Matt Kielty

John controlled the budget of California, the fifth or sixth biggest economy in the world.

And he goes to the governor of California and he says, look, I need to spend money on a task force, a task force to promote self-esteem.

Yeah.

So what was the initial reaction to this idea?

The initial reaction was massive skepticism to this idea.

So writer Will Storr explained that the governor at the time... He was a no-nonsense Republican.

He had a reputation of being very hard-nosed.

Why spend taxpayers' money?

I said, well, look at it this way.

Like, possibly this is a really cheap way... To make society better in all kinds of ways.

Certainly a cheaper way than like raising the minimum wage or something, you know?

Right, right, right, right, right.

But the other thing he tells the governor is that this will also promote personal and social responsibility.

Ah, so this is the like kind of 80s part that's coming in here.

Yeah, the way he thinks about it, he talks about this a lot in speeches, is like if you pay a lot of money for something...

you value something, you tend to take care of it, you know?

And so he's just applying this basic logic of like, if you value yourself, you'll take care of yourself.

And that it actually might lead to all these societal changes because of it.

That makes sense.

That makes sense.