Bloomberg Businessweek Weekend - September 3rd, 2021

edition of Bloomberg Business Week. It was another jam packed week and this week, first of all, when it came to trading, we did wrap up the month of August, tim marking the seventh consecutive monthly gain for U S docks. Despite so much going on domestically and in the world, the chief among them, Carol, was a week where the US officially wrapped up operations in Afghanistan, a process that has left thousands of Afghans seeking refuge in the US.

This coming nearly twenty years after the United States first invaded the country after September eleven, We're going to talk all about that with Janami day Murray, the Senior Director of US Emergencies, had saved the children, and what the ganization is doing to help those refugees, half of whom our children now Afghanistan. As to mention definitely on our minds this week. So too was China, which continues to

increase oversight on companies, industries, investing, and it's kids. Every day, tim it felt like China was coming out, regulations were coming out from Beijing about another crackdown on some other aspect of their economy. We got into that with Bloomberg New Economy editorial director Andy Brown, who wrote about the billions that Chinese tech leaders are shelling out in a

sign of solidarity. We're going to hear from him in a bid And the thing about Andy is there's pretty much no better voice to talk to about that, given his experience living in China for so many years. All of that to come in our first hour of Bloomberg Business Week. And if you check out the cover of Business Week, you're gonna see it's a special double issue and Carol, it is all about cities exactly. Uh And I love the cover. It says welcome to utopia and

then in parentheses in theory. And so that really speaks to the cover story, which is a story by our Joshua Breusting. We're gonna hear from him a little bit later on, and he writes about e commerce legend Mark Laurie, who's got a plan for the perfect city. But now he's got to actually take those words and put them into action. Not so easy. Not so easy. Mark Laurie

is a fascinating guy. If his name sounds familiar, because perhaps because five or six years ago you saw him on the cover of Bloomberg Business Week when he launched jet dot com, that company ultimately getting acquired by Walmart a few years ago for more than three billion dollars. Uh Lori before that was the founder of diapers dot com, a company that he sold to Amazon for hundreds of millions of dollars. And now he's got his sight set

Carol on creating this utopia. Unclear where exactly it's going to be, but he's had this realization of late that this is what he wants to focus on for a bit more though. On this week's Double Cities issue, let's catch up with the Washington d C editor behind it all.

Here's Amanda Culson Hurley. This is a great cover story, UH and just a great story about how Laura, like like a lot of other people in UH in the tech world, has gotten the city building or city planning bug and UH really has this vision of um of not only building uh this city from scratch that would eventually have five million people, but structuring it on the economic ideas of Henry George, who was a thinker in

the nineteenth century. Uh. And in the process, the city and Laura's vision would kind of save capitalism from itself. It would uh you know, reduce inequality and produced a society and egalitarian society. Um. You know, he's not h and he admits on the story. You know, he's not super clear in the details yet, still working through a lot about how, you know, how this city would be governed, even where it would be located. They're looking at sites in the American West, but it's not even clear what

state it would be. End. I gotta tell you iired a team. Yack. Then here's what are you serious about it? Yeah? You know, man, I think we talk about the importance of public private partnerships. This feels like a public private partnership ultimately on steroids, leaning more towards the private. So it's curious. We'll have to see where it goes. You know, this one hit really close to home. A third story that I want to talk about in the city's issue.

I know, sometimes I'm on the phone with my parents or something, your friends, and I'm like, I gotta just call you back because there's an ambulance right here, there's a highway right here, there's some person screaming right here. Uh. How do you make cities quieter and therefore increased quality of life because people want to live in them sometimes

regardless of how loud they are. Yeah, that's right. And this Uh, we have this great essay in the Issue about sound in cities, and it kind of starts with the fact that UM cities did get somewhat quiet during the pandemic, and yet noise complained, you know, largely did not decree, which tells you something, right um, in that a lot of the time people weren't commuting in the work, they were staying at home, and then their neighbor turns on a leaf blower or something, and you think, Okay,

it's gonna be so much quieter in the suburbs or you know, in a residential neighborhood than than in Times square. Uh, And that's not really the case. Or perhaps it's quieter, but you know that neighborhood noise is every bit as annoying if not more so so our our writer fergus O'Sullivan, Uh, you know, try to kind of dive into what it is about urban noise that bothers us or pleases us the most, and kind of found that, uh, you know, often it's not just about the volume. It's uh, you know,

it's it's about the kind of overall effect. It varies a lot from place to place. That was the Washington d c editor behind it all, Amanda Coulson Hurley and to got the City's issue. Lots of stories there. You can find that at Bloomberg dot com, on newsstands and also on the Bloomberg terminal. Still ahead though, on Bloomberg Business Week, you have seen those horrific images of the people of Afghanistan as they struggled to get out of

the country amid the US withdrawal. This week, one hundred thousand were able to get out with the help of the United States, and many of those now seeking refuge. Well, we're going to get into how that's happening, some of their stories. That's coming up next. This is Bloomberg. This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Bloomberg Quick Takes.

Tim Stinovik from Bloomberg Radio. This past week was filled once again with tough images of the evacuation of Afghanistan, a crisis situation that involved the airlifting of fifty hundred Americans and one hundred thousand Afghans. Those Afghans are now taking shelter and countries around the globe, thousands here in the United States. Save the Children is a among the organizations helping out. For more on the work they're doing, Carol talked with janemy Day Moray, the senior director of

US Emergencies that Save the Children. I am out at Delis Airport providing services and supports, particularly to the young children and the new mothers who are coming through. Working inside the airport, UM providing safe places for women, private places for women to be able to nurse and also change diapers. Many of the children have been traveling for more than thirty hours, and you can imagine UM sitting

in the same diapers that whole time. They have their diaper rash, and so they really need support UM when they're getting off the flight, right And from what I understand that, I mean, there are so many that our kids, about half of them, is that correct? From what we've been seeing absolutely and many of them are young children, so very very vulnerable children. The families have taken an incredibly long slight and been evacuated. As I'm sure people

have seen on the news. It's about a fifteen hour flight then to the dullas here in Virginia. UM families then have to come into the airport, their process through customs and border protection, which has been taking a number of hours. They then proceed upstairs where they're tested for COVID and in that large lounge where all the families passed through, that's where we have our first mother and

baby areas. For many families, when they get to that space, it's the first time they've been offered any food, water, relief UM in hours, many many hours. We're talking about Jena May dam Ray. She's senior director of US Emergencies that Save the Children with US from Washington, d C.

