0:07

Hello and welcome to the

0:09

Political Orphanage, a home for

0:11

plucky misfits and problem solvers.

0:14

I'm your host, Andrew Heaton. Few

0:17

months back, this program did City

0:20

Week, a multiple

0:22

episode special on urban planning

0:24

featuring mayors, a Lord Provost,

0:26

planners and designers. And

0:28

I was very excited to get one

0:30

guest, Alombert Toud, a famous urbanist and

0:32

instructor at NYU's Marin Institute. Now

0:35

I was stoked to talk to him about

0:37

his book, Order Without Design, How Markets Shape

0:40

Cities, and I've linked to that episode in

0:42

today's show description. Afterwards,

0:45

listeners reached out to me and

0:47

said, hey, get that dude

0:49

back on the show. He was cool. And

0:52

I said, well, I've already talked to him

0:54

about his book. So you want me to talk to him about, to

0:57

which they replied, him, talk

1:00

to him about him. He's worked

1:02

in Algeria, communist China, the Soviet

1:04

Union, France, and he's smart and charming.

1:06

Just talk to him about his career. So

1:09

today, due to popular

1:11

demand, I am bringing back the

1:13

great Alombert Toud as a

1:16

guest to discuss his experiences working

1:18

with commies and Frenchman. It's

1:21

a fun chat about how incentives affect

1:23

outcome and the specific contrasts

1:26

between top-down command economies, free

1:28

markets, and highly regulated ones.

1:31

But first, the

1:34

Political Orphanage is a listener supported

1:36

show. If you want

1:38

to support it, go to patreon.com/Andrew

1:40

Heaton. What do you get? A

1:42

warm sense of accomplishment, two

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or three extra inches in height, and

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bonus content. Every

1:49

week, there is a bonus episode exclusively

1:51

for patrons. Could it be life-saving? Could

1:54

it be code words to get you into the Bilderberg Group? You'll

1:57

never know, unless you become a patron.

2:00

So go to

2:02

patreon.com/andrew heton. That's

2:04

patreon.com/andrew heton. Thanks

2:09

My guest today is Alain Bertin. He

2:11

is a senior fellow at nyu's maren

2:13

institute of urban design formerly the principal

2:15

urban planner for the world bank. He

2:18

has served as the resident urban planner

2:20

in a number of cities around the

2:22

world including bankhoc, san salvador, port-au-prince sana

2:24

in yemen new york, harris, algeria and

2:26

india. He is the author of order

2:28

without design how markets shape cities which

2:31

we previously spoke about on this program

2:33

for city week. Hello nice to see

2:35

you. Thank you. Thank you for inviting

2:37

me back. You worked in both

2:39

china and the soviet union so that's

2:42

correct. You've got command economy experience.

2:45

India yes right yeah and it

2:48

was it was quite a learning experience

2:50

you nothing like

2:52

learning about market by working in the soviet

2:54

union. One thing i'm curious about because you

2:56

worked in at least

2:58

six different countries is

3:00

is the flavor of work different in

3:02

a command economy like i understand that

3:05

the the the planning's different because pricing

3:07

is different but does like does a

3:09

guy with a mega horn come in

3:11

and yell at you to increase production

3:14

or is there is there corruption or

3:16

bribery or is it just nice people

3:18

laboring under a bad system? It's nice

3:20

people intelligence people doing stupid things because

3:23

of the system encourage them to do

3:25

stupid things yes okay it's a very

3:27

low productivity system you know insulated from

3:29

from performance you know they they

3:32

have to follow quotas which

3:34

are very different from performance

3:36

for instance say on the

3:38

building site you see

3:41

crates you know a building is you

3:44

know housing apartment buildings nearly finished you

3:46

see crates full of gas arriving so that

3:48

they couldn't put the glass in the window

3:51

and then when they open the

3:53

crates half of the glass there is

3:55

broken so you you say

3:57

well you are sending them back i suppose

4:00

and they say no because

4:04

this is a company that you know it's

4:06

a vertical monopoly and the

4:08

people who manufacture the glass are the

4:10

same as the one who are building

4:12

the building and so

4:15

we cannot send them back we

4:17

just and why does this

4:19

glass broken well because they

4:21

have a quota of glass which is

4:23

per square you know they have a

4:25

number of square meter of glass to

4:27

produce every day but it doesn't specify

4:29

the thickness so

4:32

as they have shortage of energy

4:35

and everything if you

4:37

want to meet the quota you

4:39

make a glass as thin as possible

4:41

and if it's arrived broken it doesn't

4:44

matter because it's then the people are

4:46

so eager to have an apartment they

4:48

will put plastic or cardboard in the

4:50

in the windows in while

4:53

and there is no feedback on demand

4:55

you know they they are not going to

4:57

lose clients because that's all that you

5:00

realize the whole system is rotten

5:03

you know in a way the Soviet Union

5:05

could you know they could send a satellite

5:08

or or or kids because

5:10

then they concentrate an enormous amount

5:12

of resource on that if

5:14

they could not produce a washing machine

5:16

you know that will work that that

5:18

is a marvelous anecdote that I'm adding

5:21

to my mental toolkit the

5:23

one that I'm hitherto familiar with that I've

5:25

invoked on the program a couple of times

5:27

is that in the Soviet Union there were

5:29

agricultural quotas because there wasn't enough food so

5:31

they said from now on by government dick-tot

5:33

all the farmers instead of tilling 40 acres

5:36

a day you must till 80 acres a day

5:38

and the farmers went yeah all right

5:40

and they just lifted the tills on their tractors

5:42

up by eight inches so that they could just

5:45

rake the surface area as quickly as they could

5:47

and they were able to achieve that 80 80

5:49

acres of tilled

5:52

land but it was completely functionless and they ended

5:54

up having lower yield

5:56

of crops as a result of that it sounds like the

5:58

exact same thing with producing Like, yes. Paper,

6:01

thin windows. We hit the quota, but

6:03

they're all broken. Yes, right. The forces,

6:05

and even in small consumer things, forces,

6:08

I was in Armenia, and again,

6:11

after the fall of the Soviet Union,

6:13

but the Armenian system was completely intact

6:15

from the Soviet Union. It

6:17

takes time to change. I was

6:20

in the hotel where I was spending

6:23

$200 a night, but it had hot

6:25

water only two hours a day. At

6:29

night, I tend to cough, so

6:31

I wanted hot water. I went to

6:33

the market to buy those little gizmo

6:35

where you put in a glass and

6:38

it's warm water. My

6:40

Armenian colleagues told me, well, buy

6:42

at least five or six of them because they

6:45

are bound to fail. This is a

6:47

very simple thing. It's a resistance that you

6:49

put in your glass to have hot

6:51

water. Indeed, within

6:54

three hours, I had already three of

6:56

them that failed. This

6:59

again is the added quota to produce

7:01

those things. It was in the plan.

7:03

Whether this thing worked or not didn't matter at

7:06

all because there was no consumer

7:08

response. There was no competition. That's

7:10

fascinating. That's almost like how, when

7:13

I travel, depending on the city I'm in, I

7:15

might go, okay, well, I should show up. I

7:18

should leave an hour and a half early because

7:20

there might be traffic and there might be a

7:22

line. There was that on the

7:24

consumer level of, well, you want to buy six

7:26

products because we know the competency rate is 50%.

7:29

If you buy six, there's a decent chance one of them

7:31

might work. That was just kind of how life was? That's

7:34

right. Yes, yes, exactly. For

7:36

something as simple as that, it was not

7:40

high-tech thing. I

7:42

had the same experience in Cuba. I visited

7:44

Cuba. I was invited, I trade for a

7:47

conference in Cuba. I

7:49

came with my computer. It was the early

7:51

day of the computer. It was a small

7:53

computer. It was not very powerful. They

7:56

asked me, well, in the United States, how many

7:58

computers do you have to buy in order to

8:00

have one which works. And it

8:02

was the same thing. They had Soviet

8:04

computers, you know, like that. So they

8:07

decanibalized two or three in order to

8:09

have one which eventually worked. I did

8:11

an episode on this program about a

8:13

half a year ago on scaling, where

8:16

I tried to get my head around, can

8:19

government scale up indefinitely? So does something

8:21

that work in Singapore, will that work,

8:23

you know, for the entire United Kingdom?

