I think a lot of us have noticed that
our cities are deeply dysfunctional.
They're they're broken in our society,
right? You have I think we have a
candidate who's like a socialist
Islamist who's in danger of taking over
New York uh very soon right now. And we
we have we have all sorts of problems.
People can't afford to have kids in
cities the way they're set up. Uh I
think there's this cost disease for
everything. Like like what went wrong?
What's going on with these cities? And
and what's what's an optimistic take on
it, Mark? How can we fix this?
>> Yeah. So the guy in the guy in New York
is interesting. uh and uh he's you know
kind of running slight slightly behind
Quuomo for New York mayor but he's
literally running a platform among other
things of having um city- owned uh
grocery stores right and so and so you
know the joke is you know he's
reinventing breadlines you know for the
21st century like you know impressive
really tremendous tremendously
tremendous platform
>> um the uh Seattle is another case study
of this Seattle to give you a sense how
crazy things are the the district in
Seattle the city council district where
the most Microsoft and Amazon executives
lived live uh elected a a city council
woman who's who ran a platform of
nationalizing Microsoft and Amazon.
Um, right. And then, you know, in the
Bay Area, I've got, you know, a thou,
you know, I I live in I live in ground
zero of dysfunction and collapse. Um,
and I've got I've got I've got thousands
of stories uh from the Bay Area. Yeah.
So, like I think there's like a very
fundamental political economy thing
happening which which is which which
falls out of this sort of economic
transformation that's happened and this
policy transformation that's happened.
And so the there's a guy there's a
French there's actually a French writer
geographer who has I think the best
analysis on this um and who's written a
great book on it called Twilight of the
Elites and what he basically observes is
if you look at all the western countries
through this process of sort of
de-industrialization and
financialization and techn you know sort
of technology knowledge work you know
becoming preeminent at the high end of
the economy you sort of have this
pattern where uh basically like in an
agricultural economy or in a
manufacturing economy you kind of have
to spread everything out throughout the
country because like natural resources
really matter and energy really matters
and physical infrastructure matters and
access to you know trains and all these
things you know really rivers and water
and so forth really matters but if
you're if you're going to replant your
the sort of commanding heights of your
economy on knowledge work then what
you're going to do is you're going to
slam basically all economic growth into
the cities right because you're which is
what what Silicon Valley has done right
so you want all the software developers
in one place and and you want them you
know and they're gonna the good news is
they're gonna eat at high-end
restaurants and they're going to employ
a lot of nannies but like fundamentally
they're going to be sitting in
conference rooms you know design
designing software other and and you
want that to happen in a single
concentrated place. Um and so what
happens is basically this the cities
become a magnet for basically two kinds
of people. One is sort of the upper
class which is to say kind of the you
know highly educated elite in the
knowledgeable professions uh who make
enough money where they can afford to
buy you know $3 million houses. Um and
then you've basically got the so you've
got basically like super expensive homes
and then you've got public housing
so-called public housing right council
estates in the UK or section 88 8H or
whatever it is housing here. um where
you've got you know basically public
housing and so and then and then the
public housing is is is you know is
basically it's it's you know it's you
know people who are very low paid kind
of on the you know low end of the
service economy um and then and then and
then that's the city and and then who's
squeezed out of the city is basically
right the entire middle class is
squeezed out and just to give you an
example of this in the Bay Area if
you're a cop or a firefighter in the Bay
Area and you work in Palo Alto you
commute three hours both ways uh just to
be able to like have a house and afford
a family right and then of course you
look what's happening in the cities and
It's, you know, there's there's like
lots of dogs, there's very few kids,
right? And it's like, you know, what on
earth is that about? Well, you you can't
buy a house. You you you can't you can't
you can't have a family. Um you may not
even own a car. Like, how are you going
to get kids anywhere? But what happens
is from from a political standpoint is
the cities then are run, right? They're
in in in their local democracies, it's
these super high-end kind of, you know,
very progressive elites. And then it's
sort of the clientele underclass, right?
Um that um you know, of you know, in the
US it's Hispanic immigrants or
African-Americans. you know, in Europe
it's it's, you know, their, you know,
their their other kind of clientele
underclass that they've developed in
places like Paris. Um, and so you've got
this high plus you you've got this kind
of old political kind of structure of
of, you know, sort of top plus bottom,
you know, kind of configuration. What
you've done is you squeeze the middle
and you've ejected the middle out of the
cities into the countryside, but you've
de-industrialized and so there's no new
economic activity happening in the
countryside uh for all the middle class
people to do.
>> This so far is not an optimistic panel,
Mark.
>> Sorry. [laughter] Sorry.
Let me try to make it optimistic. Sorry.
Let me try to make it optimistic. Okay,
>> let me try to make it optimistic. These
are choices. Like these are choices.
These are policy choices. Like sometimes
the way this stuff gets painted is that
these are just like impersonal economic
forces or technology forces. And of
course, you know, I get this a lot. It's
like you idiot, don't you understand
that? Like, you know, it's it's just
like, you know, manufacturing is old
fashioned. We have this all this new
stuff. We shouldn't need you know what?
No, these are choices. Like there were
specific choices made. I So the classic
choice the classic choice that was made.
I'll beat since I'm at the Reagan
library, I'll beat I'll beat up on
Nixon. Um so Richard Nixon the year I
was born 1971 he proposed something
called project independence. Uh he he
actually visionary visionary president
he saw the energy crisis coming. Um and
he said it's a national imperative to
build a thousand new nuclear power
plants uh in civilian nuclear power
plants in the US by the year 2000. Cut
the entire US electric grid over to
nuclear.
>> It would by the way would have gotten us
to electric cars you know probably 30 40
years faster um and would have
completely separated us from strategic
involvement in the in in the Middle East
for for for energy. Um so that was the
good news. The bad news is he created
the EPA and the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission which then prevented Project
Independence from happening and of
course the no new nuclear power plants
got built. But that was a policy choice,
right? And and I'm sure that was not the
out that was not the result that he
intended but that was a policy choice.
Um and so you know and and by the way a
lot of this is happening right now in
Washington. Like there is an opportunity
to look at everything from nuclear
power, minerals, natural resources. I
was on a call this morning on natural
resources with very promising progress
being made. um you know, rare earth
metals, there's, you know, construction.
We we have a project to build a new city
um in California. Um we've bought, you
know, four times the uh acreage of of
Manhattan uh in Solano County. Um you
know, we have the opportunity to build
like entirely new cities in this
country. Um you know, we like there's
any number of things any number of these
policy decisions that we could make that
would cause revitalization.