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Subscribe, and thank you so much for listening to another season
of reversing climate change. Hello and welcome to reversing
climate. I'm Ross, Kenyan, Paul gamble
CEO of nori and one of my fellow co-founders is here with me.
Hi Paul. Hey Rosco.
Hello. We have the distinct pleasure of
having Matthew yglesias on today, co-founder of box host of
the podcast, the weeds writer journalist and author of 1
billion, Americans, the case for thinking bigger.
Hey, Matt hello. Hello.
Thanks for coming on the show. We're so happy to have you.
I'm really glad to be here. Yes, indeed.
Well, this book we We have thoughts about it.
We care about this issue a lot. We think it's really important,
we like that. You tried to thread a very
unique needle on it and we were thinking that maybe the best way
to get started is if you could run us through the basics of
what you're trying to accomplish with it.
Okay. So the point of 1 billion
Americans is that there should be 1 billion Americans, you
know, and so you can say, like, why why 1 billion Americans yet?
Basic reason, look, we have a world of sort of Growing
geopolitical competition with China in particular, to an
extent. India coming up there, too.
It's because we finally have rapid population growth in some
very large countries that have historically been quite poor.
This is mostly good. It has reduced poverty around
the world. You know, it's something to
celebrate but the sort of dream of the 90s that economic growth
in China would lead to liberalization and
democratization and an Embrace of a All based Global Order that
is totally not happened. And no, American political
leaders are saying, oh, that's fine.
We'll just be number two. Let's submit to Chinese
hegemony, but they're also known talk.
Realistically about what you're going to do about it, right?
So like Obama said well we need to win the future with I don't
know what it was. Like some grant for people to
get technical education and Community College but she don't
think it's a fine idea, we should do that but it's
ridiculous. Compared to the scale of the
problem. Trump was like, maybe going to
ban Tick-Tock or then now maybe he won't.
And, you know, maybe we should maybe we shouldn't.
But taking on China's video, me maps is like not it's not going
to get it done, you know, if we think about the fundamentals,
it's like, you know, China is about Mexico in terms of per
capita living standards, maybe Bulgaria depending on how you
look at it better food than Bulgaria, though.
So maybe closer to Mexico and that sense.
But there's this huge great power Because there's 1.2
billion Chinese people, so I say, let's Embrace yellow.
You look historically right the United States really big deal in
the world Canada, nice country, not a big deal.
Why? We're big deal because we have
10 times their population and we have 10 times the population
because our leaders historically made it a priority to get people
to move here and so I think we should look going forward.
We should support families with children.
We should do more in terms. Of paid leave and terms
preschool in terms of child allowance so that people can
have two to three kids per family.
Which is what they say they want instead of one or two, which is
what they actually have right now.
And we should be more open to immigration and we should see
this as the real American greatness.
Agenda is to grow the population.
We're not obviously going to triple it overnight because it
takes time to build houses of things, but we should aim for
aggressive population growth rather than settling for for
stagnation and National Decline. And that is the book and this is
usually when people start yelling at me about climate
change. So, oh yeah.
I'm going to save that Downstream or just a little bit.
I really like about this book that you state your assumptions
and your values, very close to up front and the book which I
find is weirdly uncommon. So I do admire that, but you
chose to frame this book in geopolitical, terms about world
leadership and competition between countries.
Which I associate you in boxes, being a relatively Progressive
outfit, but that doesn't seem to be something that we think of,
in fact, sometimes I think of the left, I almost get the sense
that they wouldn't mind at the United States gave up its World
hegemon status. So I don't know.
How is it reaction been to this portion of it.
How did you land there? Well, so if I took can play
psychiatrist, I think a lot of people on the left would be more
comfortable with a world in which They themselves lived in a
country that was more, like, Canada or New Zealand or
Denmark. Like like a country that just
doesn't have hegemonic aspirations.
They're not comfortable with that aspect of the American
national project and so they don't like to talk about it at
the same time when you kind of Bear Down, are there people in
America who say will be better if China was hegemonic?
Would it be better if we had a global Military?
Hegemon, they cared even Less about human rights in the United
States. That was more autocratic more
racist and like, no, right. Nobody actually thinks that it's
just also not something that Progressive minded people want
to embrace. And, you know, I had a professor
a long time ago by the name of Glen Morgan and he wrote a
really interesting Book 15 years ago and it's called the idea of
a European super-state and it was encouraging, the European
union to become more integrated, much more integrated.
And have like a single European military entity, you know?
And so there would be like, 'you aircraft carriers and an EU
nuclear Arsenal and European like Euro Navy Seals and his
whole argument. You know, this is the bush era.
His argument was that like America, you know, has become
this like, quasi, Rogue State and we can't count on the
Americans anymore. So we need to do it for
ourselves, and that's a super interesting argument.
And if I were European, I think I would be doing takes all the
time. How Professor Morgan had that,
right? But one way or another like,
that's not what happened, right? We got brexit.
We've had a sort of loosening of the European common border
strategy and you know, so from the American perspective it's
like you sort of got to take it or leave it right.
There isn't some other like nicer country that's going to
come along and be hegemon. We're not going to have Iceland
become the world's number one power.
There's only two real contenders and America is by far.
I think Think the better horse to bet on, hmm.
Okay, already anticipating angry emails.
We'll see what happens with that.
Okay, we'll go into the position now, where people going to.
Now start yelling about climate change will play that role for
you here. Thank God.
Yeah. Yeah I'll step into the breach
and do this for you. So a lot of people that we speak
with they tend to have very strong sympathies towards D
growth. Economics about humans making a
strategic Retreat. You could even say from growth
from a consumption. In and living simpler lives.
This is definitely more of a wizardly rather than profit
approach. We develop technology, we invite
people in, they immigrants start businesses, they develop
technology. We're all better off and we
develop new alternatives to polluting Enterprises.
Is that broadly your position? Yes.
