“The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York by Robert Caro”.

I picked this up on recommendation from Mr. Incredible Ajay Shah, a card carrying economist.

The author of this book is so meticulous in his research (most of his books takes between 10 to 30 years from him to write), one of the book series he wrote “The Years of Lyndon Johnson”, he has written 4 books and now working on the final book on this series. He has been working on the book longer than the time spent by President in his entire politics. That’s such a beautiful dedication and purpose to life. Another story I heard on how he investigates stories on the Tim Ferriss Show hosting Morgan Housel.

There was one scene from the book where he’s interviewing Lyndon Johnson’s chauffeur who was with him for his entire career as a politician. Lyndon Johnson did the same driver. And so the driver saw everything. And Robert Caro says, “Tell me when Lyndon Johnson was in the backseat of the car when he was campaigning, what was he doing?”
And the chauffeur’s like, “I don’t know. I wasn’t paying attention.” But he just kept asking, “No, no, tell me more. What was he doing? What was he talking about? What’d he do?” And he kept getting the answer, “I don’t know. I wasn’t paying attention.” And finally, after weeks of asking the same question, the chauffeur says, “You know what? After campaign rallies, Lyndon Johnson would talk to himself in the backseat of the car, and he would say to himself, mumbling to himself, ‘This worked, this didn’t, I need to get better at this. I need to double down on this.’” That’s fascinating that he would talk to him himself. And it took Robert Caro weeks of asking the same question before.

As Morgan Housel puts it, “Bottom Line, probably the greatest biographer of all time and certainly the most thorough biographer of all time”.

Back to the Power Broker book, the title sounds intriguing, the broker with unlimited power – spoiler: he was –. The book is about the Robert Moses, the man who changed and shaped the landscape of New York State. I will most definitely not do justice by summarising a 1200 page book but I will try to show all interesting things I came across and finally to the important section on how it relates to climate change.

The book reads exactly like a Hollywood movie. The man starts with vision, ideal & pure thoughts of how he can be of service to the public, becoming the best public servant. He tastes the first defeat and learns, the world cannot be won on just ideals, one needs power. In politics, he quickly learns on what matters is who holds the power wins at the end. Just like a Hollywood movie, he reaches a low point in life and magically an opportunity is present it to him (I cannot wrap my head around the probability of such incidences, how do people meet and how one can affect/influence other is so mind blowing to me), He makes the most of the opportunity and impresses the Governor Al Smith, BFF. He has a vision on making the greatest parks out there for people of New York to spend their weekends away. Slowly, he starts deviating from his ideals, bending when required on his ideals in order to gain more power, power to do the things – build parks, highways, parkways, housing – the way he wants and I mean only the way he wants. It’s either his way or project may as well go down the drain. High on power (not money), gaining more and more at every turn, he becomes a different version from the man he started out with – idealist –. But that is expected to one drowning in power. I am skipping a loooot of things about him, the way he picked fights with Mayors, Governors, hell even with President of USA, just to make things his way. He did not care about any people or public or their convenience, if he thinks there’s going to be bridge there – a bridge will be built exactly over there. After 42 years in power, finally cracks began to appear and person who was once believed to be the most incorruptible, selfless public servant by press was not so pious. The press started looking closely on what work he had done in the past, and how some of it has come to haunt future generations.

Below, I will add some interesting lines I encountered in the book

When curtain rose on the next act of Moses’ life, idealism was gone from the stage. In it’s place was an understanding that ideas –dreams– were useless without power to transform them into reality. Moses spent the rest of his life amassing power, bringing to the task imagination, iron will and determination. And he was successful.
When Robert Moses began building playgrounds in NY City there were 199. When he stopped, there were 777.
…. no brick of public housing project laid without his approval.
His power was measured in decades. … he held power so substantial that in the fields, in which he chose to exercise it, it was not challenged seriously by any Governor of New York State or, during 34 year period, in which it was extended over city as well as state, by any Mayor of New York City. He held his power during administration of six Governors …. and five Mayors … in 1974, at the age of 85, he was fighting with desperate cunning to get it back.
Robert Moses built public works costing in 1968 dollars, 27 billion dollars.
… his power was such that he could seize my house, put me out of it and arrest me for trespassing if I tried to get in again.
Democracy had not solved the problem of building large-scale urban public works, so Moses solved it by ignoring democracy. … he had a dictator’s power. And he used them. He enjoyed using them – for using them gave him what was his greatest pleasure: the imposition of his will on the other people.

There’s a question that Peter Thiel (famous VC) like to ask: What important truth do very few people agree with you on? I have been thinking a lot about this question and reading this confirmed by belief. My answer to this question would be democracy cannot solve problems of climate change. It has to someone/few people so determined to get things done not just on local or national level but on global level. This is next to impossible task and there’s no such a global powerful position that has such power or influence. It is through power and forcing people to do things. we might get to avoid the catastrophe or as I see pushing humanity off the cliff. Very few people if any would see it this way. I don’t know if it is right or wrong. Also, having such greater power will almost definitely corrupt that person/institution. The aftermath if these people avoid destruction of humanity through their power is also scary.

There’s is no right or wrong, black and white in this world (and politics), just shades of gray.

I will end with Lord Acton’s powerful quote

Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority; still more when you superadd the tendency of the certainty of corruption by authority.