Pirate Wires - American Cities In CRISES | PIRATE WIRES EP#16 🏴‍☠️

Episode Date: September 29, 2023

EPISODE SIXTEEN: Liz Wolfe returns to the pod this week! We discuss looting in Philadelphia and how an Instagram influencer named "Meatball" was introduced to the world. We then get into the bizarre Republican Debates and Immigration & Migrant crises that continues in major cities. River gives a report on how Florida is the only state that can actually build a high speed rail and Sanjana deep dives into San Francisco's Millionaire Marxist, Dean Preston. Featuring Mike Solana , Liz Wolfe, River Page, Sanjana Friedman Subscribe to Pirate Wires: https://www.piratewires.com/ Topics Discussed: https://www.piratewires.com/p/dean-preston-san-franciscos-millionnaire https://www.piratewires.com/p/florida-has-high-speed-rail-and-california Pirate Wires Twitter: https://twitter.com/PirateWires Mike Twitter: https://twitter.com/micsolana Liz Twitter: https://twitter.com/LizWolfeReason River Twitter: https://twitter.com/river_is_nice Sanjana Twitter: https://twitter.com/metaversehell TIMESTAMPS: 0:00 - Intro 0:43 - Welcome Liz Back To The Pod! Congrats On Her Newborn! 2:15 - On This Episode.. 4:10 - The Decay Of Philadelphia - How An Influencer Named Meatball Started A Riot 11:10 - Getting Caught Up In The Moment - Riots In NYC In 2020 19:40 - GOP Debate 24:22 - Immigration Reform - Migrant Crises In NYC 40:25 - Dean Preston - Deep Dive Into Sanjana's Article On San Francisco's Millionaire Marxist 54:11 - The Brightline - Deep Dive Into River's Article On Florida's High Speed Rail That California Never Will Have 1:10:05 - Follow Liz On Twitter - See You Next Week! Pirate Wires Pod Every Friday!!

Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit, oh shit. Everybody must eat. Everybody must eat. And that is where Meatball comes in the story. A star is born. A star is born. So you're going to risk incarceration for mid-market athleisure wear? River, I'm super affected by that as an aspiring yoga Montessori mom myself.

For $25 a month, you can access her content on OnlyFans. River, that one's for you. She seems to remember that like this is nominally because this cop got acquitted and she's like, yeah, like we want justice as everyone's like storming the Lululemon store. Free meat is trending in Philly right now on Twitter. All right, guys, welcome back to the pod. This week, you'll notice I'm in a brand new studio. I told you we're like taking a tour of the world. This is the first professional studio we're in.

Don't get used to it. It's back to my bedroom next week. Special guest Liz Wolf with us today. Liz is a staff writer at Reason. And is it staff, staff writer at Reason? I have no idea what my title is. She's got some kind of title at Reason. She's a writer. She's a great writer. She runs the Roundup, the Reason Roundup. A friend of mine had a, can I talk about your baby? Yeah, sure.

Conceived of her child. Can I talk about the conception of your child? I mean, you could tell some of that, but I mean, hopefully you don't know too much. I don't know too many of the details. I will tell you that she has a baby. Suspiciously timed baby. It's suspiciously timed to her reticon. And that's, I'll just, I'm not saying I'm responsible for Liz's child, but I'm responsible for Liz's child. And I feel it's like one of my proudest moments. There were three her reticon babies, actually. Three. Who was the third? I just found out about, I don't know if i can say it uh actually i don't know he's not he's not been public about it uh but yeah there there are there are three

his was a little less his was not conceived at hereticon it was um he reconnected with his ex at hereticon which which led to the conception. And now, alas, they're no longer together, but they do have a baby, which probably gets the actual podcast. So we've got a ton of topics this week. The very first one, I don't know quite what to call it. We're taking a look at Philadelphia, which is this kind of strangely not talked about dystopia in America. We talk about crime a lot. Philly is the worst in a lot of regards. And it kind of skates past the criticism that cities like New York and San Francisco get, I think, because it's just a

smaller city that people don't, I don't know, care as much about. But it's a pretty big deal what's happening there. Sanjay is going to walk us through it. We're going to talk about the GOP debate, which happened last night. We are going to talk about probably immigration in the context of that, because it was a huge part of that debate. Liz is here to share her tedious libertarian perspective with us, and I'm sure we'll disagree a lot and probably agree on things like, for example, Dean Preston, who is the millionaire Marxist of San Francisco. Sanjana wrote a great piece about him. We're going to break the entire drama surrounding him and Elon Musk down. And then we're going to round it all out with a white pill because America has seen the construction of

some high speed rail for the first time in, I don't even know how long, fortunately, River's here to tell us. He wrote a great piece about the Miami Bright Line and sort of placed it in the context of the total failure that we've seen in California. This is of high-speed rail, right? So this is something that we talk about a lot on this podcast, something that I write about a lot is the inability of, it seems like the inability of America to do stuff anymore, to build new infrastructure, to run new trains. This one is a, this, the bright line to me feels like a cool sort of counter example. And, and I want to get into that. I want to explain why, why it was possible in Florida, maybe speculate on, on, on why it's not possible in California. So let's just, I think let's just take it from

the top with the actual decay and blight of the city of brotherly love. I'm sorry to say, Sanjana lives there. She did some touring of the carnage. I don't know, I don't want to call it carnage. Some touring of the disaster area yesterday. I will just let you take it away. Break it, break it down for us. What, what's going on in Philadelphia? All right. So I guess the context for what happened a couple of days ago in Philadelphia is that in August, um, a police officer shot and killed a guy, um, at a traffic stop who had a knife. And, um, so this, the district attorney in Philadelphia, a very progressive guy named Larry Krasner, brought charges against the police officer who was accused of killing this man.

And two days ago, a judge decided to acquit him of all charges. And so there were protests to acquit the cop. Yeah, the guy the guy died. And so there were protests at City Hall that that were by all accounts, pretty peaceful. Um, and a couple hours after the protest dispersed a bunch of masked, mainly teenagers descended on the main shopping artery of Philadelphia. Um, and this basically unleashed a night of looting in on Walnut street and then also on other retail corridors in the city.

Um, and that is where Meatball... Oh, shit! Oh, shit! Oh, shit! Oh, shit! Everybody must eat! Everybody must eat! A star is born. A star is born and quickly incarcerated, it seems like. Um, but Meatball... Meatball is the alias of a woman named uh dajia blackwell who's 21 years old she's an instagram influencer who's got almost 200 000 followers um i also learned

that she is on only fans so for for 25 a month you can access uh her content on only fans 25 river that one's for you um 25 river that one's for you 25 is a little steep let's be i mean you're not you're not you're not even a little curious the mass bandit of philadelphia yeah she is a very enterprising woman she also owns a um a beanie business um and she sells beanies for 50 a pop like beanie baby no no like the no like like beanies oh okay so she's like a like a boomer beanie baby collector uh 25 a month only fans like no you say criminal i say capitalist I say the spirit of America. I don't know. Yeah. Well, so anyway, so Meatball basically goes out on Tuesday night.

