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The constitution with all amendments is 7,500 words.
Search this video
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The current system of federal law and regulation is 150 million words.
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It is beyond the capacity of any human understanding.
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And even AI can't make sense of it.
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It's like a giant short circuit.
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So you pile up all this stuff over year after year after year.
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And after a while, government's unmanageable. It doesn't deliver. It wastes money.
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My guest today is my friend Philip K.
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Howard, the founder of Common Good, a nonprofit advocating the return of common sense and individual decisionmaking to government.
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A very bracing conversation about all the things that we could do to make the way our government in the United States work better.
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Please enjoy my conversation with Philip Howard.
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>> Philip Howard, it finally we've known each other forever.
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I served on your board at Common Good.
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I discovered you well before I met you with your first book, The Death of Common Sense, >> 1995. >> 1995, >> right? Loved it.
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>> Have loved all of your books.
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But I gotta ask, like that's 30 years ago, 31 years ago, and things have seemingly only gotten worse. >> Right. Right.
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I think I have a uh I had lunch with a tycoon a few years ago.
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And he said, you know, I like what you write, but but have you ever accomplished anything?
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And I said, well, actually, now that you mention it, I have a perfect record of failure.
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He said, that's what I thought.
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I'm not giving you any money.
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Um um that's not exactly true.
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I actually have worked on a bunch of reforms with Congress, but the reality is the situation has gotten worse.
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>> And and diagnose it for me. Why?
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I I mean, I have pretty strong views on this.
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I I think our current political class is one of the worst on both sides of the aisle.
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I'm very uh bipartisan in my view.
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But why >> uh what no reformer has done yet is taken on uh the underlying operating philosophy of modern government, which is basically that um that that we should replace human judgment with either specific legal rules or objective proof.
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And so there was no such thing until the 1970s as thousandpage rulebooks.
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There was no such thing as having to go to a month-long hearing to prove that somebody doesn't do their job.
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The Interstate Highway Act, which was in 1956, was 29 pages long.
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Within 10 years, over 20,000 miles of road had been built.
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The last transportation bill was almost a thousand pages long and would take 10 years to get a permit for one stretch of road.
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>> I mean it it's almost like Monty Python is running the government, right?
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Like the department of silly walks and at all.
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But again, I'm going to press you. Why?
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>> Well, a lot of people make money on this system.
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I mean it was when I went to law school which was a long time ago uh the orthodoxy the new orthodoxy was that you can't trust human judgment.
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An official might be like Robert Moses and you know blow through things right >> and so so we were going to create a government better than people.
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And again, we have I mean like the worker safety rules.
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There are 4,000 I'm all for worker safety regulation, but the way they do it is they have 4,000 rules and they have rules that say things like stairwell shall be lit by natural or artificial light. Now, now that's useful.
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And and and then they have and then the company has to have an inspector, a compliance inspector who has a checklist for these 4,000 rules going around checking the boxes that they do this.
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So that's a person doing really nothing useful.
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And then and then there's another person who checks the checker.
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So you have all this bureaucracy, you know, kind of building up and Washington becomes this enormous factory for red tape and law firms, including the law firm I was a senior partner of.
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And uh you have these law firms doing really well making money and lobbyists and they all navigate the all the precise language and they argue over it and really nothing ever changes.
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It's like a perpetual tugofwar and they have no interest in changing it. Everybody's doing well.
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I think Washington has one of the largest Lamborghini dealers in the United States.
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You know, a place where nothing ever happens. >> Yeah.
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I was just down there and saw as many fancy cars as you one might see in Greenwich, Connecticut.
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And it's it seems to me that the source might have been the idealism of the 1960s.
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And by that I mean we can we can make things better.
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But I think it counted also on this idea that we are born as a tableau, you know, as a blank slate.
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>> And we are not born as a blank slate. >> Right.
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Well, first of all, we're not born as a blank plate and and I think there was some idealism.
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I think there was a kind of naive that that with modern technology on the on the rise and you know that was the era of IBM 360s you know stuff like that >> um they could do it but the real motiv was guilt.
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We woke up in the 1960s to segregation, to pollution, to unsafe cars, to locking up disabled children in, you know, horrible places like >> doing some horrible >> Yeah. Yeah.
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And so, and so we had the the establishment had a record of neglect of, you know, of many groups that that should not have been neglected.
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And so it was one thing to change the values, which we did do with environmental laws and civil rights laws and all that was good and necessary, but they wanted to make sure that that could never happen again.
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And the way to make sure there were no abuses of authority was to get rid of authority.
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authority. And so uh the historic >> excuse me get rid of individuals authority authority individual authority the law was going to become or the regulation was going to become the authority big yeah you'd have a legal system that tell everybody what to do so
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Eric Foner is very distinguished historian from Columbia University wrote a book about I think it's called the future of freedom where he said in the 1960s something the the governing idea was the elimination of all authority that that would the so freedom would be enhanced if no one had authority. Now it
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Now it turns out that that's upside down that that if the person running a firm let's say doesn't have authority to uphold mutual standards and values then there's not going to be mutual trust and then in in fact everyone loses more their freedom.
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there's nobody to go to say I've got a good idea.
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Let's change the way we do things. Right?
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So, so authority is actually critical to to everyone's freedom.
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You need red lights and green lights, right?
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in in any society and in in any institution.
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But but we still are trapped in this uh in this kind of quicksand of law that we created where no one can make a judgment and then the result is is that people who don't respect law like the current president for example um can get away with murder because they just simply ignore it.
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And and one one of the things that I always come back to is you mentioned all of the abuses that were being solved.
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I was 100% in favor of everything you just mentioned.
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The Civil Rights Act, the Clean Water Act.
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Like the rivers around this city used to be so polluted like you risked your life jumping into them and they got a lot cleaner.
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So all of those initial rules and regulations and new laws I think actually did really really good things and then what you're talking about started to happen and we we became a society I had a guest on who basically was comparing the US and China and he goes the US has developed a lawyer society China has developed an engineer society, >> right? Dan Wong. >> Yeah.
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And when I was on the board of common good, the thing like all of the ideas you came up with and the other board members and and associates I thought were brilliant, but like how how do you get that into people's like, yeah, we really should do this?
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Because, you know, I'm not a Democrat or a Republican.
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And I just like can can maybe I'm kind of like you, a radical centrist. >> Yeah.
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Well, I mean, you know, again, I've you know, I've been working on specific reforms like, you know, I got I was very involved in a bunch of environmental permitting reforms in Congress a few years ago.
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You know, we developed this project, you'll remember, for expert health courts and got everybody for it.
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Obama agreed to support it and where for medical malpractice it'd go to a a an expert court without juries and it would make health care better and also relief quicker for people who were really injured by mistakes.
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And we had a pilot project in the Affordable Care Act that Obama supported and funding for it.
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And the day before the vote, the uh Democratic leader of the Senate, Harry Reid, had it pulled because the trial lawyers, they make all their money on extortion. >> Yeah.
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>> You know, you may be liable for $20 million for this tragedy.