8:26

Will something that works in Canada work for the entire United States? One

8:28

of the push backs that I got from a

8:30

listener was he theorized that the

8:32

reason that government tends to work very well

8:35

in Europe is not really because of the

8:37

size of government, but rather through some work

8:39

of history, there's just an expectation of low

8:41

corruption, whereas that has not happened in,

8:43

say, like Albania. And so you

8:46

just have lower corruption levels and that translates to

8:48

higher productivity. Do you think there's anything to that

8:51

or do you think scaling does affect just

8:53

kind of the basic levels of government? No,

8:56

I think you have to have some

8:59

type of decentralization. There

9:01

is no doubt that high centralization

9:05

produces inefficiency at the local

9:07

level and more

9:09

corruption, probably, although

9:11

I'm not completely sure about that. Yes,

9:14

probably. But

9:16

you could have, you know,

9:18

forces in the United States

9:21

is extremely decentralized by world

9:23

standards. So

9:26

local community, local town

9:28

have a complete freedom of land

9:31

use that they do not have

9:33

in many other countries, which might

9:35

not be, by the way, always

9:37

a blessing. But

9:42

so it doesn't depend on the size

9:44

of the country. It depends on the institution. On

9:48

the opposite, a country like France,

9:50

my native country, is

9:53

still extremely centralized by culture.

9:55

You know, it's Louis

9:57

XIV's Napoleon. the

10:00

history of the king who tried to

10:02

assemble very different region.

10:07

And it's a cultural thing. People

10:09

accept this enormous centralization. Things

10:12

like university in France not so long

10:14

ago were all dependent

10:16

on the ministry of education. It was

10:18

the minister who appointed the professors and

10:20

things like that. Whoa, really?

10:23

Yes. It's only recently at least

10:26

under Sarkozy when Sarkozy

10:28

gave the first time autonomy

10:30

to some university and now I think most

10:32

of them are autonomous. But

10:35

they were your

10:37

promotion with... If

10:40

you were a professor in Marseille, the

10:42

promotion was to be nominated in Paris

10:44

by the minister. Really? So

10:46

if you were going to get tenure or

10:48

you were going to... I don't know how the hierarchy

10:51

works in France, but... Yes, that's right. Yeah, there is

10:53

equivalent. Associate professor to full

10:55

professor, whatever. That would go through

10:57

the education ministry and the capital?

10:59

The education ministry, yes. Yes. Yes.

11:02

The bureaucracy, which probably they said...

11:04

They were certainly bureaucrats in the region

11:07

to do that, but they were depending

11:09

on the ministry. It

11:11

was not... So that was a revolutionary

11:13

thing done relatively recently

11:16

ago when Sarkozy was president.

11:19

So you see that. But that was well accepted.

11:21

You see that's what's changed. And

11:25

for me, coming to the

11:27

United States, I realize how

11:29

extreme decentralized this enormous country

11:31

is. It's a very large

11:33

country. At the time, extremely

11:35

decentralized. We do not... In

11:38

the American constitution, you have a

11:40

definition of what the federal government

11:42

is allowed to do. Everything

11:45

else is a devolve

11:47

to the states and the states themselves

11:49

devolve it around to the

11:51

counties or to the incorporated

11:53

cities. We

11:55

do not have this equivalent, I think, in

11:58

front of... We have a constitution. But

12:01

basically most of

12:05

the money is transferred from the central government

12:07

to the province and the city. There

12:10

is now some autonomy. We

12:14

are going through autonomy. But

12:16

so it's cultural. It's

12:18

a cultural aspect because Germany is very

12:20

decentralized. Right. Because Germany

12:22

is a federation whereas France has departments. It

12:25

doesn't have states as departments. And they're like-

12:27

Yeah, right. Yeah. So

12:29

they're like federal districts basically? Now we have

12:31

region but the region are very recent. The region

12:33

were in fact the province at the time of

12:35

the king. And the

12:38

revolution canceled the

12:40

province in order to- revolution

12:43

was Paris. The rest

12:45

of the country was not so enthusiastic about

12:47

the revolution. And so

12:49

they divided France into 90

12:52

department, 88 department. So

12:57

which were very small. The size of

12:59

the department was, if I remember,

13:02

was decided by how much

13:04

you could cover to go

13:07

to the main city, how much you could cover

13:10

on horseback during one day. Well,

13:13

and they did all sorts of other things too.

13:16

Didn't they, the revolution tried to do metric time?

13:18

Like they wanted to get away from the 24-hour

13:20

clock and have like a 25-hour clock because it

13:22

was divisible by five. Yeah.

13:25

So the weeks were 10 days, but

13:27

that was mostly to remove religion from

13:29

the life of the people because then

13:31

if you had 10 days a week,

13:33

it was very difficult to know which

13:35

sense date was and the months were

13:38

all 10 days and the

13:40

change, the name was changed, the name

13:42

of the months was changed. That

13:44

was in order to eradicate

13:46

Catholic religion. Well,

13:48

actually, could you elaborate on- so I spent

13:50

a lot of time in the United Kingdom.

13:52

I live in Edinburgh during the summer. So

13:55

I can speak indefinitely about the differences

13:57

between the British mindset and the American

14:00

mindset. I really don't know a whole lot

14:02

about the ... I

14:04

know of France in an abstract sense, but

14:06

I don't really know France. So what do

14:08

you see as the main differences in mindset

14:11

between the American and the French world? I

14:14

think that the French expect a

14:17

lot from the government. Again,

14:20

it's consistent with this centralization.

14:23

Even recently, Macron

14:27

is a good president, but

14:30

at the same time he declared that the

14:32

role of Europe was to protect us. They

14:36

do not see Europe as a free market,

14:39

as an area where you are free to

14:41

move around, but more

14:43

as a protection against other

14:45

countries. Not militarily, protection

14:48

again for jobs. Oh,

14:50

got it. Okay. Yeah. So

14:52

that's why I felt

14:55

sorry when, because

14:58

of Brexit from our point of view,

15:00

I think the Brits had a good

15:02

influence on the European Union. And

15:05

now between Germany and France would

15:07

dominate the European Union. I think

15:10

both of them are rather protectionist, rather

15:13

trying to ... I mean,

15:18

the involvement of the government in every

15:20

day, for

15:22

a long time, I think it's still like

15:24

that. When you have a sale,

15:27

the department store make a sale,

15:30

it's a government to decide which day it is. Which

15:33

date it is? Yes. What

15:36

do you mean by that? Whether it falls on

15:38

a Tuesday or Wednesday? Yeah. And

15:42

it can be done. All the departments,

15:44

all the shops have to do it

15:47

at the same time. And the government

15:49

decided not so long ago what type

15:51

of thing will be on sale. You

15:53

had to have the merchandise in Your

15:56

shop for more than one year. You Could

15:58

not get it. Something else and

16:01

put it on sale. Wait wait, hold out

16:03

the fridge. The fridge government is t recent

16:05

lead. Determined. What would be

16:07

on sale or not? That was something that they can

16:09

assert themselves with. Yes, And and

16:11

west and what discounts? Cindy. yes

16:14

that is some commie gobbledygook right? Their success

16:16

that as if it it does woods that

16:18

you could trust the private sector. The to

16:20

do is to figure out what to put

16:22

on sale and what's a slight Ohio. And

16:25

as you to go away so why

16:27

would they do that the to that.

