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Explore your curiosity - Interesting people with fascinating stories.
Life consists of three things:
-The stories we tell others
-The stories others tell us
-The stories we tell ourselves.
Amanda, welcome aboard to the show. So happy to have you here today.
Speaker 2:Good to be here. It's a great way to finish my Friday.
Speaker 1:Oh my god. It's, I hope so. I hope so. Let's see if we can have some fun. Okay.
Speaker 1:I don't think most of our audience knows what EDO is. What is what even is EDO, and why do we need it?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Economic development is a lot of things, and I think people can be really good at some parts and not good at other parts, and so I'll I'll kinda give an overview. The purely capitalistic perspective is that economic development is helping cities, counties, states increase their tax base, right? It is increasing your sales tax base, it's increasing your property tax base through whatever means that
Speaker 1:you Wait, hold on, hold on. Don't we want to pay less taxes? Why do we want to increase our tax base? That's weird.
Speaker 2:Well, most cities, counties, and states are funded by your taxes. And so all the services that residents really like, like parks and recreation and nice roads, no potholes, all of that is funded by local taxes. Not all of it. I mean, we do get some income tax that that goes through, but my goal is not to do anything about your income tax. No, no, My goal is only to do things about your local taxes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so this is not about increasing the taxes for individuals. This is about bringing businesses into the city so they pay taxes.
Speaker 2:That's right, that's right, and also having a structure and having a system that encourages people to invest in their properties, in their
Speaker 1:That's wonderful. What does that what does that mean? Tell us more about what it how do you even incentivize a person to do that? And what does it even mean?
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, you know, there is there is saying that, like, you have to have money to make money. And so that is something that is a real challenge in economic development is that a lot of people say, hey, That property looks like it's in disrepair. We should get a Trader Joe's. We should get a whatever. Right?
Speaker 2:Something that they really, really want. And, you know, what you learn when you're in economic development is that it's it's not that easy, right? There's so many decisions that go into like site selection for a business to locate into your space, and cities make decisions that make it easier or harder too.
Speaker 1:Yes. For example, is there internet? For example, are there roads? For example, is there water? For example, is there like, it's complicated.
Speaker 2:It is. It is. And let's say you have a building that's already in place and it's just empty. Can that business do business, the business that they want to do there, or is it zoned incorrectly? What does it look like to have different zoning?
Speaker 2:And it's interesting because I lived in Poland for like ten years, and they don't really have zoning, so you would have, you know, in an apartment building, you'd have a dentist office next to you.
Speaker 1:So that's so, okay. So Yeah. Why do we have zoning? Like,
Speaker 2:the Why bonus do zoning have is zoning? Well, if you listen to the Yimby movement, we should have a lot less zoning. But, I mean, the primary reason that you have zoning is so that you don't have heavy industry next to homes, so that you have places for specific industries and types of businesses that make it easy to live there and make it pleasant to live there. Right? Don't want a lot next to a daycare, right?
Speaker 1:Exactly. So zoning is really about bringing order to the chaos, but sometimes we go a little too far and then when we need to fix our mistakes, so it's kind of a delicate balance that you need to be very cognizant about it. So you're working on something exciting. How do you even figure out what are the problems that you need to solve? Like how do you know what the questions are?
Speaker 1:Forget the answers for a moment.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a great question. I have been working here for eighteen months now and I feel like I finally am starting to be able to ask the right questions, which is kind of crazy that you can live in a place and be in a place and still not know what it needs and what it doesn't need. So Silicon Valley is a really interesting place because you have residents who are really demanding, right? They're saying, Hey, we're paying a lot of taxes. We want all of these benefits.
Speaker 2:People demand a lot, and cities have to respond to that. Otherwise, they will lose those residents, right? There's a lot of patchwork of what's going on here, and so Redwood City has traditionally been sort of like the edge of Silicon Valley, right? I was discussing with a broker. He's like, Oh, you know, it's the barbell.
Speaker 2:There's Silicon Valley, and then there's San Francisco, and then there's
Speaker 1:Everything you.
Speaker 2:And I was like, no. No. We're not in the barbell. And he's like, you're not at the barbell.
Speaker 1:I was
Speaker 2:like, okay. So know. But I you know, I'm I'm I'm working on a a marketing slogan, edge of Silicon Valley, edge of innovation. But I like that. Thanks.
Speaker 2:I came up with that this morning. It felt like very inspired. But, you know, what I'm trying to figure out is how do we balance the needs of large businesses. Right? We have a number of tech firms.
Speaker 2:Right? Oracle used to have its headquarters in Redwood City. It no longer does for reasons. We have a lot of businesses who come, especially biotech, that are sort of mid sized biotech. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And so how do they grow here? Or how do we attract somebody who's not mid sized, who's already growing, right? These are really, really hard questions.
Speaker 1:This is a really hard question, right? So biotech is a really interesting one. I'll put a plug in here for my wife. She works for a pharma company. It's a weird one.
Speaker 1:Like, what do you like, how do you even think about what are the needs of a biotech company? And the biotech company at the small, medium, and large is a completely different beast.
Speaker 2:Completely. It's not like office. Right? Like a Google, you know, you might be providing more amenities when you get bigger. Right?
Speaker 2:But biotech, you know, you're you're early stage. They don't have funding. They they are not this is so exploratory as to whether it's gonna work. Yeah. That they need really cheap space, and Silicon Valley doesn't have a lot of cheap space.