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Therefore, you better pay us, you know, 10 or something, even though the doctor may have done nothing wrong.
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You know, it may just have been a sick person getting sicker.
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So um so it's been hard to make change but but one does feel that the times are changing.
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I mean politics have become more extreme on both sides. >> Yep. >> You know. >> Yep.
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>> The left left is more left and the >> Yeah.
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We were just talking about it before you got here.
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It's like wow when did this happen? >> Yeah.
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And and and the right is so there's clearly more of a mood for change.
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Twothirds of the country is dissatisfied with both parties.
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don't like the way things are.
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Also, close to twothirds of the country fundamentally agree on basic values.
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You know, the golden rule, honesty, all that kind of stuff.
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So, so it's not like diversity has driven us apart.
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People still believe in the same same things.
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So, so it does seem there needs.
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So, I'm talking to some former attorneys general now.
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Uh just um hosted a three-day workshop three weeks ago to try to come up with a new political narrative.
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And the idea is not to start a new party, not even at least for now, to start a movement, but just to change the conversation.
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So, we've come up with a um an idea for a new narrative. It's in writing.
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We're in the process of trying to get some leading citizens to sign on to it.
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Some So, I was just talking to former Governor Mitch Daniels yesterday about it, you know, so he's on board.
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Um and and get a group of people to start talking about it.
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And this new narrative is not about policy.
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It's about how things work, how you run a school, how you get a permit, you know, how you're allowed to act honestly with each other in the workplace without fearing a lawsuit, that sort of thing.
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It's really about operating systems.
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So, we have a a name for it.
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We have a narrative that we're working out.
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And it's uh and I think it's I think it's good. It's um it took a lot.
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took a lot. I got had a bunch of marketing people and press people in this workshop and uh so we're going to try to roll it out uh slowly with just leading citizens maybe yourself uh talking about it with with different groups of people and begin to say isn't
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it time that we actually overhauled the system so that people can act so that American Americans can roll up their sleeves and act like Americans >> you know and and and that's what people no longer longer feel comfortable doing and and the law is what's gotten in the way is this legal quicksand stuff. So,
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So, um so it's about reempowering human agency. >> Yeah.
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Which is something I deeply deeply believe in and and also when you look at the history of this country, you you have things like you have a book on this.
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I think it was probably your most controversial and that was public uh unions. >> Right. Right. Not accountable. Right. Not accountable. Great book.
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And and as I was reading that book, I remembered that FDR himself said that would be the worst thing to ever let happen.
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Many people considered FDR one of our most progressive presidents.
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And yet he was like absolutely not. And yet it happened. >> Right.
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Well, democracy Well, it's funny you mentioned that.
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I'm just finishing a book called Burning Money.
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And it's a book uh that tries to describe the harm of government that's become unmanageable and it's very hard proving a negative but I've you know I haven't I I teach at a Harvard business school sometimes so I have a lot of business school professors friends and they sort of helped me out even but you know it's funny there's a vast library of books on how to manage businesses better.
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There's not one book on what happens if you lack managerial authority.
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It's just like breathing.
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It's like what happens if you don't breathe, you know?
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It's and so if you don't have somebody who can actually direct resources here or there, decide who's good at what, you know, adapt when something unforeseen happens, all the things that have to make anything work in any institution require managers, right? Well, guess what?
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government no longer has managerial authority.
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So we at least more or less particularly in the big cities and big states you know New York, Illinois, New York City, we're getting about half the product at twice the price and we can't afford that anymore.
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I mean there are a lot of public needs and there are a lot of there are a lot of serious policy issues that need to get addressed.
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Income inequality, all kinds of stuff.
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Meanwhile, we're burning money.
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We're literally burning money.
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You cannot uh there's a school in Chicago that's for has capacity for a thousand students that has 27 students in it and no one has the capacity to close down the school and transfer the students to a nearby school because the teachers unions have made it so that no one can close the school.
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Half of New York City schools are operating at barely over half capacity because of declining demographics.
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But the teacher union's got a law called maintenance of effort laws which requires that it never reduce its budget unless tax revenues go down because the teachers union got an agreement.
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So for 50 years since they got collective bargaining power, year after year, they've gotten more and more requirements like that that have been built into the codes into these are laws now that are laws that literally require us to burn money require us to burn money.
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And and and no one almost no one appreciates that.
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And I've I've hired lawyers.
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I have a partnership with the public interest law firm in Chicago that just won the tariff case against Trump and also won the the Janice case.
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So, we have a draft complaint of in federal court to challenge the constitutionality of public union controls uh ready to go, but I don't want to do it until I write this book that explains why it's so harmful that we can't manage government.
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And you mentioned earlier that what we really need is a new operating system, right?
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And in operating systems, incentives kind of rule everything around us.
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Right now, as you've just outlined, our incentives, like for example, if I was the head of the public teachers union, man, I would be calling for more of those laws because that would I was highly incentivized to do so, right?
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and and so you it's it's easy um and disingenuous in my opinion to it's easy to scapegoat uh everybody and I think like let's just stop doing that.
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Let's look at the underlying system and the incentives that result from it and you know that explains a ton.
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I remember one time you told me about the uh law here in New York City where a public school teacher may not if a child is in distress remember this. Yeah.
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And the teacher may not touch >> but can't touch the child >> that child.
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>> In in other words, one of the most basic human instincts if an adult sees a child in distress is to comfort them.
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is to I mean that's just so part of human OS, >> right?
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But we have this precautionary system of government of law now so that anything that might go wrong is forbidden.
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So it is possible a weird person could touch a child inappropriately. >> Yeah. >> Of course.
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>> So because that is possible and not that unusual, you know, Catholic churches and priests and all that, right?
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So, uh, so they make a rule that you can't touch a child, but that's equally weird, you know, and so you don't and so the only way to to, uh, to kind of square the circle is is to have a system where the people in charge are allowed to use their judgment about who's a good person and who maybe is a little odd and and be able to remove the odd person from that teaching job.
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But you can't remove anybody. 99. 9 there.
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I interviewed a former commissioner in New York recently who said in his 40 years of being uh you know a top official in New York City, he had never seen anyone terminated for performance. >> Wow. Never. Very.
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So, so you have a system where where you can't terminate the weird person because you say they're a little weird.
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uh you have to prove they're weird.
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Well, how do you prove someone's weird, right?
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someone's weird, right? you you kind of I mean and so most of the things that are I think it was Einstein or someone like that said if it can be measured it's not that important right you know >> well that that in investing yeah once a target becomes a measurement it's no
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longer useful as a target >> completely so so we have this system that assumes that right and wrong can be proved objectively that is manifestly false how do you prove someone is selfish how do you prove somebody is good judgment at this but not such good judgment at that. You know, how do you
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You know, how do you prove who works hard, who cooperates well?
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How do you prove what's a good product, what's not a good product?
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You know, you know, none of this stuff is provable.
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It's it's tested in the marketplace of human relations, in the marketplace of of values, in the marketplace of products, but but it's not provable.