16:29

They did. that's because in for

16:31

us youths as is to prevent

16:33

company deal with the core and

16:35

says competition you so that everybody

16:37

would be quite a old that's

16:39

the will not be a department

16:41

store were undermines The other oh

16:43

my god the cassette years. You'll

16:46

you'll You'll find that is only the in the

16:48

nineteenth. Centuries as Snc com is was

16:50

also a member of parliament. As it

16:52

said a bust your ass the I.

16:55

See as he said it's yo when it when

16:57

he he did this story about. Sets Elite

16:59

he said that it's and said have

17:02

windows because it's undermined the tend to

17:04

make his new yes it's This was

17:06

not just the two full fun he

17:09

was the they add things to again

17:11

as a fireman trying to put sex

17:13

producers at the expense of the consumer

17:15

because because that's the way the faces

17:18

asked ah that were like we'll full

17:20

of voice assess As for books you

17:22

know what the defense com and to

17:24

it was revealed subsidized coach a very

17:27

much much more than any other country.

17:29

In the World fall racism still

17:31

forbids discounts on books because Us

17:33

and Fair Competition hero the again

17:35

puts it puts they see that

17:37

the products as a producer at

17:39

the expense of the Us Human

17:42

Voices Amazon doesn't have the right.

17:44

To. add to have discounts

17:47

on books interests and that's why you

17:49

have find the price of books in

17:51

the in france as is is printed

17:53

on the plaza because this of the

17:56

price said to as to use you

17:58

can alter as i just I want

18:00

to wrap my mind around a couple of

18:02

things here because you can sum me up

18:04

as basically saying neoliberalism plus

18:06

cushions. So just like big old

18:10

destructive free market, but we've got a safety

18:12

net when people fall off of it. Yes,

18:15

that's right. That's right. Yeah, that's

18:17

fine. I hate command economy stuff. I think

18:19

it's really bad. In

18:22

France, if I am

18:25

a private bookstore, I'm like

18:27

a cute quirky little bookstore in Paris,

18:31

I can't discount books. I

18:35

couldn't say this

18:37

book by Bastiat is not selling so well, so I'm going

18:39

to reduce it by 50%, try to move

18:41

the ... Wow.

18:45

And that's ... if it's probably

18:47

... if it is an old book, a

18:49

used book, probably depending on the

18:52

state of the book, you can discount it,

18:54

yes, but not a new book, no. You

18:57

could ... there's already a law in place saying if

18:59

you haven't sold the book in two years that it's

19:01

kind of dog-worn, then you could reduce it by 30%,

19:03

but there's actually like a government rubric? Yeah,

19:05

no, no. I think if it has been

19:08

used already, if it's in bad state, if

19:10

you buy a used book, it's kind of

19:12

a ... I doubt that a new book

19:14

you could ever discount a new

19:16

book, no. Wow. Well,

19:19

and then the subsidizing culture thing, I am

19:22

by trade a comedian, I'm an author, I was

19:25

just shooting a pilot in New

19:27

York, so I'm hip deep in

19:29

entertainment. Arguably, we are doing entertainment

19:32

right now, very pro-entertainment, but I

19:34

find it anathema for the government

19:36

fund entertainment because you're ultimately taking money

19:38

from a bunch of struggling waiters and giving

19:40

it to me, the guy that has a

19:43

friend in government, and or alternately a bunch

19:45

of rich people are going, man, poor people

19:47

are dumb. They want monster truck rallies,

19:49

we should get them to like ballet, so let's take

19:51

their money and subsidize ballet tickets, which will be cheaper

19:53

for us, and then we'll get more ballet even though

19:56

they'll never go watch it. But That

19:58

sounds like the French model, as they're ... Just the

20:00

big government needs to be supported. Govern

20:02

culture, Oh hi, Yes

20:04

Yes! Fly out at To and

20:07

of course the problem is set.

20:09

To. Get subsidies to so sure you

20:11

need they a governments com meeting with

20:13

decides who gets censored eight you know

20:16

yeah everybody will be culture and did

20:18

see a sensitive that explains why some

20:20

time you as some extremely boring sales

20:22

in France zero that the people who

20:24

did this movie said use the committee

20:26

with the committee or get is a

20:28

small group of people and maybe. the

20:31

more boy gets his law attractive

20:34

this this sign it I don't

20:36

those but this explains your i'm

20:38

not saying he of these some

20:40

great french cinema but that's a

20:42

be as a sexist. The.

20:44

Oh it's very dangerous to to

20:46

to subsidize butcher except maybe I

20:48

would make an exception but maybe

20:50

because I'm french for anything which

20:52

is less it you know it's

20:54

a forces a comedy fall says

20:57

i have no program is they

20:59

since his eyes praying more yeah

21:01

you know a some same as

21:03

a six speed of subsidizing the

21:05

louvre i think is illegitimate say

21:07

for a and subsidizing modern art

21:09

that think is very dangerous yeah.

21:12

If. If if we have even in the United

21:14

States we we we don't subsidize art that much.

21:16

We do have the of the national. Ah,

21:18

Humanity isn't always as a as ride separate but they're

21:21

they're the I should say they are very small in

21:23

terms of the federal budget so while I would be

21:25

fun vijay up there are not man whose sleep over

21:27

them but but the modern art stuff like there was

21:29

that the famous whether came about twenty years ago was

21:32

the crucifix like there was a crucifix that a jar

21:34

of piss yes I say it as he to teach

21:36

at a i had an endless there was sir federal

21:38

funds of it's like but there might be get some

21:40

validity to this is is a piece of artwork but

21:43

yes I tell ya I don't have as a lot

21:45

of trouble taking other people's money to fund this like

21:47

use of language Edmunds people. The. As

21:49

tried to. ah yes, yes, that's

21:52

this self again that's different from

21:54

subsidizing care of American classics. A

21:57

sensor that. Way. you're lucky given

21:59

a beamed of Frederick Hayek, who is like

22:01

the, you know, the archon of free market

22:03

economics. I believe he was in favor of

22:05

subsidizing the opera. He was like, the government

22:07

should print money, run the courts, and subsidize

22:09

the opera. He

22:11

didn't think it would work without that.

22:14

Yes, because he was a Viennese. If

22:17

you theoretically, let's say you buy a surprising

22:19

dark horse majority or elected president of France

22:21

and you go in and you're in charge

22:24

of the culture budget, we're going to subsidize

22:26

the Louvre. We'll subsidize Molié.

22:29

But other than that, we're not going to have, you know,

22:31

we're reducing the media budget, the entertainment budget

22:33

by 90%. How do you

22:35

think culture would change in France? Would it become more populist?

22:37

Would it become, there'd be a lot of three Stooges and

22:39

less ballet? They would be a revolution

22:41

and it would be out of my job within 15

22:43

days. Well, there's going to

22:45

be riots for fun regardless. It

22:48

seems like the British have football, the

22:50

French have riots, but with

22:53

cultural subsidies, the other problem that I

22:55

have with it, as a card carrying

22:57

elitist, it strikes me as

22:59

a hyper elitist way to run

23:01

a country of basically saying that the

23:03

bottom 80% of our country is too stupid

23:05

to make its own decisions on art and entertainment

23:08

and we need to take their money and put

23:10

it towards what we, their bettors think they ought

23:12

to be consuming. I think

23:14

this is true for modern art, anything which

23:16

is modern, which is being done there. If

23:19

you have a country like France,

23:22

which has a very deep heritage and

23:24

being French is, even

23:26

if you are born outside, is

23:28

to, in a way, adopting this heritage.

23:31

If you become French, multi-secured

23:33

become your ancestor. So

23:37

I think that then there is

23:39

a justification to subsidize this

23:42

part of it, like the

23:44

Louvre or something, or maybe

23:46

again the classics, you know, the classic

23:48

theater. I think there is a point

23:50

because, you know, to

23:52

play this will be always expensive,

23:55

you know, to, you need to,

23:57

you need actors who are extremely

23:59

well trained. It's the

24:01

same as playing Shakespeare. You need

24:03

the actors. You cannot pick people in

24:05

the street and play Shakespeare. You need

24:07

a lot of training, so it's expensive.

