0:15

Pushkin. I

0:18

have a friend who lives in Brentwood, on

0:20

the west side of Los Angeles, between Beverly

0:22

Hills and Santa Monica. He is

0:25

a little poolhouse in his backyard and

0:27

I stay there whenever I come to LA,

0:29

kind of like cato'calon if your memory

0:31

for O. J. Simpson Esoterica goes back

0:34

that far. Anyway,

0:38

my friend's street dead ends on San Vicente

0:40

Boulevard, one of the central east

0:42

west corridors in LA. And

0:45

on the other side of San Vicente is this

0:47

absolutely gorgeous golf course, one

0:50

of the many private country clubs at LA is

0:52

famous for. If you drive

0:54

down Wilshire Boulevard into Beverly Hills,

0:56

ten minutes east of Brentwood, you go

0:58

right past Los Angeles Country Club, which

1:01

costs maybe a quarter of a million dollars

1:03

just to join. That is, if they'll

1:05

even consider your application. There's

1:09

bel Air Country Club just north of Ucla,

1:12

which might be the most beautiful golf course in

1:14

the country. Hillcraft Staff

1:16

Pico Wiltshire country Club in

1:18

Hancock Park. I could go on. They're everywhere,

1:21

vast, gorgeous and

1:23

private. The

1:27

one near my friend's house is called Brentwood country

1:29

Club and it has a tall chain link

1:31

fence around it which goes almost

1:33

all the way out to the street, leaving just

1:35

this narrow, rocky dirt track.

1:38

There's no sidewalk, and since there

1:40

aren't a lot of places to run in Los Angeles,

1:43

tons of people run around the Brentwood Country

1:45

Club on that narrow dirt track. And

1:52

there's one thing that always bothers me every

1:54

time I run that route. Why

1:56

do all the runners of West Los Angeles have

1:58

to squeeze into this narrow, rocky

2:00

little track when there's a huge, magnificent

2:03

park just on the other side of the fence. My

2:09

name is Malcolm Gladwell, and you're listening

2:11

to Revisionist History, my podcast

2:14

about things overlooked and misunderstood.

2:21

This episode is about the problem

2:23

with golf. I hate

2:25

golf and hopefully by

2:28

the end of this you'll hate golf

2:30

too. I'm

2:37

standing who would die day Zac,

2:39

who is a very successful

2:41

landscape architect, Santa Monica,

2:44

And we're on the corner of seventh Sente

2:47

and Berlin Game and we're looking into

2:50

the Brentwood Country Club and

2:52

the first thing I see is barbed wire. Looks

2:55

like a couple of layers of barbed

2:57

wire. This looks like it looks like the Berlin

3:00

Wall. I don't think they want us to get in there.

3:02

What are you? What are we seeing? We're seeing this move a little

3:04

closer here. What's that stand

3:06

up trees? Do you know what those are? That

3:09

looks like silkoakes in the foreground?

3:12

And then I see a Sadrus deodora,

3:15

quite lovely. Lots of larger

3:17

trees, which are unusual in Los Angeles

3:19

because there's so little open

3:21

space. Yeah, there's

3:24

some Pinus canariensis. Looks

3:26

like a redwood in there. I

3:28

don't think dai Zak has ever played a round of golf

3:30

in her life. That's exactly why

3:32

I wanted her opinion. I wanted

3:34

someone objective to tell me

3:37

what it would take to turn this place into a park.

3:39

Well, first of all, I would get rid of

3:41

the two layers of bar lare the

3:45

whole Eastern European feel East German

3:47

field would have to be corrected. I

3:49

mean, that might be some people's bag, but

3:53

it's not very welcoming. Yeah.

3:59

The typical golf course is two hundred

4:02

acres, give or take. That's a lot of

4:04

land. You have to landscape. Bit

4:06

mow it drenched in pesticides,

4:08

keep the sand traps perfect. I

4:11

read somewhere that when a fancy golf course rebuilds

4:13

its bunkers, it typically takes about

4:15

three hundred and eighty nine truckloads

4:17

of sand three hundred

4:19

and eighty nine just to keep

4:22

everything nice and white and fluffy. But

4:24

at the same time, because golf involves

4:27

launching a potentially lethal projectile

4:29

at great speeds across enormous distances,

4:32

you have to severely limit the number of people on the

4:35

course at any one time. Typically,

4:37

a good private course can handle no more than

4:39

seventy two golfers at once. So

4:41

that's one golfer per one hundred and twenty thousand,

4:44

eight hundred and thirty three square feet. Can

4:46

you imagine if basketball had the same population

4:49

density as golf. I did the math.