I mean you know I think there's a lot that can be said about
de-growth. I tend not to spend that much of
my time focusing on why it's wrong.
Because Cuz, you know, I think of the actual politics of the
United States like the big issue is that the American government
is doing like barely anything to combat climate change and we
should, in fact, be doing a lot. But I think it would happens is
that because, you know, we have this tremendous gap between sort
of culture and politics, right? So it feels to a lot of people
that it's like, when we've been talking about climate change for
all these years and we're not solving the problem.
So obviously, The problem is borderline unsolvable and
therefore we need D growth somehow and and that will solve
it. But like the truth is that what
we need to do like it's frustrating that we're not doing
it but it's like we need to do the things that boring sensible.
People have been saying, we need to do for like a bajillion
years. Like, we need to price pollution
externalities and we need to invest money in technology, is
unlike its super tedious. It's like I'd people like want
the answer to be more exciting than that because the politics
is hard but it's just hard and like if we price externalities
and invest in technology effectively then we can have a
prosperous growing society, that mitigates climate change and
responsible way. And if we don't do that stuff,
like asking everyone to go live on a farm and compost or
something like we're thicker sweaters.
It's like, that's not a real idea.
It doesn't mean He said, like the country of Vietnam is not
going to stop industrializing because American
environmentalist would like them to write.
One of the inevitable outcomes of larger scale.
Climate change, is mass migration from place to place,
and we had Bryan Caplan on the show while back to talk about
his book open borders. So, if you want 2/3 of a billion
more people living in America, I'm assuming you're going to
have to have more immigrants. Where do you think you might
differ from kaplan's approach? Whoa, so I mean, I agree with
Brian about a lot of things, he's an economist, I think his
economic analysis of immigration is really, really good.
I think he quotes me and his book and I quote him in my book.
So on one level like we're very similar on the other hand, like
Brian is a hardcore anti-nationalist.
So I think his vision of immigration is in part about
sort of dissolving, The American Nation, And in a kind of
important way where as I see it the opposite way that like, I
want to strengthen the American Nation.
I think that people moving here has been a source of national
strength. I think that people are right to
be skeptical of the idea of totally indiscriminately opening
up the borders, but that black we should, in fact, be much more
open to immigration, you know, both to make the country.
I mean, primarily because like it will make America a better
stronger, greater, whatever name.
Nation, right? It isn't the population leveling
off a good thing, in some people's eyes, like, break that
down, what you were just saying, like, why would it make us
stronger and how does having children relate to that too?
Sure, you know, I mean, I think the most basic way that it makes
you stronger ready. Makes us stronger country is
Market size, right? The, the United States for a
long time for about a hundred years, a little bit more has
been the world's number one economy.
And we've been the world's number one economy for so long
that we don't Think about that or what it means, right?
But a lot of privileges come with that like anyone anywhere,
who invents anything wants to bring it to the American market,
right? It's just a fact because our
Market is so big secondarily when our government wants to
regulate things, you know, if we want to say, okay, everyone has
to use high efficiency. Dishwashers companies will
complain about that because they don't want to do it, but if we
tell them they have to do it, they will go do it right?
New Zealand. Can't just order people to
change their whole manufacturing process because they want you to
nobody cares about the New Zealand Market, they'll just
walk away, right? So, they've got a nice little
country there with a lot of sheep.
And the occasional movie shoots there and a high standard of
living. But in World terms, they have to
take or leave the world as they find it.
And it's been a world shaped by the United States, which is
fairly benign as a world for sort of nice guy developed.
Is to live in. China is less of a nice guy and
they are growing. And you see, they have become
already the world's number one market for movie tickets.
And so there was a great report in pain America.
That pain America put out in August about the consequences of
this. And it means that right now
Hollywood shapes their movies. According to the demands of
Chinese censors, right? The PRC movie censorship office
serves the role of the EPA for Like we regulate dishwashers,
they regulate the content or movies and as they get bigger,
they get more influence. So right now, they tell Disney,
you can't have a Tibetan character in Doctor Strange, so
they change it. So the ancient one is no longer
Tibetan. It's played by Tilda Swinton and
you know, she has no determinant ethnicity.
But as he keeps going right, as they get bigger, do they start
telling Disney? Well, ABC News can't cover human
rights in Tibet. Do they tell NBC Universal that
you? MSNBC, CNBC can't cover these
kind of issues. And what do we say, right?
These are profit-seeking companies, if that's what they
got to do to get in the China market like that's what they'll
do you see with American technology companies ride?
So Apple has this big song and dance about user privacy but
there's just a huge exception for phone sold in the China
market and if the China Market gets bigger and bigger and China
starts, telling them look to get access to the China Market.
You have to let the Chinese government's, Snoop on
everyone's data, not just for China.
Chinese phones. But for phones sold all
throughout Asia, like, is Apple going to say no to that?
This is, I think the basic concern that you've got to have
a lot of countries get by just fine with being small, but
that's because America has been the big country, right?
And I think it's in our interest, it's in our interest
to coordinate better with allies.
I mean, there's a lot of like, Council on Foreign Relations
type stuff. You could think about here that
we're not doing, but basically like the fundamentals of
national strength, come down. Population size times per capita
GDP, right? So we all talk all the time
about how to grow our GDP, you know, we have some ideas but
it's hard. It's hard to grow as fast as a
poor country. That's catching up, but we can
grow our population, Matt. You kind of sound like a
conservative here. What gives very conservative?
I'm super duper duper right wing in this book.
Except that my two ideas that we should expand the welfare state
to take more care of parents and children and then we should be
more open to immigrants so those are Upper left wing ideas, so,
you know, so, everyone loves you.
I'm beloved by all know. I'm look, it's been interesting.
So, the reason that this is a good book to purchase and read
Because that's the point of all this is that so much shit that
you can buy today. It's like, it's so tedious, you
know, so like the bestseller list is like, 11 books about how
Donald Trump is a maniac. And I think one book about have
Liberals are destroying the country and everybody knows what
those books say. You know, like you don't need to
read them you don't even need to have them on the Shelf like
everybody knows you already think about Trump.