Speaker 2:There are certain places in Silicon Valley that have cheaper spaces, you know, but then when they get something that works, then they'll get some funding, and then they can move into a nicer space. Right? But are those spaces ready? Right? I I was talking with one guy, and he was like, yeah.
Speaker 2:So we wanna move into this space. He's like, and I think we need a building permit. And I'm like, please just hire somebody who knows this. Like, I be a really good scientist, right? Like know your know your limits.
Speaker 2:You're basically scientist basically in a
Speaker 1:high working with PhDs, right? It's PhDs. Yeah. So, so yeah, so the magical day is the PDUFA date, right? That's when they figure out if the FDA is into whatever they're doing and the magic before that is did they meet their primary key, their primary, what's called primary endpoint?
Speaker 1:Yeah. And basically that is the day, that's like when they win the lottery or they're out of business basically.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Well, and we've seen so many firms fold in the last, I don't know, six months here.
Speaker 1:It's a risky business pharma, right?
Speaker 2:It is really risky. It is really risky, and all of a sudden, you know, they were value, you know, you see these headlines, you know, firm valued at 1,000,000,000 or firm valued at, you know, several Now $100,000,002.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:But hopefully those people have some soft landings, but you know, I don't yeah. It's rough. A very dynamic place. Have to say I, that has been the hardest part of working here is how much things change and how fast they change and that you as economic development have very
Speaker 1:Let little me ask you this, right? Pharma as an industry to focus on them is incredibly difficult because they want universities, they want smart people, they want PhDs, they want research facilities. Then when they get bigger, maybe they want manufacturing. Like it's such a weird thing. How do you kind of make those decisions?
Speaker 1:Because you're not just like, Hey, you want to come? Come. You kind of want to focus yourself to give the right services to the right people. That's an impossible decision. How do you even do that?
Speaker 2:Well, I think you have to look at who you already have and see why are people choosing you now, and can you attract more of those kind of people. Right? And unfortunatelyfortunately, the industry has really boomed in San Mateo County. Right? It started in South San Francisco, and they had a ton of space for also manufacturing.
Speaker 2:Right? I mean, Genentech does a lot of manufacturing there. Gilead does a lot of manufacturing in Foster City. And then as you grow, now you may not be able to grow. Right?
Speaker 2:We have a firm that's in one of our neighborhoods that's called Seaport Center, and they're like this close to FDA approval, and I'm like, okay. Well, what happens?
Speaker 1:Like, nothing.
Speaker 2:They don't a space to grow. They don't have a space to grow
Speaker 1:And in that space right then you're like, this is ridiculous. You do poorly. Obviously you do poorly, but even if you do well, then you run into other problems. It's like, come on guys, what are we doing here?
Speaker 2:This is really It's growing pains. It's growing It
Speaker 1:is.
Speaker 2:It really is. So it's, you know, one thing that I think my neighboring city has done really well is tried to provide the end to end service in the redesign of of some of their buildings. So they will have cheaper sort of already built to suit not built to suit, but, like, you know, fully built out spaces that people can use, and then when their firm know, a firm takes off, they're saying, hey. Well, look at this. We have this floor available for a business like yours.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And so we have a big redevelopment that's coming in our business stores. It's like happening. It's exciting. You're almost planning
Speaker 1:a pipeline, right? So there's all the small companies, only certain percentage of them will graduate, but if they graduate, that's when they're going to start paying the big bucks. You don't want to lose them. So you almost need to plan out this conversion between the small to the medium to the large. Like, that sounds like a really tough problem.
Speaker 1:How do you approach that?
Speaker 2:Well, I think people are starting to see that that's the way. To quote, right, the Mandalorian implant model, to like quote things, this is the way. You can't have those split across lots of different places. And as you redevelop spaces, you need to plan for people to not have a ton of capital in the beginning. Right?
Speaker 2:You need to plan for that. And so as we redevelop some of our older life life sciences properties, we're saying, okay. Give me some some, you know, start up spaces. Give me some larger contiguous spaces, and now give me also some medium spaces where people can grow. I think it's that's not how it started.
Speaker 2:Right? I mean, there's so much garage ethos in Silicon Valley, which is great. I mean but it's biotech is is more expensive than a garage ethos, right? You really do need a lot more of an infrastructure to start your biotech I
Speaker 1:can't remember what the numbers were, but there's a really smart PhD, her name is Moira Ganz and she has a podcast called Biotech Nation. She's like my all time favorite, I guess podcaster. Don't know, she's much bigger than a podcaster.
Speaker 2:Oh, I can check it, yeah.
Speaker 1:And I'm a big biotech fan and you know, when you're coming to these CEOs, they're becoming, some of them, many of them are becoming more savvy to the level that they want to know if I come here, especially the second time rounders, like, oh, if I come here, what will happen if I meet my, you know, the end points and I need to now manufacture, like what's the plan Phil? So it's getting tricky like from a certain perspective, and keep me honest here if you agree, the industry is also forcing you to have a much better plan.
Speaker 2:Yes, I would agree with that. Generally in San Mateo County, manufacturing is way too expensive in most of the Bay Area. The East Bay still has quite a bit of manufacturing, but you're not going to see traditional manufacturing. Can still
Speaker 1:There is a little bit of that there.