4:51

If basketball was played according to the geographical

4:54

requirements of golf, a basketball

4:56

court would be thirty acres. Picture

5:00

that that had to play on motorcycles.

5:06

Okay, another fact about golf.

5:09

Rich people really really like

5:12

it. They're obsessed with it in a way

5:14

that there just isn't any parallel for ordinary

5:16

people. Because serious golfers

5:18

are super anal about their scores. We

5:20

can actually quantify their obsession in

5:23

order to calculate their handicap, basically

5:25

how well they're playing relative to other people at

5:28

the country club. They all post their results

5:30

on a database maintained by the United

5:32

States Golf Association, So we

5:34

have a record, and it's a gold

5:36

mine to be able to calculate your

5:38

handicap and track it through time. You

5:41

will log into the system either at your course

5:44

or on your home computer. I'm talking to

5:46

an economist at Miami University named

5:48

Lee Biggerstaff. He's interested

5:51

in the habits of top corporate executives.

5:53

If you have the corner office and a multimillion

5:56

dollars stock option and a golf stream

5:58

five, does that make you more or

6:00

less likely to put in a hard day's work. The

6:03

USGA database is of serious

6:05

professional interest to a guy like Biggerstaff.

6:07

And you input are you played, and

6:10

what day you played on, and what your

6:12

score was, and you know, after

6:14

a certain number of rounds being played, the

6:17

USGA will will indicate what your handicap

6:19

is, your level of skill, which allows you

6:21

to compete against other golfers of different skill level

6:23

and kind of normalize against that you

6:25

know how you always hear that CEOs play

6:27

a lot of golf. Bigger Staff's

6:29

insight is that the USGA database

6:32

allows us to know exactly how much

6:34

they play. All you need to do is

6:36

cross reference that list of scores with

6:38

a list of the CEOs of America's largest

6:41

companies. So that's what he does. It

6:43

takes forever, by the way, we started while as

6:45

a PhD student, and so the certainly

6:47

was a multi month process. So it's not something

6:49

that necessarily want to repeat in the near term just because it took

6:52

a lot of collection time. There, how

6:54

can you not love this? Surely this

6:56

is why God invented graduate students. Bigger

6:58

Staff begins with the names of the heads the

7:01

top fifteen hundred publicly held companies

7:03

in the US. Three hundred

7:05

and sixty three of those fifteen hundred

7:08

turn out to be so obsessed with golf

7:10

that they enter their scores into the USGA database.

7:13

What you're seeing on average is

7:15

I think fifteen rounds a year. It's kind of the average

7:18

CEO is playing that amount of golf, but

7:20

it's a heavily skewed distribution, right, So we have a lot of

7:22

people that are playing very little golf, and then

7:25

we have a tail where we're picking it

7:27

up. You know, the top quartile of what we're looking at, which

7:30

is twenty two or more rounds per year. And if you

7:32

go to the top ten percent of Bigger Staff sample,

7:35

the CEOs are playing around at least

7:37

thirty seven times a year. A

7:43

round of golf is a good four four and a half hours,

7:45

So if you play thirty seven times a year,

7:48

that's more than one hundred and sixty hours

7:50

on the course, the equivalent of five and

7:52

a half weeks of work. By

7:55

the way, these are understatements. They

7:58

don't include the time spent driving to the course,

8:00

warming up, getting changed, having

8:02

a drink. Doesn't include the hours

8:04

spent practicing shots on the putting green

8:06

or the driving range, or all the rounds

8:08

you that you don't enter into the database,

8:11

like if you're only playing nine holes or playing a

8:13

fun round, so the real time is

8:15

probably way higher. Bigger

8:18

Staff then goes on to show that the more

8:20

golf of CEO plays, the worse

8:22

his firm does, and also that the

8:24

more golf of CEO plays, the more likely

8:26

he is to be fired. In other

8:28

words, this isn't a harmless habit.

8:31

It's a dangerous habit. Remember

8:34

the Wall Street investment bank bear Sterns.