24:11

Maybe there is a point where you

24:13

say, we want this

24:15

to be accessible to you, and

24:17

therefore we subsidize it. I

24:25

will agree on that. But not

24:27

certainly not anything which is murder. I

24:30

am far more boorish

24:32

and uncivilized and do not think we should

24:34

subsidize Shakespeare. I think the Shakespearean actors should

24:36

have to go around the community with a

24:39

pamphlet explaining why it's a good thing to

24:41

come watch and make a sales pitch, and

24:43

if they can't do it. What

24:46

about acting

24:50

is a low productivity thing,

24:52

so it's necessarily expensive compared

24:55

to movies or videos. So

24:59

if you want, maybe then Shakespeare

25:01

should be entirely on video. Well,

25:04

I think you still have, to my knowledge,

25:06

Shakespeare is not subsidizing the United States, but

25:09

here in Austin, Texas, where I live, some

25:12

local rich eccentric built a replica

25:15

of the Globe Theater, and there's a

25:17

Shakespearean acting company that puts on

25:20

two plays a year, to my knowledge, but they're

25:22

able to do that. If they subsidize it, maybe

25:24

we get- But say, do

25:28

you think that some people do not go because

25:30

it's too expensive? Compared

25:33

to watching a Netflix? Yes. I think there's

25:36

multiple factors for why people wouldn't go see

25:38

Shakespeare. Part of it could be expense, but

25:41

the concern that I have with trying to

25:43

make fine arts less expensive

25:45

is I think that it largely ends

25:47

up becoming just a subsidy to rich

25:49

people. Ballet,

25:51

for example, or opera, I Don't think

25:53

ballet and opera are apt to become

25:56

mass phenomenon at any point, So if

25:58

you're subsidizing it, what you're largely- The

26:00

doing is just making the ticket prices lower

26:02

for people that were going to go see

26:04

it and can afford it anyway. Ah yes,

26:06

I agree to that. Yeah yeah, could pull

26:08

if I'm sure. you could proliferate Shakespeare if

26:10

if you subsidized it. But I think that

26:13

if you nicely for Shakespeare's not subsidized, you

26:15

still sing Shakespeare in all fifty states. There's

26:17

still people that love Shakespeare. They love performing.

26:19

It's yes, yes yes yes. As with it

26:21

but say does the price of Fate. Of

26:24

he lies Deferments. A

26:26

D Tip: People are fucking wealth.

26:28

They could Again, they could still

26:30

What? Shakespeare, Italy? Verizon? Boom. Person

26:33

of six feel on on on Netflix

26:35

be they could do that but that

26:38

I I think too that you could.

26:40

Also I think that there's there's a

26:42

a kind of i'm community pride element

26:44

that also factors into this were. In

26:46

New York City, there's Shakespeare in the park. Yes, I

26:49

get that might be subsidized, but my guess is that

26:51

he wouldn't have to be a fit if if of

26:53

there's plenty of people in New York that care about

26:55

Shakespeare and would wanted to be accessible to everybody. And

26:57

so they would funded ah out of their own pocket

27:00

And then yes, it would come let alone with a

27:02

picnic basket. Yes, That's

27:04

a team that that's had possible

27:06

to yes a year when saying

27:08

goes. So in Farsi said to

27:11

see entropy spicy clay is very

27:13

very low. I mean this. There's

27:15

no tradition of philanthropy because again

27:18

you expect the states to to

27:20

do like to see entropy do

27:22

season. He says suspicion of see

27:25

and trump's relate. Yes,

27:27

Yes, I guess I like

27:29

meet meet me coming out

27:31

of this a Transatlantic Britannica

27:33

American tradition. I look it.

27:36

Up Government has the last resort. so Rise

27:38

of Charities Really good because of the charity.

27:40

Sucks you don't have to give money to

27:42

it. It'll go away if is a big

27:44

guy to after. Yeah, yes. just and efficient.

27:46

like. I donate a portion of my income

27:48

to charity every year and I'm sorry I

27:50

was about of I I I widely I

27:53

check out Charity Navigator. Ah, i

27:55

look at the impact of them

27:57

i can i can allocate more

27:59

resources i in a much better way than just

28:01

giving it to the government. As

28:03

a citizen, I can't go, man, the Department

28:05

of the Interior is far more effective than the Department

28:07

of Education. So sit all on my tax dot. I'm

28:09

not allowed to do that, right? So

28:12

being suspicious of philanthropy is

28:14

just completely inverted to my

28:16

model. I agree.

28:18

Yeah. And I discovered philanthropy in

28:21

the US because it really do

28:23

not exist in cross of very

28:25

little. And it's very suspicious. People

28:28

are suspicious of it. That art

28:30

will be, let's say, the

28:32

whim of a billionaire. That's what they

28:34

see, quality things. It should be at

28:37

the whim of technocrats. It should be

28:39

all of the- No,

28:42

they think the government as a people.

28:44

Of course, it's not a people. It's

28:46

a technocrats. I learned

28:48

that also in the

28:50

Soviet, in Russia or China, when

28:52

they say the land belongs to

28:55

people, land belongs to people. Well,

28:57

it belongs to the viewer countries

28:59

that are in England. It's

29:03

not the people. It has nothing to do with it.

29:06

My hero, Pedro, who's, I've

29:08

got a signed picture of him on my wall.

29:10

He said that there's a very big difference between

29:12

believing in people and believing in the people. So

29:15

I believe in people. I think people are great.

29:17

Yeah, right. Yeah. The people. I'm very illusory. Yes,

29:19

yeah. You know that

29:22

the monetary unit

29:24

in China, the Yuan is the

29:26

thing, but in fact, it's called

29:28

the renminbi, which means the people's

29:30

money. Oh, good. The

29:32

renminbi is the people's money. Ah,

29:34

yes. I'm sure it's very equally

29:36

distributed. We've

29:39

invoked several wonderful

29:41

liberals from the pantheon of intellectual

29:43

history so far. You mentioned Basia,

29:46

you've mentioned Montesquieu, who's arguably the

29:48

first liberal in history. The

29:50

United States has a great debt of gratitude

29:53

to Montesquieu because we get our concept of

29:55

the separation of powers from him. You also,

29:57

I believe, have Ricardo, who's a French economist.

30:00

So you have the

30:02

Enlightenment running at a high

30:05

rate in France of these wonderful liberal

30:07

Enlightenment thinkers. I thought

30:09

that Ricardo was Portuguese,

30:12

I think. I defer to you. I could be wrong.

30:15

This might be my... I would be delighted

30:17

to claim him as a compatriot. This

30:20

could well be my British snotty that's kicking

30:22

in, where I'm like, I'm a continental person.

30:25

Confidential people, yes. It's just someone they have

30:27

a funny accent. For sure you've

30:29

got Montesquieu, you've got Batheog. Yeah, that's right.

30:32

And the word laissez-faire is always French.

30:34

Laissez-faire, yeah. Al topoyneux is French, you

30:36

know that. What happened?

30:39

Because if I'd been making a bet in

30:42

1650 of who's going to be

30:44

the Enlightenment civilization

30:46

that is going to

30:48

be anti-authoritarian and it is full,

30:51

full rate, I would have gone with France because in

30:54

Britain you have Hobbes and then

30:56

Locke and you don't really have what I'd call

30:58

liberals to Locke or Adam Smith, but there are

31:01

these concurrent developments going on in France and then

31:03

it takes this hard left turn. Why did it

31:05

go in a different direction? I

31:07

think the French Revolution. I

31:11

recently gave a talk

31:14

in Charleston about Adam

31:17

Swiss and Rousseau. Well,

31:19

also he's Swiss, you know. He claims

31:21

to be a citizen of Geneva. Yeah,

31:23

that's right. I forgot about that. Yeah,

31:26

he is Swiss. He's a good poet. But

31:29

some of his part of his body is

31:31

buried at the Pontiôg in Paris. He

31:34

was one of the first men to be put

31:36

in the Pontiôg. They

31:39

would parade his treatise on the

31:41

social contract. It would be in

31:43

parade and annual festivals during the

31:45

French Revolution. At the time of the

31:47

Revolution. So you see, Adam Smith is

31:50

an optimist about human

31:53

beings, you know, and

31:55

you feel that even when

31:57

they fulfill their own interests, it doesn't.