Jano May. One of the things that I find a situations like this, times like this, is that one needs to get beyond those big broad headlines and understand that underneath all of those headlines are people, families, children, individual stories. What can you share with us about some of the people that you are helping some of the personal stories, as you said, a lot of them, the kids in particular.

Half of these refugees have been kids so far. Most of them are coming not wearing shoes, without any bags. UM help us put some faces uum these individuals. There was a father who was watching his three beautiful little girls through some coloring in the space, and he was a very tall, proud man, and of course wearing a COVID mask. But he turned to me and his eyes just welled up with tears and he said, I was a translator at the US embassy. I had a good life in Afghanistan. I had a car and a house,

which are a big deal to have in Afghanistan. And he said, I have nothing now. I don't know what I'm gonna do. I have to start again. I have nothing. And I was like, I told him, you have your beautiful girls, and you are welcome here in the US. And that was just one moment. And then if I may share another one, a beautiful moment at the Philadelphia airport again, another family. They were about to board the

bus to go out to Port Dix. And one of the soldiers who was there, who's helping staff up the site. Uh looked at them. The last man who was there with his family is the last person in mine to get on the bus, and he gave him. The soldier gave the man a big bear hug, and the man smiled and just hugged back, and the soldier said to

the man, welcome to America. You're gonna love it. And it was just this beautiful moment of smiles and and welcome to people who have suffered incredibly on their journey to get here, and they've arrived here with hope for a with hope for safety and security, but also hope for a better life now here in a for their families.

You know, I do think that when it comes to the Middle East, we tend to group all the countries together, all of the situations together, And there's obviously different situations, different countries, different relationships that the US has um with various regions within the Middle East. But it's also a reminder, and you're helping us be reminded of that that it's not just soldiers and terrorists and war, but it's people who were prior to this living a quote unquote normal

life and a good life. Absolutely, and that's also a very troubled life because the country has been at war a long time and conflict is deadly for women and girls and children especially they're the innocent ones in these conflicts. And so for US as a country to now be receiving thousands of Ascan children who will be able to become contributing members here and be a part of the you know, be a part of our country now is kind of what we're all about and what we were

we were founded on years ago. But it's beautiful to see the reception that they are receiving, both here at Dulles and also in Philadelphia at the airport and at all of the military bases where they're arriving or being sent in order for their visas to be processed. Save the Children is also working out at Fort Bliss, which is Bio Paso, Texas. That's one of the largest receiving sites.

They'll have about ten thousand of the refugees there while they're waiting for their visas to be processed before they can be safely released into the US, and where they're again operating programs for children to keep them safe, to help them start to learn English, to help them uh again be children and and come back to being what

a normal experiences. I know, schools across the US are starting now, and children here have traditions as they start, and these chill when they're starting to build their traditions in the US and the days ahead. Tell us what happens once they settled. You've talked to us about helping them get settled. They obviously have to get processed as you mentioned, through customs, border protection, get visas um, obviously some basic supplies, and then transferred, as you said, to

a transit shelter. Um. What are the next steps for them? How are they then assimilated into US a society. Well, they will from the transit shelter. They're then sent to the military days. They'll be there for the next they're they're predicting the next months or six weeks, sometimes a little bit longer. During that time, they're trying to establish programs on the basis that will help them start to begin to learn about life here in America and help

them without assimilation process. And then they will travel on. Many of them have families or have worked for employers and they who have a presence in the US. They'll be moving on to community. These across the country and will start to contribute. Once they get their visas and their work permits, they'll be able to start to contribute um in our communities to being a part of who we are as a country. That's Jane may Day Murray, the senior director of US Emergencies at Save the Children.

Coming up, we had to Beijing, where China's President g continues to make his mark to create a common prosperity for his country and in the process Chinese tech billionaires while they're forking over billions to show their allegiance. That

story is still to come. On Bloomberg Business Week. This is Bloomberg Broadcasting from the financial capital of the world, Bloomberg eleven Rio in New York to Washington, d C. Bloomberg to Boston, Bloomberg one oh six one to San Francisco, Bloomberg nine sixty to the country Sirius XM General one nine and around the globe the Bloomberg Business in Bloomberg Radio dot Com. This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Bloomberg Quick Takes Tim Stinovian on Bloomberg Radio.

So yeah, another round of headlines out of China. This week, as the government and regulators continue to crack down on aspects of their society with a goal of creating, in

the words of Chinese President g a common prosperity. Those moves this week included China limiting online gaming by miners to three hours a week, China's securities regulator planning to rain in the country's buyout firms, and China threatening to ban e commerce companies that violate i P laws and tim That's just a few of the headlines that came

out of Beijing this week. With all this in mind, we checked in once again with Bloomberg New Economy editorial director Andy Brown, who recently wrote about what wealthy tech entrepreneurs in China are doing to show solidarity with the Chinese government. Yeah, that's that's exactly right. This is political theater of the highest order. Um President, as you say, is on a campaign to promote common prosperity. In doing so, he's reviving the maoist eras there are of egalitarianism, and

the country's billionaires have got the message. Then they're coughing up billions of dollars, something like thirteen billion just in the last few months handed over to charity. Great. If you're looking at your billionaires and your most dynamic Chinese companies to hedge their political risk, you're a shareholder, perhaps you're not quite so happy, Andy, Is this the Cultural Revolution? Two point oh? In some ways, Look, this is a lot of this is a lot of this is about politics.

