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The Bear Was Poked With Maria Konnikova · Revisionist History

0:15
Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hello everyone, I'm backed with the Visionist Histories ombusman
0:23
Speaker 1: Mariya Kanikova. This is our third round and she's here
0:28
Speaker 1: to grill me on the six part series we just
0:30
Speaker 1: wrapped up on Guns in America. This is a mail
0:33
Speaker 1: bag in the truest sense of the word. We received
0:37
Speaker 1: an unprecedented amount of listener mail in this series, and
0:40
Speaker 1: Maria's come prepared with a whole slew of your feedback.
0:45
Speaker 1: Some nice, that's so nice.
0:48
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I am surprised at how much nice we got,
0:53
Speaker 2: considering the subject of this particular season of Revisionist History.
0:59
Speaker 2: To be perfectly honest, so let's start with something really
1:04
Speaker 2: nice and positive.
1:05
Speaker 1: Get the good stuff up takes.
1:06
Speaker 2: Exactly exactly, you know the praise sound which, right, that's
1:10
Speaker 2: the feedback sandwich. But you had a relatively light episode
1:14
Speaker 2: in there about gun smoke, and someone wrote in being
1:21
Speaker 2: a little bit worried that you got the murder rate
1:24
Speaker 2: wrong when you calculated the murders, which I bring this, yes,
1:29
Speaker 2: all right, So basically you had this episode where you
1:34
Speaker 2: talked about the show that ran for how many years?
1:38
Speaker 2: Twenty years, right, almost twenty years, and your producer Tali
1:44
Speaker 2: Emlin actually went through several seasons of it and calculated
1:51
Speaker 2: what the murder rate would be, and you found that
1:54
Speaker 2: it would actually, even though it's insane, it is actually
1:58
Speaker 2: eighty times higher than what it would be in any
2:04
Speaker 2: city in the United States today. Yes, but it turns
2:08
Speaker 2: out that you might have actually undercounted. According to this listener.
2:12
Speaker 2: So here's the letter, the murder rate in Dodge City
2:17
Speaker 2: was even worse than you calculated. You compared a season
2:20
Speaker 2: of the show to an annual rate of modern day cities. However,
2:24
Speaker 2: each episode probably takes place in a single day or
2:28
Speaker 2: so the entire season probably only covered a couple months
2:32
Speaker 2: of time. That would make the annual rate five to
2:36
Speaker 2: six times worse than you already calculated. So what do
2:41
Speaker 2: we think about that?
2:42
Speaker 1: Okay, I get where this critique is coming from. I
2:47
Speaker 1: think some merit to it. I would point out, though,
2:49
Speaker 1: when I asked Ally about this, she says, if you
2:52
Speaker 1: look at the first two seasons, so we have an
2:54
Speaker 1: episode said in summer, we have one in winter, we
2:57
Speaker 1: have one on Christmas, We've got a blizzard. So they
3:01
Speaker 1: are kind of implying that what we're seeing unfolding in
3:05
Speaker 1: the mythical Dodge City is real passage of time and
3:10
Speaker 1: not a series of episodes. And also, by the way,
3:13
Speaker 1: the actors get older, right, so you know when they
3:18
Speaker 1: when this starts, Matt Dilan's a young man. When Gun
3:21
Speaker 1: Smoke ins, Matt Dylan is no longer a young man.
3:24
Speaker 1: So maybe the best way to say this is that,
3:27
Speaker 1: you know, I think we should probably split the difference
3:30
Speaker 1: and say that we were being excessively generous to the
3:34
Speaker 1: fictional Dodge City in suggesting that their murder rate was
3:37
Speaker 1: only eighty times higher than the next highest American city.
3:44
Speaker 1: And uh, you know, maybe it should. The accurate number
3:48
Speaker 1: is one sixty.
3:51
Speaker 2: That is absolutely crazy. By the way, I have never
3:54
Speaker 2: seen gun Smoke, and I had to look it up.
3:58
Speaker 2: The first time I heard of it was on your show.
4:02
Speaker 1: And I act you get for growing up in Russia.
4:04
Speaker 2: This is true. But I also had this like brain
4:08
Speaker 2: fart moment where Matt Dylan. I was like, wait, but
4:11
Speaker 2: Matt Dylan isn't that old.
4:14
Speaker 1: Oh you would think of the other man.
4:15
Speaker 2: I was thinking of the actor Matt Dylan, and so
4:17
Speaker 2: for a second I was like, wait, how is Matt
4:20
Speaker 2: Dylan in this show gun Smoke? And it was just
4:23
Speaker 2: like this this total fictional universe that I created in
4:26
Speaker 2: my head before I looked up what it actually was.