It's boring. This is a book that you know I
got some very good reviews and some right-wing Publications I
got some bad reviews and some left-wing ones I got vice versa.
I got Libertarians who like it, Libertarians who hate it, social
conservatives who like it social conservatives who hate it and
it's because it is actually an interesting book that is not
just like tedious. Station of the same talking
point. So people have taste and
distinction from all political Persuasions love this book.
And, you know, knuckle-dragging cretins from all around the
Spectrum, think it's bad and no, ruthless ruthless.
Yeah, most of the thinker's. I come back to time and time
again. Are those that I find it really
any issue that breaks neatly into what I can imagine the
right. Will say and what I imagine the
left will say I know is just going to be a boring played out
thing. We've been debating for decades
and I really don't want to To play in it.
And I love that people like Wendell Berry or Dorothy day
that I find very surprising. I'm just like, oh, I don't
always agree. But this is a at least you're
saying something new and I respect that and there's
definitely a lot of that in this book.
So if you like that, I'm gonna pay you that compliment.
Matt, you're also in that category of poking, everyone in
the eye and giving everyone a hug too.
Yeah. I mean, I just like, you know,
It's a weird thing about being a like politics writer like I am
which is that Agents come after you every once in a while.
They're like oh you should write a book but so many of the books
that I think people in my line of work, right?
Just end up being boring and our takes are better consumed in in
short form. So I wanted to write a book that
was interested, you know? So I like I wasn't writing one
and I wasn't writing one. And then I came up with this
idea that I actually thought was interesting.
I have a lot of ideas that I think are true and correct.
Act. But like a 200 Pages for me of
like Donald Trump seems like he doesn't know what he's doing or
wow. Republicans.
They really like cutting taxes on rich people but also their
kind of racist. It's like, who cares?
You know, those are tweets, those aren't books.
I love Twitter, I love tweets. But like this is a book.
It's not that long of a book but even a short book is like it's
kind of a lot of pages. So I wanted to make it
interesting you know to put forward a proposition that I
think is correct. That we should have a billion
Americans that people have a lot of questions about, and then I
tried it like, actually go through it and be like, here's
how we can change housing to accommodate them.
Here's how we can change Transportation policy to
accommodate them. Here's what I think, the like
Eco pessimists and dystopian is get wrong.
Here's what the cultural decline is, get wrong.
Here's what you ought to know about immigration economics.
Here's what you don't know about welfare state design.
It's like, you know, it's chock full of facts and figures and
information Brad plumbers climate writer at the Times.
He paid me. I thought a great compliment the
other day. He said, like separate from the
argument. I learned a lot from this book,
which is good because like, Brad's a super smart guy, you
know, he knows a lot and it's good to write a book that people
can learn from. Okay.
One of the things that I noticed in reading this book is how much
it made me appreciate cities. So, I've basically always been a
city dweller, either Suburban exurban actually in the heart of
various cities, and all I can see now in spending time in
cities, is the squalor and the noise.
And I find them to be very frustrating.
And I've since moved a little bit farther out of the core of
Seattle. So it's more quiet and I'm more.
Okay, with living in the proximity of the city.
But I spend so much time on this show well, like, talking about.
Wendell Berry comes basically every episode and this sort of
idealized rural existence. And I need someone to bring us
back to the center of that because I think I've overdone
it. So convinced me that cities are
actually a really important and good thing I said you see great
the think about were living Is that?
I don't know. I don't want to be too
provocative here. I know I go.
Okay, I won't be mean about it. So okay, you have cities right?
And in the cities we would all starve to death if not for the
farmers in the countryside. You know that's just a fact.
We need those Countryside. People at the same time, the
people living in the countryside would all be dirt, bore
subsistence Farmers. If not for cities and urban
life, you know, you can have an idealized vision.
That's the countryside. But you can also look, I mean,
you can look in a lot of Asian countries to this day and see
people living in Huts doing back-breaking labor, 10 hours a
day. In rice patties, you know growth
stunted because I have no protein and that's the natural
state of Rural Life, right? We Elevate above that.
The reason that life in rural America or rural Australia,
Canada France, whatever it might be, is actually pretty good.
Is that we have like Technologies and wealth that
come out of cities and ideas and things like that.
And that's just a cities like in World historical terms, like
agglomerations of human beings. Right now in America, we also
have a lot of very specific things about Central.
City municipalities versus suburbs that are near them, but
obviously like the whole like the suburbs exist as part of an
urban Fabric and it's totally reasonable for like some people
Live over here and some people are live over there.
You know, you want to find a neighborhood that sort of suits
you. But the point is that like the
city has to exist for all of that to make sense.
So I basically agree with you on that and I've always lived in
cities and I tend to like cities and whenever I think about the
idea of moving to a more rural area, I get a little scared,
basically scared of missing out on different cultural things and
being close to the amenities that I like.
But one Of the frustrations. I have living in the city is how
cities are governed. And, you know, before we started
recording this, you who are starting to share an opinion
about like how the Los Angeles metro system is poorly run.
And here in Seattle, we've committed to an over 50 billion
dollar light rail system. That won't even be fully
operational until like, almost the year 2040.
And then meanwhile, compared to China your foil in this book who
are able to build mass transit systems in like a week.
Half, what are we doing wrong? How do we improve that?
What are the mechanics of making cities?
Work better for their residents? Yeah, I mean there's a lot that
we are doing wrong. I mean, the point I was making,
you know, we're talking before is that like I think Progressive
minded. People are aware that big cities
in America are not like perfectly governed like if you
just kind of ask them, right, you'd be like have like how's it
going in? Los Angeles is everything.
Perfect? They be like, No in fact there
are significant problems and Listen, not to knock it but just
like every city is like that and yet you can't say oh well, the
problem here is Republicans, right?