She drives down to Center City and she's live streaming herself on Instagram. And it's like the whole story ended up being around like 30 minutes. minutes and she basically live streams herself inciting a riot in center city and in another area of the city um where she's gathering a bunch of teens and she's filming herself the whole time and she's like which stores are we gonna hit first and then leads them to the apple store the teens break into the apple store um meatballs egging them on the entire time there's like a video that she filmed where there's two security guards holding back the doors to the Apple store

and like 30 teens pulling on the doors until they finally get in and they all start running out with like the new iPhones and iPads. She films them at the Lululemon store, like breaking in and stealing a bunch of shit. And then finally... Lululemon is insane. saw this video okay why so you're gonna risk incarceration for mid-market athleisure wear

like i just don't understand like you're like i'm a thug who would like break into a retail location and steal a shit but also i want to dress like a yoga mom dropping off her kids like it doesn't make sense to me the idea of wearing the lululemon to like your yoga class the next day is just an interesting clash of world views you're like i stole this at a race riot now i'm gonna do like sitting dog or whatever like it's just it's insane i mean river i'm super affected by that as an aspiring uh yoga montessori mom myself but no i think that one like sort of like downplayed aspect in this at least in how it works in new york city i'm not sure how it works other places because obviously new york is the only city worth fucking paying attention to um just kidding uh

but like you know there's organized crime rings that essentially lift these goods and then have a pretty sophisticated system for flipping them. So like, are we sure that these people are personally wearing the Lululemon sports bras? Or is there some sort of like process by which they convert this into cold hard cash? Which also brings me to my next question, which is, is it even, I don't believe that it was a race riot. I don't think that that's true. I think it was, that was the catalyst, is it even, I don't believe that it was a race riot. I don't think that that's true. I think, I think it was in, that was the catalyst, but it's, that's, we've seen this in every city in the, not every city in the country. We've seen this in Chicago. We've seen this in

San Francisco. No, we did see it in San Francisco, but a couple of years ago, uh, we've seen this in New York. Um, and it, it seems a lot of the time to just kind of happen randomly. Social media is sort of induced like looting. It was not a race riot. I mean, it was the clips from the night basically show people happy. I thought. Yeah. People descending on city. And at one point in the video, Meatball sort of remembers.

She seems to remember that like this is nominally because this cop got acquitted and she's like yeah like we want justice as everyone's like storming the lululemon store yeah and and they also like looted a bunch of liquor stores in the city that's how she got caught so this is an important part of the story meatball has been booked and her mugshot is going viral um tears are streaming down her face in the mugshot. Um, but she got caught outside a liquor store. She has like a bottle of Hennessy in her hand and she's in the car and the cops pull up on her and they're like, you need to get out of the car. She's been charged with, um, burglary, conspiracy, criminal trespass, riot, criminal mischief, criminal use of communication facility, which I think means like live streaming her riot. Yeah. Receipt of stolen property and disorderly conduct.

Do we know the etymology of her nickname Meatball? I think it refers, you know, she's heavyset. Oh, it's not a nickname of her own? This is a thing that's been put on her. set um oh wait it's not a nickname of her own this is a thing that's been put on her no i think she also owns it like free so free meat is trending in philly right now on twitter and she i mean everyone just embrace the meatball nickname yeah like she everyone i know in philly knows like all the young people i know in philly know who she is and are like free meatball and means something to them so i think she she embraced the nickname yeah uh this reminds me of a couple years ago uh during i forget which of the riots it was but it was an actual sort of riot because there was a molotov and my rule for that is like was there a Molotov. And my rule for that is like, was there a Molotov cocktail involved? And there was in this case, it was these two, these two like very like stereotypical,

like Lululemon type like white girls is my recollection of these events. Being interviewed by a reporter at one of these riots. And this girl just straight up casually tossed a Molotov cocktail into a cop car that was abandoned, lit it on fire. And the reporter is reporting and like favorably on, on, on what I think we were calling a protest at that point. And he was just like, even he was like, this is, did you just throw Molotov cocktail at a cop car? Like that seems crazy. And then she was arrested and it was a it was this very surreal like you realize that she had gotten caught up in this event that was i think much bigger than her and did she somehow lost track of like i am a person in a society that

has rules and you can't light a cop car on fire, especially not in front of cameras and while talking to a reporter and expect for there not to be something to happen. And with Meatball, it feels like I saw her weirdly, and I hope this doesn't make me sound too soft. I saw her picture crying. I felt bad for her. I felt like she didn't realize what she was doing was real is what it really felt like. It felt like this really strong disconnect between the the like Instagramification of reality and then like the consequences of I was just live streaming crime. And now I'm going to maybe go to jail. I don't know. What do you guys think about that? Am I being too soft? Well, she's only 21. I mean, it's not an excuse, but she's really, really young. So there's an argument that like her brain's not fully formed. And yeah, she made a really stupid decision, a series of very stupid decisions. I tend to slightly dislike the argument of like, you know, because somebody's young and or their brain isn't fully formed, there's sort of possibly less culpability or more mercy.

Like it's tough because there's a little bit of tension in how I look at this, because I think generally speaking, you know, extending more mercy toward people, you know, vis-a-vis their interactions with our criminal justice system is the ideal. you know, vis-a-vis their interactions with our criminal justice system is the ideal. But at the same time, I struggle with the fact that like, I'm sorry, but like in this country at 21, you can like lay down your life for the country and the military. You can legally consent to all kinds of contracts. And I think we need to like veer toward ideally greater consistency on that front in terms of what constitutes adulthood versus what doesn't. But I do think that there is maybe this almost like, what's the term for it? Like collective effervescence, like the feeling that people get when at a religious service or at a concert or whatever their form of like collective, like, you know, communing spiritually with those around them and getting swept up in the moment.

There is something to that. And I wonder whether we're seeing that in this like incredibly warped form via live streaming crime. Yeah, I think it's like we can't change the rules for this person and for people like this who are caught up in the moment this way. Molotov cocktail girl, it's like got to go to prison for that. But I couldn't help but think about this exact thing. Well, especially watching Meatball's sort of joyous narration of everything. You have 200,000, you mentioned you have 200,000 followers. In a moment like that, a lot of people are watching you. It's happening in real time. You're being egged on by everybody. And yeah, it's some crazy mob shit that, you know it it affects you and this is the

nature of social media right it like opens you up to that sort of the the bigger you become there's a lot of i mean people talk about algorithm uh what is it uh audience capture rather this is a this feels like maybe a version of that where you kind of lose yourself to the to the crowd i mean again like you gotta you did a crime, you got to do the time potentially, but I do wonder if we have a bigger problem. And it's not even necessarily social decay in this case. I wonder how much of this is actually social media. I do think one of the interesting things with the Lululemon Girl Molotov cocktail case that you were citing, Mike, is like, it's funny because peak Me Too era,