8:36

They went bankrupt during the mortgage crisis

8:39

in July of two thousand and seven, Right

8:42

when the crisis was beginning. The

8:44

CEO of bear Stearns would often helicopter

8:47

out from Wall Street on Friday afternoons to his

8:49

exclusive course in New Jersey to get

8:51

a round in before sunset. Even

8:53

when his company was collapsing, he couldn't

8:56

stop playing golf. Out

8:59

of President Donald Trump's first four months

9:01

in office, he visited his own golf

9:03

courses twenty five times. One

9:06

week he played three times. You

9:08

would think he would be at the office learning

9:10

how to be president, reading intelligence briefings,

9:12

drading the swamp. No, he's golfing. It's

9:14

an addiction, right, because the

9:16

definition of an addiction is a self destructive

9:19

habit. Just think if I said

9:21

to you that an important employee

9:23

of a major organization made lifestyle

9:25

choices that caused him to miss enormous

9:27

amounts of work, harm his performance,

9:30

and put his own career in jeopardy, you

9:32

would say, WHOA check that guy

9:34

into rehab. That's golf crack

9:38

cocaine for rich white guys the

9:41

highest and the sample one

9:43

hundred forty six or one hundred forty eight rounds

9:46

recorded in a single year, which I mean at that point, that's

9:48

a tremendous amount of time it's been on a golf

9:50

course. You thought I was engaging in hyperboly,

9:53

didn't you that I was using the word addiction

9:55

metaphorically. One hundred and forty

9:57

eight rounds a year is a round of golf every

10:00

three days, and that would

10:02

be if it was kind of uniformly distributed across

10:04

the year. It's you know,

10:06

golf certainly has a season where it's a little bit more sense

10:09

in terms of the summer versus the winner.

10:12

And you can't tell me what company

10:15

is. I want to know what company is.

10:18

Yeah, this we're just with this data, given

10:20

it somewhat sensitive, we're

10:23

unwilling to name out CEOs.

10:25

I can't believe you won't tell me. I mean,

10:28

here, we have an activity that is incredibly

10:30

expensive, that is organized in just

10:32

about the most extravagant manner possible.

10:35

And at the same time, this expensive habit

10:37

is incredibly addictive, to the point that there's

10:39

a chief executive out there of a major

10:42

American corporation who plays

10:44

an average of one hundred and forty

10:46

eight rounds of golf a year and is so

10:48

completely unself conscious about that

10:50

fact that he posts all one hundred

10:53

and forty eight rounds on a public database

10:55

where it can be analyzed by graduate students.

10:59

So what happens to rich white guys with a dangerous,

11:01

costly obsession. Do they burn

11:03

through their life savings paying for their addiction

11:05

like ordinary addicts do? Please

11:08

give them a little more respect. By

11:12

the way, this is my fifteenth year in television.

11:14

Imagine that fifteen years of me the

11:18

longest stomach test in the history of show. You

11:22

could argue, I would say in the forties

11:24

and fifties there was no one who was more

11:26

widely popular in American than Bob Hope.

11:29

I'm talking to Richard Zoglin, Bob

11:31

Hope's biographer. I think Bob

11:33

Hope has been a little forgotten in recent years,

11:36

but in his day he was huge.