It's like we are actually struggling to govern ourselves
and Achieve what it is. We want to achieve, you know, I
think a lot of that comes down fundamentally to land use
questions, right? So like the LA Metro, I'm quite
familiar with the Saga on this and its really sad like they
have spent. An incredible amount of money
building, a subway system in Los Angeles.
And, you know, of course, it's not that big of a subway system
relative to the size of the city.
It's totally understandable that it hasn't been enough investment
to transform Ela into like a true mass transit City.
But it's much more extensive transit system than like a small
European city would have but it has almost no ridership because
La for starters. They run trains very
infrequently and the trains don't run frequently.
They say because they can't afford to run them frequently,
but that's because fare collection is so low because the
ridership is so low. And then, the ridership is so
low in part because they didn't change any of the land use, they
didn't say okay you can build tall apartment buildings now
near these train stations and you know Seattle, I don't know
as well but I was there last year and I was taking whatever
the train is in. The airport and, you know, you
sort of cruising south of downtown and to what look like,
you know, reasonably built-up areas, but you'll be right there
by a station and it's like, parking lots, you know, or one
story, you know. It's kind of like strip mall
style retail and it's not zoned to say okay, you know you're
within a quarter mile walk from this light rail station, you
could just put up a like a big ass Tower and then you go into
To like really, really the center of the city.
And there is like, some part of town where they have allowed
people to put up big ass towers and there's a bunch of cranes
there. And so that everyone in Seattle
is like, oh my God, there's so much development here and there
is, in fact, more development in Seattle than there is in San
Francisco where there's like basically none but still a
majority of the land in not in the Seattle metro area.
But in the city of Seattle itself is zoned for
single-family detached houses. And you know, it's fine people
like single-family detached houses, what do you make it
illegal to build denser stuff, you get huge housing,
affordability problems, you get, you don't have the density to
support Transit. Ridership.
And so you have everybody kind of kick it around and it's like
well I want somebody else to take the light rail.
You don't like but not me. I want to keep driving my car
and I want parking everywhere but that's not how cities work
like if you look at cities you know whether it's Paris or
Berlin. Or Hong Kong or Singapore or New
York, write that like have substantial Transit, ridership,
they have made themselves too dense for to be convenient to
drive in park, your car somewhere.
Where do you fall on buses versus trains?
Because like, I used to have to commute to downtown Seattle and
the bus route that I took came every 15 to 30 minutes.
And then going home was a total nightmare and I just always kept
finding myself thinking like We, if we would just reroute some of
the 50 billion dollars that we put into this train system, that
won't even be usable for 20 years, into just more buses with
more frequent service with that improve it would ridership go
up. What does the research say on
that? What's better here?
So, you know, it's not that like buses are good and trains are
bad or something. I do think that what's true is
that when you have a city at the scale of Seattle say, Say,
probably the best thing to do is to look at your bus Network and
try to make it better, right? That the sort of quality of the
bus service is a limiting factor on ridership.
They're investing in rail, I think is really, really
worthwhile. But the reason to do it would be
to facilitate very dense development near the rail stops.
And I guess like that's what I'm saying about l.a., right?
They kind of wanted to like take La as it exists, then come up
with spend a lot of money. Like the voters of l.a. were
willing to truly open their wallets to this goal but they
wanted to do was get somebody else to ride the Metro.
Yeah. So that their life could be
exactly the same the with less traffic in it and it doesn't
work like that, right? Like the LA Metro is this great
achievement, you know, like they spent a lot of money on it.
It's a lot of tunnels. Owls, it does in fact, work, but
the reason to do something like that would be to rezone to have
big apartment buildings near the train stations and then a lot of
people would ride the train but it would be a different kind of
city after that, right? But it would be a better city
after that and that that's what people should do.
Like if they if they want to be have like green growth and you
know Green New Deal and bababababa like the whole point
of the new deal was for things to be different.
Aunt after it was done, then they were previously a lot of
progressive thought. It feels like people want
progress without change. Hmm, you know.
And like yeah, have that. Yeah, it sounds like you're
saying like, like an l.a. the train system, that's the end in
and of itself. But you're suggesting that like
rail investment should be a means to an end of which is
increasing density so that more people can live and work
affordably in cities. Okay yes exactly.
You know a or there are some places in America that are so
dense. Yeah, I'm sorry.
You have bus routes that have such heavy ridership.
In a few places there's like a couple routes in New York that
are like this. Maybe one in San Francisco.
Maybe one here in Washington DC where I live that just upgrading
them to rail would it'd be justified this in terms of the
number of people who would do it.
But in the typical American city, you know, Los Angeles,
Seattle, Houston, Dallas, you're looking at big cities, there's
like a lot of demand to live in them and the purpose of
building. A rail network, should be to
reshape the urban form. So you can achieve a higher
level of, you know, Urban density or Bannock - I don't
know what the but the right, what the right verb is but it's
like people would live. Are the train stations, you
know, like that's what trains are for.
The thing that they are good at is that the geometry of Rail
lines is that they move human beings more efficiently than
roads do. But if you don't want that
outcome, then there's no point, I mean, I think trains look nice
as do a lot of people but like that's not a good reason to
build them. I used to live in LA and to take
the trains and times the the red line off of Vermont and I had to
go downtown I would do that or go into the valley.
He was fine and it worked. Okay.
I've heard La described as the United States is first post.
Modern city without just a clear Center where there is various
different types of centers, depending on where you would
want to go. It wasn't like, downtown LA was
where all commercial activity was concentrated.
In fact, probably quite the opposite.
So how do you build an environment like that?
It does that model really, makes sense for it in the same kind of
ways it might with Manhattan. Well, so I mean I think it does,
right? So you take away, right?
And if you just Posit massive up zoning of all of the Metro
stations, right? Then that starts to create a
thing where more people are living near those stations
sometimes because they want to ride the train but honestly
maybe they have no desire to ride the train.