And you know, during the Cultural Revolution, people in China famed compliance. Um uh, they didn't really mean it. Um. There's a penalty to be paid in China to day if you go against the party line. And line now is egalitarianism um And this means really a an assault on the private sector. And that's really where the problem comes from because so much of China's inequality is baked into the system, is baked into the taxation system. But it's the billionaires the private sector that are paying the

price for this. Well okay, So you know, every time you and I talk, I think about, you know, presidency and what the end game is. Because on one hand, right they do long term planning, China does as a country, as a nation, as a government, and they have been very open about wanting to dominate major industrial sectors. At the same time, some of what they're doing feels like they're pushing back on the ability to do that in capitalism. Can they do both? Can they be leaders in industries? Um?

And at the same point, Okay, it's a really good point, Carol. I mean, China is playing by a different set of rules here. This is not capitalism where the purpose of the corporation is to maximize shareholder value. What companies in China are being told now is that your purpose in life is to fall into line and support government policy when it comes to technology, when it comes to the economy,

and also social and political objectives. So we saw that with this announcement that online gaming companies, we're going to have to drastically limit the number of hours that kids spend in front of their screens three hours a week. This is a this is a bit to fix a social problem in China, and companies are expected to take the lead. And it doesn't matter the impact on their profits or indeed especially not the impact on foreign investors.

It's simply peripheral. So are they putting at risk their ability to be a global leader going forward, one that's respected by global investors, global business? You know, I'm trying to unders and kind of what the endgame I mean, I understand the idea of spreading out the wealth and making sure that there's no upheavals within China itself, but I do wonder about what the future role is then as a nation. Yeah, well, you know when when you're

when you're the communist party. Um, you know, every every mail looks like it needs a hammer. And Um, they're going about this in a really draconian peremptory way. I mean, the problems that they're addressing in China are similar to problems elsewhere in the world. I mean, inequality in China

is about the same as inequality in the United States. Um. The difference is that, you know, the way the way they've decided to go about this is to is to scapegoat the country's leading entrepreneurs, including uh Jack mar Of course, who was the biggest and the most powerful of them all, and that was Bloomberg New Economy editorial director Andy Brown. Be sure to check out Andy's weekly column at Bloomberg dot com and on the Bloomberg you're listening to Bloomberg

Business Week coming up next. He talks with everybody, and those conversations have led to another book, this one about the American experiment, and by everybody, we really mean everybody the innovators making and remaking the United States. Has told to Carlisle Group co founder and hosta Bloomberg Wealth David Rubinstein, this is Bloomberg. You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Bloomberg Quick takes Tim Stinovik from Bloomberg Radio,

So Tim, let's be fair. He talks with all kinds of leaders from all walks of our u s lives, of our global lives. Really the household names, the executives, the innovators, the warriors, the upstarts, the artists, and from those conversations he has written trilogy of books. Those books on leadership called How to Lead, Wisdom from the World's Greatest CEOs, Founders and game Changers. The second though, The

American Story, It's based on his conversations with historians. And the third in the series, Just Out, is all about the arc of the United States as a young country as it invented and reinvented itself in real time. And that book's titled him It's called The American Experiment. Dialogues on a Dream. The conversationalist, philanthropist and author Behind It All, David Rubinstein. He is co founder co chairman of the private equity from the Carlisle Group. He's also host of

Bloomberg Wealth on Bloomberg TV and Bloomberg Radio. Here's our conversation. Well, generally, I like to talk to people who are willing to say something, as you know from being an interviewer. Uh, if you watch the Sunday talk shows, sometimes you say, why do these people go on these shows? Because they don't want to want to say anything. What you want is somebody who's willing to say something and say something

they haven't said before. That's the best interview, right, And so I'm always looking for somebody who is willing to be engaging and doesn't want to just spar with the interviewer and not say anything. So you know that's that's a challenge, but that's what I'm trying to do. And you always want somebody that people will listen to and want to hear. So if I got an engaging guest, but nobody's ever heard of that person, it may not be as effective. If you can get Jeff Bezos, you know,

you know that's people want to hear from him. So if you want somebody has a name, and who's going to engage And some people are great and some people are not as great, And you know you've just figured out during the interview. But we think about what's happened with the pandemic, the capital riots, um, the inequities, George Floyd, we could go on and on. There's it feels like a decade or two decades of history have happened in

the last year and a half. How is that, David shaped kind of your thinking and putting this book together. And again, the voices you wanted to get to, each one has a different thing. The January six event, um, I do talk about it extensively in the book, and I basically say it was a severe stress test for America and America one. And I dedicate the book to

the public servants who protect our democracy. Because remember, we had sixty five lawsuits that were filed to overturn the January to overturn the election, and none of them actually prevailed, none of them got very far. All the judges basically complied with what is the rule of law, and they basically didn't act political. So I think we learned a lot about the importance of the rule of law in

this country. We also learned a lot in terms of the importance of health care in this country, how it's so unfair that people are her minority status or or are poor. Really we're suffering disproportionately because of COVID because they don't have good health care to begin with, and they didn't have access to the best health care. And it's a sad situation. But it also made me think about this my mortality. I'm seventy two years old, and when you're seventy two, you had a chance of you

got this disease that you could maybe not survive. And we now know that six the people when on ventilators didn't actually come back out of the ventilators. We were putting people ventilators think it was helping, wasn't. So we learned a lot about how to treat people. But suppose I had gotten this and I went on a ventilator,

I probably wouldn't be here now. So I learned a lot of up my mortality and thinking about it, And the result is I'm rushing to get more things done because I now realize, Hey, life is really short and something bad can happen very quickly, and so that that's been something that I've been thinking a lot about. It's like the Hamilton's right, I'm running out of time right concept. As you point out in the book, the American experiment

has been relatively short at this point. And I'm wondering if you could contextualize the way that you think about what happened over the last year, year and a half as to what extent it really stress tested us, because you do you do make note of the judiciary essentially saving the United States, not the lawmakers, because you do call out in the book the lawmakers, the senators and the members of Congress who voted to overturn the election.

