Episode 171 Scott Adams: Bill Pulte Talks About TheBlightAuthority.com Helping Urban Areas
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Hey everybody, come on in here.
We've got an excellent Coffee with Scott Adams coming.
You may already see my special guest appearing by iPad.
It's Bill Pulte.
We're going to be talking about the Blight Authority.
Some exciting updates.
And they really are exciting, if you like to change the world, and who doesn't, really.
You know what goes well with changing the world?
I'll tell ya. Coffee.
Do you have your coffee?
Bill, do you have your coffee?
You really should. I have something.
Alright, alright. It's time for...
You know what it's time for.
It's time for the simultaneous sip.
Here it comes.
Join me.
That's good.
- Good, we're gonna have to work on that synchronicity a little bit. - You pick it up, just line it, put it down, we're gonna walk. - So, Bill, for those who-- Yes, good to be with you, Scott. Good to be with you.
And for those who are not yet aware of the Blight Authority, could you give us the quick rundown, and then we're going to tell people about the exciting updates.
Absolutely. So what we do is we It's drug activity, and really it's been quite a success in the cities we've operated in.
And thanks to you and many others, but really you, Scott, we have a new website today, blightauthority.com backslash ideas, which I know we're going to be talking about.
So the punchline is we got a great urban strategy that's worked on fixing many urban communities, and we'd like to take that across the United States.
So those of you who have been following my writings for a while, and I think that's most of you, you know I always talk about systems being better than goals.
A goal is a very specific thing you want to do, whereas a system is something you would do on a regular basis to try to kick up the best opportunities and work your way toward a place of better odds of success.
So, when I heard about Bill's project here, the Blight Authority, and how they were clearing out, you know, these big contiguous pieces of land in these urban areas, and the land is, would it be fair to say that the land is close to free at this point, or is that an overstatement?
If somebody wanted to use it and had a good idea for it.
Well, let's put it this way.
When a lot of these urban communities go bankrupt, for example, the creditors all argue about what So it's a loss.
It's a negative thing to own this land, whereas in some cases it's up.
But I think it's a fair assessment to say that a lot of this land has less value than people think it does, and therefore it can get bought at the right price, but then you've got to maintain it and do a lot of other things to keep it.
So we've got these big swaths of empty lots in urban areas, and there will be more of them.
What are the plans for doing more of these in different cities, for example?
Well, we're about to announce two of our next cities, one or two of our next cities we're going to see.
As you know, Scott, I've got a lot of big urban mayors calling me saying, hey, Pulte, can you come?
to XYZ city and frankly it just requires a lot of work and so the situation that we find ourselves in Scott is you know which city should we go to first?
What we did in Detroit we did 10 city blocks in 10 days boom we knocked out 10 city blocks then we did 14 city blocks in under 30 days so these can be done in short periods of time but again if you're talking about scaling this across the United States There are literally hundreds of thousands of abatement buildings in urban America, so we've got our work cut out for us.
Wow. And for those who are not familiar with the word blight, B-L-I-G-H-T, blight just refers to these run-down, crime-infested, useless areas that just need to be bulldozed so you can start over with some better idea.
And let's talk about the better ideas.
So what we noticed needed to, you know, the second part of the project is once you've got it down to dirt, what do you do with it?
You don't want to leave it as dirt.
You know, ideally you want to help build back these urban areas, give them something that makes sense for the people who already live there.
And we decided to collect some ideas.
So we built a page that has a forum at blightauthority.com.
You can either go to blightauthority.com and hit the forum button or go directly to it, blightauthority.com.
And people already are adding lots of ideas.
You got a lot of attention after being on Fox& Friends yesterday morning.
Did that make the website a little more active?
Oh yeah, the website shot through the roof.
That was a huge segment with Fox& Friends, really a home run segment.
We had Reverend Simmons on, who's a big pastor out of Detroit, African-American gentleman, really just a class act.
And this gentleman and I, we went into one of the worst areas of Detroit, worst in terms of murder, great in terms of people, but worst in terms of murder, drug activity, etc.