It's just that houses are really expensive everywhere in
California. So if you build giant apartment,
buildings, like anywhere in Los Angeles, some people will live
in them. So now all the sudden you have a
lot of people and their living near Metro stations and now
companies are are thinking about where to locate Office Buildings
and commute patterns matter, right?
But the Metro Network converges on downtown, Los Angeles just
like things do in classic cities.
So once you have a bunch of people who are living near Metro
stations, then if you put your office downtown, that becomes a
convenient way for a lot of people to get to you.
Whereas, if you have it in, you know, wherever else, Culver
City, it's maybe not as good. So it becomes a reason to have a
sort of more centralized kind of thing.
You know, I would also say that Americans sometimes think that
like Los Angeles and New York are the only cities in the
world. So if New York is very like
centralized and then l.a. isn't it's like well a is super weird
but there's a lot of multi-centered cities in the
world, right? Paris doesn't have a hyper Focus
downtown Berlin has sort of several distinct City centers
because of the unique history that it's It had over the years
so it's fairly normal for cities to be a little bit less.
Like Manhattan is an island like New York is actually a little
bit of the weird City more than Allah is, but La is a, you know,
it's built around freeways but that's because like they built
these freak ways and then they built the city around it.
Now, they built all these Rail lines and you have to let the
city build around them. Hmm.
Okay. I'm gonna take a little bit of a
different direction here. Matt, we listened to your
podcast with Tyler, Colin, if you're listening and you haven't
heard conversations with Tyler often quite a good way, to spend
your time listening to a podcast, it's a good show but
you had an interesting comment about how centralizing in order
to decentralize. So I think I speak for Paul and
I hear I think we both like subsidiarity.
We want institutions to be as small and as local as it
actually makes sense to with the scale.
Obviously if it just doesn't make sense for something to be
small scale, and it needs to be larger in order to function
properly, I'm not ideological about it.
Well, I try not. Got to be at least.
But do you think a more populous country would make federalism in
this sort of 50 different states experimenting work better and
actually make that a more functional way to govern?
Well, I think the book does not get into this and, yeah, I think
you say it's a whole separate book or something like that.
Details, like, people should ask themselves, why?
American Federalism is so crappy because it's like a good idea,
right? I think you discuss a lot of
different. Problems and people will reach
the conclusion. That federalism might be useful
here. And federalism really is should
be useful, right? But if you look at it
empirically, what happens is that the dominant player in
state politics is the state legislature even more?
So, you know, Congress is more powerful than the presidency but
State politics are even more tilted to the legislature.
That's in part because they don't have the National Security
Arena. Now, which is a huge part of the
president's job. It's in part because the
executive branch tends to be disaggregated, so you'll have a
separately, elected Attorney, General of an insurance
commissioner controller or Treasurer other things like that
to these hyper empowered legislators.
And then you look at State Legislative elections and you
see that people's voting behavior is an almost pure
function of their approval of the president of the United
States. You know what I mean?
So like people vote Republican for State Legislature in
Louisiana because they like Donald Trump and that has
obviously nothing to do with how good a job.
The legislature is doing of making policy for Louisiana and
people for governor show a lot more creativity.
So, Louisiana and Kentucky have Democratic Governors,
Massachusetts and Maryland have Republican Governors and that's
because of specific things that were happening in the States.
But the governor's don't actually have a lot of
authority. Those States, the legislators do
and they're often very gerrymandered on top of that.
So I think that's all pretty bad, right?
And if we want to have a real politics of federalism, we need
to have real State politics. And that means seven, mix of
empowering. The governor more relative to
other officials because you have real electoral competition there
and it means trying to differentiate the political
party system like in Canada. You can have totally separate
parties in your provinces then you have in national federal
politics so that people say look in my Quebec election, I vote
based on Quebec issues and then in my Canada election, I vote
based on candidate shoes and we don't have any of that in
America and it makes federalism very, very weak as a sort of
like effective strategy for addressing governance.
Yeah. I see your point there.
One of my like, This bugaboos is, I'm just not a fan of the
Seventeenth Amendment and the idea of changing the way the
senators are elected to be popularly voted upon, rather
than by the state legislatures, but sounds like you're arguing
against putting more power in the hands of the legislators,
but I guess just in general, you know, we've got this, like,
major partisan increasingly partisan times that are
happening, and that doesn't seem to be slowing down.
So, we basically have a federal government that doesn't work
well. Well, at all and if we triple
the country's population is that going to make things better or
worse? Like how do we make the
government more responsive to that many people.
Well, so I put the card in the horse, the other way, around my
claim is that our politics has become dysfunctional because in
the post-cold war environment, we have stopped really having a
politics that's about improving America.
And we've instead At this politics, that's about pitting
Americans against each other and fighting with each other, right?
And it's not that having a larger population will fix that
problem. It's that raising our gaze away
from picking fights with each other and toward thinking, about
America's role in the world and how we can be the dominant.
Great power of the next century and the century after that will
naturally create a more constructive.
Politics. Because he know.
So like one thing in the book is I'm talking about how we should
do more, you know, to support people with like Day Care
subsidies and, you know, I give my view of what's the right way
to do that. But I could totally imagine a
conservative person, putting more weight on deregulation is a
solution a left-wing person. Might say, I say that we should
give some support to stay at home parents.
A left-wing person might disagree with that a cultural
Every day of might think it's absolutely essential.
This is like a lie. You can disagree about in
politics, but the premise of that disagreement would be that
we agree that we should be doing something to financially support
and child. Rearing, right, right.
And then we're having a conversation about how do we do
that and then we can have I do if you guys know the book, great
classic Business book, getting to yes, you know about how to
have constructive negotiations right now.
It's like if we want to reach a solution that I think we can, I
don't think the values that divide Americans are this like
unbridgeable void, but there's significant and mostly the way
our politics is setup files, you just don't want to bridge The
Divide, right? They want to find reasons to
break up and then say, ah, Fu. And so like we can't solve any
problems that way and we're not going to.