Speaker 2:We can still do biotech manufacturing. The East Bay communities in and around Fremont have done a great job. Fremont, again, right, these these are really well the reason I'm excited about doing this plan, right, is because when you have a plan, then you can say, hey. This is the way we're going. This is who we're gonna brand ourselves as.
Speaker 2:And Fremont said, we wanna be advanced manufacturing.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And that's why they have Tesla, and that's why they have, you know, so many other things. Right? And now I think Zoox is in Hayward, but, like, I mean, they're neighbors. There's this cool stuff going on over there.
Speaker 1:So computer science graduates are having issues finding jobs. Why is that? Stuff like Signal, not Signal, sorry, Cursor, Lovable, all these software can basically generate software at the level of a computer science graduate. So, and the existing engineers who are much more experienced, they're architects, they basically are now more productive because of softwares like Copilot, Cursor and So we're starting to see very, very, very early signals of a maybe market crash. And what could potentially be really bad here is that, you know, maybe computer science has a problem first, maybe then accountants have a problem.
Speaker 1:But I think what's starting to scare the economists is that there's going be a cascading effect. And what that means is that multiple industries will start to crash at the same time. And what companies do, it's not nice to say, but the first thing they do is they try to save money. So they increase their share price. I don't know how many years after supply and demand will realign again, and then there'll be hyper growth, but there's gonna be a really awful period of nobody knows how many years.
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 1:What do we do?
Speaker 2:I mean, do we do? I think that we need to be talking about it and thinking about it. Right?
Speaker 1:That's why I do this show.
Speaker 2:It was I went to a local governance summer institute this summer, and we talked about this problem. Right? That you've got really impressive tools like Copilot, and also, you know, you can, like, make it work just for your city. You could pull it on this.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:And what they're saying is, hey. Well, this can write staff reports. This can do the work of management analysts. And I'm like, oh, that's bad because those are typically entry level jobs for somebody who's coming out of college, who's learning how cities work and gives them an opportunity to understand, you know, how does this system work, right?
Speaker 1:So hold on, hold on, me just
Speaker 2:Scientists write it's the same, right?
Speaker 1:It's same. What Amanda is saying, and this is brilliant, is that if you think about the kind of growth trajectory of juniors into seniors, if you stem the juniors, you're going to have a problem later on. So this is basically what's happening in Japan, right? So when you think about the kind of elderly population, like, but there's gonna be problems we're not even thinking about.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Well, it's absolutely true. And I think one of the things that I've seen in economic mobility, and I I work with our our colleges here, right, is is teaching kids how how how transferable their skills are and helping them understand that, yes, you did learn how to be a computer scientist, and you need to learn how to do this, but how can you take it further, or how can you apply those things that you've learned to other things? Problem is that when you go to college, right, most people study things in college that they want to do or that they think are going to be beneficial for society, right? And so
Speaker 1:Oh, our cottage systems are in trouble. I mean, I didn't think we'll go there today, but they're going to fail left, right and center. Some of them are going to figure it out, I don't know who, but many of them are going to fail because your want to be student is going be like, I got this degree and I can't find a job, that's a problem.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. I mean, I went to Purdue and they're having conversations about like, well, maybe in this budget period we cut our English department. We're not going to have a master's no, like they don't have a master's program in creative writing anymore.
Speaker 1:That's the wrong program to cut. Can you just tell them that? I
Speaker 2:agree. I mean, I agree. But it's it's tough, right, because there's such this emphasis on I don't know. It's become transactional. Right?
Speaker 2:Like, college is saying, like, I'm paying you for this, and in exchange I should get this.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes.
Speaker 2:And I think it would be beneficial if we took a less transactional approach to learning, right? That you learn so that you can think and you
Speaker 1:What's have that word? Bigger Sorry, knowledge we don't that mean? I don't know what that means.
Speaker 2:I would say that it's so that you have a bigger knowledge base, right? So that you can make connections between basically be an No,
Speaker 1:the word think, is that
Speaker 2:a thing? We The word think, what is don't do a lot of that right now.
Speaker 1:We don't do that.
Speaker 2:I mean, that's that's the whole criticism of a lot of our our Gen Z right now. Right? Is, well, tell me what you want me to do. Yeah. Well, what problem do you see?
Speaker 2:Well, I don't know.
Speaker 1:I don't know how I had a conversation with a rabbi yesterday and with an EDO today, and somehow we got to the same topic, the same basically you're Interesting saying
Speaker 2:because you're thinking about it and
Speaker 1:I'm so you're driving it this problem. Now you sound like my wife. I'm the problem. Okay, you're right.
Speaker 2:You're right. I'm the problem.
Speaker 1:I'm just giving my wife
Speaker 2:a shot.
Speaker 1:She's wonderful. The question really is not what's the answer, the question really is what's the question? So that's totally the, I completely agree with this. Here's my argument and please convey this message to Purdue and anybody else, any other university that might be on the verge of making a stupid decision. If the engineers are going to be automated and what we really need is innovation in order to realign demand with supply because basically demand is going to go all the way down and if supply stays fixed, all else equal, sorry for becoming an economist for a second, I am a graduate of University studied of with, you know, Nobel laureates.
Speaker 1:Some of it rubs off.
Speaker 2:Hey, hey, feel that. I mean, I went to the University of Chicago too.