11:38

Every late night comedian who does a

11:41

stand up monologue at the beginning of the show

11:43

owes a debt to Bob Hope because he kind of invented

11:46

that thing, a stand up comedy monologue

11:48

that sort of took note of what was going on in the world,

11:50

what was going on in Hollywood, what was going

11:53

on everywhere, and he was just the voice

11:56

of America. I think for a long

11:58

time. Bob Hope is

12:00

a crucial part of the story of golf in America,

12:03

although I'm warning you things are

12:05

going to get a little complicated, which

12:07

is sort of the point, because you don't get to run

12:09

the world for as long as rich white guys have without

12:12

being pretty wily, and some

12:14

of their best and wiliest work has

12:16

been on the golf course. So

12:20

there's a principle in property tax law called

12:22

highest and best use, which is

12:24

that one of the ways you figure out how much

12:27

to tax a piece of property is to

12:29

estimate what its best use might be. For

12:32

example, if I have a one acre plot

12:34

and the fanciest part of Manhattan that I

12:36

used to grow vegetables, I can't say to

12:38

the city that land is worthless, it's

12:40

just a vegetable garden. No, the

12:42

city's going to say, we're going to value that

12:45

one acre and tax it as if it had

12:47

an apartment block on it, because

12:49

that's the best use of land in the fancy

12:51

parts of Manhattan. Now,

12:53

if you've got a vast golf course in the middle of

12:55

Beverly Hills or Brentwood Highest

12:57

and best use makes you really nervous

13:00

because plainly, the highest and best

13:02

use of land in the middle of one of the most expensive

13:04

and densely populated cities in the world is

13:06

not a private golf course. So

13:09

years ago, in nineteen sixty, California's

13:12

country clubs realize they have to act

13:14

or they're going to get taxed into oblivion. They

13:17

get together and they propose an amendment

13:19

to the state constitution that permanently

13:22

exempts them from the highest and best

13:24

use standard. They want their vegetable

13:26

garden to be taxed as a vegetable

13:29

garden. If

13:31

you think about it, this is seriously

13:33

audacious. Private golf

13:36

courses are these massive, opulent,

13:38

gated playgrounds, and membership

13:40

is often restricted. In Los Angeles

13:42

in nineteen sixty, a lot of these clubs didn't

13:44

let in Jews. They certainly didn't let

13:47

in black people except to work in the kitchen. Yet

13:49

they wanted a constitutional exemption

13:52

to ordinary property taxes like they

13:54

were some kind of public amenity. How

13:57

can they argue this, They don't,

13:59

not really. They just bring him Bob Hope

14:02

who, in addition to being the most popular entertainer

14:05

in America, is also an obsessive

14:07

golfer. Obsessive I

14:09

might as well level with you. I spent so much time

14:11

in Santraff they sent me citizenship papers

14:14

from Saudi Arabia. Oh yeah, I

14:16

love to hear the whole. Bob

14:18

Hope once wrote an entire book just devoted

14:21

to his golf game, called Confessions

14:23

of a Hooker, in which he estimates

14:25

that he had played on two thousand

14:27

different golf courses over the course of

14:29

his life. He belonged to the Lakeside

14:32

Country Club in La near where

14:34

he lived A little of the pious,

14:36

Yes, I think

14:39

so. Yeah. The genius at picking

14:41

Bob Hope is the face of California's country

14:43

clubs is that his whole persona,

14:45

his whole act, was about being everyman.

14:48

He's self deprecating. Half his jokes

14:50

are about how he's not part of the in group,

14:53

even though of course there's no one more in than

14:55

Bob Hope. Isn't this wonderful all being here

14:57

in California? I just love it. Look at that sky.

15:00

That's the only place in the world where you can get four seasons

15:02

in one day. I want to tell you that this

15:05

is the vie. We're better. Hurry, we'll be It'll be snowing

15:07

before the third hole. Yeah, let's

15:09

move on. Oh boy, So,

15:11

how did the Bob Hope for Golf campaign do?

15:13

In nineteen sixty It wins, The

15:16

proposition passes, and it's added

15:18

to Article thirteen of the California Constitution,

15:21

where it remains to this day.

15:24

In order to win a set of privileges

15:26

for the very wealthy. In other words, California's

15:29

country clubs turned to a man who symbolizes

15:32

the common man. I mean,

15:34

when does it ever happen that a TV celebrity

15:36

wins a sweetheart deal for his rich golf

15:38

buddies by posing as a friend of the common

15:41

man. If you get my drift

15:48

to give me back, just should like totally

15:51

understand Prop thirteen properties

15:53

past in nineteen seventy eight, and

15:56

what are the principal stipulations

15:58

of the proposition. I'm

16:01

in a big conference room in the Los Angeles

16:03

County Municipal Building, one of those

16:05

beautiful nineteen thirties office buildings

16:07

that are all over downtown Las Ange Angelists. There

16:10

are four people on the other side of the table. They're

16:12

from the La County Tax Assessor's office.

16:15

I'm on my quest to figure out why Brentwood

16:18

Country Club isn't just a big park that I can

16:20

go running through, and I've decided

16:22

to start with the people who run the tax system.