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And this system is built on a false premise.
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And we need to basically go back to a human system.
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The Constitution with all amendments is 7,500 words and it includes principles like no unreasonable searches and seizures and freedom of speech and it does those things in a couple of words.
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It doesn't define them, but but they they become defined over time as issues come up.
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And so people have a general sense from those principles of what the boundaries are.
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And we feel comfortable going to bed at night that the police can't just arbitrarily barge in, you know, and throw us in jail or whatever.
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The current system of federal law and regulation is 150 million words.
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It is beyond the capacity of any human understanding and even AI can't make sense of it because it's not consistent.
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It's like it's like a giant um short circuit, you know, of all these laws that are piled on top of each other.
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Going back to the teachers union, a couple of years ago, Citizens Budget Commission in New York City counted 21 bills that passed the legislature to enhance union benefits and rights in one year, 60 years after, you know, they got collective bargaining power.
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Now, not all of them ended up making it in the law for one reason or another, but they are relentless.
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And so you pile up all this stuff over year after year after year.
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And and after a while, government's unmanageable. It doesn't deliver. It wastes money.
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By the way, you're a money guy, right?
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23 million people in the United States work for the government. 23 million people.
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So that's over one in seven people in the workplace. They are not manageable.
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They're not managed sensibly in any way.
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uh they they they cost about $3 trillion tax that's in total comp and benefits.
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They spend in a discretionary way or so they oversee another four to5 trillion dollar.
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So we're talking about um you know not quite maybe a third of the GDP that's being spent by a system that is no longer manageable and and it's not delivering public services very well either and there are all these new needs we need to so so why
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do we tolerate that we we tolerate it because we don't understand >> it it seems to me that I I always argued in you know I I'm a big fan of philosophy and like you don't need to be a pure Platonist or Arisatilian. You You need both.
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>> You need both because if it's pure Plato, you get the Republic and you get the philosopher kings and oh, they're going to do a great job.
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What you need from Aristotle is wait a sec that might not work out like that. >> Right. The happy man, right? >> Yeah.
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And what I was always struck by in our many conversations is I just can't believe that I, you know, we know that the majority of Americans intuitively understand this.
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We know that as you mentioned earlier, if you looked at Americans of all race, creed, color, sex, etc.
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, we share much more in common than divides us. And and yet here we are. >> Right. Right.
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So we need a new and by the way, neither political party will solve this problem.
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If you project out five or 10 years, there's no nothing on the horizon that can that that is almost conceivable that could end up solving this problem.
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The Democrats get most of their resources from the worst of these groups. >> Yeah.
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>> By the way, I happen to be a registered Democrat.
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I'm for environmental protection.
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I'm worried about, you know, climate change.
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I'm, you know, I'm, you know, I'm for taking care of people who need help.
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I mean, I'm for all those things, right?
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They will never solve this problem.
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And the Republicans see government as the enemy.
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>> They they do just both parties do just fine running against the extremes of the other party, right?
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They collect a lot of money from the people who Democrats collect it from the people who can't stand Trump and the Trump people collect it from the people who can't stand AOC and you know Manny right so so you have this system that's that's where both parties are profiting by extremism and leaving the vast middle as you described behind.
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So, we have to come up with a new narrative.
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First, a new narrative and a vision and then let it turn into something.
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Um, I was talking to a former attorney general.
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I won't mention it because I don't have permission, but a very prominent attorney general and we're having a discussion and and I I didn't know him.
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He was introduced to me by the president of insurance company.
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Um, I said, "Well, do you know why we're talking?" He said, "Zoom."
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I said, "No, I have no idea why we're talking."
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So I said, "So I don't think either party's going to solve the problems of this country, and we need a new narrative that actually addresses the problems that people see with a government that doesn't function very well and doesn't let people be themselves.
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You know, we got a video training that tells us basically, don't be yourself, right? Don't tell a joke.
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Don't, you know, don't be candid."
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So, so after about six or seven minutes, he starts finishing my sentences.
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And then at the end of our half hour, he says, "Okay, here's what we do.
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You come up with the framework of principles about what this new vision looks like, and we'll go find eight or 10 or 12 really prominent citizens to start talking about.
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We don't have to agree on everything.
26:47
everything. start talking about why this is the kind of directionally what's missing in our public discussion and then we start then we maybe we have some public events then we start talking about and I said he said I think it's possible that we could get one or more
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people running for president in 2028 to talk this way because everybody just listening to you of course you're right I mean this is exactly what's of course you're right everybody knows you're right just nobody's saying it >> right and that's the exact point that always frustrates me. Um, there's that
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Um, there's that great quote, I can't remember who said it, but it's like, if you give me the ability to write the stories of a country, I care not who writes the laws.
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And and he was really on to something there.
27:31
And and that's why I'm really happy to hear that you're developing the narrative because like the the system we operate under right now assigns you the bin you're going to be in, right?
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If you can attribute all of my political or social positions from hearing one of them, I am brain dead. >> Right. I I am flatline.
27:53
And and yet that's what they do, right? >> Yeah.
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You know, the the thing that people don't appreciate by with with this modern mutation of law is law is not supposed to be central planning.
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Law is supposed to be a framework that protects people from bad things.
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no pollution, no discrimination, no cheating, you know, whatever.
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Within that, it's supposed to safeguard an open field of freedom. >> Yes.
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>> So, what's happened in the last 60 years is the open field of freedom has become a legal minefield.
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a legal minefield. It got instead of proscribing what was bad for 60 years or so since the 60s we started prescribing how to do everything and also giving anybody who doesn't like your decision a legal right to challenge it you know and
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so I wrote something for the free press recently they had a series on kind of great Americans who are not political leaders you know leading up to July 4th and so I did one on an early management theorist named Mary Parker Fed who died in 1933. She was a prominent management theorist
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She was a prominent management theorist before women could vote.
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So, you know, it was really really sort of unusual character.
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And and one of her points was, you know, we as modern democracy is evolving, we have freedom all wrong. freedom.
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It's it's important to have democratic elections, but democracy is really that's all about just going in one direction or another. It's about the herd.
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>> It's about it doesn't affect your freedom.
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And then there are other people John Stewart Mill and others who talk about the importance of individual rights.
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You can do whatever you want to do.
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He said, >> you know, as she said, talking about individual, it's like breaking a branch off a tree and expecting it to live.
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We don't live alone individually.
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We live in groups and it's within groups that people innovate and find meaning and fellow feeling and develop their values and apply their values. It's in group.
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It's it's in group activities.
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And one of the things I think she could not have foreseen was that this modern post60s idea of law tells you exactly how to do everything.
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Means that people really are no longer free.
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That groups no longer have the u capacity to innovate and do things their own way.
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People running a school can't run it. You can't. Oh, let's try this.
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Can I tell a regulatory success story, >> please?
30:22
So, a couple of decades ago, Australia had terrible nursing homes.
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Uh, America, by the way, is terrible nursing homes.
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Do not go to a nursing home.