there was almost this like implication that like, women don't really have capacity for evil. They are merely these feeble creatures that are so frequently duped and cajoled and persuaded. And then now it's interesting because with stuff like the blue lemon white girl throwing the molotov cocktail, it's as if in that moment, in those types of scenarios, we are sort of waking up to like, actually, nope, every single person

has great capacity for evil, including the seemingly innocuous yoga apparel betch, right? And I think that's sort of an interesting, weird full circle moment that we're in here. I think that's probably a better way of thinking about people as like, you know, everybody has capacity for, you know, rehabilitation and for evil and for good as well. But like, that's an interesting component to this. I almost wonder the degree to which it's a useful corrective, no longer letting, you know, certain demographics off scot-free. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like you're saying there was something sort of feminist about it,

throwing the Molotov cocktail at the cop car. No, I'm saying there's something feminist about the fact that, like, we're collectively repulsed by that and feel the need to lock somebody up for doing that, right? Like, that's the way that it should be. No, I don't think it's very feminist to throw the Molotov cocktail. It's also like i mean like the 1970s equivalent of uh lulu lemon girl throwing a molotov cocktail at a cop car was just

like bernardine dorn like heading the weather underground like blowing up buildings like right it's just like these like middle class middle class stylish kind of cool white people who are doing crazy shit. One of his four terrorist parents. Yeah, right. There was one that claimed to be brainwashed. She also wore a beanie. She was like

a model. What was her name? No one? In the Weather Underground? I think she was in the Weather Underground. It was a big part of... It's a massive story in the early 70s, I believe. She gets kidnapped by these people. Oh, Patty Hearst? Yeah, that was the one.

Oh, yeah. Well, she was kidnapped and she, it was like Stockholm Syndrome or whatever. But she became like a part of the- She was like a socialized, she was like the heiress of like a publishing empire. Her family owned like most of the newspapers in America. All right, Sanjana, any final thoughts or important details of this story before we move on? Yeah, I mean, I guess I'll just say that

Philly's been going pretty viral on Twitter the past couple of days, just because everyone's talking about the lawlessness there and the looting. But if you compare what happened two days ago to what happened in 2020, the scale of the destruction was much lower like i was walking you know through walnut street yesterday and it was really only the stores where meatball was egging people on it was the apple store it was footlocker it was lululemon um and in 2020 they firebombed stores

in philadelphia like there's still, the old Doc Martin store has now been turned into a beer garden because it was firebombed and burned down. And, you know, a running- We live in the stupidest culture. It's so dumb. And a running store that got looted is now like this yuppie bar.

But, you know, in 2020, the destruction was much greater. But I think, you know, the city a few months ago paid out $10 million to protesters from 2020, that they tear gassed in the wake of, you know, of George Floyd and everything. Whereas now you're seeing, you know, 4049 people were arrested last night, or something like right, or I note it. It seemed like the reaction was very different. It seems like a kind of national vibe shift on crime, which is just much less tolerant of maybe things in general. I think people are feeling agitated. They are feeling

like the world's a little bit too chaotic for them. They want some normalcy. We saw a lot of this last night at the GOP debate. Crime was a pretty big part of that. Liz, I know you were watching. What was your overall take of that? Like, maybe let's narrow it down. Obviously, Trump wasn't there. So the whole thing to me feels kind of beside the point. He's leading by what, like 60 points.

There's no way he's not going to be the nomination unless he's jailed. And even then, he might still be the nomination. But if you were to sort of look at the people, the candidates talking, and you were to break down their messaging to America, what do you think are the narratives that were really resonating, particularly when it comes to like crime and immigration? Well, I think it was incredibly, like you said, farcical. Not only was Trump not present, but he also wasn't really mentioned. And I think on one hand, that could allow people theoretically on a debate stage to move on to more pressing issues. But that's not really what they

did. And I think instead, it almost felt like this very conspicuous absence where, you know, they don't need to fully define themselves in relation to Trump, but to some degree, they need to reckon with the fact that Trump is pulling, you know, so far above them and that there's a massive contingent of MAGA true blue diehards. And that felt like something like just the massive elephant in the room that nobody was really acknowledging. So I'm not really sure what use this served. I felt like I wasted my own time a little bit, which is actually amusingly something Ron DeSantis even mentioned in the post-game interviews where he was like, if I'd been watching this at home, I probably would have turned it off. And it's like, you just told on yourself, right? Like, this is totally pointless. Um, there was a lot of jumping from issues at the southern border to people are dying of fentanyl and there's a big overdose problem and there's a big crime problem. There wasn't necessarily very much, um, you know, detail given and, and I feel like some of the connective tissue that strings these issues together, which are admittedly related, was missing. So I felt a little bit like it was just kind of like, people are coming in at the border, fentanyl homelessness. And it's like, okay, well, you need a little bit more teasing out not only how that is happening. DeSantis said he was going to send the military into Mexico to take out the cartels. That seemed like a pretty direct, we need to stop this type comment.

Yeah, I mean, but this is something De something desantis repeatedly says and then never really and i'm sorry this is wonky but like never identifies the mechanism by which he would legally do that right like he either misunderstands the actual power that he has or he wants to like go to war with mexico and invade which like we should dissect that a little bit more if that is actually what we authentically believe we should be doing yeah it, I was like, is he, are we declaring war? What exactly, how do you use the military in a foreign country and not declare war? I say after 20 years, I guess, of doing that. So maybe that's a stupid question.

We definitely have been doing that. I mean, I guess you could like extra legally do this via like CIA assassinations, like return to Banana Republicville, but like regardless, actually fleshing out the mechanism by which he intends to do this, I think would be useful. And honestly, ditto for things like Vivek Ramaswamy's comment about revoking birthright citizenship for children of illegal immigrants and changing

basically the way the United States treats birthright citizenship. Again, this is something that Vivek Ramaswamy has talked about a fair bit on the campaign trail. So none of this is really new at all. But the specific mechanism by which he means to accomplish this legally, I think, is of some significance. Let's talk about the birthright thing. Sorry, finish your thought and then I do want to talk about birthright. No, the only person who I think actually seemed tethered to reality was Nikki Haley. And I think the problem is that to some degree undermined her overall performance. Uh, she tried to fit so much detail in there. Uh, and I think it's pretty highly logical, but in doing so the showmanship of it, I think is missing. And I'm not sure how

well that plays. I would honestly say Chris Christie had some very strong points. Um, Donald Duck doing that. No one up here is going to call you Donald Trump anymore. We're going to call you Donald Duck. We won't be calling you donald trump anymore we'll be calling you donald donald that's a verbatim quote that was chris christie chris christie also was the one who made the crack about um you know how biden is like sleeping with the teachers unions which is very awkward and then pence followed up with like i get laid too by a teacher it was it was such a like a weird foray into pence's sex life it was something that nobody asked for nobody needed nobody wanted why also

he doesn't fuck like he doesn't fuck right like there's no way you know he calls his wife mother which is a little people just moved on from that i wasn't able to but those were all right so on birthright citizenship you were saying you're saying there's no legal mechanism for what Vivek proposed, which was, I think, revoking what Vivek proposed was revoking birthright from people who already already have it. And birthright is like, you cross the border, you have a kid, the kid is automatically an American citizen. That did seem to me kind of great. Like, I don't know how you can revoke someone's citizenship. However, the idea of getting rid of birthrights moving forward, it feels like pretty normal. Actually, most countries in the world don't,