Speaker 1:There you go. There you go. Oh, I'm not
Speaker 2:cool kids.
Speaker 1:We'll geek out for a second, but not too long for the audience to be like, no, sorry. So, so all else equals prices drop. In this specific model, prices are salary.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:So
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, it's salary, but or it's positions. Yes. Right? Which freaks out people even more, right? Because you have, I would say, you know, one of the reasons that a lot of people like to work in government and like to do engineering in government, right, is that there is some stability because you are unionized, largely, right?
Speaker 2:Not all of them, but
Speaker 1:That's right. Prices are sticky. Yeah.
Speaker 2:But you know that I just want to go back to the discussion of like what happens when computer scientists can't find jobs, right? If the computer scientist is using it's sort of like learning a new technology. Right? They can't just rely on the hard skills. They're gonna have to rely on the soft skills, and it's gonna I mean, I I may be using this term wrong, but it's so much about human centered design.
Speaker 2:Right? Yes, we have processes, but how are those people going to interpret those processes? How are people going to use this? Are people going to use this?
Speaker 1:Amanda, I think you're brilliant. I'll just say it. I think you're brilliant. The reason why Purdue hopefully won't make that mistake is because in my humble opinion the future in a world where engineers don't have a job because AI just does it is not a future where we cancel the arts. It's a future where actually we need more of the arts to bring in innovation, bring in human centric design, to bring in new demand for the supply that is not being met.
Speaker 1:So my argument actually is that no, we need more literature. We need more arts, we need more people who think different because the future is going to have a lot of tough problems so we should not be canceling endless literature and arts and math and stuff like that. We need more of that because the really tough problems won't be solved in us or assembly or whatever. They're going to be solved in linear algebra. So all these people that we maybe don't value today, I think they're going to have a comeback.
Speaker 1:This is like, you know, the revenge of the geeks 2.0 basically. This is
Speaker 2:But it's a different kind, right? I hear about it's interesting. I mentioned that I lived in Poland, and the Polish university system is just really different than The US university system, and they're very technical, right? It's like if you get an engineering degree, you study engineering, and you don't really do electives like Americans do electives. And my husband was like, yeah.
Speaker 2:That's smart. Why do I need to waste time and money on these things that aren't gonna help me be a better, you know, whatever? But then you realize how many things how many things are designed without that perspective, and, like, how much you can learn from reading a book about a different culture and being, oh, that actually is really interesting. That could actually work You know what I mean? And, and, and you need that.
Speaker 1:I'm a hardcore, like computer scientist. Like these are, this is like thesis research behind me. All the books that you see there on the right, there's not one computer science book, not one. There's psychology, there's business, there's math, there's apparently Lord of the Rings.
Speaker 2:Hey, any good bookshelf has that.
Speaker 1:Hey, but my point is that, and there's a wonderful company called IDEO, and IDEO, I can't remember who there, they put out a book called the, I think it was the Seven Faces of Innovation, Nine Faces, I don't know, but basically they detail- You
Speaker 2:know I've heard about this.
Speaker 1:They're super famous, they're super famous. So they put out this book and then they basically define different types of innovation because this is like the design innovation company, like the most famous one in the world. One of the design principles of innovation is called cross colonization. That is the bringing of ideas from Shakespeare to math, from math to computer science, from English literature to buildings. Yeah.
Speaker 1:That's the idea that human constructs are universal, and we can't be stupid by narrowing our view to the view of a of a of a horse or an ant or whatever. Yeah. It's really important.
Speaker 2:Isn't that how they invented there's so many things that have been invented by, like, you put like birds. Right? And how there are birds that are too heavy to take off, but, like, they get some sort of, like, undercurrent and then that, like, invented drone technology because you could use this, and you're like, excuse me. What? Like, that's how and we could make helicopters more efficient if we use this other type of, you know, starting point.
Speaker 2:And I'm like, wow.
Speaker 1:So true.
Speaker 2:Just by looking at birds. So Like, that's amazing.
Speaker 1:As you know, I know nothing about drones, but so so I don't know if you knew this, but you know how Viagra came about? It was-
Speaker 2:Weren't they looking for like a blood pressure medicine?
Speaker 1:Yes. And you know what? You know what happened? The men didn't give back the medicine. So you do a double blind, you do a double blind study.
Speaker 1:Sure. And then at the end, you're like, okay, we're done with the study. Give us back your whatever your placebo pills, your sugar pills. They don't know who's who, right? It's double blind.
Speaker 1:And give us, so give us everything back. Everybody who had the real drug as opposed to the placebo did not give back the medicine. So everybody knew they had the real medicine, not because their heart was doing better.
Speaker 2:Because their heart
Speaker 1:was doing better. Their heart was doing much better.
Speaker 2:So better.
Speaker 1:So they're like, what's happening here? And then they did a follow-up study and they're like, holy shit, we just hit the jackpot.
Speaker 2:Right. Well, I mean, that's also kind of how they found GLP-1s, right? Is like they were looking for some other intervention, maybe just for diabetes, but then it turns out that GLP-1s also have a lot of influence on all kinds of addictive behaviors. People drink less. They have less compulsions to gamble.
Speaker 2:You know what I mean? You Oh, kind of like lose your
Speaker 1:wow. I didn't hear about this. I need to read up.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It's super duper interesting.
