#1798 - Michael Shellenberger

Michael Shellenberger (0:16)

Thanks for having me back, Joe.

Joe Rogan (0:18)

Nice to see you. Hey, I said that I wasn't going to do any more political podcasts, but I had already booked this one.

So for people like, what the fuck, man? But you're not just a political person. Your book, San Fransisco, what would you call that? That's a sociopolitical book, right?

Michael Shellenberger (0:37)

That's a book of journalism, commercial nonfiction, for sure.

Joe Rogan (0:40)

And a way for people to understand what can happen when bad policies get in the way of a city and turn it sideways, which is what has happened to San Fransisco.

Michael Shellenberger (0:53)

Yeah, pathological altruism. I like that word. Yeah. It's not mine. It's synthesized a bunch of other people's stuff.

I considered whether it was Monkhausen syndrome by proxy.

Joe Rogan (1:06)

Why so?

Michael Shellenberger (1:07)

Well, so Monkhausen syndrome by proxy, of course, is when a parent deliberately poisons her child in order to be able to treat the child for illness. So we have one of the things-

Joe Rogan (1:17)

Is it just children? It's like a caretaker, right?

Michael Shellenberger (1:20)

Yeah, I guess it could be like a nurse and a patient. But one of the things, since I've seen you last, a few things have happened. I discovered- I was the first one to report that we have a supervised drug use site now, illegal, in San Francisco's United Nations Plaza, where people are using fentanyl and meth under city supervision.

So I guess the difference is that Monkhausen syndrome by proxy, the adult or the caregiver, is poisoning the person directly. In this case, people are poisoning themselves in front of the supposed caregivers, and the caregivers are there to monitor it, but-

Joe Rogan (1:57)

When they do something like that, do they have any proposal or any sort of protocol these people can follow to get off the drugs?

Michael Shellenberger (2:06)

They call it radical compassion.

This is- There's a chapter on my book called Love Bombing, but it's basically- This is the big blind spot for progressives, is that they just can't conceive that being radically compassionate could cause harm.

Joe Rogan (2:22)

And radical compassion, the idea is you're going to accept these people for who they are, the fact they're drug users, and you're going to give them a comfortable, safe place in order to do their drugs.

Michael Shellenberger (2:34)

Yeah, radical- Sorry, and by the way, it's radical hospitality is what they call it.

Joe Rogan (2:39)

Hospitality.

Michael Shellenberger (2:41)

When you're attaching the word radical to anything, you should be cautious. Yeah, I mean, the idea is, so they supposedly, this was the, they called this, so in December, we whipped up a lot of concern in California, in San Francisco, for what was happening in San Francisco, the open air drug markets, the overdose deaths, which were almost triple the COVID deaths in 2020

And the mayor announced a crackdown in December. She said she's going to put an end to all the bullshit. That was literally a word she used. And she said she was going to use tough love, which is what we want, tough love.

Joe Rogan (3:15)

So what do you think lit the fire under her?

Michael Shellenberger (3:18)

Well, I think the book helped a lot. San Francisco, I'll take some amount of credit for it. It was national media attention. I think it's bad for tourism. People don't want to bring their families to San Francisco.

Joe Rogan (3:27)

Is that the worst city in terms of like the way things have eroded due to extreme progressive ideology?

Michael Shellenberger (3:34)

Honestly, I think the book is San Francisco because, and people are always like, you should write that book about Seattle, and it's like, no, no, it's the same thing in all these places, but San Francisco refers also to compassion sickness.

St. Francis is the saint of compassion. You go too far and you get pathological altruism, but the worst city by far is Los Angeles. There's no doubt about it. Skid Row is just, it's just insane. I mean, I don't even know, it's like, it's like visiting hell.

Joe Rogan (4:09)

It's hard for people to believe if they haven't actually visited, and I'm saying this as someone who hasn't visited it in more than 15 years, but 15 years ago, it was insane. And Sager, Sager and Jetty from Breaking Points, he was just there, and he told me, you can't believe it, you can't believe it's.

Michael Shellenberger (4:33)

No, it's horrible, and I'm a father of a 16-year-old girl, and you see young women, you see teenagers prostituting themselves in psychotic states, clearly not in control of their minds or their bodies. Why do we allow this? This is a complete breakdown of civilization, it's not civilized.