4:29
Speaker 1: Years ago, maybe thirty thirty, maybe twenty five. I'm at
4:33
Speaker 1: a party in the West Village and I realized Matt
4:36
Speaker 1: Dillon is there when he was really at the height
4:39
Speaker 1: of his fame. He's still famous, but he was very
4:41
Speaker 1: I ingratiated myself with him and spent a delightful evening.
4:46
Speaker 1: It went well past evening, I said, I spent a
4:49
Speaker 1: delightful evening in his company, and I can testify that
4:53
Speaker 1: he is everybody's charming in real life as he would
4:56
Speaker 1: as the movies was jest he would be.
4:58
Speaker 2: That's wonderful. Was he named after the show?
5:01
Speaker 1: Well, I think it's obvious he was, right, Yeah, because
5:04
Speaker 1: he kind of does. He looks not unlike the the
5:09
Speaker 1: fictional Matt Dill. Maybe his parents had a notion, but
5:12
Speaker 1: who knows either that or like just some agent gave
5:14
Speaker 1: it to him when he was nineteen years old.
5:17
Speaker 2: Well, I think I think that's amazing. And you know,
5:20
Speaker 2: to my credit, I also did not have a TV
5:21
Speaker 2: growing up, so notice, so you know, ah, we have
5:24
Speaker 2: that in common. So we did have this one lighthearted
5:29
Speaker 2: reader's email, but every other email, or at least the
5:35
Speaker 2: vast majority, were about one single episode. Do you want
5:38
Speaker 2: to care to guess which one it was?
5:39
Speaker 1: I'm going to guess it was the assault rifle.
5:41
Speaker 2: Episode, and you would have guessed correctly, it's that episode.
5:46
Speaker 1: Before you go, before you get into the let me
5:48
Speaker 1: just say that there are things you do as journalists,
5:52
Speaker 1: and you know this well, that are deliberate provocations. You
5:55
Speaker 1: do them precisely because you do think you are running
5:58
Speaker 1: counter to people's expectations and preconceptions. This would be one
6:03
Speaker 1: of those. I was poking the bear, and I guess
6:07
Speaker 1: the bear. The bear was postfair, was duly boked.
6:12
Speaker 2: Mission accomplished. So let's get into some of these letters,
6:15
Speaker 2: because when you listen to excerpts from them, you start
6:19
Speaker 2: realizing that it's as if people listened to two different episodes,
6:24
Speaker 2: depending on where they were coming from to begin with
6:29
Speaker 2: their own opinions about gun control colored what they heard
6:33
Speaker 2: you say and how they experienced your interviews to a
6:37
Speaker 2: shocking degree. I mean, actually not shocking. I'm not at
6:40
Speaker 2: all shocked, but it's crazy reading these and seeing just
6:45
Speaker 2: the opposite responses. So they will write things like, let's
6:50
Speaker 2: see the gun rights guy was more genial than the
6:53
Speaker 2: gun control guy, but he was just as misleading. All
6:58
Speaker 2: he did was smile while he made you look left
7:01
Speaker 2: when you should have looked to the right. And then
7:04
Speaker 2: they have all of these figures behind that saying that, oh, well,
7:08
Speaker 2: they're saying that, you know, he is saying that it
7:11
Speaker 2: only takes three seconds to do this, but mass shooters
7:16
Speaker 2: are there's going to be so much going on and
7:18
Speaker 2: his math is wrong and this is wrong, and that
7:20
Speaker 2: is wrong, and they say that you were led astray.
7:26
Speaker 2: But then you have someone saying, Malcolm, you know, I'm
7:30
Speaker 2: so proud of you for finally seeing the light now
7:33
Speaker 2: and now I'm quoting. Now, let's remember that the problem
7:36
Speaker 2: in America is a murder problem, not a weapon problem.
7:42
Speaker 2: So you have two very very different points of view, right,
7:46
Speaker 2: and let's talk about that. How can people walk away
7:51
Speaker 2: from the same episode, listening to the same data with
7:55
Speaker 2: just completely opposite perspectives.
