:11:16.220 something like this while maintaining your business right like it like you do you pick that

01:11:21.980 number that works right but i mean like if mark zuckerberg gave 90 of his interest in in facebook

01:11:27.660 away today he'd retain he would just retain all of his super voting rights i mean he would he would

01:11:33.340 he would maintain control of the of the company and the money would still just flow to these to

01:11:40.140 this this entity that he had set up it's a that's not not when he dies and you know a thousand years

01:11:46.140 once he solves the problem of aging but now it would start working now and be a beautiful thing

01:11:51.260 i can't argue with that i mean especially at that level of kind of wealth yeah it would be a beautiful

01:11:56.300 thing but i also think there's a beautiful thing in the power of people coming together at every level

01:12:02.700 like they did the fire department foundation we had people put up two million we had people put up

01:12:08.540 two hundred dollars right but collectively 20 million bucks in a week and that was just awesome

01:12:15.100 yeah so we're going to do more of that well done well rick um i hesitate to ask your your uh

01:12:22.300 future aspirations politically because i want to but you will twist your arm in that that direction

01:12:27.500 is there anything you want to talk about on on the horizon do you have thoughts about running for

01:12:32.460 anything i i love public service so it's it's in my blood i've done it for a long time would you run

01:12:39.740 for governor would you run for mayor again what's what's possible i don't know i really don't know

01:12:45.420 and i'm not trying to be the typical politician that says i don't know i just really don't know i

01:12:50.300 loved running for mayor i love the campaign i love being with the family i love meeting people all around

01:12:56.220 the city it was just it was so rewarding for us we loved it and that's a good sign because it looks

01:13:02.780 excruciating from someone who's not built that way yeah it looks i mean that that's the barrier the

01:13:08.140 idea that it would just be tortured to go through the process yeah yeah but what what what i didn't

01:13:14.300 expect was the fuel and the energy i got by seeing people becoming hopeful that someone was going to help

01:13:23.020 them come to their rescue that so many people that don't have a voice don't feel like they're ever

01:13:27.820 heard that are sort of lost in the system and in a lot of these neighborhoods i mean there was a lot

01:13:33.180 of hugs and a lot of crying it was just it was wonderful so from that standpoint i'd love to do it

01:13:39.660 what i hated about it was the democratic party so scared that i was going to come into their tent

01:13:46.380 that they they rallied like never before in a mayor's race the president flies out biden flies

01:13:55.420 out harris flies out campaigns for for bass yeah pelosi bernie flew out i mean they were all flying out

01:14:04.700 and up to the point right before the election we were still running as a democrat and running as a

01:14:10.380 democrat being treated as a closet trumper or you know treated as a new person and we've got a career

01:14:17.180 politician we're going to protect she's part of the system up until right before the election we're 1.00

01:14:23.340 still tied we're right on top of each other from the polling and then they finally convinced obama to

01:14:28.460 come into it now whether that moved it or didn't move it or there are other things i don't know but to

01:14:33.980 have that kind of energy to stop somebody from getting in just blew my mind right yeah why not just

01:14:42.060 let the system work so you know i would love to serve i think i could i know i would work hard i

01:14:49.580 think i could do a good job i would certainly do my best but i just got to get around the idea of

01:14:55.100 of going through that again i feel like we're at a different moment i think a lot of it could be

01:14:59.900 that that is has been uh but it's it's corrupt yeah the system is really corrupt and you got to

01:15:08.380 break through that you got to break through that yeah well um if and when you make that decision we

01:15:15.100 will have another conversation about it i look forward to it okay yeah yeah thank you so much for

01:15:19.500 your time i know it's a very busy couple of weeks so yeah let's get back out there and yeah keep that

01:15:25.020 suit on at least one person dresses as a grown-up in this town so thanks for having me sam really

01:15:30.060 enjoyed it thanks so much

01:15:40.300 you

Making Sense - Sam Harris - January 27, 2025

#399 — The Politics of Catastrophe

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