32:00

some of those interests benefit

32:02

society, providing some

32:05

general rules, let's say, of

32:07

conduct, of contract, etc., where

32:09

we also think that we

32:12

are completely degenerate since

32:14

we have abandoned hunting

32:17

and gathering, the

32:19

good salvage. And therefore,

32:22

any individual interest

32:24

is necessarily the opposite of

32:26

the public interest. And

32:28

therefore, Rousseau always talks

32:31

about virtue, and

32:33

where Adam Smith says, I am very suspicious

32:35

of the people who talk about virtue, making

32:39

business out of it. So

32:42

you see those two. And for

32:44

some reason, it's Rousseau who won

32:46

the war of ideas in

32:48

France, and we are still under Rousseau

32:50

right now, I think, the

32:54

entrance of Rousseau. That somehow,

32:57

somebody will incarnate the general

32:59

will as to rule the

33:01

country in the name of the general will.

33:03

And the more they contradict the

33:06

individual interest of people, the better

33:08

it shows that they are serving

33:11

the general welfare. So

33:14

these two ideas,

33:16

unfortunately, again,

33:19

it's Rousseau who won

33:21

and not an entrance. This

33:23

is a fascinating emblem of two different ways

33:25

of approaching political economy. And I see this

33:27

play out in the United States all the

33:29

time. I don't know that it has a

33:31

direct lineage to Rousseau, but it resonates with

33:33

it. I have a very

33:36

Lockean Adam Smith mindset. I have a child

33:38

of the Enlightenment. So I view

33:40

the purpose of government as a last

33:42

resort protective measure. The government exists to

33:44

protect people from burglars,

33:46

foreign armies. Expand that a little

33:49

bit to poverty. And for Rousseau,

33:51

perhaps, yes. Yeah, exactly. But it's

33:54

people who are really out of

33:56

charge, you know, the 1%, you

33:58

know, your house burns. or

34:00

something, or you are

34:03

in terrible health conditions.

34:07

And that's predicated on an idea that most

34:10

people are decent and

34:12

that kind of Adam Smith perspective

34:14

of if

34:17

we can develop a system, which we have, that allows

34:20

aggregate self-interest to lift

34:23

the quality of

34:25

life for everybody, great. There's a

34:27

different mindset, and it sounds like Rousseau

34:29

had this, of kind of the operative

34:31

bad thing is greed, and the point

34:34

of the government is to suppress greed

34:36

and play whack-a-mole with greed. And if

34:38

only we could give bureaucrats sufficient power

34:40

to outlaw greed, you know that easily

34:42

quantifiable metric phenomenon of greed that's very

34:45

easy to pinpoint and regulate. If only

34:47

we could have the government knock out

34:49

greed, everything would be great. That's

34:51

right. Yes, yes, yes. In

34:54

planning, many of my colleague

34:56

planners think that when, again,

34:59

there is a shortage of housing in

35:02

bits everywhere, and they think it's about

35:04

speculators. If you could eliminate speculators, then

35:07

the problem will be solved. Speculators

35:10

are people who, of course, benefit

35:12

from the shortage created by government.

35:15

And we are all speculators. We

35:17

are not going to buy something if we know

35:20

that this product is going to go down

35:22

in value in the next five years, right?

35:26

So we are speculators. So

35:28

this idea that speculators are special,

35:30

you know, they are a bit like shy

35:32

molesters or something like that. People

35:35

were completely different from us. But

35:39

if you can eradicate them, then

35:41

that's it. Problem

35:43

solved. Yeah, I'm a fan of-

35:45

So, again, that's a flying carpet,

35:48

you see that? I

35:50

have a thousand percent with you. I'm a fan of

35:52

Thomas Sowell, and he talks about in one of his

35:54

books that for people that don't have

35:57

a fundamental grasp of economics, the world is

35:59

this kind of- scary place buffeted

36:01

by greed and greed is the cause

36:03

of bad things. But when

36:05

you start trying to investigate it, if your household earns $70,000

36:07

a year, congratulations, you're

36:10

in the top 1% of the entire globe. Are

36:13

people in Africa poor because you're making $70,000 a year?

36:16

I would argue no, that probably everybody's

36:19

going to be better by you making more money

36:21

because we don't have a zero-sum game and them

36:23

making more money is ultimately going to benefit you

36:25

too. And

36:28

forces of people in poor

36:31

country benefit from the

36:34

cheapest technology that we produce. Some

36:38

years ago, people who

36:40

could afford to telephone overseas

36:43

were only rich people. When I

36:45

was a kid, calling the

36:47

United States was,

36:50

you had to save money to do it. My

36:53

parents would, when they were in college, if they

36:56

wanted to make a long-distance call, I

36:59

think my mom was in Missouri for a little bit, she

37:01

would haul her parents' collect to

37:04

let them know that she had arrived safely at her destination.

37:06

And they'd say, do you want to get a phone

37:08

call from DeAnn? And they'd go, nope, because

37:10

the whole purpose of it was just to let them know that she'd made

37:12

it, because it was going to be like $30 just

37:15

to talk for five seconds. And

37:17

so yeah, now it's free. We're talking for

37:19

free over the internet in a different city.

37:23

On affordable housing, to swing back to policy for

37:25

a minute, let's say you've already become president,

37:28

you've been flushed out via pilot

37:30

revolution for defunding the arts. Maybe

37:33

you haven't been beheaded. Well,

37:35

you haven't been beheaded. So in this

37:37

scenario, the American government has invaded France

37:39

and re-instituted you as president. You've

37:42

come back. I'm the president. You're

37:44

the president again. But we're fine with

37:46

you dealing with housing policy. So if

37:49

the Batau administration is

37:52

now capable of dealing with housing, what would

37:54

you do to create more affordable housing? I

37:57

will remove all regulations.

38:00

having to do with the

38:02

quantity of flow

38:04

space and land, which is used

38:06

for housing. I would

38:08

let just people decide where

38:10

and when. There

38:13

are some regulations you should have

38:15

on housing about, for instance, some

38:17

building codes are useful. If you're

38:19

building concrete, there are some norms

38:21

about the way the concrete should

38:24

be cast. That's fine. How

38:26

the sewer bits connect in case they

38:29

spill. Yeah,

38:31

fire regulation, because fire regulation,

38:33

the consumer is not able to

38:36

see right away whether a house could

38:38

take fire in five minutes or in

38:40

five hours. So this

38:42

you need regulation done by people who will know

38:44

about it. But anything

38:46

which has to do

38:48

with area, area forces if

38:51

somebody wants to build houses which

38:53

are 10 square meters. And

38:56

there is a client for that. We'll

39:00

just do it. We have still

39:02

Chambre de Bonne in Paris, which are

39:04

actually the minimum allowed now is nine

39:06

square meters, which is tiny. It's

39:10

about 100 square feet. 100 square feet.

39:13

Okay. So that's like my camper. That's

39:16

like a small RV or basically a

39:18

van. That's the interior of the van.

39:20

Yeah, a van. Yeah. So it's a

39:22

trade off that people may want to

39:25

do to live in the six only

39:27

small forces in Paris and

39:29

to have all the amenities which are

39:31

there and rather than live in a

39:33

suburb. And it's up to them to

39:35

decide. The same with

39:38

what Vanna called the fire

39:40

ratio. That means the amount of land

39:42

you are allowed to, you are forced

39:45

to use in order to build. So

39:49

you see forces the height of building all that

39:51

should be left to the consumer. That

39:53

means basically the

39:55

government always limits not

39:58

necessarily the height of building. but the ratio

40:00

between the floor space you can build on

40:02

the piece of land and the land. That

40:04

means they force you always to

40:07

consume more land than you will want.