They are still in power right now. Yes, And I know many of them, and privately they will say to you, well, I had to do that, or I knew it wasn't going to really prevail. Sure many of these people are you know, I live in Washington. I host I host a series uh in front of Members of Congress once a month with COVID ending soon hopefully I'll be resuming that. And I know a lot of members and so forth, and you know privately what they say is, um, well I had to do this, and they didn't really believe

in it, but you know, and so forth. Some will say that I'm not going to go and say who's had that, But clearly it's a very political situation. It's the saddest part of the whole situation we now face is that we've politicized the government so much so that the country's really unable to move forward very much. We have people who don't want to wear masks, who think that it's a good thing to force people not to

wear masks. In effect, we we we you know, a sad situation in many ways when you think about it that school children whose teachers want them to have masks are being told they aren't supposed to have that mask. So bad situation, and people are dying because of this. When did debate become like a bad thing? I thought that was what kind of the routes of democracy. We're all about, this whole idea of having different perspectives and hopefully talking it through and getting to a better place.

When I worked in Congress and nineteen seventies and the White House, uh, there was obviously political disputes all the time, and obviously this was after Watergate. It people thought eventually you've got to get something done, and so you had bipartisan legislation. Now if to be considered a great legislator used to be you're good at bipartisan legislation, get people

on both sides of work together. Now to be a great legislator, um, you're probably somebody that is good in only getting your Democrats or your Republicans to support you. And members of Congress now spend so much time raising money because they want to raise money for their campaigns or to work anybody from challenging them, and they have to spend their time in the case of members of

the House, to raising money. And the money and the Internet and social media has just divided the country in so many ways that I find it interesting when I host these dinners, so many people say this is the most interesting thing that members feel they're doing. In Washington.

They can have a dinner when nobody sees their meeting with somebody from the opposite party cause there's no press there, and they can talk to people from the opposite house, which they really do because they rarely have conference committees anymore. It's uh, you know, look, I also recognize this every generation ten thousand years back and so forth has always said, well, in my time it was better, and now it's not

as good now. George Washington's father allegedly told him, well, your generation are not gonna achieve anything because you guys are not hard working or whatever. Well, the truth is, every every generation tells the younger people, you're not gonna be tough enough, you're not gonna be surviving, and an ultimately civilization goes forward. So sure their challenges. Now. I'm not happy with many things that have happened. One thing that did happen, though, uh, during all this period of time,

it is the is the George Floyd murder. In that case, the thing that struck me was this, we've been through. I lived for the Civil Rights Revolution, We've lived through the Voting Rights Act, the Civil Rights Act, and so many things that have been done, infirmative action of the things. But this one murder crystallized for people in this country, the fact that we are still discriminating in so many ways.

Just think about it. All the people that have been lynched over the years didn't seem to have the same resonance as this one murder. Maybe because it was on TV, maybe everybody saw it. Maybe because people saw. It was so ridiculous the way it was handled. But we've made some progress obviously on racial relations. And i'd say in the book that while we've made a lot of aggress on racial relations and and and gender equality and other things,

we still have a long way to go. The rhetoric that is in the Declaration of Independence and the rhetoric in the Constitution is wonderful. What we've been spending two thirty years try to live up to that rhetoric, and to some extent we've made progress, and some extent we haven't. And what I say in the book is that we have these genes. These genes are part of us, the belief in the rule of law, the belief and equality,

belief in the power of voting. And we've been trying to make sure that people um kind of honor these things that are part of our genes. And sometimes we do and sometimes we don't. The rule of law is a gene that's so strong that it prevailed in the January sixth situation and and the and the post election fight. And I think that was good in many other countries. And you've had a leader of do what was done here.

I think you could have had a military takeover. Let's talk about some of the conversations Ken Burns, Madeline Albright, Um, Juliaepor, who I don't know is necessarily a household name, Um Alter, Isaacson, David McCullough, some of the things Rinna Morano, Um. Some of the conversations that stood out. And obviously they talked

about very different topics. The different topics well, ken Burns talked about Vietnam, and it turns out in Vietnam, the political leaders knew all along, They knew all along that we had no chance of winning that war military. It was really a political um exercise, which was disappointed because we lost fifty eight thousand men and the Vietnamese lost millions of people. UM. David McCulloch did a wonderful job of explaining how nobody took the right brother seriously in

this country. They had to go to France to kind of prove um that they could they could they could fly. Another reason why we love France, right. Um. You know. So, Rita Moreno is an incredible story and a woman from Puerto Rico who was not taken that seriously as an actress because she was from Puerto Rico. She was given kind of latino Latino jobs, but she turned out to be an Academy Award winner and she had an interesting life.

She lived with um, a very famous person for quite some time, Marlon Brando and I think eight years or so, and then try to commit suicide because he was unfaithful. And then she recovered from that and obviously went on to now win an Emmy, a Grammy, uh, every other word Tony that you can win. So she's um quite an impressive person. Now we're still performing at age eighty nine. The investment environment, I don't know whether it's back, whether

it's crypto. What's interesting to you right now? Well, clearly crypto is something that gets a lot of attention. It's amazing how many people are interested in crypto. Are you invested in crypto in any way? I have not invested in crypto currencies myself. I have invested in some companies

that kind of service the industry. And my standard view on crypto is when you go to Las Vegas, most people are smart to know you're not gonna win there, maybe spend more time than you're certainly not gonna win, but you enjoy it. You have the pleasure of gambling. So you picked one or two percent of your net worth and do that. Well, the same as true in crypto. Crypto you want to speculate, you don't really know that much about it. Try it one or two or three percent.