Speaker 1:So we have this amazing thing. It's by mistake. Like we didn't plan Yeah.
Speaker 2:No, I mean, it's science on some level, right? It's like looking for novel applications of other, of existing tools too. Right?
Speaker 1:Yeah. That's just mean that science doesn't work. I mean, we're just figuring shit out by mistake because science kind of all, I went to the dark side for a moment there?
Speaker 2:I know. I mean, I think that is that is science is just experimentation and saying, hey. I have this idea. What is does it work? Does it not work?
Speaker 2:Right? And then, hey. Did it work for something else? And that's what I love about I actually studied science before I went into government, right? And I was talking yesterday with another ED manager who used to be a biochemist, and I think it just comes down to problem solving, right?
Speaker 2:If this didn't work, what might? Or what was good out of this thing that didn't work? Right? And that's cool. That's that's the cool part of science.
Speaker 1:You know what? What's the problem with human beings? Let's go there.
Speaker 2:Self awareness? I don't know.
Speaker 1:Yes. Yes. 100. Yes. A thousand times.
Speaker 1:Yes. That's not the one I was going for. We think in binary terms, We think in good and bad and right and wrong, but that's not how the world works, right? And in fact, the scientific method is all about, oh, let me prove this to be wrong, which sounds weird, like why? So I'm trying to prove something wrong like that sounds weird.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So that's a weird thing that I think the general public sometimes doesn't wrap their head around it because it's so weird that like why would that be true? Why? If you're a scientist, you're smart, right? So if you're smart, you know the answer. So give me the answer.
Speaker 2:Well, it's right. But that's yeah. Yeah. I mean, people really do like simple answers and I get it. I mean, that's how you end up in so many of the problems that we face today.
Speaker 2:Also politically, also in health and fitness and whatever. Right? It's like, if you tell me this thing, I will do it, and that thing should work. And you're like, okay. Well, there's a lot there's a lot more nuance.
Speaker 2:Right? Like, we wanna reduce carbon emissions. Okay. But we wanna reduce plastic pollution. Plastic is bad.
Speaker 2:It goes into the ocean. Let's Oh, use it turns out that raises carbon emissions. What? You know, like, there's so many trade offs that I don't know. It's I was reading an article today, and it was talking about, like, instead of asking people, would you pay more to reduce emissions?
Speaker 2:Like, having people really start to understand what trade offs are, that that I mean, look. I mean, I said self awareness.
Speaker 1:Heresy. Burn her.
Speaker 2:Everybody wants everything. I know, I know, but trade offs are really important, and when you just present things as binary, like we can have this or we can't, it's like, well, am
Speaker 1:I Amanda, the not next thing you're gonna ask politicians not to speak in bite sized, you know, sentences. Come on now.
Speaker 2:I'm an elected official and it is very hard to work in this environment.
Speaker 1:Will tell you this show is gonna get you fired. But why politicians are incredibly smart. This is a very rarely known truth. The other really known truth is that politicians will be at each other's throats and then five minutes later they'll be thinking together on how to solve an actual problem. But it's kind of funny because there's this like public show of like we're bad, they're good, we're good, they're bad, but then the politicians are working together like every single day.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And they weren't admitted to, you know, the public or to people in their party, but they kind of like other people on the other side. Like, it's kind of weird. Like, why do we need to be so subversive, so like extremist? Why do we have to be like, they're the devil. Like, why can't we just be like, no, I actually enjoy working with this person.
Speaker 1:He's reasonable. But yeah, You
Speaker 2:still see that. I think you still see that at the local level and even at
Speaker 1:That's the state fair.
Speaker 2:But the problem is that, like, our national politics have become very, very, like, polarized and and and they seep down. So it's like, even if you're a really reasonable local Democrat or Republican or third party, you know, you're still tagged with this sort of national nonsense that's that's nonsensical. And and and at the end of the day, politics does influence the things that get made, right? You went back, we started zoning, right? And part of the reason we have zoning is because there are politicians in these local towns that say, I don't want that.
Speaker 2:Period. I don't want that in my backyard. I don't want that in my town. And maybe a neighboring town will say, I do want that. Yes.
Speaker 2:Maybe another neighboring town will say, Oh, I don't want that either. And then it has to go much further, right? But when you have a whole bunch of people saying no or a whole bunch of people saying yes, you get a totally different landscape than if you have different preferences in different places.
Speaker 1:Right. So this is an incredibly interesting problem because even in one community, there's a lot of dynamic trade off where if you help one part of the community, you're quite literally not helping another because there's a finite budget. These decisions are incredibly difficult. So in European countries where drugs are free, the way that they do that is they have to decide what the basket is. So what are the drugs that are free?
Speaker 1:Because if it's not in the basket, like we can't pay for everything. So, so there needs to be a basket basically of the free drugs. And then there's a special committee that's made out of like, you know, really smart that are basically deciding who's going to live and who's going to die. Like, I don't want to be on that committee.
Speaker 2:No, you don't want to be on that committee. And that's why they try to like go to data. Right? That's why you get, what do they call them? It's like actuaries, you know, like that's why you get the actuarial tables.
Speaker 1:These are the people that give dollar values to people's lives. I'm not a huge fan, but the actuary approach is one approach, but we need to use heart with math, not just math. There's a
Speaker 2:Agree. Mean, I think we started at that premise of you can't be a good scientist without heart, right? You can't be a good mathematician without heart.