And we literally cleared out 14 city blocks.
And actually, Scott, within that perimeter that Reverend Simmons We found a young girl's dead body.
They hadn't found her yet, and actually one of our machines, one of our contractors, actually encountered the body physically in part of our activity.
So Reverend Simmons was with me on Fox News.
That was just awesome to showcase that property.
The response has been just overwhelming, frankly, with people reaching out, wanting to work with us, wanting them to I think it's indicative of kind of the viral nature of this project and really how much people want to see our urban communities look beautiful and frankly be safe.
I mean a lot of these kids are not safe in these areas Scott and that's what we're doing is making these kids safer.
Yeah, I've heard that safety might be the number one thing you have to get right because you can't do anything else.
You know, nobody's going to put a business in an unsafe neighborhood, etc.
So that would be one of the many elements of ideas that we're collecting at the website.
And let me talk about what the process here is.
There are very few things in the world where everybody agrees, especially if there's any political element to it.
And I think everybody would agree that the urban areas are in trouble, a lot of them, and that they need help, and that if we had a good idea how to do it, pretty much everybody would like to do it.
And I've heard, and maybe Bill, you can tell me, just fact check this.
I've heard it said, just in somebody's writing, that money isn't the problem you think it would be.
The problem is how to deploy it.
So you can't attract money if you don't have a way to intelligently employ it.
So there's kind of a chicken and egg, you know, you need money to do things, but you need to know what to do in order to attract money.
And so, partly for that and partly because we just want to create energy around ideas and focusing on the problem, the website will be collecting every idea from people who have a new product that might be good for building low-cost housing, to people who have ideas about how to organize a community, Maybe some ideas about how you would handle education.
Perhaps something about healthcare, just specific to the local area.
Things about transportation, security.
Can you think of some more categories, Bill, that I'm leaving out?
No, I think those are pretty much all of them.
I think that what we've seen in the initial 24 hours is people have been pretty creative.
So if you think you've got an idea, just throw it out there for us, please.
And I want to give you an example.
I was just looking at the site to see some of the ideas that have been suggested.
And this is not a commercial for this product.
I don't know about it, but it just looks like a great idea.
So there's these things called Apex building blocks that seem to be some kind of a lightweight, concrete base, but something makes them light.
I don't know what. But they fit together, not quite like Legos, but they're easy to assemble.
And you can build an entire structure in one day, apparently.
Now, that's the type of idea.
And again, I'm not endorsing that particular product.
I'm just saying we're collecting all of those sorts of ideas in one place.
And in the perfect world, people who have money and are looking for a way to make the world better might be able to discover some people who have some products that do it, perhaps some people who would organize, maybe some people who want to run a small project.
Maybe some of these people say, hey, let's get together and talk some more.
So the idea is just to concentrate energy through a lens into this one website where all the people anywhere who have ideas can put them in one place in some easy to find way.
And we're hoping that that leads to better ideas, better thinking, maybe some human connections that weren't going to happen otherwise.
So this is one of those cases.
This is the sort of thing that's showing you how the nature of the world is changing in terms of there are some things government is good at, and there are some things that government maybe can help but isn't really the ideal solution.
And if you see what's happening, Bill and I are not members of the government, but look what we could do.
We could build this website, Bills Group, non-profit.
How many people contribute?
You've got a number of big donors and now some smaller donors to fund the Blight Authority.
How many entities back that now?
And they're all non-government, right?
Yeah, well, we've had hundreds, and frankly, they're private entities.
But one of the things that we've seen is a lot of individuals going to our website and donating, even yesterday after the Fox& Friends segment.
You know, that was fascinating to see how many people are starting to just say, hey, look, can we even write, you know, small checks, big checks, etc.
So I think it very much is a private movement.
You talked a little bit about deploying the funds.
I think what's important to note there is specifically is somebody, leadership matters, right?
And, you know, on this urban issue in particular, you know, you need really good leadership to talk to the city, to talk to the state, to talk to the county.