7:58
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, it shouldn't come as a surprise that
8:02
Speaker 1: people's when people listen to something that they feel strongly about,
8:07
Speaker 1: they have a subjective reading, nor, you know, nor does
8:12
Speaker 1: it surprise me now after thirty years of writing books,
8:16
Speaker 1: that people don't read or listen to the end. You know,
8:21
Speaker 1: I wrote a book called my second book, Blink, was
8:25
Speaker 1: a book that looked critically at When I say critically,
8:29
Speaker 1: the examine wrote the pros and cons of snap judgments,
8:33
Speaker 1: But you had to keep reading. It started out on
8:36
Speaker 1: the pros and then as I dug deeper got interested
8:39
Speaker 1: in the cons. The number of people who either supported
8:44
Speaker 1: or loved that book or hated that book because they
8:47
Speaker 1: perceived it as being a book about celebrating snap judgments
8:52
Speaker 1: was limitless. You know, anytime you tell a story that
8:54
Speaker 1: has a twist, you're going to leave some portion of
8:57
Speaker 1: people along the way. And I think this episode is
9:00
Speaker 1: a proof of that. Like basically where I end up
9:03
Speaker 1: remember is you know, is a gun is a gun
9:05
Speaker 1: as a gun. Parsing these these distinctions between gun is
9:09
Speaker 1: a pointless exercise that leads you away from the central issue,
9:13
Speaker 1: which is that having lots of lethal weapons floating around
9:17
Speaker 1: in a society is not the best idea.
9:21
Speaker 2: Right. Obviously, when you were doing these interviews, you you
9:24
Speaker 2: know you want to do the interview, and you never
9:26
Speaker 2: want to You don't want to antagonize a person you're interviewing.
9:30
Speaker 2: In the middle of the interview, especially when they're holding
9:32
Speaker 2: a gun. But I'm actually just curious from a personal perspective,
9:36
Speaker 2: if if you care to comment, were you kind of
9:39
Speaker 2: were you persuaded by by these arguments so that it
9:44
Speaker 2: actually doesn't make that much of a difference, and that
9:49
Speaker 2: you you know that that we should that were barking
9:54
Speaker 2: up the wrong tree when we're looking at this guy legislation.
9:57
Speaker 1: I was there two persuasive things in the reporting a persuision.
10:02
Speaker 1: One was with my gun expert, the guy I've shot
10:06
Speaker 1: within North Carolina, Gregg Wallace. And what's persuasive about his
10:11
Speaker 1: discussion is not how fast you can shoot a semi
10:15
Speaker 1: automatic weapon versus an automatic weapon, although that is the
10:17
Speaker 1: thing is relevant. The real core issue he was getting
10:19
Speaker 1: at is said assault rifle bands don't ban assault rifles.
10:25
Speaker 1: They ban a subcategory of assault rifles which qualify for
10:29
Speaker 1: the ban not because they are more lethal, but because
10:32
Speaker 1: they have certain cosmetic features that make them unattractive or
10:36
Speaker 1: mean looking. Right, Really, what you're getting so's his function
10:40
Speaker 1: in the story is to remind us that, look, this
10:43
Speaker 1: is a bullshit exercise. You may think that an assault
10:46
Speaker 1: rifle ban bands assault rifles it does not. Right, the
10:49
Speaker 1: fundamental platform of the AR fifteen remains untouched by these bands, right.
10:56
Speaker 1: You can still use the basic weapon, you just can't
10:59
Speaker 1: use some of these accessories. That's pointing with the number
11:02
Speaker 1: two is it is not a distinction without a difference
11:06
Speaker 1: to point out that a semi automatic weapon is not
11:09
Speaker 1: the same as an automatic weapon. They are fundamentally different.
11:13
Speaker 1: And if people are under the illusion that an assault
11:18
Speaker 1: weapon is basically like a machine gun, they're wrong, right, Yeah,
11:24
Speaker 1: And that's not a trivial mistake.
11:26
Speaker 2: Right.
11:27
Speaker 1: So a lot of these as I'm reading through on
11:29
Speaker 1: this one in this one letter, a lot of them,
11:32
Speaker 1: you know, are fussing around in the kind of minor
11:36
Speaker 1: details of these distinctions, and it's just like, it's not
11:39
Speaker 1: the point. The point is like, what we're setting out
11:42
Speaker 1: to do here is not actually what we're doing A
11:44
Speaker 1: and B. This brings us to the second persuasive character
11:47
Speaker 1: in that the most persuasive character in that episode was
11:50
Speaker 1: the er doctor. Yeah, the guy in DC who had
11:54
Speaker 1: studied mass shootings and points out that the truly lethal
11:59
Speaker 1: weapon in the hands of a mass shooter is a
12:02
Speaker 1: handgun and not an assault rifle. And that's because what
12:06
Speaker 1: makes a gun lethal is not just a matter of
12:10
Speaker 1: its ballistic properties. It's a question of how it's used.