Speaker 1:This is
Speaker 2:true. This is true. It be nice to be able to solve problems without emotions, but people are people, right? It doesn't work like that.
Speaker 1:There's all these movies where the aliens come and they're like, oh, like your emotions are your weakness humans, and then they're like, no, our emotions are what make us strong.
Speaker 2:It's our strength.
Speaker 1:It's our strength.
Speaker 2:I do think it is our strength. Is our weakness. I mean, I don't know, right? It's both. Think I that was one of my very first leadership lessons when I was in my first job out of college was, Amanda, you go really hard, which is a real advantage, but also you go really hard, which can put people off.
Speaker 2:Like, that's interesting, right?
Speaker 1:Isn't it wonderful that our advantages are also our disadvantages at the same time? Yeah. If you criticize somebody for their weaknesses, you're criticizing them for their beauty as well. Pouch!
Speaker 2:Arie, you should make that like a theme. That was good.
Speaker 1:Oh lord, I don't know. Anyway, this podcast is about helping government prepare for the impending doom of AI, which will last for some years and then hopefully blow over a So, okay, so how do we prepare for this, you know, collapsing of industries? Obviously there's going to be new industries that emerge, but we need to figure that out. So we need the innovation to figure that out and create those industries. We need to get ahead of the curve.
Speaker 1:We can't wait until the industries collapse to train our people and prepare them for this future. We need to redo our universities. Like, it almost feels like we need to reprogram the entire government operating system.
Speaker 2:Good luck. I don't know if you've noticed how slow government moves, but it's designed that way so that we think through everything very, very closely.
Speaker 1:For good reason, by the way.
Speaker 2:Yes. Yeah. It's intentional. Right? It's unintentional.
Speaker 1:But okay, so we need to move fast, but we've designed the system to move slow intentionally. We don't want people like changing government overnight. That can be that, you know, that happened in Russia and in China and like that can be dangerous. So this is, this is an internal conflict or a paradigm in how government works that is going to either save us or fail us. How do you even think about this?
Speaker 2:That's a very, very good point. I mean, do think a lot of people are thinking about this. There are, you know, task forces on AI and education, not only in using it for teaching, but also in teaching how kids how to use it.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:Right? And I once expressed in my, like, economic development newsletter that I was not a huge fan of AI, and somebody who I who I did not expect to be a fan of AI said, Amanda, like, this is how I use it. I wanna show you this. And he showed me some really interesting things, and I thought, gosh, it really can be a thought partner, and it really can make certain things much more efficient and save that time of, you know, I would call it like data entry. It's like the data entry of the seventies, right, when we move to computers.
Speaker 2:But the truth is that there are there's gonna be a part of the industry that and part of the people who lose their jobs, those jobs aren't coming Right? It's the same people who, you know, programmed Fortran. Once they learn the next thing, right?
Speaker 1:I met a lady at the Apple store today, and she's like, Oh, I'm locked out, and I'm like, I'm not an Apple employee, but sure I'll help you. And she's in her eighties and we're talking and you know, I'm, so my wife says that some people are socially awkward. I'm awkwardly social. So my son is like that too. So basically we're talking and we're becoming friends and so she tells me she basically programmed on the IBM punch card machines and I was like woah that's like that's an amazing part of history And like nobody is doing punch card programming anymore.
Speaker 1:Right? Those people don't have a job anymore. And that's probably okay. So if the people that were doing punch cards didn't have a job and now the people that are doing this on a keyword, which is me by the way, I'm computer scientist, I'm a developer, I'm a programmer, won't have a job anymore, maybe that's okay too, but my question is, as government, as local economic development, we want something to happen so the shock in our community will be less, right? Want to reduce that economic shock.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And it's about education and it's about other things. If you had a magic wand and you had to pick one like area of government to like redo perfectly overnight and you didn't have the slowness of government to deal with, arduously we have to deal with that. If you could have a magic wand, what would be that area of government that you would rewrite the operating system overnight?
Speaker 2:That's a very interesting question.
Speaker 1:Only easy questions today, Amanda.
Speaker 2:You know, it's probably would do something around like the land use piece and building plans. It stops some innovation from happening because it can be really expensive to get your plans approved, right? And making sure that you're combined, you're meeting all the codes and meeting all that stuff. Right? And our our planners should be able to think about bigger, better things than, oh, okay.
Speaker 2:Have I done plan check? You know, have I checked all the things? Did I see all the things? I think that that's an area that is is right for it, that you could put, you know, architectural plans into an AI and say, look at this and compare it to the 2021 California building code.
Speaker 1:Is this in spec?
Speaker 2:Right. Right. You know? Or our, you know, local building codes. What does it mean?
Speaker 1:The irony is that the planners would lose their jobs, but the economy would be accelerated by the fact that that process is accelerated. That's the irony.
Speaker 2:Well, but I don't know that they would lose their jobs, right? Because it would free them up for like bigger idea planning, right? That's something that's I'm a one man shop, right? And as you said, we were talking about trade offs, right? When I spend time working with our large industries, I'm not spending time talking with our restaurants and seeing how they're doing, because I don't have enough time in the day to do that.
Speaker 2:So what could our planners be working on that could actually transform the city or transform the community that they don't get to work on very much because we don't have enough time for that.