And if you're satisfied with the country, just kind of go.
Down the tubes. You know, that's fine.
But it seems bad to me. We have the Cold War and that
was the unifying thing. It was like what fueled the
space race and other types of projections of American cultural
values around the world? And we've basically lost it.
This is like the fukuyama like end of History kind of thing.
Like we we haven't really had anything like that to unify us
since 1990 or so and it sounds like your argument is well this
is a thing that we can all aspire to And so if we can agree
on the ends, then we can start debating.
The means which is where actual policy discussions.
Take place. Yeah, I mean, I agree with that.
And if you, if you read fukuyama's book, which people
sometimes dunk on, right, having read his last chapter is
actually quite pessimistic. Like he's not saying, this is
gonna be great. He's actually predicting that
we're going to have very divisive politics dominated by
demagogues and nonsense, which I think it's more or less, what?
Happened. And as everybody says, like,
history is not in fact, over we have a bunch of big challenges
and you know, something that I think is interesting about the
cold war is it wasn't just well, okay, we did the Space Program
to stick it to the Soviets but that at that time you would not
have had an advocate of the free enterprise system stand up and
say, well, you know what, if millions of people have
stagnating wages, Ages for a generation and KitKat health
insurance, and their children are living in poverty.
That's just the market for you, right?
Because that would sound like a pitch for communism, right?
People believed it people who believed in capitalism wanted to
make the system work, right? They undertook an obligation to
not just say that, like, in theory, this would be better,
but that like, actually it had to be better, right?
We accepted that challenge and we sort of don't Have that now,
right, there's no sense that America needs to live up to its
values or that America needs to deliver for its people.
And I think that that time that moment of innocence is sort of
slipping away and it's time to start thinking about what do we
plan to do in this world? Okay, I'm fairly sympathetic,
though. The idea that 1 billion
Americans could be a similar rallying call that we can all
unify around like the space race.
Yes. I mean it just seems like we let
more people in and we have more children.
That's not like a defeat communism.
Go to the Moon Planet American flag.
It seems to be number one forever.
Being number will get you think number one forever.
There we go. Okay.
Yeah. That's that's controversial in
its own way, but if I'm going to live in a country, I probably
would want it to be the world leader.
I don't know. I'm not nearly as embarrassed
about that as I should be, but you're saying, I'm saying, you
should own it. It's like I think one of the
Things in American politics today is like nobody is like a
who cares number one. Number two.
Everybody says everyone speeches like this is the greatest
country on Earth, but then you look at these IMF projection is
this like, well, in purchasing power parity terms were already
number two, in exchange rate. Terms were still number one, but
everyone thinks China's exchange rate is fake.
So maybe we'll still be number one for like five or six more
years. And so, like you said, Joe
Biden's platform, he is going to be like the last president for
whom America was the the number one economy in the world that
that sounds really bad actually, when you state it that way.
So what are we going to do about it, right?
Like I say, grow the population across I was going to say like I
mean when I visit like other westernized countries that have
like you know, roughly similar cultural values to what we have
here in the US and there. And if I go to a store or a
grocery store or I turn on the TV or whatever everything that
I'm seeing our cultural exports from the United States.
And I can imagine being a citizen of one of those
countries and just being like a little bit annoyed and jealous
and envious. That everything like runs
through America, you have no idea how many times people will
say, like oh Ross from friends, and I'm like, I'm not even like
some random country. I've been to all the time.
Yeah. Right.
So that to me seems like a good reason.
Like, I mean, I agree with Matt's objective here.
I like being in the country, that is the cultural exporter.
Because that means that, when I participated A pate in the
culture. I'm participating in the thing
that ultimately affects much more around the world than if I
were just a kiwi and New Zealand and my only expert export is
Flight of the Conchords. Yeah.
And what we do in the shadows and lower strings.
Right on the right now, I look, I it says something like,
everybody knows, right? If you grew up in New Zealand
and you're smart and you're ambitious and, you know, you do
really well in high school and whatever and you want to like,
Get in the world. You know, you got to end up
moving to London or New York or San Francisco or something like
that. It's that is that going to
happen in Auckland, right? And that's an important part of
the American identity. I think that like we are this
great Hub of stuff, right? Cultural stuff, technical
Innovation, we've got all kinds of problems.
Obviously a red knows all about that but we also have the
opportunity for a level of of greatness that does not exist
elsewhere, right? And like maybe closer to the
main theme of you guys that show, right?
It's like I have no idea where the person who invents a amazing
way to like suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere will be
born like, could be anywhere, but I have a really strong odds
that that company that does that stuff will be an American
company. You know like that person is
going to come now. Maybe not right you could
imagine it China Japan Germany. There's like a few other
plausible contenders but they're also pretty big countries in the
scheme of things and now like it could totally be a person from
Iceland or you know Honduras or God knows where but they are
going to migrate to a big country with big cities, a big
base of investors and technically skilled people and
customers and a A government that can think in terms of big
projects, because just like, that's how the state-of-the-art
moves forward, and nothing against New Zealand, or
Portugal, or the Czech Republic or there's lots of nice little
countries out there. You know?
And every once in a while they give us something like Legos at
a Denmark but like the big stuff gets done by the big countries
and that's like a deep in America's DNA and fiber and I
don't think we should like reject that and like shrink
Ourselves down. I think we should embrace it.
One of the long-running debates on the show although we've
mostly had people who think the answer is yes.
And I believe you will think this as well.
People listening should have kids, right?
If they're like I don't know because of the climate you're
saying just have kids, your kid might solve climate change.
Yeah, I mean, there's that and there's I mean, Look, if you
don't want to have kids don't have kids, right?
And if you want to come up with a high-minded reason for it you
can say climate change is the reason.
I mean that's fine. I just like I mean I was a
philosophy major in college and I don't really go deep into this
population ethic stuff but it's like everybody understands that
like Thanos is the villain and the Avengers movies.
I don't want to that everyone does.