12:14
Speaker 1: And there are so many quote unquote advantages to a
12:17
Speaker 1: handgun in the way it's used that it makes it,
12:21
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, a more dangerous weapon
12:23
Speaker 1: in a mass shooting. There is a whole kind of
12:25
Speaker 1: really weird academic subculture devoted to the analysis of mass shootings,
12:32
Speaker 1: and you would be surprised how divergent those findings are
12:35
Speaker 1: from a lot of our preconceptions about what happens in
12:40
Speaker 1: a mass shooting.
12:41
Speaker 2: That's really interesting, and I actually saw that as a
12:44
Speaker 2: thread throughout this entire season of Revisionist History, just how
12:50
Speaker 2: strong identity politics and our sense of who we are
12:55
Speaker 2: and how we define ourselves is when it comes to
12:59
Speaker 2: parsing the world and those definitional issues.
13:02
Speaker 1: Yeah, the other moment, you know, in the assault Rifle episode,
13:07
Speaker 1: you know, it ends with me confronting this this anti
13:12
Speaker 1: gun lobbyist, big time opponent of the Second Amendment in Washington,
13:19
Speaker 1: and I think the reason he gets very upset, and
13:22
Speaker 1: actually we didn't even use the parts of the of
13:24
Speaker 1: the conversation where he was most upset, And I think
13:27
Speaker 1: One of the reasons he was so upset is that
13:30
Speaker 1: I was out flanking him on the left, and I
13:35
Speaker 1: was taking a more anti gun position than he was.
13:37
Speaker 1: And not only that, in order to outflank him on
13:39
Speaker 1: the left, I was using right wing arguments or right
13:43
Speaker 1: wing facts. You know that that episode is if you
13:46
Speaker 1: think about it structurally, that's what it is. It's taking
13:50
Speaker 1: arguments most commonly used on the right to draw a
13:53
Speaker 1: highly liberal conclusion. It's just confused. It's just confusing to
13:57
Speaker 1: do that.
13:57
Speaker 2: Malcolm, you have come a long way from your debating fiasco.
14:04
Speaker 1: Don't even get me started. We will be right back
14:09
Speaker 1: back more from the mailbag.
14:27
Speaker 2: All right, well, let's go back to guns, because I
14:31
Speaker 2: do want to talk about some of the other episodes.
14:34
Speaker 2: I think that one theme that we haven't touched on,
14:37
Speaker 2: but that is, you know, deeply connected to all of everything.
14:42
Speaker 2: We have been discussing, the racial and the socioeconomic underpinnings
14:46
Speaker 2: of all of this, and the fact that it's kind
14:49
Speaker 2: of woven into the fabric of the country. And you know,
14:55
Speaker 2: you you talk about in these are different episodes. There's Chicago,
15:00
Speaker 2: you know, there's there's DC, There's and you have you
15:04
Speaker 2: have Alabama. You have these very different geographically arts of
15:09
Speaker 2: the country, urban rural, and yet you have some of
15:15
Speaker 2: the exact same reasons why we have still despite all
15:21
Speaker 2: of the incredible medical stuff that's happened, and despite how
15:27
Speaker 2: many lives are saved now that wouldn't have been saved
15:30
Speaker 2: in the past, we still have these huge disparities, and
15:33
Speaker 2: we still have people dying who shouldn't be dying because
15:37
Speaker 2: either they're the wrong color, or they're in a place
15:40
Speaker 2: where they seem like they're the wrong color, or they're
15:43
Speaker 2: in a place that's so economically marginalized that you know,
15:48
Speaker 2: they can't get to a trauma center, probably because that
15:52
Speaker 2: area was the wrong color at some point, and it's
15:55
Speaker 2: just it's heartbreaking, but it's still the reality.
15:59
Speaker 1: Yeah, this reminds me of I think I'm getting this right.
16:04
Speaker 1: Something I read years ago about what is the effact
16:07
Speaker 1: What is the effect of reading enrichment programs on test
16:11
Speaker 1: score gaps between black and white kids? And reading the
16:16
Speaker 1: ritual programs increase the testcore gap. They don't decrease it,
16:20
Speaker 1: even though they're intended to decrease it. But what they
16:23
Speaker 1: do is if you give reading enrichment to someone who
16:26
Speaker 1: reads a lot, they're going to reap the most of
16:30
Speaker 1: that boost. If you give a reading enrichment to someone
16:33
Speaker 1: doesn't read much, they're not going to get much out
16:35
Speaker 1: of it because they're not reading to begin with. So
16:38
Speaker 1: something that we introduced as a way to narrow the
16:41
Speaker 1: gap ends up widening the gap, which is a reminder
16:44
Speaker 1: that not all innovations do what we have an assumption.