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And and they're regulated by, you know, thousandpage rule books that tell you when the meals are and how heavy, how much they have to weigh and how many ounces of vegetables and all this kind of stuff, you know, just crazy.
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Someone had the bright but but they were terrible nursing homes.
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So, someone had the bright idea of scrapping the rule book and replacing the rule book with 31 what ended up being 31 general principles.
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Have a homelike setting, respect the dignity of the residents, that sort of thing.
31:02
So, they did it and and the and the scholars, all the legal scholars had scoffed, you know, these nursing home operators going to get get away with murder, blah blah blah.
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you know, if you don't tell them exactly what to do, they'll abuse the residents and you know, the all the all this stuff comes out.
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So, they went a year later to look at how it was going and what the scholars found is that the nursing homes were twice as good.
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And they were and they and they looked into why.
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And one reason why is that now the nurses aids came to work instead of a checklist of a thousand things to check off.
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They had internalized these principles.
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They looked at what the residents wanted.
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Instead of telling uh nursing home owners exactly how to do things, they let them do it.
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So one nursing home has a gardening theme, another one has a different theme.
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They have completely different themes.
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You know, they can innovate.
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They can do it in their own way and take pride in the uniqueness of their creation. So, humans need agency.
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We need to be able to make a difference.
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And this vast legal system has snuffed it out.
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No wonder everybody's going crazy and voting for extremist on both sides because we're not allowed to be ourselves, >> particularly for this country, right?
32:23
There's a a book called The Hypomomanic Edge: Why America Has a Little Craziness But a lot of success, right?
32:28
And the thesis is well, look at who made up the population of this country.
32:34
They had to be willing to say goodbye to everything they knew, their families, their friends, often with no money in their pockets, come over here. And so what do you get?
32:48
You you you get that type of person, >> right?
32:51
You get people who have to invent. >> Yeah.
32:53
>> So, so in in the old country, >> you were born the way you were and that still to a certain extent affects the cultures of the old countries, right? >> Yeah, I agree.
33:06
>> You know, you were you were a son of a carpenter, you were became a carpenter, right?
33:10
>> In this country, you move over to the wilderness, the frontier, and you know, if you don't watch out, somebody's going to come scalp you.
33:16
So, you really have to take care of yourself. >> Yep.
33:19
And um and people just people invent Americans invented themselves.
33:24
I mean, you know, modern, you know, Elon Rust, Musk or or Thomas Addison.
33:31
Thomas Adam's so smart about this.
33:34
Here's a guy with a third grade education. Uh great lines.
33:39
Um nothing any good works by itself.
33:42
You got to make the damn thing work.
33:44
So you imagine him developing sound and developing inventing the electric light bulb and all that kind of stuff but by you know by tinkering. >> Yeah.
33:55
>> There was a great book by Harry Evans God bless him who was the former head of the times of London and then became the head of Random House and he bought the death of common sense.
34:03
We came out he was the he was head of random house.
34:07
He p which published the death of common sense and oh it was so much fun.
34:12
First time I met him, I was so scared, you know, because I'd never written a book before and here's the editor-inchief of Brandon Mouse and he SAY I'M SAD I'M SO EXCITED ABOUT YOUR PROJECT.
34:21
It reminds me right of this and that. He's completely into it.
34:23
And um and years later and we we save friends.
34:29
He wrote a book, coffee table book, which I really urge people to read.
34:31
It's really called They Made America.
34:34
And it's a coffee table book of 5 to 10,000word essays of Americans who innovated one way or another and and what their character was and who they were.
34:50
So the Wright brothers, the Wright brothers, so everyone knew with the with the internal combustion machine engine and all that kind of stuff that it would be po and the idea of wings and stuff that it would be possible to achieve man flight.
35:05
And you had the leading physicists in the world, you know, all over the world trying for some big prize for who can first achieve man flight, right?
35:15
literally the smartest people in the world, the most educated, they're all doing experiments and having these things take off on the PTOIC and, you know, become submarines immediately, you know, all that sort of stuff.
35:25
and and and so you you have these two bicycle mechanics in Dayton, Ohio, who start pedling around with uh with little foils to test wind flows on their handlebars to see how they work. Stuff like that.
35:45
I mean, it's like Edison just tinkering, right?
35:47
And these two boys, these bicycle mechanics do it.
35:51
And after they do it, no one believes them.
35:55
And then no one believes them.
35:57
And so they so they go to so they go to Paris. Nobody believes them.
36:02
This is, you know, five years have gone by, right, since Kittyhawk. They go to Paris.
36:06
People still don't believe them.
36:08
Uh and and everyone fills the big stadium and uh and the French papers are completely making fun of them.
36:15
It was called of the the the French for the American bluff or something was the you know was the and so and so their little plane takes off from the infield this racetrack >> and it's like bor I think it was bor and they take off and and people kind of gasp and and then it starts coming toward the grandstands and then people start to panic this thing kind and then it turns and then and people just could not they could not believe it.
36:47
I mean it is such a great story.
36:51
I mean it's just such anyway Harry have you know his good year sitting on making his family sick by vulcanizing rubber in his in his kitchen stuff like that.
37:01
I mean um so these are all basically predecessors to Jim Oanessy all the all these people in this book anyway making your family sick by bossing them around and making them do all this stuff.
37:15
Um, it's a great book if they made America.
37:18
But it's about the American I it's about this this well let's try this let's try that let's do the other you know >> you know Bill Bryson has a great book America one summer and it looks at the 20s and that was the America you're describing like uh Kidge who was uh Kidge uh I'm >> Koolage >> Koolage I'm thinking of the poet um Koolage was vacationing near Mount Rushmore When the guy was making it, he had no idea he was doing it.
37:52
His aid said to him, "Hey, there's a guy, some crazy guy up there who's carving the president's faces into this mountain."
38:00
And and and Clarich was like, "Cool. Let's go look."
38:07
He didn't ask for any funding.
38:07
He didn't go up there and say, "You can't do that."
38:11
And he just was like, "Wow, that's really cool."
38:13
And back to your tinkerer thing, right?
38:15
like Claude Shannon, one of my heroes really, because that's all he did.
38:20
And for those who don't know, obviously these are all because Claude came up with information theory >> and he should be, in my opinion, as famous as Einstein.
38:30
And yet, he was just a really incredibly colorful character.
38:36
He worked on whatever was of interest to him.
38:39
And so, you got a lot of trumpets that uh shot fire out when you hit a note.
38:45
You got mechanical chess games, you got all of that, but also you got information theory.
38:49
And I I definitely think I'm also vehemently opposed to this whole generational, oh, this young generation doesn't know anything, blah blah blah.
39:02
That's total The the like these are incredibly talented people who I just feel intersect with your thesis because they're straight jacketed.
39:11
They they are straight jacketed and I think and I think they are held back by these conventions.
39:19
I mean we we look back at Victorian age and laugh at how stifying it was and stuff.
39:24
The Victorians whole have nobody I mean they were like hippies compared to us.
39:31
I mean I mean we are so >> more brothel per square mile in London during the Victorian age than at any other time.
