Better Not Call Saul: Bernard Saul II and Riley Bechtel

Zero Sum Empire

First, we set a long-term goal for the show: By 2021, get more listeners than the flat earth podcast. We can only do it with your help, so please either subscribe to our podcast or find a way to sabotage the flat earth people, whatever’s easier for you. Then we talk about Jeff Bezos (do you say Beezos or Bayzos?), who unveiled “his vision” for space colonization. He imagines a future where a trillion human beings live in space and we make rocket fuel from moon ice. Those are really things he said. We reference a NYT article that states he unveiled a “moon lander,” however he did nothing of the sort. He unveiled an IDEA for a moon lander, and he had a life-size model of it on the stage behind him. There is no actual moon lander. I cannot stress this enough: he did not unveil anything aside from his own childish fantasy about the long-term extraterrestrial future of human civilization. Please take a moment to appreciate how strange it is that the world’s richest person did that, and that people listened and applauded like it was a normal occurrence. The fact that Bezos’ presentation took place against the backdrop of a world that is literally in the middle of a mass extinction event is an irony that should, in any sane person, produce alternating waves of horror and terror. Last, we speculate on the fantasy life of billionaires a little bit. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/09/science/jeff-bezos-moon.html Our two census entries for this week are Bernard Saul II and Riley Bechtel. Bernard Saul II is the most anonymous billionaire we’ve covered so far. As far as we can tell, he hasn’t spoken to the press since 1983. His family has been in business since 1852, and B.F. Saul Co. has been around since 1892. Saul leads into a discussion about Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs), money laundering, rising urban rents, and the financialization of housing. Chances are that if you have a 401(k), you’ve invested in REITs that make money by investing in income-producing properties. Congratulations, you’re a landlord. Here’s a quick explainer on the relation between REITs, rents, and laundering: https://boingboing.net/2019/01/27/cz-edwards.html John Hennessy Saul’s Descriptive Catalogue of Fruits https://archive.org/details/johnsaulsdescrip18john_1/page/n1 Riley Bechtel is the heir to the Bechtel Corporation fortune. Bechtel is the largest construction company in the world. They built the Hoover Dam, the Chunnel, and the Riyadh Metro. They are responsible for some of the largest and most famous infrastructure projects in the world, and they’ve been around for about a hundred years. You know, it’s funny: We hear a lot about American defense companies, oil companies, chemical companies, drug companies, and internet companies getting involved in unethical and immoral activities in other countries, but we don’t hear as much about construction companies. Joe explains Bechtel’s involvement in privatizing the water supply in Bolivia. We’ve talked a little on the show about large-scale private-public partnerships around infrastructure and how private equity companies are moving more and more into this area. Important stuff to keep an eye on. Stephen D. Bechtel, Jr.'s "Reflections on Success" https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/20013444.pdf?casa_token=6Q3JfKAQCUQAAAAA:0IeBC0OXlm0FCPDESHQBsH0L5l8LpAgbW6dJ65JyXtvyv_PrDQzJ8m2OuOyIxl3ZTBJ8bymogfZKoxngm3H4njqfkJjlzIQrMNsBlNY_vONRUOIgGlA