Speaker 1:So Amanda is getting the roughest treatment that I've ever given anybody because she can handle it. She's incredibly intelligent.
Speaker 2:I'm it.
Speaker 1:I love it. Totally can. So basically I said to Amanda like, like you want to take people's jobs away? And what she said really, which is brilliant, is that demand will meet supply. And that is absolutely brilliant.
Speaker 1:And in government demand can eat supply, it can meet supply easily because you know, you don't just go and fire people. Unfortunately, in the commercial environment, that does happen because you have share prices. So I obviously said something that was untrue and wrong. Sometimes they do that just for fun.
Speaker 2:But it's not entirely untrue, right? I mean, The you know, people are shitty trying to hit their share price prices, and that is a factor. Right? But I think everybody in government we are we are limited by tax base.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:Right? And the the limitations make it harder or easier to do different things. Right? You make all these trade offs. Maybe you could do a lot more for your residents if you spent less on doing plan check.
Speaker 2:Right? You could actually have more efforts to we we'd have more we'd free up funding for infrastructure upgrades that would lead to more businesses being able to move here because they would be able to handle higher energy output. I mean, we're struggling a lot in California with energy. What does it look like to have the infrastructure for nuclear? I couldn't do that right now.
Speaker 2:I mean, like, it's just not it's not fathomable.
Speaker 1:If you're stuck on the muck of the everyday, how do you do the important things? You don't get to that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, you never get to that, and it's interesting because, you know, in another organization that I work in, we're doing a strategic plan, and people are asking, Why are we hiring consultants to help with it? And it's like, well, because we still have to keep the boat rowing, right? We still have to keep going, but we're also doing this transformative stuff. The person who's doing this really can't be the person who's doing that. There has to be more capacity.
Speaker 2:This consultant
Speaker 1:is hired for three months, and this is the only thing they do, they're experts, and we're running the show, and we can't stop and do something. Like, I don't think people get that, and you hire that consultant for three months, sure, they're expensive, but you're not hiring a team of five people to work full That's way more expensive, right?
Speaker 2:Right, right. But people get afraid about that. They worry that, well, you could have had staff, and you're like, well, we could have, but what does it look like? You know, it's having that additional extra capacity for a
Speaker 1:short That's period of unfair time because is you have a budget, you have a tax base, and oh, we could have had that, okay, but then okay, are we having less officers on the streets? Are we having less safer streets? Like, or are we having less teachers? Or are we not fixing the roads? Like, you decide, and then they're like
Speaker 2:Right, but people don't like trade offs. They don't really like to be faced with that, and I mean, I can understand why. I mean, it's why for all the stuff that politicians have to do, I mean, they they do have to make hard decisions Yeah. And say, well, in this budget, this is what we're gonna focus on, and this is what I think is most important for the next two years or whatever, and that that's a hard position to be in because, you know, there's gonna be a lot of people who are unhappy. I don't know.
Speaker 2:What again, like, politics one of my favorite phrases in politics is being a successful politician or being a successful government person is disappointing people at a rate that they can withstand.
Speaker 1:I love that. I love that. I've never heard that before, by the way. That's beautiful. You know, I a lady that was in the same school, it's her son, my son, same school, and she was an avid political activist.
Speaker 1:And I find sadistic joy in whoever the political person in front of me playing the other side. So you're a Democrat, I'm
Speaker 2:gonna That's be a very, very University of Chicago.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's true. This is true. So you're a Republican, I'm a Democrat. Whatever you are, I'm the opposite. Whatever you are, I'm playing the opposite.
Speaker 1:It's like I used to be a dungeon master when I was a kid, so this idea of telling stories and thinking through scenarios is obviously very So she's like, she was playing side X, I was playing side Y and I'm like, that's brilliant. Let's do that. Where do we get the money from? So she's like, well, taxpayers are paying for it. I'm like, we're increasing taxes?
Speaker 1:And she was like, no. So where are we taking it from? So I went down this discovery, of going down this path of saying dynamic trade offs without saying dynamic trade offs. It didn't end well.
Speaker 2:No, it doesn't. Right? I mean, that's, it doesn't.
Speaker 1:It's easy to shout slogans.
Speaker 2:That's science, but that's science, right? Because you're gonna get to this point where you fail. Yeah. Because you are gonna fail somebody.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:And you I would say that the whole, like, definition of equity is trying to fail different people regularly. Right? I that's I just came over that on the spot, but, right, like, you don't want to keep failing the same community again and again, right? How can we I mean, or how do we continue to lift up communities and give them all a chance, right?
Speaker 1:If you fail the same community all the time, then they will uprise and that's civil war basically. That's not good. But here's, okay, here's my argument. If you look at the economic model of equity over a thousand years, the biggest thing that created equity over a thousand years or redistribution of wealth was not social activism. It's technology.
Speaker 1:So it's the printing press. It's the wheel. It's the horse. So all of these technologies, right? It's putting a hoofs on the horse.
Speaker 1:It's the internet, it's computers, now it's AI. So, so sure. It's going to be horrible for some amount of years. I don't know. Don't quote me on how many, because nobody knows, but it's going to be absolutely horrible.
Speaker 1:But when we look at the long run, sorry, that's an economics term. It's going to be really good. There's going to be a massive redistribution of equity. And what we've seen is that over the last a thousand years, we have many more millionaires today than we have in the past, which is a good thing because it used to be that we had one millionaire. It was the king.