39:40
the the uh but but I mean we are so repressed by by really a philosoph it's kind of an anti-invention philosophy you know where you can't where where being yourself is a danger as opposed to an opportunity you know I was thinking about this I'm asked sometimes by people well you've been at this 30 years you've uh you've really had a lot of failure so so >> but you have been very precise Well, what they say, so so why are you so persistent?
40:14
And you know, I I you know, this has cost me a lot of money.
40:17
I mean, I I I deemphasize my law career and everything because I really believed in this >> and and it's not like I'm a uh well either a saint or or or or you know, I'm not somebody I don't wear hair shirts.
40:32
I enjoy life, you know, and like you I mean you know, so I have fun.
40:34
I'm playing in a golf tournament this weekend or whatever.
40:38
Um but uh but the reason is that I know and you know uh and the guy who is the attorney general knows who I was talking to and bunch of other people who are on my board know uh that I'm right that that we've that we've done we created a system that's fundamentally discordant to the American spirit. >> Yes.
41:03
And um when I was in college, I had the lucky I got lucky.
41:07
I got a job at a federal My family had no money.
41:10
I got job I got a job at a federal poverty program at the Oakidge National Laboratory and somebody saw that there was this kid, you know, going to an Ivy League school.
41:21
Um, and so they plucked me out and made me the gopher to a Nobel Prize winner, >> the the creator of the multiple worlds thesis of quantum physics. Right. >> Right. Right.
41:33
And so and so I spent three summers as the gopher to a Nobel Prize winner publishing I ended up publishing papers when I was a teenager on post-nuclear war recovery and stuff like that.
41:44
And but the thing I learned we were in a little small group at Oakidge that was a civil defense group.
41:51
There were about a dozen, you know, kind interdisciplinary group, economists and physicists and other chemical engineers.
41:59
Is is it that what I learned about them is that they thought things through for themselves. >> Yes.
42:07
>> And when they thought they understood something, they didn't let go of it.
42:10
It was not a question of whether it was accepted or not.
42:15
It was whether they felt they understood whatever the issue was, whatever the dynamic was and it became their truth and they wouldn't give it up because somebody disagreed unless the person who disagreed came up with a compelling reason why it was wrong.
42:34
And and I sort of feel that way.
42:37
I mean, so I feel that that what we're talking about is true.
42:41
And so why would I give it up?
42:41
It's it's, you know, it's incredibly important. >> Yeah.
42:45
The principle of parsimony basically tells us that you know there are a lot of it's AAM's razor by a different name >> like it works a lot of the time when you apply it to groups and things like that.
43:02
I was thinking of somebody I had on in the early days of this podcast, Nick Gruin, >> Do you know? >> Yeah.
43:08
I was just just on a Zoom with him. >> Okay.
43:10
And and he really sold me on this whole jury idea. Yeah. Yeah.
43:15
>> Which >> the citizens >> the citizens jury >> the citizens assemblies. Yeah. >> Yeah.
43:19
And and like why aren't we trying those?
43:23
>> I I just think my attitude is let a thousand initiatives bloom. >> Yeah.
43:30
>> And get new ideas and create and and people really another thing about society we think everything has to be in a thing and we don't really understand also the role of moral authority.
43:39
So the so citizens assemblies for example, you don't have to have power to be influential, >> right?
43:49
>> You could you could convene a citizens assembly on issues we're talking about and and have them come up with a with their own interpretation and comments on it and it would have power not because somebody can push a button to make it happen.
44:04
because real people got together and came up with that conclusion.
44:10
>> And it's it's um George Kennan, the diplomat George Kennan, uh toward the end of his life uh said he thought American government needed a fourth branch of government.
44:21
He called it a council of state, but was really sort of a council of citizens.
44:25
And his fourth branch would have no power.
44:31
its only job was be to comment on how the other branches were doing. >> Yeah.
44:36
Well, you know, didn't we used to have that in the so-called fourth estate?
44:41
I mean, journalism has descended right along with government.
44:44
I mean, and it because I was a real junkie for like, okay, I'm really outing myself as a nerd here, but during the Watergate hearings, what I was 13 years old and I spent all summer watching them and and that that feels like a profound loss to me >> because we we because in in nothing of course was perfect, but journalists sort of became the fourth estate that served that function.
45:17
>> Walter Kankite, I mean Ched Huntley, I mean these people these people had moral authority and credibility.
45:23
If they said something, you believed it. >> Yes.
45:28
>> And and you know, we just don't you just so so we've lost the moral authority.
45:34
The the one of the one of the innovations that has worked few in the last 30 years in America were the idea of base closing commissions.
45:40
You know, it was politically impossible to close down unnecessary military bases.
45:44
So, one of the recommendations of the Grace Commission under President Reagan was to create independent commissions appointed with so many by the minority leader and so many by the majority leader, but they weren't partisan.
45:59
They were you retired generals and such, and they would come up with a set of proposals about which bases to close.
46:05
So in the 2005 base closing commission, which happened to be run by a guy that went to school with, they came up with recommendations to close or consolidate 50 bases, save saving tens of billions of dollars a year.
46:17
And Congress had the power to vote it up or down, but that's it.
46:20
And so there's none of this bickering going back and forth.
46:24
And so the congressman had plausible deniability.
46:26
I'm sorry that the base was closed here, but I couldn't do anything about it.
46:31
It's all part of a package, right? Great.
46:32
Well, that's that's kind of an innovation. That's good, right?
46:36
So, but the base closing commissions had moral authority.
46:41
They they came up with the right, you know, so we need I think we need and I wanted I want to run it.
46:46
I want you to appoint me to run.
46:48
You run for president, then appoint me.
46:51
>> Oh, what did Sherman say?
46:53
>> If nominated, I will not run.
46:53
If elected, I will not serve. >> Right.
46:57
and and I want you to be appoint me to the recottification commission to methodically go through every area of law and turn, you know, 50,000 pages into a thousand pages uh and not do away with anything, >> right?
47:14
>> You know, just make it work.
47:14
Just make it a principlesbased system like more like the Constitution. Yeah.
47:20
>> And give people define authority frameworks.
47:24
have courts not second guessess it but only decide whether you someone transgressed their authority >> that should be the role of courts not second guessing I mean are the benefits of the transmission line worth the harm of building it
47:40
through a pristine forest >> that's not a legal question >> right I mean that's a policy question and ultimately a political question and you know so somebody has to make somebody has to make that decision otherwise we Today we don't have the transmission line. So we can't get the
47:56
So we can't get the power from renewable sources to the cities or to the data centers or whatever you know because uh because the process goes on for a decade. It's crazy. It's crazy.
48:08
>> My company Oshana Ventures is doing a lot with AI.
48:10
What do you think about that?
48:12
What do you think about humans who uh you know, as you mentioned, not even AI seems to be able to make sense of all of these laws, but it probably is going to do a better job serving a human.
48:25
By that I mean have every regulation put in there, have it translated into English, show where it conflicts with other rules and regulations so that at least like you a human not even a committee of humans could do it.