I mean, you go start putting bulldozers on people's property, I mean, you better know what the heck you're doing.
And in this situation, what we're doing is going and talking to all these different partners.
That's where the hard work comes in.
So we really appreciate a lot of these partners, Scott, and it's going to be really exciting to see where we go next.
I saw a question go by that said, is it non-profit?
The answer is yes, but do you want to expand on that?
No, we are absolutely a 501c3 non-profit.
Frankly, Us being a non-profit allows us to basically bring everybody together.
We want everybody to work together.
I got a lot of questions yesterday from people saying, you know, why would you go on Fox& Friends?
I think that's actually indicative of many things, frankly.
But I think what it's also indicative of is the fact that people really care about our urban communities, no matter what political side you're on.
And so what we've done a nice job of, Scott, is really being apolitical and really being focused on just getting the job done.
And I think that's how We're saying, you know, bring in these ideas and we'll bring them to the community.
And I actually think the communities will be very open-minded to new ideas.
That's been my experience. They just, in many cases, want help.
Yeah, just emphasizing what I said before, but saying it a little better this time.
There are some things that everybody agrees on.
Everybody would like to see a solution to the problem.
And given the choice of having the government spend, you know, everybody's tax dollars versus doing it privately with people who have, you know, an interest in the money and the time and everything to help.
Everybody would prefer that if it could be done privately, that that would be preferred because nobody wants their taxes to go up, right?
So we have one of these unique situations where there's nothing to disagree with.
We're in weird territory of 100% agreement.
And because of the tools of the internet, the ability to communicate and connect people and get them to focus on the same things, we can do something that just would have been impossible in an earlier day.
So we can leverage the power of the internet.
Anybody who has an interest in making the country better, in making the urban areas better, because there's a big leverage point there, right?
If you help the people who are in the deepest hole, That's the biggest bang for the buck, I think.
Or let me put this in other terms.
Here's the way I like to explain it.
If you had a choice between giving somebody a 10% raise who already has a job, which would be great.
Everybody wants a 10% raise, so that would be great.
But compare that to moving somebody from unemployed to employed.
That's a huge difference.
I mean, that's a much bigger difference than the 10% rate.
It's just in my arbitrary example.
Likewise, moving somebody from I can't afford my home to I can afford my home is an enormous difference.
Moving somebody from I don't have the training to do a job to I do have the training, enormous difference.
So you can get huge leverage if you're focusing the right resources in the right places.
And the website will be at least one way to get enough energy in one place that maybe some good connections can be made.
Do we have any questions about this?
Oh, and by the way, you can donate privately to the effort.
It's a non-profit.
You can see the results are already happening.
So this is real and undergoing, or on the way, I mean.
It's ongoing, I should say.
What happens to the land?
So that's what we're talking about.
So the land is cleared.
It has ambiguous ownership.
It's worth roughly zero-ish dollars in its current form.
But we're collecting ideas on the website bladeauthority.com.
Hit the forum menu when you get there.
And you can add ideas and you can see other people's ideas.
And we welcome commercial ideas.
So you can just put your commercial there.
If it has something to do with this area and it's useful, go ahead and put your commercial there.
And if you're just individuals who have ideas, put them there.
And it could be anything from how to build, what to build.
It could be something about commercial building.
It could be something about community, organization.
Let me give you a few more examples just to prime the pump.
I saw somebody who just put an idea on the site talking about how normally you build a community and you decide where the roads are.
You just do this square grid, you know, roads going this way, roads going this way.
And then if you were to map how people actually live, You would find out that they're always going to the same places.
They go to school and back.
They go to the freeway and back.
And that the way you design a community from the ground up is probably completely wrong.
I mean, just think about that.
Just the basic transportation of it is probably completely wrong and could be done, you know, amazingly better with a little thought.
It might take some experimenting, that sort of thing.
I'll give you some more examples.
And maybe, Bill, why don't you explain geothermal and how that's an example of something that could be done better?