It's not harmful and you'll probably have enjoyable time. Perhaps. I interviewed for my my show on Bloomberg John Paulson recently, and he is dead set against it. He just said, this is terrible and it's going to zero. And but on the other hand, I've interviewed some other people that will come out soon who are gonna be saying, hey, I think it's a way to make a lot of money. There's a one personal be interviewing soon. Who's who's made

billions of dollars in crypto. That's David Rubinstein, co founder and co chair of the Carlisle Group. David also hosted of Bloomberg Wealth on Bloomberg TV and radio, his new book The American Experiment Dialogues on a Dream. Here our whole conversation on our podcast feed That wraps up the first hour of the weekend edition of Bloomberg Business Week from Bloomberg Radio. I'm Tim Stanivack and I'm Carol Masser. Head. In our next hour, We've got the cover story of

Bloomberg Business Week, the City's Issue. It's about the diapers dot com guy who wants to build a utopian megalopolis. Plus we hear from Rob Cats, the longtime CEO of l Resorts. We talk climate change, labor and stepping down after fifteen years as the chief executive. Will also check in with one of the early investors and wheels Up. We'll talk about private air travel and his new investments in clean tech, Plus the director of the documentary Searching

for Skylab. All that and more in the next hour. This is Bloomberg. This is Bloomberg Business Week inside from the reporters and editors who bring you America's most trusted business magazine, plus global business, finance and tech news as it happened. Sloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Bloomberg Quick Takes Tim Stenovik on Bloomberg Radio. Hi, I'm Carol

Masser and I'm Tim Stanovick. Lenny Head in our second hour of the weekend edition of Bloomberg Business Week, including a conversation with one investor, Tim who's all in on campus housing, private air travel, also clean technology. Plus it's not quite ski season at least here in the Northern Hemisphere, but it's just around the corner. The CEO of l Resorts, Rob Catz, joins us with an outlook and changes in

the C suite. Also the work they're doing with all of those California fires, and the director of the documentary searching for sky Lab, America's forgotten triumph. First up this hour, let's get back to this week's special double issue of Bloomberg business Week magazine. It's the City's Issue. The cover story. It's about Mark Lori, who amassed a fortune building e commerce sites as latest mission, though investing that money into

building a privately run city. Lourie shared his vision with Bloomberg business Week Technology editor Joshua boostein as you said, Mark Laurie has had a successful career building e commerce websites. First, he built the company that ran diapers dot com, which he sold to Amazon, worked for Amazon for a bit, left and built jet dot Com, which was basically an

Amazon competitor, which was bought by Walmart. He then ran Walmart's e commerce UM division for about the last five years, but almost immediately upon getting to Walmart, he started talking to people about this plan to build a city from scratch basically. UM. His current plan is for it to have eventually about five million people. That would be forty years from now, and obviously a lot would have to

go right to get there. UM. And he's just starting to lay some of the groundwork for what's a pretty audacious project. Is it going to happen? Historically? Um? If you look at what other people who have had come up with similar plans like this, I think the answer would be no. Um. There have been a really steady stream of these utopian city building projects over the years. UM. I talked to a professor at McGill University who studies them and says that there's about a hundred and fifty

such projects underway right now. UM. But she said she couldn't really point to a single one that had fully succeeded in its goals. Some of them do have some people, but they never quite get to the heights that they're aiming for. Joshua. A few months ago, you got some time to to really sit down with with Mark Laurie and and really get his vision, which you lay out so clearly in the cover story of this edition in

Bloomberg Business Week. What is it that motivates Mark Laurie to do this, What is he concerned about, What is

his thinking around this, the philosophy around this. The thing that he's really interesting is this model of landownership UM, which was first floated by an economist named Henry George in the nine which is basically the idea that you could um hold the all of the all of the land in a city in a trust and instead of allowing people to own their own land, they everyone would be leasing the lands from this central trust and the income from that from that from those leases could be

poured back into social services. And now Laurie thinks that this is a way to deal with inequality, which he professes to be his main, uh, his main incentive in trying to pursue this project. Um. It was a little bit jarring to to hear this from a guy as he sat in his forty four million dollar Penhouse apartment and explained it to me. Um, you know, but that is really what he seemed las focused. Sounds like a

really nice apartment. By the way, what I will say is, and we're getting ready to talk with David Rubinstein, who has a new book out called The American Experiment, and it's you know, conversations he's had as America has continued to evolve and innovate and change on some really important issues.

And I do think we are at this critical juncture when we look at some of our cities that are struggling and have struggled so much in the last year and a half, and you do wonder what happens going forward? Will the infrastructure ultimately come from the federal government and maybe change some of those cities that have been struggling. You know, do we have an opportunity because we could work from home, We don't have to work in major cities to reinvent the cities and towns that we have

out there. So you, you know, as crazy as it might be, Joshua, like you do wonder, does Mark Laurie maybe have something that maybe there are ways we can do things better? Yeah? I think that they're Um this, there's a couple of themes that come up in a number of these sort of technology driven utopian city building ideas, which I think are rather valid critiques of the way

that cities work now. Um, I think LORI is correctly identified the fact that inequality is an enormous problem um and is causing really a lot of strain on on the capitalist system in the United States. Um. Also, if you have something like autonomous vehicles, you want to cut down on car use. Generally, these are big transformations of a city, and it's very hard to get things done in cities there. They tend to really grind down due

to inertia politics. Um, there's a lot of there's a lot of reasons why things can't happen, um and uh and so yeah, I think that those those are good diagnosis of the problem. Whether you'd be able to do something like that by starting a new um, I'm not sure that's any easier. UM, what you know, I mean, it's sartain tempting to give it a try. That was

Bloomberg business Week Technology editor Joshua Breustein. And For more on the world cities, including the reality of China's ghost cities, also Rochester's pay phones, be sure to check out this week's special double issue of Bloomberg Business Week magazine. It's all about cities, Remember payphones. I do there are some people out there there. My daughter doesn't. Yeah, she never interacted with them. Right now, she's just kind of green to her cell phone. All right, coming up with two

billionaires jetting up into space. You may be taking space exploration a bit for granted, but there was a time when we were early in the game and needed to learn much more about Earth, space and the Sun. Enter sky Lab documentary that tracks its voyage. That's still to come on Bloomberg Business Week. This is Bloomberg is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Bloomberg Quick Takes. Tim Stinovik from Bloomberg Radio. Is definitely turning out to be

a big year for space exploration. Tim, you know this firsthand. You were there in Texas when Jeff Bezos went up into space, and he did go into space. He was the first person, along with a handful of others in the capsule that he was in, to go atop his Blue Origin New Shepherd rocket, And a few weeks before that we saw Richard Branson go up in a Virgin