But yes. Okay well I mean I mean who
knows? I got some weird callers from
like Marin County and that that really We made me wonder but
like, just not having there. Be people is not a solution to
problems, like it's a, you're just like you're looking through
the telescope in the wrong direction.
It's like, yeah, the the tacitus, the the Romans, what,
created A Wasteland and call it peace.
Like there's no problem if there's no humans, but yeah,
it's like yeah. Okay.
I like, I mean if you don't want to have children, you don't want
to have children. Like that's fine.
I have one kid. I'm very happy with that.
I feel like to would be very stressful, but like, I'm going
to tell you that I did that for other people, you don't have
him, it just makes my life easier to have a small family.
This one Viewpoint that is like well people are the solution
because you know, like who might invent like the next great.
I don't know. A solar panel that works at
night or something but it's just more than that.
It's not like people are the topic of the discussion.
So to just say, like, well if we didn't have any people then we
wouldn't have the problem. Like that's weird.
That's neither here nor there and you know, like some Day.
One of these like nutty, spree Killers who pop up every once in
a while and do something. Horrifying will write in their
Manifesto. That like they're really worried
about climate change and then conservatives are going to all
go dunk on the left about it. That's going to be shitty and
unfair. But but like it's shitty an
unfair because I nobody actually thinks that just like
extirpating. Humanity is a fix quote-unquote
to environmental problems and so it's been a perverse.
You know, I I have Gotten some reviews by people on the left
who are like, oh man, like this is really terrible on climate
grounds, but none of the people on the left who say that seemed
to actually disagree with me, that we should have a generous
immigration policy, or that we should spend money on preschool
and we should have paid parental leave.
So it's a little like where's the beef here?
Like there was this old school like real dystopian thread in
the environmental movement where they were like all tied in with
population control? People and anti-immigration
people, but they decided like 20 or 30 years ago, that that was
racist and bad and wrong, and they're right.
But then like they need to own that and you can't just like
opportunistically invoke climate change.
So we had a your colleague David Roberts on Once Upon a Time and
I don't think he would mind me saying this.
I will think about it before and edit it if I need to.
But got a lot of nasty notes about it because we tried so
hard to be like, David surely, surely there's something worth
saving. Right-of-center this
conservative idea is that have some value.
There are things happening with Republicans and climate.
There are things to hope for, he was very nice, but gave Very
little ground on that. Wait, Matt.
So is there anything you'd like to add as an addendum to David's
visit? So look, I mean, on one level, I
think I agree with his perspective which is that the
institutional Republican party is not just sitting there
waiting for a more reasonable climate proposal.
And then they'll say, hey, yeah, like let's do a bipartisan
climate Bill, like the reason they don't want to do that is
more fundamental That being said like I think I mean, again, I
I'd look at Los Angeles, I look at New York City, you know, like
you've look at places where Republicans are not a factor and
you ask yourself like are these guys doing what it really takes
to address climate change and they're not, you know, they're
tied up in nimbyism and like d growth stuff and not really
contributing in a meaningful way and it just goes to show that
like the problem is bigger and more complex.
Then the Republicans are bad. Right?
What I think is true, is that so, say in 2016 Republicans had
lost the election and lost control of the Senate and
Democrats had filled, scalia's seat with Merrick Garland, and
then Kennedy had gotten bored. And, you know, say like the past
four years have gone really differently that might have made
Republican party, Elites really sad about losing and they would
have said man we should stop losing elections.
And it seems like our climate denialism is really unpopular,
so, maybe we should come to the table with some climate
Solutions. And there's plenty of
right-of-center people who have reasonable climate solution,
ideas, just like, waiting there for Republicans to say, they
want them, right? They don't want them is the
problem. And so if you beat them badly
and make them sad, they might go use those Solutions, you know, I
just like anybody else, right? So it's like when Jay, Kratz,
lost enough elections in a row. They decided they were tired of
everybody thinking. They had no ideas on crime.
And so they came up with some ideas, right?
Like if we Republicans lose, they'll come up with ideas on
the environment. There's smart people, they're
not evil people even. It's just that like right now,
they think their current posture is a winning strategy, you know,
so I say climate change, they say oh you want to ban
hamburgers so I don't know. Like that's that's dumb, that's
a juvenile approach to politics but that's where we're at right
now. But the The solution isn't that
there's going to be some Utopia like conservative politics,
right is basically you have the interests of businessmen and you
have the sort of socio-cultural majority saying it likes its way
of doing things, and that is the most natural form of politics in
the world. Right?
Like everywhere on the planet, there is conservative politics
for that. What exactly it's content is
changes all the time. So it's like conservatism will
always be with us and if you have Solutions like in Germany,
they have some good climate policies because the
conservative party like wanted to do them and that's how things
happen. It's like leftists it's like you
know we say things and we have ideas and we might win election
sometimes but like things happen because conservatives get on
board. No, I actually agree with that.
I think it is fair to say that in general.
Neural politicians are opportunistic, they seek out
power, Above All Else and that if there were a complete and
total drubbing of the Republican party in 2016, I do think that
there is potentially some truth to the idea that maybe they
would start adopting positions that were more popular among the
electorate. That does not currently support
Republicans. I think that's I think that's
fair and legitimate. Yeah I don't I don't have much
disagree with their, I will also second that there are lots of
people who are Trying to engage with conservatives and
Republicans on issues of climate change.
I mean, Benji backer has been on the show multiple times now,
talking about that, and they're bobbing list as well.
There are plenty of groups like that.
So I think it's just a matter of time before eventually these
things become so widespread. I mean, like culturally and I
thought you distinguish between these things pretty well
earlier, Matt that culturally like climate change is an issue
that everyone is aware. Of more and more people are in
support of doing something about.
And it's just politics, that is lagging behind.
And there's no way that that doesn't catch up.
So I think we can be optimistic about that for the future.