16:25

These are serious folks, deliberate,

16:27

thoughtful. They have promised to help me. You'll

16:31

have to guess what they really think. The

16:34

tax rate is set is one percent of

16:36

the value, as opposed to a variable

16:38

rate, which it was before. Demand speaking

16:41

is Brian Donnelly. He's talking about

16:43

the most famous amendment to the California Constitution,

16:46

Proposition thirteen. The

16:49

properties only get reassessed with when there's

16:51

a transfer or a change of ownership,

16:54

or there's new construction. Those are the

16:56

primary parts of it. Here's what he's

16:58

saying. If you own a house, every

17:00

one or two years, typically the value of your

17:03

property is reassessed by the city or county

17:05

where you live. So if your house doubles

17:07

in value, the local government will raise

17:09

your taxes accordingly. That's the way

17:11

property taxes work, except

17:14

in California. Proposition

17:16

thirteen said that for tax purposes,

17:18

the value of any piece of property in California

17:21

is frozen at pre nineteen seventy

17:23

eight levels, and the only way that

17:25

property can be reassessed at its

17:27

real current value is if the

17:30

property is sold, or, to be

17:32

more specific, if ownership

17:34

of more than fifty percent of the property

17:36

changes hands. In other words,

17:38

California has two kinds of taxpayers,

17:41

the post nineteen seventy eight people who

17:43

pay normal property taxes, and the

17:46

people lucky and old enough to

17:48

be living in the same house they owned in nineteen

17:50

seventy eight, who pay a tiny fraction

17:53

of their fair share. You know, I've got family

17:55

members who owned their houses nineteen sixty nine,

17:58

and they're paying I

18:00

think their TAXI values about ninety

18:03

thousand dollars or something like that. The houses in that neighborhood

18:05

sel for six hundred, so it's so

18:08

they're paying a lot less than It's

18:10

the proper teen conundrum, which I'm sure you've read about.

18:16

Please understand this system

18:18

is insane, totally crazy. I

18:20

mean, just think of all the reasons why someone might

18:22

deserve a big tax break. I mean, they're

18:24

sick, they're poor, they have

18:27

tons of young kids, they've made a big

18:29

investment in their business. The State of

18:31

California says no, we think

18:33

the most deserving group are people whose

18:35

property hasn't changed hands in forty years.

18:38

Okay, now, imagine that

18:40

you're a private golf club. You

18:43

did that spectacular bit of jiu jitsu

18:45

with Bob Hope in nineteen sixty, which

18:47

means that you don't pay real property taxes.

18:50

Gift from God number one. Then

18:52

comes proposition thirteen, and

18:55

you get a second gift from God because

18:58

proposition thirteen says that

19:00

those already artificially low

19:02

property taxes are now frozen

19:04

forever at nineteen seventy eight levels,

19:07

so long as your country club does

19:09

not change hands. And that last

19:12

part is crucial, because if

19:14

you have a change in ownership, then

19:16

you have to pay real property tax

19:19

like every other long suffering

19:21

California taxpayer who hasn't been

19:23

in one place since nineteen seventy eight. So

19:27

the country clubs of Los Angeles all

19:30

hang by a thread. They

19:32

continue to exist only

19:34

so long as the tax system perceives

19:37

that they have not changed hands, and

19:40

for years everyone assumes they

19:42

haven't changed hands. I mean Brettwood,

19:45

LA country Club, Wilshire. All

19:47

the major golf clubs were all founded before

19:49

nineteen seventy eight, but

19:52

Then a neighborhood newspaper called

19:54

the Los Angeles Garment and Citizen

19:56

runs an article January sixteenth,

19:59

twenty ten, in which they say,

20:02

wait a minute, most private

20:04

country clubs in Los Angeles have

20:06

what's called equity ownership. They're

20:09

owned by their members. When

20:11

you admitted, you get a share. When you die

20:13

or quit, someone else takes your share.

20:16

So over time, if enough members

20:18

die or quit, isn't that a change in ownership.

20:22

That question was put to Rick Auerback, who

20:24

was then the head of tax assessment for Ella

20:26

County. I think the quote was kind of funny for him.

20:28

You said something about, let's see on

20:31

most issues we haven't heard at least the question asked

20:33

before he said, Who'd worked in the office thirty nine years,

20:35

But this was a new one. So Auerback

20:37

refers the question to the city's lawyers.

