Dwarkesh Patel: evaluation

Transcript context

…I understand what you're saying and I can sympathize with it. Let's take the cross Bronx expressway as an egregious example of something that Robert Caro or Moses' critics would say, “God, all these people, tens of thousands of people paid a price. Their lives were uprooted.” But I just can't imagine you would say we can't have a cross Bronx. I mean, it could have been two blocks this way or two blocks that way, that's a different question. And we can talk about that too, but I think we have to have it. I think the parks,the bridges, the Verrazano-Narrows bridge transformed Staten Island. The history of Staten Island is before and after 1964. They had to take into account the curvature of the earth. That bridge was so long. At the time it was the longest suspension bridge in the world. It's been surpassed in Europe since then, but a big bridge. That would be a lifetime's achievement. If you built the Verrazano-Narrows bridge, this gigantic, gorgeous entrance to New York Harbor, that's a lifetime achievement. For Moses, it's one of a list of about 50 things. You don't even think about the Verrazano-Narrows bridge and Robert Moses. Yeah, he did it. So what? There's lots of other big things too. I think it's the scale and the scale was not human. It was totally on a different scale. And with that comes a lot of criticism because as he would say himself, in order to make an omelet, you have to break eggs. No other way to do it. And he would say, I had to do it. This is his answer. In order to build a great public event or thing, I have to hurt some people. That's just the way it is. The way we live now, we don't want to hurt anybody. You can't run a city or a country that way. You can't. Nothing will change. Yeah, I've had recently a lot of guests who have been advocating for this philosophical view that's called long-termism, which is basically the idea that we should take the interest of future generations and consider them equally with the interest of people alive today. As a way to emphasize, for example, that people who live thousands of years from now, we should take their interest seriously. I guess if we take this kind of view and just care about progeny more, there's a part in the Power Broker where they're talking about the Cross Bronx Expressway through East Tremont and Moses is getting opposition from an elected official. And Moses responds by saying, “You make a habit out of pointing out that I'm not democratically elected while you are. But the advantage of me not being democratically elected is that I can build projects that might not be the favorite thing for the people alive now, but will benefit the city for generations and centuries to come.” There's obviously a lot of arrogance there and there’s the question of if that's true. But to the extent that that is true, and it is in many cases — all these bridges you're talking about and all these highways are still standing today and are in wide use, it changes how you think about him. Given all the egg breaking that had to happen at the time, it's still the fact that for hundreds of years we'll get to use the things he built. I'm curious, you mentioned you were with Caro when you found out that Moses had died. How did you react? How did Caro react? Was he sad about it? Well, he was being interviewed. I just remember being stunned at the restaurant. We were eating at a restaurant in the Bronx and they brought a telephone to him. I've never seen anybody have a telephone brought to them. That was way before cell phones and everything else. It was 1981 and we were friends when he died. It was after I criticized him in public and the New York Times quoted me. They didn't quote that I thought was the best book I'd ever read and I wish I'd written it. They did quote that I said it was full of mistakes. That's what the New York Times said and that's what he read. He didn't hear my speech. I'm sorry. I don't have enemies with anyone, but I have regard for the book and have regard for his ability to do research. What's amazing about The Power Broker is his ability and interest in going back and interviewing his third grade teacher and stuff like that and finding that out. That's way more than what most of us are willing to do.…

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