It's just a matter of how do we make that happen as quickly as
possible. Yeah, and I mean the problem
with climate change, unfortunately, is that the
timeline on which really bad things start happening, is just
pretty aggressive, you know? I mean so you know so it's like
Obama like to quote, Martin Luther King about how the Arc of
the universe is long but it bends toward Justice, right?
And so you know, in the 1880s like reconstruction is
completely undone and then it takes 80 years after that to get
to the Civil Rights Act, and the Voting Rights Act.
And of course that's not like the end of racism or racial
problems but it's a huge step forward but that 80-year
timeline. That's awful.
You know, for the people who lived under Jim Crow 4 Two and
three generations. And the good news is that we can
now, like, big picture, it and said, well, we'll look back from
the year 2374 and say maybe that wasn't so long, but if you know,
irreparable harms are over ready underway.
So it's like, natural for activists to just be impatient
and I never want to tell anyone to like hey, calm down, you
know, the problems not sir. At the same time, like the
political process is what it is. And if say 2016, because it
seems like three presidential election losses in a row, is
kind of like a magic number which point a political party
starts. Seriously rethinking things, but
it's not like, you know, I don't like I'm optimistic.
It's not like no, right-of-center people have good
ideas on climate change or that it's impossible to imagine a
conservative movement that Embraces meaningful climate
action and just don't like it. Not going to happen like just
for no reason or because I write like a really good take about
bipartisan Solutions. It's like there has to be an
electoral event that makes the people who are leaders in that
movement say, you know, the like gun nuts and the anti-abortion
Fanatics and like, they need to say, man, I don't want to lose
elections over this like right? Coal-mining nonsense.
Like, who cares? And that's how Coalition
politics works, right? Like people get thrown under the
bus. The people who didn't, See like
gay couples, get married, like, who knows what happened to them,
right? Like, right Republicans.
Put them in the deep freezer someplace because I became an
embarrassing issue. It's sort of counterintuitive to
think. But like, I mean, if you are a
conservative or Republican and you don't like the green New
Deal, then you have to engage on the issue because if you're not
even participating in that conversation, then there's no
bulwark against that and it's just going to be continued like
one-sided policy discussion, right?
I mean and I would love Love to see a more pro-growth.
Technology-focused, but serious, not like, oh well, solve it with
technology. So we don't need to do this
regulation but like, here's my 300 billion, huge moonshot
techno Utopia like do something. You know, like something big,
and then we can have a debate about that but right now it's
like well, you have a couple big ideas Rolling through
environmental circles. And then you've got, you know, I
don't know what, you know, you've got.
Like let's pretend that windmills are going to make
birds extinct and you know that's that's dumb.
This suck a lot of dumb stuff in pain.
Yeah. Yeah.
I mean government is really good at some things and its really
bad at doing other things and I think we would all benefit if
there were more Diversified voices discussing like how to
actually achieve these goals like I would so much rather have
the government. Spend its resources, investing
in research and development of Technologies and Grant programs
for things like converting to regenerative agriculture or
whatever. I would rather not see the
government create a jobs like a make-work program that's
intended to solve like some social problem at the same time
as currying. Environmentalism and that's just
like not a discussion that anyone is open to having right
now but it sounds like you are and I wish more people were like
that. So electoral politics, right?
Is zero sub. Like, only one person can be
president. Only one person can went out
seat, but policy is positive. So, you know what I mean?
Like, if you, if you have a serious conversation, we're one
person says, my top priority is to reduce carbon dioxide
emissions. And somebody else says my top
priority is to have a vibrant Farm economy like their ways to
reconcile, those two things, if people State their top
priorities and then they want to reconcile them.
And that's true for like, any too.
Priorities right? It's like we human beings are
smart and we can make win-win deals on pretty much any topic,
but you have to want to make a deal, right?
You have to accept the premise that we should be doing
something on the climate front, rather than using the issue
opportunistically to win votes and we're just, haven't been
there, you know what I mean? Like, we haven't been.
In a place where elected officials but I mean on climate
elected officials on the right in particular have not wanted to
reach a deal. They've just construed a deal on
a climate bill would be a win for the Left, Right?
Double a lot of fun. Thanks for coming out and
hanging with us. Matt, thank you.
And yeah, one last question. I'll make it a short one though.
What are the odds that we get to 1 billion Americans the century?
I don't know. The odds are against it but I
don't think it's wildly, implausible.
We would need to achieve something like Canada's
population growth rate. So, you know if enough people
buy the book, I'll Justin's are going to be like, hey I guess we
want a billion Americans, I guess I should read it, you
know, and then we'll get it done.
So it's really on you. The podcast listening, audience
to decide whether or not it happens.
I can't predict my own sales. You are a professional.
That was so skillfully. Executed, where should someone
buy this if they want to support?
What? You're up to.
Well, I mean, it depends, you know, if you are a sort of Neo
pastoralist, you should buy it at your local independent
bookstore. You can go to book shop.com and
order it from them. And that's great.
We'd love independent, bookstores, in the book game, on
the other hand, you know, if you are a techno modernist, you
might think, an e-book is a lot more environmentally friendly,
and we're available in the Google Play Store, Amazon
Kindle, whatever apples bookstore is called, I think,
just Apple Books. So it's everywhere.
Also audiobook, if you just love my voice, so, Watch.
I actually read the audiobook script so you can hear me ramble
even more on Audible and other platforms.
So this really a lot of great ways to buy this book.
There's no wrong way to do it. Okay, link links in the show
notes of. Go ahead Paul, what's that a
magic? So I can vouch for the
audiobook. I listen to it in one go while I
was driving home from California.
A couple weeks ago. So there you go.
Yeah, it's a good. Listen, there's also a factual
error about the population of Detroit.
In the text, which is corrected in the audiobook.
So, excellent, real-time updates, you can get less fake
news about a population of Detroit back media by consuming
an audio, great great. Well thanks again, Matt.
Thank you, Matt. Thank you.
Yeah. Thanks for being on this one.
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