16:47
Speaker 1: Sometimes I think that the purpose of an innovation is
16:50
Speaker 1: to shrink the gap between the haves and have nots.
16:54
Speaker 1: This is so often violated that it's time we shelve
16:57
Speaker 1: that notion and understand that innovations are just energy. You know,
17:02
Speaker 1: they can be put to whatever use we want, and
17:04
Speaker 1: sometimes what they do is just turbocharge existing inequities. And
17:07
Speaker 1: I think Caare is an example of this exact thing.
17:12
Speaker 1: That you can't put trauma centers everywhere too expensive. You
17:16
Speaker 1: can only put them in places where you can justify
17:19
Speaker 1: them economically. And what are those places, Well, those are
17:22
Speaker 1: wealthy places. Yeah, So you put them in wealthy places,
17:25
Speaker 1: and they have the effect of making the quality of
17:27
Speaker 1: healthcare provided in wealthy places, which was already better than
17:30
Speaker 1: everyone else everywhere else, even better. Right, So when everyone
17:35
Speaker 1: who goes to a hospital gets you to for a
17:37
Speaker 1: gun shot dies. We don't notice the difference between good
17:41
Speaker 1: hospitals and bad hospitals. But when you put a trauma
17:44
Speaker 1: center in one of those places and you don't have
17:46
Speaker 1: another one, then you begin to notice it's a huge difference.
17:48
Speaker 2: Right.
17:49
Speaker 1: I was just at something when we were talking about AI,
17:52
Speaker 1: and everyone's you know, we're obviously very excited about the
17:56
Speaker 1: possibility that AI will transform all manner of things. It's
18:00
Speaker 1: really unclear whether AI lifts all boats equally, closes the
18:05
Speaker 1: gap between haves and have nots, or widens the gap.
18:07
Speaker 1: Pato halves no idea. Anyone who tells you that they
18:10
Speaker 1: know which way it'll go, doesn't you know it was
18:13
Speaker 1: fooling you.
18:14
Speaker 2: That's that's a very good point. And I mean, if
18:17
Speaker 2: I had to bet on one outcome or the other,
18:19
Speaker 2: I would say probably it's not going to lift all
18:21
Speaker 2: boats equally, just because also who's going to have access
18:25
Speaker 2: to AI, right, and who's going to have access to
18:28
Speaker 2: the technologies, and who's going to have the time to
18:31
Speaker 2: learn how to use them? Yeah, so who knows? Who knows?
18:35
Speaker 1: On that one? I'm actually an optimist, good I'm glad. Well,
18:39
Speaker 1: at least I'll say this that over time, I would
18:43
Speaker 1: expect it to close the gap. Not even so quite explicitly.
18:49
Speaker 1: It's obvious to me it lifts all boats. It's obviously
18:52
Speaker 1: in the short term, people with access to the technology
18:55
Speaker 1: will benefit the most. So I'm interested in making a
18:58
Speaker 1: medium to long term I think in medium to long
19:00
Speaker 1: term it does not merely lift all boats. If I
19:03
Speaker 1: had to put my money on something, I would say
19:07
Speaker 1: it would close the gap that the farmer in Bangladesh
19:13
Speaker 1: benefits more from AI than the than the factory farmer
19:19
Speaker 1: with fifty million dollars in equipment in Iowa.
19:22
Speaker 2: I hope you're right.
19:23
Speaker 1: These days, I'm only really optimistic about one thing, and
19:25
Speaker 1: that's it. Everything else is bad.
19:28
Speaker 2: All right, All right, well, well let's cling to that.
19:31
Speaker 2: So now back to the optimistic news of the trauma centers.
19:36
Speaker 2: But I was one of the things that I am
19:39
Speaker 2: curious about is how strongly do you actually agree with
19:43
Speaker 2: this idea of moral hazard that you raise in relation
19:47
Speaker 2: to the improvements and care, because I don't know if
19:53
Speaker 2: I actually buy that.
19:54
Speaker 1: You don't buy that. No, So the argument was that
19:57
Speaker 1: doctors have become so good at saving lives that it's
20:01
Speaker 1: relieve the pressure on the rest of society to do
20:04
Speaker 1: something real about the gunman. Exactly that if doctors had
20:10
Speaker 1: done nothing over the last fifty years, this is the counterfactual,
20:15
Speaker 1: the murder rate would be. We probably have four or
20:19
Speaker 1: five times of spending homicides in a given year. Let's
20:21
Speaker 1: say we we'd have one hundred thousand homicides as opposed
20:23
Speaker 1: to twenty thousand homicides, and at one hundred thousand, the
20:28
Speaker 1: current American policy set up, policy positions would be untenable.
