Dwarkesh Patel: uncertainty

Transcript context

…I don't think Robert Moses with all of his talents and personality, I don't think he could do in the 21st century what he did in the middle of the 20th century. I think he would have done a lot, maybe more than anybody else. But also I don’t think his bullying methods would work quite as easy today. He bullied people, including powerful people. But I do think we need it today. And I think even today, even now we have in New York, just the beginnings of leftists. I'm thinking of AOC, the woman who led the campaign against Amazon in New York saying, we need some development. If we want to make housing more affordable, somebody has got to build something. It's not that we've got more voters because you say you want affordable housing. You got to build affordable housing and especially you got to build more of it. We have to overturn the NIMBYism. Even today for all of our concern about environmental change, we have to work together. I mean, in some ways we have to believe that we're in some ways in the same boat and it won't work if we put more people in the boat, but don't make the boat any bigger. When people discuss Moses and the power accumulated, they often talk about the fact that he took so much power away from democratically elected officials and centralized so much power in himself. And obviously the Power Broker talks a great deal about the harms of that kind of centralization. But I'm curious, having studied the history of New York, what are the benefits if there can be one coordinated cohesive plan for the entire city? If there's one person who's designing all the bridges, all the highways, all the parks, is something more possible that can be possible if like multiple different branches and people have their own unique visions? I don't know if that question makes sense. That's a big question. You've got to put a lot of trust into the grand planner, especially if it's a massive area of 20-25 million people. I think that in some ways we've gone too far in the ability to obstruct change, to stop it. And we need change. Houses deteriorate. Roads deteriorate. Sewers deteriorate. We have to build into our system the ability to improve them. Now in New York we respond to emergencies. All of a sudden a water main breaks, the street collapses and then they stop everything, stop the water main break and repair the street. Meanwhile in a hundred other places it's leaking, it's just not leaking enough to make the road collapse. But the problem is there every day, every minute.…

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