Well, I think when you have these urban communities in particular, a lot of these areas are being sucked People are literally going and lighting these homes on fire.
So whether, you know, you look at HVAC, whether you look at geothermal, whether you look at water resources, Scott, what's happening is these resources are being sucked across, frankly, dilapidated and, you know, homes that are dangerous and there are squatters in these homes,
etc. So I think what you're talking about or what some of the ideas from the website are, hey, look, let's look holistically at these urban communities and let's say, okay, what's the most efficient way to That we could have these communities operate, whether that be with businesses, whether that be, you know, with parks.
I mean, you know, just something that's different.
So, again, we're open to any ideas.
You know, I'm not giving one exact thing here, but that's the beauty of, I think, where we're at right now is, you know, what are some creative ideas that we can do with these urban communities?
Because they're all across the United States.
I mean, There are literally hundreds of big urban communities across the United States, Scott, that haven't figured out what's this, you know, step two, three, and four.
What's next? Yeah, just so you can brainstorm a little bit more of the audience here.
Imagine, if you will, a community that's built with, from the ground up, it's imagined that there are security cameras basically on every corner so that every exterior part of the community has video surveillance.
Maybe every resident can look through those cameras.
That may be too much. But imagine that the homes are built with interior security as well.
Now, if you're a criminal, Where are you going to go?
You're not going to go to that community.
So you can almost instantly make a community probably something like 80% safer just by designing it with what would be relatively low cost to add cameras in the original design.
Well, I'll give you an example there, Scott.
So in our one area, our one pilot area in Detroit, we cleared over 700 lots in this 14-city block area.
And it was in Detroit We're literally dumping trash on the property.
In fact, we collected over 200,000 pounds.
Think about that. Imagine that.
200,000 pounds of trash just being dumped on this one neighborhood.
We collected over 300 car tires in this perimeter.
So you imagine all of this kind of dumping that goes on.
Again, it's a foreign concept for people who don't live in these neighborhoods.
But literally, you have people from the suburbs who are doing remodel jobs and other things dumping their trash literally in a neighborhood.
When you talk about security, that's the whole idea of what we're doing is making it so that way, as we say, when we turn on the lights, the cockroaches scatter.
Some of these ideas, the one you just mentioned, are the perfect example of how we're trying to really help that community stop some of this stuff from happening day in and day out.
Yeah, and I mentioned earlier geothermal.
I just wanted to mention that.
You know, if you don't know what geothermal heating and cooling is, it takes advantage of the fact that the earth, the interior, at least underground, I don't know if you go down 10 feet or whatever, is always a constant 56 degrees.
So one way to lower your heating and cooling costs is to run these pipes under the ground, you circulate them around, and you take advantage of the fact that, let's say, if it's zero degrees outdoors, it's 56 degrees under the ground.
So you can take some of that heat up and it's sort of close to free heat.
Same with cooling.
So that's the sort of thing that if you were to build one house, it might be a little expensive to trench it and put in those tubes.
But if you would plan the community around that, it would be easier to do the trenching for a number of homes, lowers the cost, then suddenly the energy costs go way down.
Then you imagine maybe using Elon Musk's solar panels that look like shingles, and suddenly you've got something pretty close to zero-energy homes.
So imagine building a home that's great to live in, but super inexpensive.
Imagine a home where...
I'll give you another idea.
This is one of my favorite ones, because it's my idea.
All of my ideas are my favorite ideas.
Imagine if some of the homes were built, and maybe even most of them, so that they have one extra room that could be used for business, and it's got a separate entrance.
So let's say you wanted to be a hairdresser at home, or you wanted to be, you could be anything from a parole officer to a You could do nails.
You could sell real estate.
You can imagine any number of businesses where you have relatively low foot traffic.
I'm not talking about a retail store.
Just people who have once in a while a client coming in.
And if you built that into the home with a separate entrance, and let's say a separate bathroom, it wouldn't cost that much extra for the home.
Maybe another 10%, 15%, depending on the size of the home.