20:40

They put their best and brightest legal minds

20:42

on it for six months, and

20:44

on June second, twenty ten, the

20:46

county's tax court issues a solemn,

20:49

four page ruling. They conclude,

20:51

no country clubs haven't

20:54

changed hands. If you're keeping

20:56

track, that's the third straight up gift

20:58

from God that Ellie's private country clubs

21:00

have gotten in the last fifty years. I

21:02

was talking to someone who's a member of Feller

21:05

Country Club, okay, and I said, what

21:07

percentage of the members of bel Air today?

21:10

We're members in seventy eight and he said, you

21:13

know, ten percent? So why

21:15

isn't that a change of ownership? Right? If

21:18

I haven't had a chance to dig through this a whole lot since

21:20

I got it out of the file the other

21:22

day. But they kind of get into it. It's

21:25

they're saying, if there's no one event

21:27

that is that is more than fifty percent

21:30

of a transfer, then it's not.

21:32

Each of those little individual slices are not a

21:34

change of ownership on their own. Did

21:37

you find that argument plausible? Well,

21:41

it's prop Yeah, that's that's were

21:45

implementers of the law. You don't have opinions.

21:47

No, Well, I

21:50

could swear as I looked across the table at

21:52

Donnelly and his cohorts that they were

21:54

twitching like they desperately wanted

21:56

to say something but had to bite their tongue. You

21:59

know what it's like. You know that famous

22:02

paradox I forgot with the ship.

22:05

Well, you the question is if you change, If you

22:07

have a ship and you change, it's like some ancient greeking,

22:09

and you change one board at a time, is

22:12

at the end of the day as a ship different. That's

22:15

what this is. The thing

22:17

I can't remember is a ship of theseus.

22:20

The famous thought experiment described by the

22:22

Greek philosopher Plutarch roughly two thousand

22:24

years ago. Plutarch

22:27

says, imagine theseus is sailing

22:29

on a ship, and one by one he replaces

22:32

every one of the original planks that make up

22:34

that ship with a new plank, until

22:36

every single piece of the ship is new.

22:39

The question is, when Theseus reaches

22:41

shore, is he sailing on the same ship as

22:44

he was when he left or a new ship.

22:47

One view says it's a new ship. This

22:49

is called the meriological theory of identity.

22:52

The identity of something is the sum of its

22:54

component parts. Change the parts,

22:57

you change the thing. On

22:59

the other side of the argument is something called spatio

23:02

temporal continuity theory, which

23:04

says that an object can maintain

23:06

its identity so long as

23:08

the change is gradual and the

23:10

form or shape of the object is

23:13

preserved to the changes of its component

23:15

materials. I think

23:17

you can see where I'm going with this. The

23:20

city's lawyers take the second view,

23:23

so long as a country club replaces its

23:25

rich white guys gradually, and

23:27

so long as each new rich white guy

23:29

preserves the form and shape of the rich

23:31

white guy he is replacing, then the private

23:34

golf clubs of today must have the

23:36

same existential status as

23:38

the private golf courses of nineteen seventy

23:40

eight. Collections of rich white

23:42

guys, from the standpoint of the La County

23:44

property tax system, possess spatio

23:47

temporal continuity.

23:51

At this point I realized I was in

23:53

way over my head. Tax assessors

23:56

were not going to be enough. I needed

23:58

an actual philosopher, so

24:00

I called Mark Cohen of the University

24:02

of Washington to get to the bottom

24:05

of the question of whether large groups

24:07

of rich white people possess on too logical

24:09

permanence. Here's an

24:11

argument that favors the space

24:13

EO temporal continuity theory.

24:16

The idea that what makes

24:18

the ship persists

24:20

through time as one and the same is

24:23

that it moves smoothly through space

24:25

time. One plank is removed

24:28

and thrown overboard, and a

24:30

replacement plank is installed taken

24:32

from the cargo the ship has on board, so

24:34

when it arrives it doesn't have a

24:36

single part that is identical

24:39

to any of the parts it started out with, and

24:41

so there's no point at which you can say, aha,

24:44

now we have a new ship, a different a numerically

24:46

different ship. So

24:48

that if you have that sort of argument

24:51

in mind, you think, okay, the Space Show

24:53

temporal continuity criterion is the correct

24:55

one. Forget about requiring that all the

24:57

parts are the same. But Cone

25:00

is not finished as a philosopher.