40:11

And again, if it's private, see if

40:13

the government build houses for you, then

40:15

we need regulation. Because the

40:17

bureaucrats will say, well, it saves

40:20

a lot of money if we

40:22

say the ceiling is

40:25

only five feet above ground. And

40:27

so you end up with houses with five

40:29

feet. But if the private

40:31

sector does it, the private sector

40:33

is making money when the cost

40:35

and value are very different. So

40:39

if you decrease the cost, but you decrease

40:42

even more the value, for instance, if the

40:44

ceiling is too low, ceiling

40:47

of say from six

40:49

feet, for instance, your house has

40:51

practically no value at all. So

40:53

you have saved on construction

40:56

because you have low ceilings. But

40:59

so the value, so the private

41:01

sector always maximize the difference between

41:03

value. And so that's why they

41:05

cannot do things that are rejected

41:08

by the costura. I'll

41:10

add to that, that there's a phenomenon

41:12

that I call the step ladder fallacy.

41:15

I'm trademarking that. If we've

41:17

got a ladder and the bottom

41:20

rung on the ladder is filthy, it's covered with

41:23

what you, I guess the word, it's covered

41:25

with this hideous stuff. And

41:28

we look at it and go, that's awful. No one

41:30

should ever have put their foot on that bottom rung.

41:32

It's so true. So we knock it

41:34

out with a hammer and we on top of the ladder

41:36

now look down and go, no one's on that filthy bottom

41:38

rung of the ladder because they're just not on the ladder

41:40

at all. And we think we solved

41:42

the problem, whereas in reality, we've just castigated them out with

41:45

a hundred square foot area. That

41:48

sounds, if we were forcing somebody

41:50

to live in that, that sounds inhumane. It

41:52

sounds like Dickensian poverty. But you start thinking about

41:54

it. I lived in New York City for five

41:56

years. If you could offer

41:59

people. who live in the West Village

42:01

and live in basically a large closet,

42:04

but they pay $400 a month for

42:07

it, there would be so many 23-year-olds that

42:09

would jump at the chance to do that.

42:11

Absolutely. They'd go to the local gym

42:13

to shower. They're just sleeping there. They're 23. They're

42:16

out doing stuff all the time. This is their foothold in the

42:18

city. They get to live in the best part of the city.

42:22

You're opening up options for people. If you outlawed that,

42:24

now they just have to live in the outer boroughs.

42:26

They don't move to New York or they go there

42:28

for two months and they leave. Yes.

42:31

Yes, that's when I lived

42:33

after I was married, lived in Paris.

42:36

We had the equivalent of a

42:38

Chambord-a-bun, but we were at 10

42:40

minutes from the Latin Quarter and

42:43

that for us as a value.

42:45

We had the shower shared by

42:47

four rooms like that on the

42:49

corridor, which was fine. We

42:52

perished for that. It was a trade-off we decided

42:54

to make. When we moved to

42:56

New York, we were

42:59

at the time we had one kid, so we were three.

43:02

We found something. It

43:04

was an old road tenement, which was

43:06

built in the 1880s, which

43:08

would be unlawful now, but it

43:11

was 28 square meters. It

43:16

was about 350 square

43:19

feet, which is forbidden now in

43:22

New York to build. But

43:24

fortunately, we found that and that

43:26

allowed us to live in Manhattan,

43:28

which allowed us again all the

43:30

amenities of Manhattan and meeting friends

43:33

in the evening. If we have

43:35

been commuting to the suburbs to

43:37

afford a minimum house,

43:39

power and social life would have

43:41

been very different. I'm

43:45

with you on this. I'm very

43:47

skeptical of zoning regulations and I'm very

43:49

much in your court in terms of

43:51

... Regulate externalities don't

43:53

regulate force space. That

43:56

said, the pushback that I get from some of my

43:58

friends is the ... private sector is

44:00

only going to do something if it's making a

44:02

profit on it. It's more profitable to make luxury

44:04

apartments than it is to make hovels. Not

44:07

true. Not true. Okay.

44:10

How come? Not true because you have a much

44:13

larger clientele for low income apartment if

44:15

you are allowed to build them. You

44:18

see, go to Manhattan, you

44:20

will find a McDonald's next to a

44:22

French restaurant where you have to spend $200 per

44:25

head, and then you have a McDonald's

44:27

next to it. McDonald's. Probably

44:30

if I have money to invest, I'd rather

44:32

invest in McDonald's than in the French restaurant.

44:34

Or they charge $200 per head. You

44:38

see, because there is more people

44:40

who are in New York who are

44:44

interested in having a quick, you know,

44:46

to grab a sandwich rather

44:48

than spend two hour and a half at

44:50

a French restaurant. Yeah, that's my

44:53

rejoinder is that there's a concept called return

44:55

on investment, which is ultimately what capitalists are

44:57

doing. That's why you find the t-shirts at

44:59

$5 a t-shirt, and then you find also

45:02

suit which cost $10,000. So

45:05

the private sector do not just build

45:07

suit at $10,000, although there is a

45:10

market for Right. When

45:13

I was in New York, brief, like literally right

45:15

before I got into media, I took some real

45:17

estate classes. I never ended up becoming a real

45:19

estate broker, but I took them. And

45:21

one of the classes was on ROI, return on

45:23

investment. They were explaining

45:25

how to calculate ROI of this is the down

45:28

payment for an apartment that you'd be purchasing as

45:30

a landlord. This is the floor

45:32

space. And they pointed to several instances where it makes

45:35

you're going to get more money. Like for

45:37

example, what do you call them? Trailer

45:39

parks have a pretty high ROI rate. Like

45:42

they're the cheapest in terms of housing, but you

45:44

actually like buying five trailer parks that cost $100,000

45:46

is probably going to make you more money than

45:49

buying an apartment building that costs $500,000. Right. Because

45:52

you're getting more people through there. Absolutely.

45:54

But then the problem now in our modern

45:57

society is that if you try

45:59

to create a trailer, you a trailer park, you

46:01

would be sued by neighbors who say, we

46:03

don't want a trailer park. Then it would

46:05

become very expensive to build a

46:07

trailer park. That's

46:09

a problem. In a way, it

46:12

decreases in property rights. I think

46:15

this is suing everybody for futile things,

46:17

saying it's not in the spirit of

46:19

the neighborhood or something like that, which

46:21

is not the real extent of that.

46:23

Which is to say it might affect

46:25

my property values. I want the state

46:27

to restrict other people's property rights. My

46:29

property value stays high. Then, of course,

46:34

if you are going to spend so much on a

46:36

lawyer, and it takes four or

46:38

five years before you can build, then it's

46:41

true that betting on

46:43

the high end of the market is

46:45

much better. You have more chance to

46:47

survive selling your luxury

46:49

products than the cheap one, if

46:52

most of the money you spend is on lawyers.

46:55

Do you think there's a role

46:57

for government to create temporary

46:59

housing for homeless people or to have housing

47:01

vouchers? Or would you have the free market

47:04

handle everything? I

47:06

would like to have

47:08

governments just concentrate on

47:10

the lowest 3% of

47:12

income. Maybe

47:16

4%, 5% maximum. I

47:19

think that as soon as you go higher than that,

47:22

you are in fact saying we

47:25

subsidize our own inefficiency. There's

47:29

no reason why we cannot

47:31

produce housing in a

47:33

quantity. If

47:37

somebody is unemployed and no resources, and

47:40

you will not let this person die in the

47:42

street, so you have to do something. But

47:45

most people cannot find housing

47:47

are school teachers, people like

47:49

that who have a completely

47:51

honorable job, I would

47:53

say even indispensable job. People

47:55

who are waiters in restaurants or things

47:57

like that, they are doing it. an

48:01

absolutely essential job. Now

48:05

New York is subsidizing up to

48:07

120% of the median world. That

48:16

means more than 60%. Theoretically,

48:18

you could benefit from subsidy if

48:20

only 40% of the people are

48:22

richer than you.