I think very few countries in the world have some kind of birthright citizenship. If I were to go to Spain and have a kid, the kid would not be Spanish unless I had the kid with a Spanish woman. So what is so controversial about that? I mean, I think the challenge is like we have constitutional issues here. Like 14th Amendment is pretty explicit. That was the slave one though, right? What's that? Wasn't that the, this is what Scott was saying. He was like, no, this is a slave amendment. It has nothing to do with immigration. I mean, that's not how it has traditionally been legally interpreted. I mean, I'm not a legal scholar, but Ilya Salman over at Volod Conspiracy definitely covers this a fair amount. And there's like, I think the cases here, I'm trying to look up the case now so I can point you in the right direction. I think it's United States v. Wong Kim Ark. And basically, it affirmed that people born on U.S. soil, with the exception of foreign diplomats, I think that's

one exception. Soldiers of invading armies don't get the ability to just give birthright citizenship to their children, which I think makes a lot of sense. But people are all afforded citizenship by the 14th Amendment. This is historically how the Supreme Court has interpreted this. We have pretty longstanding precedent on that. And I think Vivek maybe downplays the degree to which this would be a very hard thing to change constitutionally. So I mean, yeah, maybe it's an interesting policy discussion to have. But I think if he actually wants to be the executive, making sure that the policies he's proposing pass constitutional muster is sort of a useful prerequisite.

In countries where there isn't birthright citizenship, you do have issues sometimes where you have people who are like in the country illegally or whatever, and then they have children. And then those children are basically stateless because the laws in their own country don't allow someone who's like not there or whatever like there's like all these issues that can arise from that where you could end up with people who um just like we don't even know where to send them right like there was a for instance there was um a um like what would you do about like abandoned children like somebody like finds a baby in the woods i mean this like stuff sort of happens it's like you don't know who their parents were

so it's like are they u.s citizens like what country they belong to right how is it handled in in europe border control found a baby um at the border earlier this week they don't know where this baby is from i assume that it will be like adopted out um and be given some sort of like revised thing and like made a u.s like birth certificate made a u.s citizen because like i mean we literally don't know where what country this baby is from we can't deport it i don't know if you can deport a baby anyway but like you definitely can't deport one to just a random country and be like we think this one might be guatemalan could you take it like you know so uh i mean i i think there's like a lot of like human uh tragedies that could arise from us getting rid of birthright citizenship with this

level i think like chaotic immigration like you have to weigh that against the fact that right now we have an obvious massive incentive to just cross and have a child and declare them citizen i also don't understand why a foreign diplomat who has a kid here is any different than someone crossing the border illegally and having a kid here um what like and i'm not even saying neither should be citizen but why wouldn't the foreign diplomats kid be a citizen i i don't understand that distinction at all. And I wonder what would happen actually with this court if something were to be taken to them. Because if you were to ask me 10 years ago, less, five years ago, if Roe v. Wade would ever go away, I would have said definitely not. That

seemed unthinkable to me. And yet here we are. Well, the thing that I think is so interesting about the foreign born citizenship question, or the, you know, when nationals of other countries come to the United States and have essentially an anchor baby is this is such a weird thing to fixate on in terms of like how to fix the crisis at the southern border. Like if the question that the moderators pose is what to do about the massive, massive influx of people that has just absolutely surged under the Biden administration attempting to cross the southern border. Not typically just Mexicans. We have Venezuelans. We have people from the Middle East. We have people really coming from all over

the world and fleeing across, attempting to seek asylum at ports of entry. And the thing that I think is so fascinating right now is this has been what's been going on for quite a while. And then there are all of these sort of so-called sanctuary cities in the United States, you know, cities I think that we all live in and have a lot of familiarity with, like New York is this way. The one that you said is the only one that matters, I believe. Yeah, New York, exactly. But it's absolutely crazy. Like they essentially have a law on the books in New York City, I think passed in the 80s, that makes it so that they are supposed to provide refuge, shelter, food, service, social services to anybody who comes here. I'm sorry, but now you have this problem where literally New York's governor, Kathy Hochul, is saying, don't come here. And they're distributing

flyers in Spanish to these people saying, New York is full. There's this crazy tension at the heart. They said, go to more affordable cities with arrows pointing to different cities, including San Francisco. That's the crazy shit to me. I'm not sure whether they were pointing to specific cities or whether the graphic design of it was just like literally anywhere like anywhere else please god do not come do not there's an interesting thing here that i think is do not come do not come i'm gonna come relevant to so many of the themes that like explore all the time at PirateWire, which is, well, a bunch of do-gooder leftists who live in San Francisco or live in New York or live in Los Angeles claim that they just want to constantly let as many immigrants in as possible. And then they run into this huge problem where it's like, well, actually, how do we accommodate this?

You want that and you simultaneously want a massive social safety net. You want a massive welfare state. And literally New York is in this situation where Eric Adams and Kathy Hochul are saying, we don't have the means to support this anymore. And I think this is actually like we're seeing this moment where a bunch of far leftist policies are collapsing on crime and what, you know, as it pertains to sanctuary cities in the welfare state. And to me, it kind of seems like this is fertile territory for people seeking the Republican nomination to go after. So like,

why didn't they? Why did they leave this on the table? Wait, which which part did they leave on the table? They definitely talking about the fact that like, what a crazy damning indictment of New York's policies for New York to say we're a sanctuary city. But no, actually, JK, we're full don't come here. I mean, I think that was maybe just a debate. They were really trying to pack a lot in there. I definitely heard them go after New York quite a bit on this issue. I'm curious how you think about it as a libertarian, because I was, you know, libertarian for many years. I think it's still to some degree my true north, I think, in a perfect world, etc. I'm freedom oriented for sure.

North, I think in a perfect world, et cetera. I'm freedom oriented for sure. I want to maximize that as much as possible. However, we live in a society and it has a lot of structure in place already. One of the things in place is a massive and increasingly large social welfare state, as you just mentioned. Libertarians sort of famously open border way before the left was doing it. The libertarians were on top of it. I was this literal open border guy 10 years ago. But then I had to face the fact that we were very close to getting that policy. In fact, we had already had it to some extent, but there was no way we were ever going to get rid of the social welfare state, which I've even kind of changed my opinion on as the years have gone. But you can't't have both like you can't have open borders in a welfare state without destroying the country it seems to me like that just seems like straight

logic like we don't have the money to pay out every person on the planet who moves here um how do you think about that as a libertarian well what do you mean by open borders so i mean the classic libertarian approach is oh is free markets, like a free country is a literally open border. Sort of move on in and everyone's welcome. There are no quotas. Anyone who comes here can come here and build. So sort of like the US pre, you know, 1850s or so.