25:02

His job is to consider all the scenarios

25:05

raised by the ship of theseus conundrum, like

25:08

the museum count example. The museum

25:10

example goes like this. Suppose

25:12

the ship is

25:14

in a museum of ancient ships and

25:17

a gang of crooks is trying to steal this

25:19

ancient ship, and it realizes

25:22

it can't just haul it out in one

25:24

piece. They would easily be spotted. So

25:26

they come up with a clever scheme. They

25:28

sneak in every night and steal the ship,

25:31

one board at a time, one plank

25:33

a day, so the museum doesn't realize

25:35

what's going on. By the time they're finished

25:38

one day number n they have all

25:40

end parts of the ship removed. Now

25:43

they reassemble them and put it on

25:45

the black market. They're selling Theseus's

25:48

ancient ship for a pretty price,

25:51

and they've left a replica

25:53

behind in the museum. I

25:55

contend that in this case, when you describe

25:57

it in this way, it seems

26:00

as if Theseus's ship

26:02

has been stolen piecemeal from

26:04

the museum.

26:07

Cohen's point is that there's no sim will

26:09

answer to the ship of Theseus problem.

26:11

You can go around and around and around.

26:14

That's why it's a puzzle. But do

26:16

you see what the lawyers at the LA Board

26:18

of Equalization did. They just

26:20

waltz into a philosophical conundrum

26:23

that has bedeviled some of the best minds in the

26:25

world for two thousand years and

26:27

declare victory and say, oh, it's

26:29

definitely option one spatio temporal

26:31

continuity. The

26:36

problem as it stands is

26:39

irresolvable, and you

26:41

only come to a conclusion that makes any

26:43

sense to you if you

26:46

place it in a context

26:49

in which there is something sort

26:51

of extra metaphysical, something pragmatic,

26:55

that helps that tilts you in one

26:57

direction or the other. So what's the pragmatic,

27:00

extra metaphysical consideration here?

27:02

It's at Los Angeles ranks near the bottom

27:04

of all major metropolitan areas

27:07

in the United States. In terms of public parks,

27:10

there's Griffith Park off in the northeastern

27:12

corner of the city, which only a fraction of

27:14

the city can even get to. And then

27:17

there's basically nothing except

27:19

these massive golf courses which

27:21

are both closed to general public and

27:23

subsidized by the general public. Do

27:25

you want to know the size of that subsidy?

27:28

I asked around a guy I

27:30

know knows a guy who's a member of the La Country

27:32

Club. That guy's back of the envelope

27:34

calculation was that the club's land was

27:36

worth about six billion dollars. But

27:39

that was a couple of years ago. Then I heard

27:41

from another guy who said that they now think it's worth

27:43

nine billion, nine billion.

27:46

Under normal circumstances, the property

27:48

taxes on that much land would come to about

27:51

ninety million dollars a year. Do

27:54

you know what LA Country Club actually paid

27:56

after you add up the Bob Hope exemption and

27:58

the spatio temporal continuity ruling

28:01

two hundred thousand dollars give

28:03

or take all. Right, let's

28:06

do the math together. They

28:08

should be paying ninety million. In

28:10

fact, they're only paying two hundred

28:12

thousand dollars in property taxes. Ninety

28:15

millions two hundred thousand dollars is

28:17

eighty nine million, eight hundred thousand

28:19

dollars. That's how much the tax

28:22

bearers of Los Angeles subsidize one

28:24

of the swankiest country clubs

28:26

in the world every year. Well,

28:29

now I wanted to bring up something else that comes

28:31

to mind here, which is that the

28:34

spatial temporal argument, taken

28:37

out of philosophical context strikes

28:40

me as being can

28:42

sometimes be really troubling. For

28:45

example, it's a very I mean, I

28:47

think there's something fundamentally intuitive

28:49

about it. And I don't mean that necessarily

28:52

in a good way. That it you

28:54

know that we get the fact that we

28:57

call the Hudson River the Hudson

28:59

River, even though the Hudson River is

29:02

at every second changing.