20:31
Speaker 1: We would jump up and down and say enough stuff. Now,
20:35
Speaker 1: do I think that there is some truth in that? Yes. However,
20:40
Speaker 1: then I thought, after I'd finished the episode and I
20:43
Speaker 1: was writing this next book, I'm working on doing something
20:46
Speaker 1: on the opioid crisis, and I realized, Oh, we're at
20:49
Speaker 1: one hundred and twenty thousand opioid whatever it is, one
20:53
Speaker 1: hundred and ten thousand opioid deaths a year and hasn't
20:58
Speaker 1: really moved the needle. We don't even talk about it.
21:00
Speaker 2: Yep.
21:01
Speaker 1: So, and also, opioid deaths are not dissimilar to homicide
21:09
Speaker 1: deaths in a sense that it's clustered in various parts
21:12
Speaker 1: of the country, various slightly younger age groups. You know,
21:18
Speaker 1: the fact that we spend an enormous amount of time
21:20
Speaker 1: arguing about mass shootings when mass shootings are what, less
21:23
Speaker 1: than one percent of total homicide deaths in a given year,
21:26
Speaker 1: and very little time on the remaining ninety nine percent,
21:29
Speaker 1: suggests to me that maybe it wouldn't make a difference.
21:32
Speaker 1: Maybe the moral hazard thing is just a kind of
21:34
Speaker 1: intellectual nicety. The opioid thing would suggest that if it's
21:40
Speaker 1: the wrong people dying, really hard to get people upset.
21:44
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, that's to be perfectly honest, that's exactly
21:47
Speaker 2: what I was thinking when I was listening to this.
21:49
Speaker 2: I was saying, I actually think the moral hazard argument
21:51
Speaker 2: is bullshit, and that we wouldn't care, and that it's
21:55
Speaker 2: just these days, we also are so immune to a
21:59
Speaker 2: lot of this stuff where you're just like, oh, yeah,
22:02
Speaker 2: you know, I guess more people are dying, and.
22:07
Speaker 1: Here's the so here's the let me make a let
22:10
Speaker 1: me return, let me do another backflip and say, okay,
22:13
Speaker 1: here's here's here's a here's a moral hazard argument, and
22:18
Speaker 1: maybe that it's a it's a mechanism argument. So moral
22:22
Speaker 1: hazard is as a term is used most frequently in.
22:25
Speaker 2: The insurance industry.
22:27
Speaker 1: If I ensure you against a risk, I make your
22:31
Speaker 1: motivation to avoid that risk, I diminish your class. Example
22:36
Speaker 1: would be you live in a flood zone and I
22:40
Speaker 1: give you flood insurance, or the federal government you know,
22:43
Speaker 1: provides flood insurance. Nobody moves from South Beach. Yep, logically
22:48
Speaker 1: you shouldn't live in South Peach. In fact, they're building.
22:50
Speaker 1: They built billions of dollars in luxury house against South
22:53
Speaker 1: Beach in the last ten years, precisely because the builders
22:57
Speaker 1: are and the not not just builders, the purchasers of
23:00
Speaker 1: those apartments are reasonably sure that in the event of
23:03
Speaker 1: an environmental catastrophe, they will be bailed out by the government.
23:06
Speaker 1: So why not why not live in paradise until you
23:08
Speaker 1: get there? The answer to that is that just because
23:13
Speaker 1: one institution or body insures against risk and provides a
23:17
Speaker 1: mechanism for moral hazard doesn't mean everybody does. So what's
23:21
Speaker 1: happening in Miami is that, sure, if the hurricane wipes
23:26
Speaker 1: out your house, the Feds may bail you out, or
23:28
Speaker 1: the statement bail you out, But in the meantime, no
23:32
Speaker 1: private insurer is writing you up policy, right, So you're
23:36
Speaker 1: other self assuring or you're naked. The cycling that's happening
23:40
Speaker 1: that I suspect may soon happen, and there are people
23:43
Speaker 1: talking about this now, is maybe when you buy a
23:47
Speaker 1: house in South Beach, the mortgage rate is three points higher,
23:54
Speaker 1: maybe it's ten percent. Maybe the bank just says, you
23:57
Speaker 1: know what, why am I writing a mortgage for an
24:01
Speaker 1: apartment in South Beach that's the same as an apartment
24:05
Speaker 1: on a mountaintop in Maine when the odds that one
24:08
Speaker 1: will be swept away in a hurricane are a thousand
24:12
Speaker 1: times higher than the other. But really, by a quirk
24:14
Speaker 1: of history, we have national mortgage rates. Why are mortgage
24:18
Speaker 1: rates national if risks are not equal across what happens
24:22
Speaker 1: when we start localizing mortgage rates. That is a way
24:25
Speaker 1: in which moral hazard problems can be corrected by the market, right.