48:27

This is crazy. The

48:29

word even affordable housing now in

48:32

the United States means subsidized housing.

48:34

Instead of saying, well, I

48:36

am a student and I can afford it, or

48:38

I am a school teacher and I can afford

48:40

an apartment within 40 minutes

48:43

from my school. Yeah. I

48:45

think there's multiple phenomena that happen within the

48:47

New York model. One,

48:50

there's this propensity to say we

48:52

ought to have, there ought to be apartments which

48:54

are very low rent for poor people. While

48:58

I see the benefits to that, if you make

49:00

it too large and you make it too low,

49:02

you're also just locking out an entire

49:05

chunk of the public from ever owning a home

49:07

and building up multi-generational wealth. If

49:10

you make all the apartment buildings affordable and in the

49:12

sense of just low rent, then the people

49:15

that are wealthy buy the condo, buy the

49:17

house, grow the wealth, pass

49:19

it on to their kids and you keep people at

49:21

that same level. The other bit is that

49:24

in reality, in my experience, anecdotally and based on the

49:26

data I've seen, it doesn't tend to benefit the poor

49:28

people the most. It tends to benefit the upper middle

49:30

class people who know how to game the system the

49:32

most. You've got folks that are- You

49:35

have two societies. One living in

49:37

a socialist system where goods are

49:39

allocated by the government to you

49:42

and the other living in a capitalist

49:44

society which is of course much more

49:47

efficient. You have people

49:50

living in public

49:52

housing in New York, I like that. The subs

49:54

that they are by the way linked to their

49:58

units, if they move out. they lose

50:00

the subsidy. So they are,

50:02

so if they find a

50:04

job, fantastic job, but far

50:07

away from their thing, they are tied

50:09

to that. They are tied also to

50:11

a neighborhood they may not like because

50:13

it's kind of a thing like that.

50:16

So, so in a way, the voucher

50:18

is superior to, to the

50:20

subsidy of thing, but say the voucher

50:22

is a problem that if

50:24

you have a supply constraint, you

50:27

know, and in the system like we have

50:29

in all the cities of the United States

50:32

and in Europe, by the way, also, because

50:34

of regulatory constraints, because you can be sued,

50:36

because you had to do an environment report,

50:40

you know, assessment before you can build

50:42

anything. So if

50:44

that's the case, then that's,

50:46

that's the reason you know, you, so

50:49

if you have a voucher system, which in

50:51

fact, increase demand, you know, it's a way

50:53

of increasing demand, you subsidize the income

50:55

of some people, so you have more money,

50:58

try to buy housing, but you have

51:00

a supply constraint because you are sued,

51:03

you cannot build anything, then you end

51:05

up with more expensive housing, you have

51:07

the same amount of housing on the

51:09

market, but more money to buy it.

51:12

And you also have distortions as well. So like in New

51:14

York, what do you call

51:16

it, rent stability is

51:18

extremely popular and rental control

51:20

is very popular. When

51:23

you look at the data, it's like the

51:25

majority of places that have rent control in

51:27

New York are affluent

51:30

older couples that have like 1200 square

51:32

feet, you'll get all these situations where, True

51:35

case lies, that's exactly right. And if

51:38

you didn't have those, those rent, it's not that

51:40

we want to impoverish anybody, it's that when your

51:42

kids move out of your condo and you're scaling

51:44

down, there are families that need

51:46

that space and it would make sense for you

51:49

to move to a 800 square foot place. But

51:51

as it is, you've got lots

51:55

of like single people that are older

51:57

that have money that have like three

51:59

bedrooms. don't need them. And so you

52:01

end up creating this distortion of the housing market

52:03

that reduces the supply that drives up demand, which

52:05

ends up hurting the poor the most. We

52:08

don't see that. We just, it just sounds like

52:10

I'm trying to kick old people out of an

52:12

apartment. Right. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. No, no. I

52:14

mean, the land control again is, it's a fine

52:16

compliment. Two more questions for you. Then we'll wrap

52:18

up. To get back to the French mindset, I

52:21

am guessing that the French are very

52:23

pro regulatory structure. Like they, do

52:26

they tend to have a, before we

52:28

do this, we should check with the government or like,

52:30

you know, have the government do stuff first and then

52:33

build. Are they very permission based

52:35

in their thinking? No, they

52:37

are, they expect the government to

52:39

do a lot of things for them. Including

52:42

a lot of benefits, by

52:45

the way, in France are not even targeted

52:48

to the poor. It's again, it's a

52:50

name of egalitarian thing. For instance, if

52:52

you have, you know, above

52:54

a certain age, you are entitled to

52:56

benefit just because you are old, for

52:59

instance, whatever you think. This is again,

53:01

equality next to fact. Well, plus there's,

53:03

isn't the big, the big fight going

53:05

on right now is that everybody nationally

53:08

gets their pension kicks in at like

53:10

50 or something. And Macron is like,

53:12

we can't afford this. We're going to

53:14

have to be 52 now

53:16

where you get to retire. Well, he wants

53:18

to put it at 64. It's

53:22

62, but although a lot of

53:24

people retired before, because they are

53:26

special, for instance, people working for

53:29

the railway, even if you, your

53:31

job in the railway is to sell tickets

53:34

on a small station of the Cote d'Azur,

53:37

you retire in Mertalia because, you

53:39

know, the souvenir of the railway,

53:41

the guy is shoveling the coal

53:43

in the local motifs, you know,

53:45

that's a very difficult job.

53:47

So, there are a lot

53:49

of regimes of, you know, where you retire

53:51

at a, you

53:54

know, rather high pension and

53:57

early and the French live longer

53:59

and longer. So some

54:01

now are spending more time with

54:03

retirees than working. And

54:06

then our population is aging. So

54:09

if Macron didn't succeed in the reform, it

54:11

will mean that the young people will have

54:13

to pay more taxes just

54:16

when they are employed to pay for

54:18

the people, the older

54:20

people. Yeah, big intergenerational wealth

54:22

transfer. Yeah. And then

54:24

of course, the older people being more and

54:27

more nervous, they have more weight in

54:30

the election than the young one. And the

54:32

young also tend not to vote so much.

54:34

That also strikes me as unfair on two

54:36

levels. While establishing that I think

54:38

that there should be a social safety net

54:40

for older people, and establishing that I think

54:42

retirement plans are a good idea, although I

54:44

would do something like Australia, where they have

54:46

an obligatory savings account. There's

54:49

the intergenerational wealth transfer you allude to of

54:51

younger people, you're actively taking their money and

54:53

giving it to the age cohort that has

54:55

the most money. But

54:57

then also, I don't know the

54:59

intricacies of the French system, but I'm assuming that

55:01

a working class person would start working at 17, 18, and

55:03

is also going to die earlier than

55:07

an upper middle class person. So I might start working at

55:09

18, and I might die at 60, whereas a upper middle

55:11

class person is going to start working at 23, 24, and

55:14

die at 85, 90. So

55:19

as an upper middle class person, this is great, because

55:21

I start paying into the system later, and I get

55:23

to enjoy it for 20, 30 years,

55:25

whereas as a working class person, I pay in early

55:27

and I die before I get to enjoy it. So

55:29

I don't know that that ends up being a good

55:32

class structure. I'm not so sure about the numbers

55:35

now. I don't think that in France

55:37

now there are that much difference in

55:40

the longevity, depending on some

55:42

certain job, yes, certainly, but

55:44

not that many. Okay. Not

55:47

that many. Well, I'm glad to hear that. That

55:50

would somewhat curtail my argument a

55:52

little bit. You know, the French

55:55

also have a still, I mean,

55:57

Spanish, but they have a pretty

55:59

good nutritional amides,

56:02

which make them live longer.