Galactics own version of that. We should know Jeff Bezos went quite a few miles higher, and many people say, at least according to the International Definition of space, that he was the one who actually went to space. We're battling for the billionaires. Now, I know it's a good question. In case you forgot. Just here's a reminder. Certainly after the two of them went up into space, we're just going to say it. We mean Spye, everybody, Loo controlled

Bezos best day ever. Well after the initial Moon exploration came sky Lab, America's first man space station, which launched on May fourteen, seventy three. Dwight Stephen Bonievsky is director of a documentary on it. It's called Searching for sky Lab, America's Forgotten Triumph. Skylab. The best way I can I can put it is when I was a little boy, I was taken aback. I remember vividly watching Apollo seventeen on the television, and since that point I was fascinated

by space. And the more I learned, the more I wanted to share this knowledge. And I've discovered about Skylab because it crashed into my homeland of Australia in nine will take us take us back then? Because I do think that it is. I agree with you that it is America's forgotten triumph. When you think of space stations, people think of the International Space Station that is continuing to orbit right now, take us into what happened with sky Lab, especially with the with your interaction with it

in the late nineteen seventies. Yeah, well, this is part of the reason why it's become a forgotten triumph, so to speak. Um, I grew up thinking it was a failure because it crashed into Australia, and it's the sort of thing I had the feeling people were like, we don't really want to talk about that because of Christ,

you know, let's move on, let's forget about it. And being in astronaut conventions and so forth, I would see all the time the Apollo astronauts, the ones that walked on the Moon, would have crowds of people come to them. The sky labbers, you could stand there and talk to them for half an hour before somebody else would come along. And I thought this, This actually outraged me. I thought what these guys did up there was so fascinating. It

helped us understand the planet. And they're being sort of pushed a shot aside for for the people that walked on the Moon, and I thought what they did is equally, if not more important than what Apollo did, And I'm very biased, of course, um, and I in researching the film changed my percession for thinking this is the thing

that crashed into Australia. Wow, this was a success right even up until the point that it crashed, because learning from from people at NORAD who were telling me that what they learned from skylad crashing set the benchmark for all the orbital analysis that they do now on spacecraft and they come back to Earth and he said, we

couldn't pay for this information that we now know. So, Dwight, what do you make of of what's going on right now with this kind of races to space with from private companies now instead of government so many years later. What are your thoughts? I think it's actually a good thing. I think it's exactly what space exploration needs. I liken it very much to how the aircraft industry went in the beginning. It was a millionaires only club pretty much. Now anybody can get on a plane. Um, I think

that's going to happen with space travel as well. I mean, would you do it? I bet you would. I certainly would. I have gone to Kennedy Space and I've seen the size of the Gemini capsule. If it's something like that. No way, I wouldn't even fit into the thing because I'm over six ft tur so let's out of the question.

But in principle, yes, I definitely would fly. Hey Dwight, I'm wondering about how you went about finding the interviews that you did for this story, engineers and their families, those people who were eyewitnesses to it actually coming down in the Australian desert. Who who did you interview and how did you get these interviews. I just approached the astronauts and asked them point blank, the guys in Honeysuckle

in Australia. I was involved back in nine for the search for the Apollo eleven telemetry tapes, so I got to know them through my work in assisting that research and for family members and so forth. It was just shot out of a blue Look, I know who you are. I think it's a tragedy that's your parents are forgotten about because they flew up in space after Apollo and everybody was just so enthused to be able to tell

their story. I didn't have that much problem. The hardest thing, the hardest thing in all of this was after making the film as an independent filmmaker running out of money to be able to promote the thing. And that's where I had to get creative in learning how to to market the thing. And I am so glad that Bloomberg had gotten wind of my creativity and decided to talk to me. So I am very indebted to you. Thank you well. We're certainly eager to have you on the show.

And I'm wondering what it was like to live on sky Lab. What did you learn from the astronauts who you spoke to for for the documentary, we we interviewed Paul White and what I believe was the very last interview he ever gave, which was you know, an honor bitter sweet, and he said, and we have it in the m He said, I never got tired of looking out the window. And I thought, wow that that they were obviously very busy. You know, the time they had to sit in front of the window was allocated by

the second pretty much. But the fact that they could sit there and just take in this visual panorama of the earth. Or Jack Lousmore was saying when he did a spacewalk, he would see the ball beneath him and they're flying over and he was describing it like a magic carpet, and he said, he said, this is something you cannot describe. And I believe him. You know, I've seen film of it and television downing. I it must

be like standing at Grand Canyon. You can see photos, but until you stand at Grand Canyon and see it for real, no, no words can can come close to

describing how it really is. Hey, wait, just in the last thirty seconds that we have, what is the next story about space you want to tell Apollo Sawyer's test project where the Russians and the Americans met up, because that was significant in more ways than we're made available in in the time that had happened when we think today, cooperation between nations up in spaces and the standard not the exception that was Dwight Stephen Bonifski, director of the

documentary Searching for sky Lab, America's Forgotten triumph. Still to come on Bloomberg Business Week, we catch up with the outgoing CEO of the our resorts. You know, one of the challenges that come with climate change is whether you know variability, more intense variability, and we've seen this, whether it's you know, with intense rains by the way. It could be intense cold or intense snows during the winter,

or intense heat, fires drying on. You know, we are we think that this is a global um critical issue, you know, an emergency. The resorts CEO Rob Katz joins us. Next, This is Bloomberg Broadcasting from the financial capital of the World, Bloomberg in Rio in New York to Washington, d C. Bloomberg nine nine one to Boston, Bloomberg one O six one does San Francisco, Bloomberg nine to the country, Serrius XM Chane and around the globe, the Bloomberg Business and

Bloomberg Radio dot Com. This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Bloomberg Quick Takes Tim Stenovin on Bloomberg Radio. Last month, Bill Resorts announced succession planning, naming Kirsten Lynchville's chief marketing officer as CEO effective November one. As for the CURRENCYO, Rob Cats, he will stay on as executive