48:42
AI it's trivial and but but not as a ruling as here here's what you're dealing with now you humans figure this out. >> Yeah. Yeah. completely.
48:54
So, you know, I sort of I think the closest analogy I can think of to AI is the steam engine.
49:02
>> You know, you went from manual labor to now a machine that could really do powerful things and could be harnessed on tractors or whatever. Yeah.
49:09
>> And um so I have some senior AI people writing for my free press series that's coming out called Reboot Almost Everything.
49:18
Uh it's a 20 part series.
49:20
It's going to come out uh in August.
49:20
And and so they're talking about uses of AI.
49:25
Reed Hastings talking about how every u student can now have a tutor.
49:31
>> You know, it's a fantastic, right?
49:31
There are all these fantastic opportunities with AI.
49:34
I mean, ultimately though, someone has to be accountable for tough choices. >> I agree.
49:40
>> And AI is not accountable.
49:42
>> So, so someone needs to >> the human running the AI needs to be accountable.
49:46
>> It needs to be accountable. I agree.
49:46
So we're going to need to come up with uh so senior person Google is writing an article on what they view as the proper AI oversight.
49:54
So you know so I've got you know it's it's really interesting.
49:58
It's really a brave it is a brave new world but the opportunities are fantastic.
50:03
Uh but it but but the challenge is of coming up with human oversight because values AI can mimic values, >> right?
50:16
>> But it can't really have values and and so I mean there's a lot of ethical theory and about how you know ethics ethics can't be uh applied in advance.
50:31
You always have to be in the situation, right? >> Situational.
50:35
>> It's always situational and and so and so somebody has to be overseeing AI and somebody has to make ultimate calls and that's and coming up with those structures is going to be challenging too. >> Yeah.
50:47
I think that one of the things that AI can do splendidly is to take those millions and millions of words and boil them down to and put them in plain English.
50:59
And by the way, I think they should do it for business agreements, too, right?
51:03
Like you can't use anything online without agreeing. I don't know.
51:09
Do you know anyone who's been who's read the terms and conditions?
51:11
My my favorite is when you go to doctor's office and they say, "Okay."
51:15
And they have a little thing there above the receptionist and say, "Okay, now sign here."
51:19
And and you never see the agreement.
51:22
And they say, "Okay, now what? Here comes another one. Now sign here."
51:25
Now sign here." and you say here's you never they don't even go through the pretense of showing you the agreement you're just signing stuff I mean it's truly it's like the reductium of certain of of of kind of modern legal life crazy >> so tell me a little bit about the series
51:44
that you're doing for the free press >> so the series is called reboot almost everything and it go hearkens back to our discussion about the need to change operating systems so it's not about policy And so we go area by area and we have an expert set up in a give or take 500word essay. These are like one page you know
52:03
These are like one page you know kind of essay very short essay but you know with prominent people like Reed Hastings or Mitch Daniels and say here's the problem.
52:12
Government has become unmanageable that has all these harms. Here's the solution.
52:18
We have to give you know change civil service systems and get rid of union controls and do this.
52:22
Uh I've I've written write the introduction but I've written one on litigation said here's the problem.
52:29
Uh we have an impartial s system of litigation in this country.
52:34
Uh that that's a good thing and people trust it to be impartial.
52:37
Uh but it draws no boundaries of who can sue for what. So where's the law part?
52:43
You know it's kind of sue for anything rather than law, you know, not lawsuits but sue for anything suits or whatever.
52:52
And so so we're missing something.
52:52
And the harm of that is not just that you get these occasional crazy verdicts like um but but that but that people don't feel free in daily they won't let the kids go out and play alone because they might if there's an accident you might be you might be liable.
53:12
>> Our staff here is quite young and before you got here we were talking about I grew up in the 1970s like we were freerange kids.
53:20
We could do whatever we wanted as long as the parents as long as we got home, >> right?
53:27
And so what's happened is is the couple decades ago there was a a terrible accident on a sledding hill in Greenwich, Connecticut.
53:34
You >> I remember it well >> and uh someone got a verdict of $6 million.
53:41
Uh and the result of that was not I mean Greenwich is a rich town. It could afford it.
53:45
Is that sledding hills across the country closed down? >> Yeah.
53:51
including that one, >> right? Including that one.
53:53
>> I used to take my kids there, >> right?
53:55
And so and so you have and so all of a sudden because of a lawsuit brought by one person, no deliberate policy choice, the trade-off judgment about whether the risks of sledding uh out, you know, outweigh or not the fun of going out in the winter and snow were not being made by anybody who is politically accountable, right?
54:19
being made by the fact that somebody brought a lawsuit. >> Yeah.
54:22
>> And um there was a similar case in England about the same time >> that where somebody terrible accident dove in a lake um became a quadriplegic. Terrible accident.
54:32
But but there was nothing there was no hidden dangers there.
54:36
It was a little bit like the Greenwich lawsuit.
54:37
I mean there was sure you could run into something if you weren't watching but you know but people have sledded on that hill for decades you know without in >> a right of passage for your kids. >> Yeah.
54:48
And so in England uh no hidden it was just a freak accident. It was tragic.
54:54
But but but the county that owned the lake was so scared of liability because there were two or three new drownings a year.
55:01
You know a big lake people swimming bad things can happen blah blah blah.
55:05
They had determined to close the lake down and then this accident happened.
55:08
So the uh the court said, "Well, this is foreseeable.
55:12
Therefore, we're going to grant damage to this person."
55:14
It goes up to the equivalent of the UK Supreme Court and they order the case to be dismissed and they say, "It is part of our role as as the lead judges to protect the reasonable freedoms >> of people in society, including the freedom to take risk." Yeah.
55:36
>> Do we require that rivers and lakes close down because of the certainty that some accident will happen?
55:41
Then people will be enjoyed.
55:43
Or as one judge said, do we climb we require all trees be cut down because some child may climb one and fall down.
55:50
And um and uh we will not tolerate a dull and gray safety regime.
56:00
We are here to protect the reasonable freedoms including the freedom to take reasonable risk.
56:05
Ah, what a great decision.
56:07
>> And and it's the uh call the Tomlinson case and that's what we're missing in this country that no one is drawing those boundaries.
56:15
And so I've written a one of my pieces in the in the free press talks about how you would do that.
56:22
And so you could write it you could have a state pass a statute that says the judges shall have the responsibility to draw the reasonable to draw the lines of reasonable dispute.
56:34
You know, in any lawsuit and in any case that might affect the freedoms of people not in the courtroom, the court shall make a legal ruling on the boundaries of acceptable risk.
56:47
See, you know, I I'm a big fan of uh the book, The Beginning of Infinity, and he he talks a lot in that book about u the precautionary principle.
56:55
And he he links the the excesses of the precautionary principle to essentially the death of societies because they can't innovate anymore.
57:08
And >> in my what happens if >> Yeah, that's that's David Deutsch, right?
57:15
And I read it when it came out and I liked it a lot, but then I when I reread it, it just mapped over to what you're talking about.