56:07

The idea that every meal you mix things,

56:10

vegetables, fruits, and meat, and

56:12

things like that, I think

56:14

it's still very much ingrained.

56:18

And so that explains why they live longer.

56:21

And they live in much more walkable cities, so

56:23

everybody's getting more exercise on a regular basis. Right,

56:25

yeah. There are a number of

56:27

reasons for that. Some

56:29

attribute it to red wine. Now that's nonsense. Can I

56:31

weigh in on this for a minute? This is my

56:33

comedian brain kicking in, because the

56:36

resveratrol argument was a big deal about

56:38

20 years ago, because it was the

56:40

garlic question. Yeah, that's right. The

56:43

prince have a high fat diet, but

56:45

they're skinnier than we are. They have

56:47

less heart problems. Why is it? It

56:49

must be red wine. I started looking

56:51

at that going, you're telling me somebody

56:53

that drinks red wine lives longer than

56:55

somebody that drinks malt liquor? Crazy.

56:58

I wonder if there's any other correlations

57:00

at work. Might the person that has

57:02

a Merlot collection also have healthcare and

57:04

gym membership, whereas the plastic

57:06

jug malt liquor drinker does not have that? It's

57:09

just a proxy for wealth. That's all that is.

57:11

But it would be a nice story if it

57:13

was true. It's great. I mean,

57:15

the wine industry was brilliant to perpetuate that. Final

57:18

question for you, because we talked about the French Revolution a little bit.

57:21

In the United States, the American Revolution is

57:23

overwhelmingly popular. Most Americans outside of

57:26

a handful of leftists are like,

57:28

yay, George Washington. I think that

57:30

the British, by and large, the

57:32

glorious revolution is a good thing. Everybody's

57:35

glad. I look at the French Revolution, and

57:37

it seems like it went off the rails real

57:39

quick, and a lot of people got beheaded. It

57:41

strikes me as just mob rule with interesting tricorner

57:43

hats. Did the French lionize it?

57:46

Is the French Revolution a glorious thing? Is it

57:48

a bad thing? Is it just kind of morally

57:50

mixed? How do you interpret it? Yes. It's

57:53

French that the French Revolution ...

57:57

We all learn history, by

57:59

the way, is true. standard books which

58:02

are again from the

58:04

Ministry of Education. By

58:09

the way, French learning stories spend a

58:11

lot of time, I'm not sure if

58:13

it's still like that, but from the

58:15

age six when I joined school to

58:17

my baccalaureate at 18, I had at least

58:21

three hours of

58:23

history every week, every year,

58:26

and with a lot of

58:28

homework. So they

58:30

study history very, very much, and

58:35

most of the history books are pretty good,

58:37

I think, but the

58:39

French Revolution is certainly

58:41

glorified, including Napoleon, by

58:43

the way, including Napoleon,

58:45

essentially. Really? Yes,

58:47

yes. I mean, Napoleon, as

58:50

a dictator, though, he has some positive

58:52

sides. I'd say on a

58:54

dictator scale, he's a pretty good one,

58:56

if we're going for Napoleon de Mao,

58:59

I'd definitely rather have Napoleon, if you

59:01

were. Like

59:03

Jimmy Carter versus Napoleon, I'd pick Jimmy Carter. I

59:05

think Jimmy Carter would be a lot better than

59:07

Napoleon. Well, that's bad, certainly,

59:09

yes. But

59:14

the Revolution itself is glorified.

59:18

The fact that our

59:20

national day is Bastille Day. Bastille Day

59:22

was ... there

59:24

was only six or seven people

59:27

in Bastille, and they were usually

59:29

noblemen because their

59:32

family didn't want to trial because it would

59:34

be embarrassing for them. There

59:36

was a guy who had been gambling, or the

59:38

market side was in the Bastille. It

59:41

was liberated just about, I

59:43

think, three weeks before the Revolution, because

59:45

of Bastille Day, so he was not.

59:47

The mob would destroy the Bastille, was

59:49

mostly drunk. They killed all

59:51

the Swiss guards, which were the poor guys,

59:53

were there. They find a job

59:55

there because in Switzerland at the time, it was

59:57

difficult to make a living out of the war.

1:00:00

by the culture. And they

1:00:02

were mass actors, although they

1:00:04

didn't fire on the mob, you know,

1:00:06

when they asked permission to defend themselves

1:00:08

and the team said, no, do not

1:00:11

fire French people. And

1:00:13

so they asked to be

1:00:15

let go. And the revolutionary

1:00:17

said yes, and then they killed them and

1:00:19

they put their head on the, you know,

1:00:22

on the peak. So it's not a very

1:00:24

glorious day. You know, of course, it was

1:00:26

a symbol of absolutism.

1:00:28

And at the same time, the

1:00:31

same year or the year after,

1:00:33

the same year in August, the

1:00:35

assembly which was there, including

1:00:38

the church and the aristocracy decide

1:00:40

to abolish off fiddle rights. So

1:00:42

the equality

1:00:47

things, you know, to pay taxes

1:00:49

exactly like the others. So that

1:00:51

was a very nice day to

1:00:53

and then there was the declaration

1:00:55

de Broglome de Citroën, which was

1:00:58

a universal declaration about human

1:01:00

rights. That revolution declared

1:01:02

that would have been a wonderful

1:01:05

day for the

1:01:07

national day. We decided that it

1:01:09

was this riot in the Vassie,

1:01:11

Mass atranque Swiss people. That was

1:01:13

our national day. And I think

1:01:15

that this still have this, you

1:01:18

know, idea of insurrection itself

1:01:20

is a way to progress. Yeah,

1:01:23

this, I don't

1:01:25

have much protest blood

1:01:28

in me. The

1:01:30

idea of just being kind of loud and walking

1:01:32

up a hill and shouting just doesn't, it seems

1:01:35

to really appeal to other people a lot. And just

1:01:37

for me, it's never lit me up. I

1:01:39

will say to the, to

1:01:42

meet your embarrassing historical anecdote with Texas

1:01:44

where I currently am, you know, the

1:01:46

Alamo is very lionized and you start

1:01:48

looking into it and that the Americans

1:01:50

that had moved to Texas when it

1:01:52

was a Mexican province, what

1:01:54

you did, the Mexicans went, hey, great

1:01:56

to have you. Do whatever you want.

1:01:58

Speak English. People can't

1:02:00

have slaves." And they went, no, we're

1:02:02

absolutely going to have slaves. Within

1:02:05

rebellion, the Alamo, the Mexican

1:02:07

army intentionally left the back door open

1:02:09

so the guys could escape and they

1:02:11

refused, so they shot them. And it's

1:02:13

like, so they fought this over slavery

1:02:15

and then they got unnecessarily slaughtered and

1:02:18

this is what we want to celebrate

1:02:20

is just a really bad military defeat.

1:02:22

Like, there's other wonderful things Texas has done

1:02:24

that we could celebrate that would make more

1:02:26

sense. Yes, drag can. Yes, yes,

1:02:29

essentially, yes. That's interesting. That's a good

1:02:31

band of chairs. Mr. Butau, I have really

1:02:33

enjoyed talking to you. Thank you so much. I'm

1:02:36

delighted you date about the program again and thank

1:02:38

you for your time. Thank you

1:02:40

so much. It was all fun. Thank you. That's

1:02:43

the show. Thanks for listening. Thank

1:02:46

you, Monsieur Butau, for coming on. A pleasure to

1:02:48

speak to you again. I remain

1:02:50

a fan. Thank you, Eric

1:02:52

Stipe, who edited today's episode. And

1:02:54

thank you patrons who make it all possible. Until

1:02:57

next time, I've been Andrew Heaton and

1:03:00

so have you.