Sure. But this is, you know, the population of the planet's like seven plus billion now. And we have a massive diversity. No, no, no. I'm not saying that that's aspirational. I'm just saying, so this is actually a huge pet peeve of mine. I think libertarians use the term open borders sort of like at their own peril, and they end up sort of undermining their case a lot of the times. I think there's definitely a time and a place to do our wonky libertarian aspirational open borders, free movement of people and goods across borders. That is something that I fundamentally want and value.

But I think it's important to remain realistic and tethered to reality. And the way I would frame my own personal immigration beliefs is the fact that we have such long waiting lists for both low skilled and seasonal workers and also high skilled workers attempting to come into this country to work and study, the fact that in some cases, if you're an Indian applying for, you know, you're educated, you went to IIT and you're applying for a visa, you might be waiting for 10 years to come and work at a tech firm in this country. To me, that's a travesty. And that's an example of like a relatively reasonable waitlist. What I see as the ideal is drastically increasing the number

of visas that we hand out to people in a whole bunch of different categories. I think the fact that like, you know, we experience such, we're experiencing shortages of pilots right now, we're experiencing physician shortages. We now we're experiencing physician shortages we're also then experiencing like child care sector worker shortages and i know that sometimes this makes leftists super pissed off but fundamentally i want the ability to like find a nanny for my son um and you know maybe pay below market rate for new york nanny world uh and you know what there's a whole bunch of venezuelans who want to flee socialism who want to come here and work for slightly below current market rate for me, and I want the ability to make that deal. Speaking of pissed off leftists,

we do have a Bernie bro in the chat with us. River, what is your response to Liz? I mean, I think that there's, libertarians are like, love talking about like markets and supply and demand, but then like all of a sudden when it comes to the labor market and immigration they're like there is no supply and demand like demand like the supply is not going to like lower the price of labor it's just not like i it's it's this insane thing where i and in the left is like basically doing this now, too. Like, I mean, Angela Nagle basically got who wrote Kill All Normies. She basically got kicked down the left and called a fascist for writing in American Affairs, an article that basically said, like, it is the leftist position to restrict immigration because it hurts the working class.

It lowers wages. It hurts union density. And like, I think all that's true like there there are plenty of studies that show that um mass immigration of the kind we're like seeing at the southern border so like you know mostly lower skilled like fairly uneducated workers it hurts um working class wages particularly in the black community. And I just feel like that's completely ignored. It's like, they're like, okay, well, what if we pretend that everyone is like actually starting a small business and not- No, I own the consequences that you're describing. I think they are by and large correct. First of

all, I think that there are, in terms of labor market, I think supply and demand absolutely does exist. The problem is like the labor market is so currently distorted by minimum wage loss, but also restrictions on immigration. But the consequences that you're talking about related to displacement and how much this might hurt the working class, I think you're right. I think libertarians need to do a better job of owning the fact that there will be those consequences. I also think actually sometimes people on the right wing, when they talk about the possible influx of crime and criminals and increased cartel activity and stuff, I think that actually libertarians would be intelligent to pay a little

bit more attention to what they're talking about and to maybe support some of the vetting processes that they're seeking. To some degree, I think being overrun by cartels would be a very bad thing, and I don't think it should be that controversial of a statement to say. No, but yeah, to some degree. I love it because you're the moderate libertarian. You're the moderate libertarian. You're like, let's just... Well, I should make a full-throated endorsement of,

I think it's fine to vet people to make sure they're not absolutely insane murderers who are flooding across our borders. And I think the fact that some of my countrymen in Camp Libertarian fail to admit that, I think is a big problem. I mean, really, I think the fact of the matter is there are negative consequences that come with drastically increased immigration. I own those consequences. And I think the net good, it's still a net good. And I think we can kind of look to Canada. I mean, the US foreign extensively on the clown car that we call Canada. I want like a crypto heaven, a crypto and immigration heaven where Justin, like no Justin Trudeau type losers ever get elevated to public office. So that's like my Canadian American vision.

Okay. My Canadian American vision is they are, that's where we keep our resources. They have a fake government that we pretend exists until we need stuff from canada and then it's ours um that is my vision for canada and they don't get a vote um let's i do want to talk about so on the immigration thing i'm kidding by the way don't come for me i don't really want to enslave the canadians like they're basically us i just am playing uh on immigration uh and bad governance there and sanctuary cities one city so far that has escaped more or less unscathed from uh the migration i

don't know how long it can last actually uh it has been san francisco and san francisco has some pretty funny policies in this regard. I remember years ago before COVID, I would take the bus home from work and it would pass a, uh, like a facility. I think it was like a homeless center. Um, maybe it wasn't a homeless center. There was really a church and then like something next to it that felt like a social center of some kind. And, uh, it had a giant banner outside that said, uh, immigrants welcome. And it was a giant banner outside that said, immigrants welcome. And it's a beautiful sentiment. I think it had something to, you might have mentioned the sanctuary city component, which

was very in vogue at the time under the Donald Trump presidency. And outside on the steps were maybe 20 homeless people sleeping. And it was like that every single day that I drove past. And it just kind of, for me, really highlights the politics of San Francisco. It's like this pageantry of goodness and this absolute decay. Like if you have room for immigrants, how do you not have room for the people who live here? Why are they sleeping on the street? Why is that not our priority, right? Like stuff like this, we talk about it a lot. I think one of the central characters in this entire drama of San Francisco is a man named Dean Preston, who I

refer to often as the millionaire Marxist. Sanjana just wrote a great profile of the man. He's on the board of supervisors. Take it away. Yeah. Well, before I get into Dean, I just want to say, I don't know if San Francisco has actually escaped the wave of immigration because like 90 percent of their fentanyl dealers are from Honduras. That's an aside for later. Yeah. Dean Preston, as you said, he's a member of the Board of Supervisors, which is like San Francisco City Council. It's a very powerful legislative body in the city. And each supervisor represents a different district. So Dean represents District 5, which is

a very heterogeneous cross-section of San Francisco. It includes neighborhoods like the Haight-Ashbury and Japantown, and also includes poor neighborhoods like the Western Edition and since last year, the Tenderloin, which is a very infamous part of San Francisco known for its open air drug markets, lots of homelessness, and some of the most depraved scenes that you can see on the streets of America, unfortunately, in this day and age. So Dean's responsible for those neighborhoods. I think a good line to sort of summarize who he is for someone who's not familiar with him is he's the city's only openly democratic socialist legislator. And he's also a multimillionaire who, according to public records, has at least like $4 million in stock at Apple, Cisco, IBM, and Microsoft,

despite his claim that capitalism is the root of all evil and we need to combat the parasitic 1%. He owns a $3.4 million house in Alamo Square, which is one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in San Francisco. He has a house in Long Island. He and his wife have bought and sold hundreds of acres of property in Medellino County up in the North Bay. And he's a trust fund baby. He grew up in Greenwich Village in a co-op building that his parents owned. He went to Bowdoin and then UC Hastings and has done public interest law for his career before getting into politics. And he brands himself as an advocate for the poor and dispossessed. But his voting record shows that he's basically the opposite. He's been one of the most consistent opponents of affordable housing in San Francisco.