Chairperson of the board. Cats checked in with us to talk about the changes the business outlook in What's Next for Vail, We again though with an update on the California fires and VAL's Lake Tahoe Ski Resorts check it out clearly. You know, our number one priority is making sure that we're protecting everybody in those communities, everyone who's

been evacuated, making sure we're giving them support, sustenance. Uh, you know, not only for our employees, but for anyone in those communities UM AT in any way needs help right now. UM, it's a very challenging situation. UM. The fire is obviously doing significant damage. As of yet, it has not reached either Kirkwood or Heavenly, our two resorts in Tahoe, UM, but it is close to both UM and we are working closely with all the various agencies UM to do what we can to help minimize damage,

particularly to the communities. That's obviously our number one priority right now. Rob. When you see this play out, I mean, this is like, this is the visualization of climate change happening in real time. I know your company has been one that is for years talked about sustainability, focused on sustainability. After all, your business is dependent on it. What does it make you think of when you see this visual

representation of it? Yeah, I think it's it's something that we've been talking about for quite some time, which is that UM, you know, One of the challenges that come with climate change is whether you know, variability, more intense variability. And we've seen this, whether it's you know, with intense rains. By the way, it could be intense cold or intense

snows during the winter, or intense heat fires drying. Um. You know, we are we think that this is a global um uh critical issue, you know, an emergency that requires global cooperation. Certainly, our company is trying to do its part. We have a very proactive and bold commitment to zero where we're gonna you know, essentially be a net carbon zero company by the year um. And we've been active in lobbying and pushing for better US and

global cooperation on this issue. I think the cost of doing our part for climate changes is far outweighed by the benefit of mitigating some of these other costs that come from these natural disasters. Do you think net zero is a way we need to think about it or do we need to think about a way of not just being net zero, but actually doing something that improves

the situation action rather than just kind of being neutral. Well, yeah, just just to be cleared, when we say that zero, what we mean is that we would reduce our carbon footprint to net zero um from where it is today, and that would come from a combination of reducing our electrical h and other fuel usage UM by I think if it would be I think from last year, I would be I think something like twenty over the last

fifteen years plus buying uh energy from renewable sources. So I think I think that is an approach that candidly could work around the world. I don't think we can reduce our energy use to zero obviously, but I think we need to make a major reduction in our energy use and then also start shifting to renewable sources. If your properties in Kirkwood and Heavenly, if they get lost to these fires, uh in Taha, would you rebuild? Yeah, point,

I don't think. Um, you know, luckily the fire hasn't hit them, and uh you know, we're hoping for obviously minimal damage. And yeah, we will of course repair anything that's damaged as soon as we possibly can to get them, uh you know, immediately open for guests, both during the fall and certainly for the upcoming winner. And at this point, yeah,

we're very much focused on a terrific winner. AD does climate change impact any of your strategy or how do how does it get incorporated into Veil Resorts kind of longer term strategy and thinkings. Well, I think that you know, as we talked about before, certainly our commitment around the environment and reducing our carbon footprint, of course is it

starts with that. But from a business standpoint, it really is about advanced commitment and the season paths strategy that we've had um over the last fifteen years, which is really to get skiers and riders to purchase their skiing in advance of the season by giving them an incredible discount,

an incredible value on on the skiing. And I think you know what's amazing is uh, you know, our season path price today uh is very much aligned with where it was about twelve years ago when we reduced prices uh and actually of course wildly below where it was right before we introduced the Epic Path. And a lot of people look at that and they said, well, why are you doing that? Uh, and how could you make

money doing that? And I think our strategy has been we think if we give this incredible deal, one of the best deals in all of travel, to guess that they will buy in advance and that gives stability to both our company, to our ability to employ and invest in the resorts, and to our communities. Right, so we think that it has been this stabilizing feature that was Rob Kat's CEO of resorts coming up on Bloomberg Business Week, from wheels up to placing bets on E S G

and campus housing. We check in with the investor who Tim is finding opportunities all over the place. This is Bloomberg. You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Bloomberg Quick Takes Tim Stinovik from Bloomberg Radio. We like checking in with our next guest because he's involved in a handful of different sectors that are important to watch, among them aviation, real estate, and of course the financial markets.

We're talking about David Edelman, who's the CEO of Campus Apartments, which manages more than two billion dollars of on and off campus housing and real estate. David, by the way, also the founder and CEO of Darko Capital. We began our conversation talking about private air travels. You know, it's two steps forward, one back, but a little bit of

everything I think you know from the aviation perspective. We've talked about my involvement on the lead director of wheels Open I think, you know, which is kind of the largest on demand aviation company in the country. We just went public about a month ago, and you know, private aviation is obviously doing very well, uh in this post pandemic world, continuing to do well. You guys are continuing to see as much demand. I mean, the stacks down about a little bit of a hit so far since that, Um,

what can you tell us about demand there? Demand is great? You know about a week ago, we reported really strong second quarter earnings about a couple of weeks ago, and you really excited about the future there. And uh, you know, private it's just become more effective, efficient and accessible. And that's really what we're doing at wheels Up is kind of creating this marketplace where we can match up people

with supply. All Right. So the because I know, we talked a lot about aviation and you saw a lot of people who maybe didn't do private aviation before really take advantage of it. Uh. During COVID, that demand level is staying at what we saw during the pandemic, or is it going above that or is it going a little bit below it. Now it's definitely you know where it wasn't headed higher. To be honest with you, people

are especially come spring. As people started making forward plans before the delta variant about travel and getting out there a little bit and enjoying summer, we saw a demand to pick up. Well, speaking getting out there. I was on a college campus over the weekend, dropping my daughter for the first time, and just hearing the president of the institution and others speak about how great it was to have kids back on campus because they haven't had

them that way. Tell us what you're seeing, because you you know, deal with um on and off campus housing. What are you seeing? So last week I was also dropping my daughter off, so the same thing, and uh,

it's all great to do it. I think, you know, we mentioned like the last time I was on during the pandemic, a lot of students still chose to kind of quarantine in their college apartment or dorm room, not wanting to live with mom and dad after maybe having experienced a brief time home, but you know, it was online remote learning. I think now what you're seeing is