Speaker 1:That's it. And everybody else was peasants. And now you can, you can become a self made king or queen by getting a good education, coming up with a good idea, building your software on Cursor or whatever, Lovable, and then, you know, hiring a good salesperson, and then you're a millionaire. Good job. That, to me, that feels like the freedom we've never had before.
Speaker 2:I would agree. It's interesting though, because I don't know, you talk about golden handcuffs a lot when you talk about money, right? And that people start making a lot of decisions to get more money instead of making decisions that are good for society or humanity or whatever, right? Just that the whole because it right. Like, let's say I mean, I think I'd be a great philanthropist if I became a millionaire.
Speaker 2:I'd give it to all good causes, and I'd invest in all the right things. Right? And but who am I to say that those are the right things? Right? And and by having this sort of, like, philanthropy based equity model and saying, like, okay, we can we can accrue wealth.
Speaker 2:Like, I'm a big I I'm a big proponent of taxes, which I know that many people are not, but having lived in Europe
Speaker 1:Amanda, lost all of the audience. She said she wants taxes. Like, well, give us schools. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I love schools.
Speaker 1:You want to have your kids at home all day. Is that what you want?
Speaker 2:I don't. Do you really want that? I don't. Do you want that? But, you know, having lived in in Europe, right, there are higher taxes.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:At least on the income level, they have different kinds of tax structure. I think actually The US and Europe are are generally pretty equally tax burdened on some level, but in a different way. I just think that and I guess that's the question is, right? There's that institutional trust there too, that your government is trying to make decisions that are right for the most people at the right time. And I don't think Americans don't necessarily have that ethos or that belief.
Speaker 2:They do on the local level most of the time, but not.
Speaker 1:It's easier on the local level because you're not on TV, know, you don't need to smear the other person on TV, so you can work together because like, I don't want to say nobody cares, but it's easier to work when you're not under the spotlight from that perspective.
Speaker 2:I would agree. And these are your neighbors, you know? It's really hard to get mad at somebody who lives in California when you live in Ohio, versa.
Speaker 1:Are they even people, those people in Are they even people? Gosh. My lord.
Speaker 2:Our good weather and beautiful no. Just kidding. So, okay. I this as a person who has family in Ohio. Like, I love Ohio.
Speaker 2:Right? And it's different.
Speaker 1:The Ohio State.
Speaker 2:The Ohio You know, I went to Ohio last weekend, and and they are still using Styrofoam. And, like, the perspective of, like, coming from California where it's, like, compostable everything.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And I get there and I'm like, wow. Styrofoam, man,
Speaker 1:I have to come like, to on.
Speaker 2:Oh, years.
Speaker 1:So when I go to restaurants, I'm like, no, give me that, not the Styrofoam, and I have to ask for it here in Colorado, it's not a thing, but yeah, so Redwood City is mighty pretty, right?
Speaker 2:It is. We are Climate Best by Government Test. That is our logo, our motto.
Speaker 1:Is that better than, what was her name, Jane, the Chicago, the Windy City?
Speaker 2:Oh, I don't know, Climb at Best by Government Test. I mean it is literally 72 here, almost all the time. It is beautiful.
Speaker 1:The Camelot of it, right? You know that song, the Camelot song? No, I ought to go listen to it. You've got to listen to it. It's like, life is perfect in Camelot, the weather is always perfect, like everything's perfect in Camelot.
Speaker 1:It's like one of these old, old, old things.
Speaker 2:Okay, okay.
Speaker 1:Oh my god, Amanda, this has been such a delight. We've had so much fun together. I hope, I hope the audience I'm sure the audience enjoyed it too. Let me ask you the difficult question, which is the only scripted question on the show. Okay.
Speaker 1:But it's hard. If you haven't
Speaker 2:I mean, haven't you don't feel like the other ones you've asked me about hard?
Speaker 1:But those were warm ups for you, Amanda.
Speaker 2:All right. All right. All right.
Speaker 1:So my mother would tell me, it's not hard. It's difficult. This is hard.
Speaker 2:That's true. Actually, when I was learning Polish, they were very specific about the definition of pruno versus it's like hard, difficult, heavy, you know? It's like fascinating.
Speaker 1:If you had to go back to the most difficult part of your life and give yourself some advice, what would that be?
Speaker 2:Oh, I've had a lot of difficult parts in my life, mostly family things, and I would say that you get to choose your own family. That's the advice that I would give my younger self, and anybody who's going through family stuff, is that you get to choose other people that you get to hang out with, and find those people, and they're really great.
Speaker 1:Amanda, thank you so much for coming on the show. This has been an absolute delight, and you will get something that most other guests don't get, an invite to come back.
Speaker 2:All right, I'm here. I'm here
Speaker 1:for There are only three guests that have come back so far, and there's only one that has come back for a third time.
Speaker 2:Oh wow.
Speaker 1:Yeah, this doesn't happen.
Speaker 2:I would have to go to listen to that person's podcast. This sounds is
Speaker 1:Paul, what's his name? Paul, Paul, he's an Australian, he's the CEO of a company called Octopus Deploy I think it is. He is brilliant, is so much fun to talk to and so are you.
Speaker 2:Thanks, have a great day, have a great weekend.