So San Francisco has some of the most restrictive zoning laws in the country, which make it like very, very difficult to build anything there. And Dean has been a big proponent of entrenching those restrictive zoning laws. And he's blocked almost 50,000 proposed affordable housing. Housing in general, he comes at it from this perspective where he says, it's not that I don't want housing. I just don't want housing for the rich. But of course, the city has essentially prohibited the construction of housing to such a degree

and made it so hard that the only way to build housing that actually turns a profit is to build these giant fucking loser condos for rich people. This is the system they created. And then they're like, no, we can't build those. So that leaves us with nothing. And that is, I mean, that is what the track record of people like Dina is, is just a constant blocking of housing and so yeah we have a yeah and he also blocks

housing in these very covert um ostensibly progressive ways so there was a very infamous case at a site called the hub in san francisco which they wanted to rezone for affordable housing it's basically just a bunch of like abandoned parking lots um where like people were using drugs and shit and dean uh got word of this apparently from an angry resident in this neighborhood who didn't want affordable housing being built and he asked for an equity study um to be done which in a city like san francisco when you ask for you know an equity study or an environmental study that's basically code for like shut this shit down for the next decade um and the equity study or an environmental study, that's basically code for like, shut this shit down for the next decade. And the equity study, like, you know, it was like five or six years later,

it still hadn't really gotten off the ground. And, or like, I don't know, it was maybe two or three years later, but years later, it hadn't got off the ground. And construction still hasn't really taken off at the hub. So it's that kind of. The profile was really well-timed because he just got into a huge controversy online. Controversy? He was massively ratioed after he suggested the solution to the car break-in problem in San Francisco was to convince San

Franciscans to stop leaving things in their car. And that, I mean, I received some pushback for criticizing this. People were like, of course you shouldn't leave things in your car. And it's like, I guess that's true. But also the bigger thing here is we need to do something about the people breaking into cars. And I think that that is like, that is the core thing that has animated people in this sort of anti-Dean Preston wave. This is what has brought people from all political stripes together. I think everybody's over the sort of widespread decay of basic civility. And yet, Elon Musk suggesting that he was going to give some money to the anti-Dean Preston campaign seems to have galvanized the left. Liz, did you follow this at all? And

what do you make of it? Well, I think it's just a classic Nepo baby move to have gone to Bowdoin, right? Like this like bougie beach bag liberal arts school in Maine where they do like these fucking like lobster feasts every semester. Like I hate that whole, all the mental imagery that this brings up is horrible. No, I mean, this is a classic tale in San Francisco. I think it's crazy to me, even though this story about how people like Dean Preston block housing, even though, you know, it gets reported by people like you guys,

and we do a lot of this at Reason, it's stunning to me that there is still this entire contingent of people who don't see with any sort of clarity the relationship between things like CEQA and environmental review laws and these equity studies and the fact that housing ends up being very expensive, not just for poor people, not just for rich people, literally for everyone. I mean, you look at the median price of a home in San Francisco, isn't it like $1.2 million? For a one bedroom. Yeah, I wouldn't call that a home, but yeah.

Yeah, no, I mean, that's like stunning to me. And I live in New York City, which is a notoriously, you know, warped and awful housing market as well. But the fact that like San Francisco is eye popping, even when I, you know, that's my standard of comparison. It's just, I mean, it's so clear that in so many of these big cities in LA and San Francisco, in New York, we have totally distorted the housing markets and made it so that essentially you are creating this sameness. You're creating this pajama class of upper middle class laptop workers who are the only people who can really afford to live there. And so like say goodbye to like the Lou Reed bohemian days or all of the like hippies in

the 70s who used to live in San Francisco who made it an interesting place. It's really becoming closed off to them. But obviously, the main problem with this is that you make it so that poor people don't have any place to go. And then they use all of these top-down solutions to attempt to engineer a solution to this problem.

At like, you know, when building building new construction forcing developers to set aside a certain number of units that are income restricted to cater to the poor okay i'm sorry but you're just distorting the housing market further instead of actually fixing the underlying issue yeah and it's it's just crazy that the it's all in service the rhetoric is in service of this larp for the the working people who can't afford to live in your city because of your policies and and it's it seems like it still resonates with people so elon musk uh by entering the debate online so the local politics people went nuts when dean said the car breaking thing. Dean Preston enters or Elon Musk enters the conversation. He says, I'm going to give some money to the anti Dean Preston campaign.

And Dean manages to flip that around and use it in his favor because he is LARPing as this as this hardcore Marxist who's like in it for the people. And he's in it for the working class. Again, the working class that does not exist san francisco is a land of uh non-profits who say they're helping the homeless and don't and rich tech workers that is kind of what and then landlords people who've existed there forever because of the tax codes um that's what you have in san francisco he turns this around and is like i am being attacked by the billionaires and it it seems to be working in his favor uh what do you guys make of that river have you did you follow that at all and i mean it seems like you should naturally yeah i mean i've seen it i mean there's this whole like lineage it's a of like rich communist space i

mean frederick engels owned a factory in scotland like i i mean this goes all the way back to the beginning you had in laos uh like a prince led the communist revolution um of course uh i get the weather underground mostly like upper middle class white kids it's it's all like a larp and like it doesn't i mean not always i mean say what you will about stalin at least he grew up poor. But I mean, Stalin also wouldn't have said that. At least Stalin didn't go to Bowdoin, damn it. Right. And by the way, Stalin wouldn't have told you to lock up your car. Like, you know, they had, say what you will about like Stalinist Russia.

Like if you stole something, like you were going to the Drew Log, they would lock you up. like you were going to the drew log uh they would lock you up um but yeah i mean it's it's in it's it's interesting in dean preston's case because he's actually like serving his own interests as a millionaire in san francisco um through all these laws but he's able to cast um the pursuit of his own uh like class interests as uh the pursuit of class the class interests of the working class which again like barely exists in san francisco uh so i mean there's like a there's like an irony to that and um also i whenever i see people with like dean preston money uh fighting with uh people with the lms money i'm like neither neither one of you have to work a day in your lives ever again, and your kids probably won't ever have to either. So just you people, it doesn't matter.