29:05

It's like, you know, the water's up, the same boats

29:08

go down on it. You know, it's never that he never

29:10

looks the same way twice ever, But we continue

29:13

to call it the Hudson River. But

29:15

it strikes me that in a political

29:17

context, as kind of thinking can be

29:19

used to perpetuate inequality

29:22

and injustice. Interesting,

29:26

for example, what is the what is an aristocracy

29:28

but a political formulation of

29:30

the spatial temporal continuity

29:34

principle. Right, it is

29:36

something like that, and it's it's troubling

29:38

it precisely that way, because they're saying circumstances

29:42

can change, and the holders of the privilege

29:44

can change. The father can die and

29:46

the son can inherit the peerage, but

29:49

the peerage remains intact. It

29:52

has this quality that's independent of

29:54

all that's going around it. And that's yes.

29:58

Where where the identity of

30:00

the object confers, for example,

30:02

a right or a title, and

30:05

if it's considered to be held

30:07

intact and in full by

30:10

whoever holds it at any one time, then

30:13

basically that removes

30:15

change altogether from the realm

30:17

of what matters as far as ownership

30:21

is concerned. Yes, so

30:24

the seventeenth great grandson

30:26

of the peer still has all of the rights

30:28

and privileges, even though so

30:30

far removed from the rights

30:33

and privileges as they attached to

30:35

the original holder of them.

30:38

So there is there is something that is

30:40

unfair and anti egalitarian

30:43

about the way this principle can get

30:46

applied. So

30:50

the golf clubs of Los Angeles are

30:53

essentially aristocratic institutions

30:57

exactly. I

31:03

think someone needs to tell Bromwood in La

31:05

Country Club and all the others that

31:07

if they want to hold space she owed temporal

31:10

continuity privileges, they have to

31:12

give something back. Take down

31:14

your barbed wire. Your members

31:16

can play golf on weekdays, but evenings

31:19

and weekends belong to the ordinary

31:21

taxpayers of Los Angeles. Let

31:23

them come and enjoy the greens and fairways

31:26

that they've been subsidizing for generations.

31:29

It's worth remembering, by the way, that the most famous

31:31

golf course in the world, the home of golf,

31:34

Saint Andrews in Scotland, is open

31:36

to the general public on Sundays. In

31:38

Toronto, the fanciest golf club is

31:41

Rosedale Country Club, right in

31:43

the middle of the city, but the golf course

31:45

is only private in summer. The

31:47

rest of the time it's open to anyone

31:49

who wants to go for a walk, or play frisbee,

31:52

or go cross country skiing. Canada

31:55

and the United Kingdom, i would point out, are

31:57

governed by a queen. They have an actual

32:00

aristocracy, but somehow

32:02

they've figured out a way to have their fancy

32:04

golf courses be democratic. It's

32:07

only on the corner of sen the sen day in

32:09

burling game that golf remains an instrument

32:12

of medieval privilege. I

32:14

mean when you fly over LA,

32:17

the green space that you see is cemeteries

32:20

and golf courses and golf courses. You don't see

32:22

parks. We don't have a park like say

32:25

San Francisco's Golden Gate Park or New

32:27

York's Central Parks Central Park.

32:30

Guys, Doc and I are standing outside the barbed wire

32:32

or Brownwood Country Club, peering

32:34

through a fence. We're trying to spot

32:36

one of the privileged few permitted a walk

32:38

in the park on the west side of LA. I see

32:41

one, guy, I

32:44

see one. That's

32:46

unbelievable. It's a Saturday afternoon. Sun is

32:48

now coming out, like

32:51

right now. We're standing on the running

32:53

track and there's someone

32:55

running up right now. There are more people

32:57

on this narrow dirt

32:59

track than there are typically

33:02

on the golf course. Let see if you

33:04

can still see any kind of I'm

33:08

still looking for a golf off. I'm

33:10

not I see one. You see

33:12

one? Yeah, that's very exciting.

33:15

Yeah, next

33:18

time I'm climbing defense, maybe

33:22

we all should. Origion's

33:39

History is produced by Meila Bell and Jacob Smith,

33:41

with Camille Baptista, Stephanie Daniel,

33:43

and Clmr Martinez, wife our

33:46

editor is Julia Barton. Flawn

33:48

Williams is our engineer. Original

33:50

music by Luis Guerra. Special

33:52

thanks to Andy Bowers and my old

33:54

pal Jacob Weisberg. At Panoply,

33:58

I'm Malcolm Bradwell.