24:31
Speaker 2: But it's a very different kind of moral hazard. Right.
24:33
Speaker 2: It's actually you can't draw this then equivalence there because
24:37
Speaker 2: one is a personal choice you're making, right, You're you're
24:41
Speaker 2: choosing to buy a house knowing that it'll be fine
24:43
Speaker 2: or not. The other one is the way that you're
24:46
Speaker 2: looking at policy legislation where you don't think it applies
24:49
Speaker 2: to you where oh, well, you know, I'm not the
24:54
Speaker 2: one dying, or you know, I think I think it's
24:58
Speaker 2: a it's a slightly different decision making calculus. And in
25:02
Speaker 2: one case, you're talking about kind of discretionary spending. I
25:07
Speaker 2: mean obviously having housing as at discretionary, but you know
25:10
Speaker 2: what I mean buying, But buying a condown in South
25:12
Speaker 2: Beach certainly is versus you know, life and death and
25:18
Speaker 2: policies that are on a more.
25:22
Speaker 1: Fundamental global basic Yes, but here my point was I
25:27
Speaker 1: should restate my point. My point is that moral hazard
25:32
Speaker 1: is a term that applies to any kind of policy
25:36
Speaker 1: that removes the kind of necessary pressure for behavioral change. Sure,
25:43
Speaker 1: my point is, using the mortgage example, was that just
25:46
Speaker 1: because one mechanism removes pressure doesn't mean there are other
25:51
Speaker 1: mechanisms that can't exert it. So and you can see
25:53
Speaker 1: that with housing. What I'm wondering is, in the case
25:56
Speaker 1: of if we had one hundred thousand homicide deaths every year,
26:00
Speaker 1: or if we continue to have these one hundred and
26:04
Speaker 1: whatever plus, is there another mechanism by which on a
26:12
Speaker 1: non effected populations might be affected. So you can imagine
26:19
Speaker 1: if you live in downtown San Francisco and you see
26:25
Speaker 1: the results on a day to day basis of what
26:28
Speaker 1: the opioid crisis is doing to vulnerable communities, that's the
26:32
Speaker 1: kind of pressure. Sure, So what if what if I
26:36
Speaker 1: imagine that you're the way you think about the opioid
26:39
Speaker 1: crisis if you live in downtown San Francisco, it's very
26:42
Speaker 1: different than if you lived in Marine County. So what
26:45
Speaker 1: happens if Marine County starts to look like downtown San Francisco.
26:49
Speaker 1: In other words, there is not it's not absolutely clear
26:52
Speaker 1: to me that the kinds of pressures that would change
26:56
Speaker 1: people's thinking in a place are always going to be
27:00
Speaker 1: confined to downtown San Francisco and downtown LA And right,
27:04
Speaker 1: there's a there could be there's a scenario where people
27:07
Speaker 1: living in suburban enclaves begin to be confronted with the
27:12
Speaker 1: consequences of social policies in a way that they're not
27:14
Speaker 1: now right.
27:16
Speaker 2: Sure, Sure, I mean I get that argument, and I
27:19
Speaker 2: think and I think that that's actually that that's a
27:21
Speaker 2: valid argument. But I just don't see, you know, how
27:24
Speaker 2: we're going to get without massive horrible things happening to
27:28
Speaker 2: the world. How we're going to get Marin County looking
27:31
Speaker 2: like downtown San Francisco. It's just a you know, it's
27:34
Speaker 2: a it's a nice what if exercise, but but it
27:37
Speaker 2: doesn't seem like an actual solution.
27:42
Speaker 1: We are going to take a little break and be
27:43
Speaker 1: back with some final thoughts.
27:57
Speaker 2: So so we had you know, we've talked about a
28:00
Speaker 2: lot of problems, and so we had one letter that
28:04
Speaker 2: finally turns to the question of okay, so what do
28:06
Speaker 2: we do? But here's here's what this letter from South
28:10
Speaker 2: Carolina asks. My request is this, I need help with
28:14
Speaker 2: the So now, what if Malcolm were in charge of
28:17
Speaker 2: this topic, what would he do? Copy Canada's rules, build
28:21
Speaker 2: a new hospital in Chicago in a certain gun violence
28:24
Speaker 2: prone area. Force all cities to report bullet contact injuries
28:28
Speaker 2: and not just fatalities. So Malcolm, you're now in charge
28:32
Speaker 2: of this.