the schools are opening back up. You know, we could certainly talk about those that are and dating vaccines, but you know, they're masking up and they're back in action, and so I think it's healthy for these students to get back there with their friends and enjoy the college experience, which is, you know, more than just the education you know, in the classroom, but the education of the self and making friends and doing all of that. So we couldn't

be happier to have people back on camp. Hey, David, you're talking about what you're seeing in terms of colleges. So kids are back. What's been the demand for on campus off campus housing? So the demand has been strong. We kids really wanted to get back out there living there with their friends. And you know, when you think from a COVID perspective, with the products we build are really kind of four bedroom for bath units, so everyone has their own bedroom. It's not high density. It's very

safe and effective from a COVID perspective. And we're we're seeing, you know, from an occupastive occupancy perspective, we're in the high nineties across our portfolio. Is that unusual or is that pretty normal? Now we're back to basically pre COVID levels, And so I think the only dip you would find across the country is probably a little bit less international students who did not come back, and that's maybe a couple of percentage points. So what does that sell you

tell you? I think you know, it's interesting. We did a story earlier. Let me just backtrack with our Steve Matthews about the metrics that we're using to really figure out what's going on in the economy and the impact that the delta arrant is having. So you were looking at hotel bookings, We're looking at airline miles being flown, We're looking at job opening postings, and a lot of

those metrics are showing that things are slowing down again. Um, how would you describe economic activity from the different lenses that you actually look at the economy through. Yeah, I see it differently from the businesses were involved in, for you know, obviously from real estate to aviation. We don't see the slowdown. We see the same trouble people are having and trying to get employees that that's certainly a challenge, but we we definitely aren't seeing kind of the slowdown

that you just mentioned. Oh you're not okay, that's interesting. Are there any concerns Um, that things could start to roll back substantially. We've certainly seen companies rolling back and not bringing maybe some of their workers back to the office, putting that off for a few months or maybe even into next year. Yeah, we're seeing kind of the people kind of like to take the wait and see approach, you thoks, companies that had announced kind of the post

labor day back into the office. You're seeing them kind of do kind of a little bit of a stutter stuff and saying, well, let's wait till October and see. And I think people are kind of just pushing it back seeing how these boosters come into play. I know that's certainly how we're looking at things as well. You sound pretty calm, So tell me a little bit about the investment environment right now, because you know you were one of the early investors and wheels up. We talked

about that earlier. Um, Where are you finding opportunities? There's a lot of money slashing around in the economy thanks to low rates, thanks to wealth creation for a big part of the s economy. Obviously, the fet easy policies helped create some of the liquidity, a lot of liquidity in the marketplace. Where would you are, Where are you committing new money and what new investments have you been making?

You know, interestingly, you know you mentioned doing at the commercial break about you know, the fires in California, a little bit about climate change and things like that. We've actually made a big push in climate tech companies, and you know, what we're really looking to do is investing companies that are reducing greenhouse gas emissions from software and

hardware solutions. We've recently, in the last ninety days, invested in a handful of unannounced companies that are working on reducing methane emissions, a handful of decarbonization companies, and so we definitely uh see that as a trend in someplace where we think you can uh that there was generally a shortage or lack of capital because maybe people just weren't as into it. So we're looking to put capital there.

What's changed that because we've been talking about E s G, certainly in climate change for a while, it does feel like in the last year and a half, and maybe it was seeing the world shut down and the skies clear up that made us realize, wait, we can maybe make a difference. We've talked about methane the difficulties with that, but also how in a short period of time you can do some cleanup, serious cleanup of it. What do

you think has changed in the investment mindset. I think that what's happened is that you had the concept of the s G, which I think first started with like, hey, that's the do good, feel good, and then you have the commercialization which then allows people to access it from a financial perspective, so that way you can kind of put your money where your mouth is versus just saying I want to make a difference. You know, I'm going to recycle or I'm going to you know, do business

with companies that are more responsible. And so I think, you know, there's been a bunch of founders, and you know even founders have been around. You know, Chris Soccer just haven't been in the fund business in a long time. Just launched a fund called lower Carbon You really quibus uh where other people haven't really focused in the climate change funds and he's doing it. So before we go, one of the other investment areas that you've done is beverages,

h Lebron James, New Tequila. I have talked with some celebrities, Nick Jonas, among them Sam Huan, who's got a new whiskey of the Atlander fame, um More and more getting into spirits. What is it that you find interesting in the beverage space and what guides your investments there? What's interesting about the beverage space is really kind of too. You know, certainly during COVID consumption certainly went up, um,

and I think creativity is going up. So you know, one of our companies we're in is a ready to drink a beverage called Vibe. And what I liked about that is we saw beer sales declining over the years and people want maybe a healthier option, and so this is a vodka based kind of ready to drink beverage

in a can. We just bought a organic lodka called American Harvest, And as we think about kind of you know that American spirit that's made my Idaho and vodka is still the biggest spirit out there, but it's not as popular as people talk about. Tequila is like the one we did with Lebron and um mav Carter and the other spirits that are out there. And so I

take that the variety. People know what they want. They like the ability to have choice, and I think Spirits is kind of finding its moment where people want to be able to have multiple options to choose from. That's David Edelman, CEO of Campus Apartments and the founder and CEO of Darko Capital. And that wraps up the weekend edition of Bloomberg Business Week from Bloomberg Radio. Thanks so much for joining us. I'm Carol Masser and I'm Tim Stanevik.

Be sure to tune into our Bloomberg Business Week daily show Monday through Friday. It starts at two pm Wall Street Time on Bloomberg Radio. You can also watch our daily broadcast on YouTube just search Bloomberg Global News. Also check out our Bloomberg Business Week podcast. You can find that at Bloomberg dot com, Apple, or wherever you get

your podcasts. Bloomberg Business Week is available on newsstands now at Bloomberg dot com and on the Bloomberg Terminal, and you can also see me on Bloomberg Quicktake available at Bloomberg dot com, slash qt, and streaming platforms like Roku, Apple TV, Samsung TV, and more. Have a great holiday weekend. Stay safe. This is Boomberg h