But it would be your job.
And if you didn't want to use it for your job, you would have a room you could rent out.
And then you've got rent to help you pay.
So if you design these things from scratch to be super wired for the Internet, where Wi-Fi works all through the home instead of just in that one room that doesn't have interference, you've got a separate entrance, you're basically freeing people from a lot of the problems of even childcare.
I mean, you might be able to put your child in the house on the other side of the door and run your business, for the most part.
You know, the kid yells a little bit, but people are used to that.
So you can imagine a whole bunch of ways you can at least, and here's the bigger point.
Most of these things could be tested in a small pilot.
So you could take some of these ideas and say, let's put some of these together and I'm going to fund it and build three or four houses.
Let's see what happens.
So there are lots of ways you could go small and learn before you get bigger.
And we're trying to collect all those ideas at bladeauthority.com and you hit the forum menu to add your own ideas or see what other people have added.
Bill, just because it's fun, what was it like being on Fox& Friends?
How early did you have to get up?
I had to get up at, I think I got up at about 4 a.m., 4, 4.15 a.m.
We had a hit time about 6.20, but they said it might change that morning of.
So I said, well, I probably got to get ready just in case.
I went downstairs at the hotel, and Fox was kind enough to arrange for a car.
And believe it or not, there was no car there.
My guest, my colleague, Reverend Simmons, had actually taken the car because we had gotten confused.
So there I was last minute hailing a cab, totally got there on time.
And I'll tell you, they have a beautiful studio there, Scott.
I think you've been on Fox and Friends, right?
Right.
Well, yes, I have.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's nice. It was very good.
They were very engaged. I couldn't believe how much, just to give a little sneak peek behind the scenes, I couldn't believe how engaged Brian and Ainsley were in the issue.
Before we were going on air, it was like the producer said, one minute, and then all of a sudden you hear 30 seconds, and here we are talking to Ainsley and Brian, and I don't even Because I'm sure they see these stories all the time.
So then you hear 30 seconds, and 20 seconds, and 10, and we're still talking.
And then all of a sudden, 10, 9, and then you hear 5, and then we went on.
And many of the producers and other people said to me afterwards, you know, wow, they could have kept going longer.
And so, you know, that I think is just indicative of all the energy that we have here, Scott, on this urban issue.
And it was really exciting to bring it to that venue.
Yeah, and I think the fact that this is a private, non-profit and not a government program makes everybody a little bit more excited because it takes away the politics of it.
And that's probably at least half of the problem in some of these things.
It's a human experiment.
You know what I mean? It's a human experience, rather.
This is humans to humans trying to help each other.
When I go on that street and I'm standing there with an African-American lady I've never met, and she probably thinks, where have these people been?
Because she told me, she says, I've been wondering where people are for 20, 30 years.
We've been trying to get the government to come out and help us.
She goes, I don't care who you are.
I don't care whether you're white. I don't care where you live.
I don't care where you came from.
You're just here to help me.
I've had many of those specific conversations doing this, and that's what makes it so important.
Yeah, and people also like action, they like energy, and they like success.
So you've created all the energy, the action, the success record, the motion, the emotion, and now the website to give us a little bit more momentum, bring in a little more energy.
Yes, and thank you for your help.
My hat off to you.
You are a true genius when it comes to this stuff.
But nothing short of that on this, so thank you.
Well, you're way too nice, but in any case, we've got a website up, and I'm hoping all of you who have similar interests in making the world a better place, this is a really good way to start.
If you're looking for something that's real and can actually make a difference in the people who need it most, this would be an excellent place to start.
And like I said, there's nobody on the other side of this.
Yeah.
Yeah. One-side America situation, and it's all for a good cause.
So help out. You can donate small or large at blightauthority.com.
And I think we've said most of what we want to say.
Wouldn't you say, Bill? Is there anything you want to say?
I agree. I agree. Great segment.
We'll be seeing more of us, too.
We'll keep going on this whole thing.
So look out for a lot of updates in the coming weeks and months.