28:33
Speaker 1: Well all of those things. I mean, I think we
28:38
Speaker 1: have to accept rist fall that there's no one there
28:41
Speaker 1: is no one thing we can do here. Probably have
28:44
Speaker 1: to do twenty things. The big my big of takeaway
28:49
Speaker 1: from doing that series was I came away fundamentally disillusioned
28:53
Speaker 1: in the power of conventional government approaches to solve the problem.
28:59
Speaker 1: I don't. Actually, I was struck in talking to people
29:02
Speaker 1: who are on the front lines of this epidemic how
29:05
Speaker 1: infrequently people talked about gun control. I mean, I talked
29:08
Speaker 1: about in passing, but it is just not The majority
29:11
Speaker 1: of gun violence in this country is people to people
29:16
Speaker 1: with the legal guns. You can change, you can pass
29:18
Speaker 1: all the laws you want. They're not being touched by that.
29:21
Speaker 1: I mean, there are little things Washington could do around
29:23
Speaker 1: the margin, but just changing the conversation so that we're
29:28
Speaker 1: not arguing in the abstract about which law does this
29:32
Speaker 1: and which law does that. A couple of seasons ago,
29:35
Speaker 1: I did this episode on homelessness and they spent a
29:38
Speaker 1: lot of time in Jacksonville, Florida, which has an exemplary
29:42
Speaker 1: homelessness program by the way, and someone involved that program said,
29:47
Speaker 1: we had this conversation which I didn't use in the episode.
29:49
Speaker 1: I've thought about all the time, long time since. She said,
29:52
Speaker 1: you know, they do account of their homeless populationship, so
29:55
Speaker 1: they have a really really accurate picture going back for years,
29:58
Speaker 1: how their population has fluctuated over time. And she said,
30:01
Speaker 1: you know, there aren't more homeless in Jacksonville today than
30:06
Speaker 1: there were five years ago, in fact is less, but
30:09
Speaker 1: they're more visible. And then she went into the long
30:12
Speaker 1: discussion of why all the reasons why they might be
30:15
Speaker 1: more visible, and it was really interesting to me because
30:20
Speaker 1: we do make this mistake where we confuse the severity
30:23
Speaker 1: of a problem with the visibility of a problem. And
30:27
Speaker 1: the thing that causes pressure is not severity, it's visibility.
30:32
Speaker 1: And so when the homeless are visible in Jacksonville, you
30:35
Speaker 1: get movement behind it. So now when the problem is
30:39
Speaker 1: it's actually small than it used to be in the past,
30:41
Speaker 1: but there's urgency now because they're visible, and when it
30:44
Speaker 1: was this huge problem that was hidden, there wasn't the
30:47
Speaker 1: same kind of So like that distinction so often I
30:51
Speaker 1: think allied that distinction between urgency and visibility. So I
30:57
Speaker 1: think that what I hope to get from the series
30:59
Speaker 1: is not that it pass a law or ban ar
31:01
Speaker 1: fifteens or whatever. I think I just wanted to make
31:04
Speaker 1: the problem more visible. The last episode is called sin
31:07
Speaker 1: is the Failure to Bother to Kill. I'm not so
31:10
Speaker 1: interested in what people decide to do to solve the problem,
31:13
Speaker 1: because there's a million ways to get it. The problem.
31:15
Speaker 1: It's not even just one problem. I'm mainly interested in
31:18
Speaker 1: trying to get people to care and to think clearly
31:21
Speaker 1: about what they're caring about.
31:25
Speaker 2: On that really really happy note, thank you for an
31:28
Speaker 2: inspiring and optimistic conversation. By the way, we're probably you know,
31:33
Speaker 2: we don't have time. But I loved the Shockley episode.
31:36
Speaker 2: I thought it was so much fun and I would
31:39
Speaker 2: I hope people listen to the end that last sentence.
31:43
Speaker 2: That just what an amazing, amazing reveal. I mean, Freud
31:48
Speaker 2: would have just like been been there. Oh Freud's back
31:53
Speaker 2: in a big way. Yea, but it was. It was
31:56
Speaker 2: such a great episode. I love it. Thank you Ray,
31:59
Speaker 2: all right, Thanks Melcom.
32:02
Speaker 1: This episode of Revisionist History was produced by Ben A. DAPFH. Haffrey,
32:06
Speaker 1: Tali Amlin, and Jacob Smith, editing by seraen Nix, original
32:10
Speaker 1: scoring by Luis Kira, mastering by Jake Gorsky, and engineering
32:15
Speaker 1: by Nina Lawrence. I'm Malcolm Claudma