57:22
So, so, okay, let's play a game.
57:25
I I have infl I am not the president.
57:28
I'm that will never happen. >> Oh, come on. I like it.
57:31
President, think of all the trouble people have spelling it. Exactly.
57:36
You know, the rest when I'm in Asia, they they just simply call me Mr. O. >> Oh, yeah. Good.
57:44
Uh but I can I can influence the president and he assigns you to this role that you've asked me to assign you to.
57:51
What what are your first five what are the first five things that you're going to promulgate?
57:58
>> Uh well the first thing will be to liberate people's freedom to be themselves by drawing the lines of who can sue for what. >> Yeah.
58:07
>> Yeah. and and giving and making judges even though it's hard draw these boundaries if the stat if the so people can do that the second thing I would do is is I would say for democracy to work the elected executives have to have the basic managerial governors and mayors u ba basic managerial tools uh they have
58:32
to have the authority to decide not only what to do consistent with legislative but who's good at doing what, you know, how to allocate money, how to balance this, you know, different, you know, how to adapt to new circumstances, all the managerial choices that I'm writing about in this little book is going to come out in January called Burning Money. Uh, so I would do that. I would Uh, so I would do that.
58:51
I would uh I would unleash I mean, Americans infrastructure is like was built by our great-grandfathers. Yeah.
58:59
I mean, literally water manes and power lines, rickety power lines all over the Northeast.
59:04
To me, it's crazy, right?
59:04
You would unleash that by by creating a a really simple authority structure.
59:10
And so, for starters, I would say I'd write a law that says notwithstanding any other law or regulation to the contrary for the next five years, pick it transmission lines shall be approved in the following process.
59:28
There will be a a notice of of proposal.
59:35
There'll be uh an environmental review of not more than 50 pages to be completed within 3 months only talking about major impacts.
59:44
There'll be a chance for the public to comment in short period and then uh these designated officials shall have the authority to make trade-off judgments consistent with with this.
59:56
Their decision can be second-guessed by this designated official, the president, whoever it is.
1:00:04
>> And the role of courts will only be to determine whether in any of these steps they've transgressed the boundaries of their authority.
1:00:11
And so you have essentially a one-page document that allows for transmission lines or whatever we're talking about to be built.
1:00:19
And you could do that in, you know, it would be a slightly more elaborate process for a new nuclear plant, but it wouldn't be 30 years, you know, you know, which is more or less what it is today, right?
1:00:32
So, so you would simp simply go, you know, piece by piece and you would create authority structures and and you would also I would to the greatest extent possible re-empower local communities to do things in their own ways >> whether it's running schools, doing their parks, doing you know decentralize as much as possible so that people can wake up in the morning and feel they can make a difference. >> You got my vote.
1:01:00
I think maybe we'll run you for president.
1:01:04
>> No, I just want to run this recontification commission. I really do.
1:01:08
I think I'm you know, I'm getting a little old, but but you know, I'm still vigorous enough for now.
1:01:11
And so Napoleon appointed four judges to uh to redo all the laws of France, criminal laws, property laws, estate laws, tax law, everything. Everything. Everything.
1:01:25
uh it was run by a a prominent judge named Portales and in six months six months they came up with new frameworks for all of the laws that affect France.
1:01:40
Then they were debated in the um in the legislature and Napoleon actually presided over a bunch of those.
1:01:49
they were enacted and what was result was the Napoleonic codes which are still the basis for civilized law in half the world.
1:01:58
You know, in the 1950s, a committee from the American Law Institute run by a guy named Carl Llewellyn, a very prominent professor, said it's ridiculous that we have what was in 48 different states, 48 different contract laws, so that anyone doing interstate commerce has to hire 48 sets of lawyers, you know, to comply with stuff.
1:02:26
So, right, this is crazy, right?
1:02:29
So, so let's create a uniform commercial code. And they devised it. They came up with it.
1:02:35
It has it has all different chapters in it that have to do with, you know, security interest and commercial sales or different chapters for each one.
1:02:44
Didn't take them that long.
1:02:44
And versions of it were adopted by virtually all the 48 states.
1:02:49
And that was one of the things that stimulated the post-war boom >> was that everybody had the same set of principles when they were doing contracts.
1:02:58
Well, we just need that for society in America. >> Yeah.
1:03:01
And you know, it's funny, too, because I was thinking a lot about World War II.
1:03:05
It it plays a part in my fictional thriller that I was telling you about.
1:03:09
Uh it spans it it ends in 2027. It starts uh in 1939. So, it's quite the epic. >> Wow. >> Um Cool.
1:03:18
But I was thinking about America back then and the thought struck me and then I saw other people talking about it as well.
1:03:25
If you if you buy into this the American Empire, which I don't, the idea that for a brief period at the end of World War II, we had a weapon that could colonize the entire world if we so chose to do so. What did we do? The opposite.
1:03:45
We did the Marshall Plan. We rebuilt Germany. We rebuilt Japan.
1:03:53
And and so like I feel very patriotic about that that that that America could have like if you look at every other so-called empire in history, if they had that weapon, they're going to run the entire world.
1:04:09
That was never in our DNA.
1:04:11
>> And if Donald Trump had been in charge, >> right? So, right.
1:04:14
So, so, so that's why I think Americans intuitively know that's bad, too.
1:04:20
That I mean, he really, he really has accurately scoped out many of the idiocies that that we've talked about.
1:04:27
He doesn't really have a vision how to fix them.
1:04:29
Um, but but we are America is a place where people not only wanted to be do good for themselves and innovate and to have agency, but they also wanted to do good. >> Yeah.
1:04:44
And and I think that part of America is really important.
1:04:47
We've obviously our moral authority is significantly diminished under the current administration.
1:04:54
And um so that's the thing we need back to come back to.
1:05:00
But but part of what I'm talking about when you have a principlesbased operating system, it is activated by people acting on their values and their judgments.
1:05:10
not just using their common sense, which is important, >> but also their values.
1:05:15
What's the right thing to do here?
1:05:20
>> And so, America is missing that.
1:05:20
There's no reason why we can't get it back, but we have to have a an op a legal operating framework that allows us to act on our values.
1:05:30
It doesn't tell us what how to do things, right?
1:05:32
So, so it's I I think there's a there's a historic moment.
1:05:36
I mean, I really believe this.
1:05:39
There's a historic moment waiting for us right now and it's to correct course and face the future with new tools AI but with with old values and an old sense of responsibility. >> Yeah.
1:05:58
And what because the effects of the current system are also not difficult to see.
1:06:05
Like you you create uh a group of people who feel no sense of agency, who feel infantilized, who who almost get trained into learned helplessness.
1:06:22
And that is so at least my version of America is the opposite of all that. >> Right.
1:06:28
Well, I'm I'm going to speak I'm going to speak at Notre Dame in October and a bunch of people and I'm going to Purdue at the same time which Miss Daniels has gotten roped into running again.