You know what I mean? It's like, there's no meaningful distinction between a multimillionaire and a multibillionaire in terms of like, do you actually have to worry about any economic issue personally in your life and like the answer is usually no so clear that nobody hates a billionaire more than a millionaire they're the ones who are right yeah you see this you you see this in the actor strike who is that the uh i it was the two girls on that like sort of wonky hbo show and they were like or the wacky they were like super into Hillary Clinton and uh what is their what was Broad City yes what what is the girl with the curly hair that actress

so that girl's going off about the billionaires and uh sort of characterizing them as the re like the billionaires are are are really um they are uh enslaving us she's doing really really aggressive language and she uses for example matt damon that was like her she brought like even people like matt damon and i thought like matt damon is not oppressed what are we talking about here this is crazy like this is just intro this is just intro rich warfare i don't care about this i refuse to care this reminds me a little bit of the very recent AOC soundbite, which for whatever reason, I don't think people paid that much attention to, where she was taken to task by an interviewer for having a Tesla, for having the Tesla be the electric vehicle she bought,

as opposed to something union made, an American made. she bought as opposed to something union made, an American made. No, our car was purchased during the pandemic when travel before a vaccine had come out. So travel between New York and Washington, the safest way that we had determined was an EV, but that was prior to some of the new models coming out on the market that had the range available. But we're actually looking into trading in our car now. So. And she was so hilarious because she she responded in like the sort of classic, like the sort of leftist, like, well, actually, let me educate you type way. And she's like, well, you know, this is really what served our needs at the time because the range was much better. But actually, we're looking into swapping it out because we do really want to live our

values. And it's like you're full of shit. And also, you just told on yourself because the Tesla, the range was better. Oh, you mean that this non-union made car is superior than other things on the market. Your revealed preferences are kind of the same as a whole bunch of other people's. And you're just such an elitist, right? At least least pretend a little bit better to be this like Bronx working class girl. Bronx working class girls don't have Teslas, lady. They also don't go to the Met Gala in a fancy dress. Like, come on, the eat the rich dress. I'll never, I will never fucking forget that dress. It's an incredible grift and she's done a great job. Honestly, I will curry favor with River over here and hand it to Bernie.

At least Bernie, you know, at least, you know, you got to hand it to Stalin and you got and hand it to Bernie, at least Bernie, you know, at least, you know, you got to hand it to Stalin and you got to hand it to Bernie. At least he like was terribly lazy and sort of like impoverished sitting in like a little one room cottage in Vermont for a gazillion years with like a mattress on the floor. He was literally like a mattress on the floor, bro, until he was like 40. Yeah, so I do authentically a poor loser. And we love that about him. So I do want to appreciate that. He was authentically a poor loser. And we love that about him.

I want to talk about some of their policy, though, in the context specifically of actual public goods. So transit. River, you just wrote a fantastic piece. I encourage everyone to read it on the Bright Line in Florida, which is a high speed, it's barely high speed rail, but it constitutes as high speed rail that is now connecting Miami to Orlando. Sort of, it seems like bucking the trend of Americans not being able to build new infrastructure.

You placed it or talked about it in the context of California's high-speed rail disaster. Do you want to just break that down for us? Sure. So California high-speed rail project was, voters approved that in 2008. It's been 15 years. They spent $9.8 billion and not one mile of track has been laid. So this gave people the impression that like America just can't build high speed rail. Like they're, this is they're like, that's in headlines. America can't build high speed rail. Why America can't build high speed rail. And really what people meant is California can't build high-speed rail. Why America can't build high-speed rail? And really what people meant is California can't build high-speed rail.

They're really the only ones doing it. The Brightline, which is a private company in Florida, they recently finished a connection between Miami and Orlando. So now Florida and a private company have created something that California could not. now Florida and a private company have created something that California could not. That said, the Bright Line went $4 billion over budget and took nine years longer than they said it was going to. So it's not exactly like, it's a success in that it exists. It's a success in comparison to California. Like under any other circumstances, people would be like, wow, this, and to California.

Like under any other circumstances, people would be like, wow, you went way over budget and also took years longer than you expected it to. That doesn't sound great. But it's the standards, the bar has been lowered so much by California

that like even this thing that took forever to build and was way more expensive is a success and um so i go through and i go through all of um the reasons why this you know could be and you could argue that you know the free market has something to do with it brightline had obligations to its uh private investors bondholders to actually finish the project whereas uh california i guess can just lie to people and say that it's it's going to be built forever but really i think that it's it's incompetence like our government has built

built big infrastructure projects most countries that have high-speed rail, those systems have been built by the government. For instance, in France, their national rail is nationalized. It was built by the government. It's run by the government. And the French advisors who came in and were advising California on their high-speed rail project. And they got pissed off eventually and left and said that they were going to North Africa because it was less politically dysfunctional. And then they helped Morocco build a high-speed rail system in a matter of a couple of years.

matter of a couple of years. Essentially, what California's problem is, is that they have embraced this politics of endless inclusion and limit, or I'm sorry, scratch that, they've embraced this politics of endless deference and limitless inclusion so we have to serve everybody we have to please everybody everyone is included everybody gets a contract and you know everybody's needs has to be met it's

not more important that random small cities in central California get railed. And it is that we actually build what we said we were going to build, which is a connection between San Francisco and LA. It's this, it's the same problem really that's at the root of all of California's

problems. I mean, you look at the homelessness issue where it's like, Oh, we're just going to give money to a billion different NGOs all over the place and they're going to fix it. And everybody who comes here, we have to help everyone. And it's this just totally incoherent system of governance that is only works because california is so wealthy in any other place in the world like this would just completely collapse in and on itself it's i actually compared the uh most absurd points of like soviet bureaucracy favorably to like what california's construction because at the end of it at the very least like you would end up with a product like you know what i mean like this is inefficient as like the soviet union was at the very least they could like build a train but like california can't even

do that like they literally like socialism can like get you a train uh capitalism could get you a train californiaism cannot build you anything it's i think so if you want get you a train. Capitalism could get you a train. Californianism cannot build you anything. It's, I think, so if you want to build a train, high-speed rail from California or from, you want to build high-speed rail from San Francisco to Los Angeles, you're going to make people unhappy. And I think maybe that's the weird thing that

Californians don't know how to grapple with. Specifically, I mean, the governance of California doesn't know how to grapple with. There are going, the governance of California doesn't know how to grapple with. There are going to be towns along that that route that don't want the train there for any number of reasons. They don't like the look of it. They don't like the sound of it. They have some invented environmental grievance that they're going to raise.

There are going to be towns that are not on that path that feel left out. As you also discussed in the piece when they sort of moved around, they take a detour into the fucking desert. Right. out as you also discussed in the piece when they sort of moved around they take a detour into the fucking desert right so there's like some suburb out there that like an la county commissioner owns so they're like we have to just like reroute into this i think when you say you know the problem is endless inclusion and deference it's it's that is what like to successfully create infrastructure for the greatest number of people, you're going to necessarily make some people upset. You will never have 100% sort of a 100% yes vote from everybody.

No American public infrastructure project would have achieved this, including things like the interstate highway system, for example, like that, that wouldn't, there were many people who were opposed to that. The rail, the cross, the cross continental rail, which was private at the time, but like that, these things, these things upset people. And in Florida, what you have is the support of the government. People were upset about the bright line and continue to be upset about the bright line. People are complaining about the bright line right now. I saw it this morning, um, because a bunch of people have been walking on the trains and getting killed and they're like we need to shut the bright line down and it's like i mean we don't people should stop walking on the

train uh train tracks so we can have stuff in our society like we need to have we need to have public trains um people were upset in florida every step of the way and continue to be so and the government just they were sued by two different counties over the way and continue to be so. And the government just supported the line. They were sued by two different counties over like, and they did the same thing they did in California. It was like, Oh, it's,

we need an environmental study. It was one of the things. And then they, I think it was Indian river County sued because they said that the fundraise, the, the way that they issued the bonds wasn't correct. And just all of this stuff that would like meant to slow it down and did slow it down to a certain extent.

Liz, what do you make of, sorry, you want to wrap it up before I just have a question for Liz? And I was just going to say, like the difference between Brightline and California is that Brightline was like, okay, no, we're going to fight all of this in court. And California is just rolling over every time anybody raises an objection. Liz, what do you make of it as, I mean, an anarchist who doesn't believe in the concept of public goods? What do you make of the dueling trains, Florida versus California? Well, first of all, my main takeaway from this is just that I want River to report out all of these types of stories because this was excellent reporting. It was really, really, really well done.

And Reason produced a documentary on this, a short 10-minute documentary on the Brightline project and sat down with the CEO. And I frankly would recommend both watching the Reason offering and then also reading River's account because I think yours definitely comes down a little bit more critical, a little bit tougher on Brightline. But I think both are really useful. And it's a really fascinating infrastructure project. I do think your fundamental takeaway about like Californianism is so destructive, and especially that practice that has become so commonplace of rolling over and just taking it, just, you know, basically succumbing to the citizen's veto, the heckler's veto, and refusing to have ambitious projects. It is so obvious that California is squandering the upper hand that it had. You're right. It is able to sort of coast on its wealth. But my question is, for how much

longer? When we're already seeing crazy out-migration from that state, at what point does the coasting stop? And at what point do they have to stop biting the hands that feed? We also see this so much. I've been following San Francisco implementing that crazy tax on, I guess, executives at companies where they make more than 100 times the median employee salary in San Francisco. And one of the obvious consequences of this is that you have people leaving San Francisco. you have people leaving San Francisco. I've also studied a fair amount of like capital flight in Scandinavia. And like Norway has been jacking up their taxes lately, specifically on ultra millionaires and billionaires. And so guess what they do? They flee to Switzerland. What would you do in that situation? Right. And so I think that to some degree, this is an underappreciated story that I wish more people would focus on, which is like, when you bite the hand that feeds, there are unintended, there are negative unintended consequences that result from

that. I do think it's fair for you to throw some cold water onto the Brightline project and say, like, look, what a bummer that the bar has been set so low in the US that that is considered successful. At the same time, one thing that I do think is really interesting is that Brightline is obviously private, but as far as I understand it, the ticket prices are sort of kept pretty low and the idea is that it's supposed to be affordable to people of all different income levels in Florida. So in order to take a three-hour trip, you pay 20 bucks. It definitely feels mixed private well no it's like it's like 79 from uh from miami to uh orlando and i mean that's something that some people have that in my the comments of my article people were like yeah you it's cheaper to just drive i mean i guess if

you don't have a car like you know but i mean i personally as somebody who lives in south florida i if i want to go to orlando i would probably just drive because it really i mean a round trip would be like over 150 dollars so i mean i don't know how economically feasible it's gonna be but i realized i was looking at the kids prices but i should look at actual adult prices and not try to just like traffic children across the state of Florida like a total weirdo. No. Okay. Fair enough.

I do think it's interesting considering like how will driverless cars change the equation for people? That sort of seems like this interesting thing where it's like, will Brightline essentially be obsolete or totally pointless 10 years from now? I don't know. That is given Californianism. Is that the word that we're using? Doesn't take the entire country and ban them pretty much everywhere. I think this is the next major war that we're going to see politically, at least when it comes to tech, post the antitrust stuff.

Self-driving cars are coming. The experiments are already happening in San Francisco. People are already mobilized to stop them. And you're going to see this kind of come up everywhere you go. And I really would not be surprised if this became a major, a major position in, you know, you want to say Democratic Party politics, but you have Tucker Carlson coming out against self-driving trucks and things like this. This is a very populist right-wing position as well. I think there's maybe bipartisan consensus, at least at the extremes, to stop this kind of thing. And I wouldn't be surprised if they succeed. I almost feel like we're being a little bit too nice to the state of California here, just in that I don't think those $9.6 billion just

disappeared into the ether. I think there probably like a vast bureaucratic structure of people who are benefiting and getting salaries from this money um no it's it's over a thousand they they the way i put this i cited an article too because it's impossible to like track down i guess without doing a foia like exactly where every dollar is going but they do brag on their own website that the money was invested um in the California economy through over 1,000 private firms so this is basically just a massive like giveaway and for the people like complaining that um you know the Florida Bright Line project isn't um isn't good somehow because of private company benefits. Private companies have benefited more in California because they've gotten $9.8 billion to do literally fucking nothing.

I think what wasn't one of these organizations voted employer of the year or something. I just saw this link that Isaac shared in our chat. It just it it it seems not it's so bad. It seems not real. But that's California, man. It is like the distillation of American luck. It can just lumber on with just the worst policy in the country. The resources are there and the people are there. Well, for now, as Liz mentioned. I'm going to give the last thought to you, Liz, before we wrap this week. I was just going to say that I think it's super interesting that we will see with driverless cars

and to the extent that projects like Brightline get completed, this displacement of truckers, for example, and sort of like lower skilled, but moderately paid workers, at the same time, we'll probably see a lot of AI displacing, highly skilled laptop class workers. And then we were also talking earlier in this conversation about one of the unintended consequences or second order impacts from letting a whole bunch of immigrants in and drastically increasing immigration will be the fact that a bunch of working class Americans, including you, cited Black Males River. And I

think it's true. There will be lots of people put out of jobs. And so I think one of the most interesting things that we'll need to pay really good attention to is what are the political undercurrents that emerge from this time of rapid displacement? And how rapid will this displacement on both ends really be? Will this be something that feels earth shattering and quickly done? Or will this be something that happens gradually with people feeling as though they have enough time to adjust? But I think how it happens and to which groups it happens will have massive implications for the types of politics that we have and the types of policies we pursue. So it's kind of like

we're either fucked on both ends or possibly we're in a time of like extreme innovation to come. And it's a matter of how we navigate these choppy waters. And I am fairly pessimistic based off of the debate from last night well on that note we'll catch you guys here next week and i promise a few more white pills thanks for listening guys and uh follow liz on twitter liz what's your handle shout it out liz wolf reason all right later guys