1:06:37
>> Um and and I've actually been targeting this of Catholic universities because because I think that your what you just said is something that they the the Catholic theology deeply believes subsidiarity agency you know you people own themselves. >> Yeah.
1:06:57
>> Yeah. you they own who they are and and that's something you know and so we need to build a cohort you know in support of that >> and and I think at least in America it's Catholic with a small C in other words it's universal in this country and and
1:07:16
you know I don't know whether you watched any of the uh reactions of the Europeans uh in the United States for the World Cup they're absolutely delightful because They're like, "I thought America was just crimeridden and and horrible." And you know, they're
1:07:30
And you know, they're they're blown away by Costco. >> Right. Right.
1:07:36
>> That's But >> I'm blown away by Costco, too, by the way.
1:07:39
I mean, any anytime I can get 50 pounds of peanut butter crunchy, I'm I'm there. >> You're there.
1:07:47
But the point is that when when regular people are allowed to experience something and then share that experience, you again are reminded that for the most part most of what what is the civilized world, right?
1:08:05
Share a lot of values in common with one another >> completely.
1:08:12
So let us Let us be that, you know, let us give us a framework that allows us to be ourselves and allow us to do things in groups differently than other groups and and doesn't force us into a you know, I've always people say, well, America is all about diversity.
1:08:31
Actually, I think America is all about conformity.
1:08:33
You know, you know, it's a you know, the Swedes go to Minnesota and the Henic Jews are in Brooklyn and, you know, the intellectuals are on the upper west side and, you know, and the techies are all in the Silicon Valley.
1:08:46
I you know, it was about conformity.
1:08:47
What what America did that was really different is it tolerated a diversity of conformities. >> Yes.
1:08:55
And so there were all these different communities but all with these core values that they shared reciprocity and living together in the same community. Fantastic.
1:09:04
I mean it's a great thing and all the innovation that comes out of all these different groups doing things in different ways.
1:09:10
Well, let us do that again. >> Yeah.
1:09:13
And uh I I love the line about conformity um because there's so much truth to it.
1:09:20
You know, you of course in both investment theory and social theory, there is this notion of the clustering effect and you know like seeks loud like but okay fine let's let's grant that as an axiom.
1:09:39
You've got to allow your view where yeah, you can have your values and there might be very very different than this group's over here, but is if you have an underlying framework that allows for that to happen and people to take control and like your idea about uh local uh city ordinances or state ordinances and and the and the attempt to create a monoculture. Monocultures always die.
1:10:08
If you know anything about evolution, right, monocultures die, >> right? They don't grow. They don't innovate.
1:10:16
Whereas when you have these cells of like-minded people, one innovating in their own way, two competing, yeah, >> with other cells in their own way, then all of a sudden you have this movement all the time and you get this great stuff, you know, happening.
1:10:31
So, so you know, I think the American character is there.
1:10:40
Obviously, you do too, but it needs to get unlocked.
1:10:44
And um so that's going to require a new narrative and a new vision.
1:10:51
And uh and I'm roping you into it.
1:10:57
>> I float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.
1:11:01
Well, Philip, uh, I love your work, as you know, served on your board for many years.
1:11:06
I hope this is the time because, you know, I've got six grandchildren now, and I don't want them to grow up in this giant squid of regulatory morass.
1:11:21
And, you know, we had a driver in Switzerland once and it turned out um, it was his last day.
1:11:26
he was retiring and and sometimes I enjoy just chatting with a variety of different people.
1:11:32
And so I started a conversation.
1:11:33
I'm like, "So tell me about yourself and everything."
1:11:37
And the first thing he led with was, "I'm born and raised in Switzerland.
1:11:42
Um, this is my last day of work and tonight I am getting on a plane and I'm going to Australia."
1:11:48
And I'm like, "Wow, okay. Why?"
1:11:51
And he goes, "As beautiful as Switzerland is, as much as I love Switzerland," he said, "I can no longer be in a culture where that which is not compulsory is forbidden and that which is not forbidden is compulsory."
1:12:11
And and so it made me think it's like in the old days and even now like we do a lot of investing in startups and things like that.
1:12:20
the number of incredibly talented people, and I mean off-the-charts talent, they still want to move, work, and live in the United States.
1:12:33
>> And and that to me seems like just such a huge asymmetric and unfair advantage that this country has >> and we're going to squander it, >> which which is insane to me.
1:12:46
So, so look at what's going wrong. We have to change it.
1:12:53
I mean, it's just so so obvious.
1:12:57
Just people just have to wake up to the reality that this framework that we're laboring under is broken for no good reason.
1:13:05
>> And not only broken, it's the wrong framework. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's wrong.
1:13:08
So, so, so give us back the freedom to be ourselves again. Roll up our sleeves.
1:13:13
I mean, let's So, so that's needed.
1:13:14
It's going to take a new movement. It's got to be invented.
1:13:18
It won't be won't happen because somebody else does it, >> right?
1:13:23
>> It's only going to happen because we do it. >> Yeah.
1:13:27
>> Well, as always, I love talking about all of I could go on for hours, but I I know that we both have other engagements.
1:13:33
We have a tradition here, and you're going to get you might like this because you don't even have to be a Zara.
1:13:39
You don't even have to be appointed.
1:13:40
We're gonna give you a magical microphone and for one day you are emperor of the entire world, not just America.
1:13:48
But you can't put anyone in a re-education camp and you can't kill anyone.
1:13:53
But what you're going to be able to do is incept them.
1:13:56
You're going to speak into that microphone two things.
1:14:02
And the entire population of the world is going to wake up whenever their next morning happens to be and they're going to say, "I just had two of the greatest ideas I've ever had and unlike all the other times, I'm actually going to act on these two things.
1:14:19
What are you incepting in the world?" >> Oh, interesting.
1:14:27
uh in any free society you must be free to follow your star. That's number one.
1:14:41
Secondly, the second thing I would say is you are not alone.
1:14:43
You exist in a community in a culture and it's your responsibility to be a responsible member of that culture. I love both of those.
1:14:54
Uh you've written tons of books.
1:14:57
You can find them everywhere, Amazon, in bookstores, etc.
1:15:02
And when is the new book coming out?
1:15:04
>> Uh the new book's going to come out in January.
1:15:06
It's called Burning Money: How Public Unions Made Government Unmanageable?
1:15:12
>> That's a loaded title.
1:15:13
>> Uh uh the book, my my most recent book, it's called Saving Can Do Do: How to Restore the Spirit of America.
1:15:20
And it's about the whole idea of striving and what's in here.
1:15:24
No, I read it the idea of striving.
1:15:27
>> Yeah, it's really really good.
1:15:29
>> Um, but these are short books.
1:15:29
I've I've taken to writing 100page books. >> Yeah.
1:15:33
Just like the revolutionaries, right?
1:15:36
They're more like the pamphlets, the federalist papers. >> Yeah. Common sense. >> They common sense.
1:15:44
>> Uh, they had a lot of impact.
1:15:44
So, Philip, I wish you absolutely the best of luck. >> Great to be with you. >> Thanks for joining.