I Spent Years on Skid Row, Homeless & Addicted - Jared Klickstein

26:13Francis Foster:Tell us about that because this is one of the things that as we start to edge towards the policy conversations one of the things that I think a lot of people are kind of like trying to work out is you mentioned shoplifting and stealing things. Yeah. Like what happens to a drug addict who gets arrested by the police? Back then, maybe three days at the most for various types of crimes. For shoplifting after Prop 47 passed in 2014, it was a ticket. You know, you might go to the station for a few hours, then you're let go. So basically, if you're not doing something violent, you're not going to jail.

26:53And that becomes very difficult because a lot of people start to desire to go to jail for a long period of time. And the only way to really do it is to commit violence. And if you commit violence, you're going to have a violent criminal record. It sort of becomes this tough situation to navigate. Why do you want to go to jail? Because I couldn't stop. You know, I just couldn't stop doing drugs. I was going to die. I, you know, you know, your back starts hurting from sleeping on the concrete. You know, you grow tiresome of this and you want to go to prison. You know, I wanted to go to prison. By 2015, I wanted to go to prison and I just didn't know how to do it without doing something horrible, you know.

27:34And how did you end up going to prison? Oh, I got really lucky.

27:41Well, I actually didn't go to prison. I faced a prison sentence. So I was on meth and I was in Panda Express, which is a restaurant here. And it was actually the Panda Express inside of a food court inside of the major library in downtown Los Angeles. And I was in that Panda Express and I reached for a plate. You know, people would leave plates of food sometimes like when they were done with it. So I went and I started picking at orange chicken. And another homeless man, unbeknownst to me, had claimed to this chicken already and a sucker punched me in the face. And we started, you know, fighting over this chicken.

28:19And I didn't really know what to do. You know, he was bigger than me and he, you know, we sort of got to a standstill and he was like, you got to pay me for that chicken. And I said, oh, you know what? I was on the, he took my cell phone. That's what happened. He took my, I had a cell phone. Most homeless people do. In fact, the more cell phones you have, the more likely you're probably homeless. I mean, because they sort of hand them out. So I actually had multiple cell phones, but he took my cell phone and essentially said, you're going to have to give me$10 if you want your cell phone back.

28:46And I said, well, I really, you know, I don't want to do that. And eventually I pulled out a knife and I sort of, I didn't, I sort of lunged at him with a knife. And at this point, security from the library had come and sort of detained both of us and the police came and looked at the footage and, you know, you can't do that. You know, you can't try to lunge at somebody. So, So I got arrested for assault with a deadly weapon and went to jail and was going to go to prison for a year and a half for assault with a deadly weapon. I got a public defender and they basically told me they were going to drop the charges and let me go.

29:18And I said, please don't let me go. I don't want the charge, but please don't let me go. And they said, well, you know, that's pretty difficult to do. And they said, well, we can give you a six month violation and then drop the charges. And I said, that's the most perfect situation I've ever heard. You know, that's exactly what I want. And she told the judge and the judge gave it to me. They gave me a six month violation. And I did six months. You know, when you're saying that, I'm just thinking, why isn't there a program which takes these people off the streets, drives them out and get some back functioning and hopefully back into the real world?

29:52Well, there were programs like that. You know, there was the Midnight Mission. There's the Union Rescue Mission. These are programs on Skid Row and they're great programs. And I actually went to one one time for about seven months. um they're they're you know it's a miracle factory i mean but you have to voluntarily go you know it's very hard to voluntarily go and and the and you know you can voluntarily leave too so um it's it's very difficult to to you know encourage someone on fentanyl to go to one of these programs especially the detox process it's so difficult uh and painful but um there was a there's sp 1380 which gavin newsom passed when he was lieutenant governor and uh this is a state bill in California passed, I think, 2014 or 2015, which states that any program that desires state funding cannot require sobriety.

30:40This was a housing first policy, sort of top down from the federal government under the Obama administration. And that sort of ended everything. So the Midnight Mission wanted to get that sweet state money. And in order to receive that state money, they could no longer require sobriety tied to housing. So it's essentially a fentanyl housing program now. Wow. Yeah. You know, when I was listening to an interview you were on, you said the words, you were glad that you went to prison because prison helped you get sober. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I didn't go to prison. I went to LA. Sorry. Brits always get it.

31:20No, it's okay. You went to jail. You went to jail. There's all these podcasts now with guys from prison and they always want to call each other out for lying about their time at prison. So I didn't go to prison. Call us out. It's awful. It's awful. You went to jail. I went to LA County jail. LA County. Which is worse than prison, probably. Why? Because it's smaller quarters. There's worse food. Everyone's kind of on edge about their case. Once you're in prison, you sort of know the deal. Okay, I'm going to be here for six years. It's just a little bit more of a tense place. But I had a great time.

31:49I mean, I had a wonderful time. It was one of the, probably the greatest times of my life. Because you weren't using, or why? Because I finally got a bed and a pillow, and I just didn't have any responsibilities. And I just knew that like my one task was like to not just to get off heroin. You know, it took me like three or four weeks to get a full night's sleep and just I detoxed hard and I just read books. I read books every day. I just, you know, I pretend I was on a beach and just lay on my bed and just read a book. And, um, and I really grew up. I mean, I really became a man. Um, you know, that's not, there's better places to become a man, but you I really was a boy.

32:26I was still a boy. And I got to learn so many things about different cultures. And I had to join a gang. And I had to really immerse myself in some dangerous situations. And I came out of it unscathed. And I really think that was a growth experience. I don't recommend it for everybody. But I had a phenomenally interesting time.

32:48Francis Foster:You said you had to join a gang. Yeah. Talk to us about that. Yeah. Yeah, well, when you go to L.A. County Jail, you have to join a gang. Everyone has to join a gang. There's no, like, I'll just opt out of that. You know, everyone goes to a gang, and the gangs are racially based, so you have to join a race gang. I wasn't excited to join a race gang, but, you know, when you went in Rome, you join a race gang. And if you're white, you have to join the Peckerwoods or the neo-Nazis. But everyone just joins the Peckerwoods. I mean, that's really kind of like the easy route. Who are the Peckerwoods?

33:22The Pecker Woods are like diet Nazis, I guess. I mean, they're not really racist. They're just white guys. So like if a dad goes in for drunk driving and he's like a businessman, he'll join the Pecker Woods. I mean, there's just no, that's the lowest level that you can join. But there were Nazis, you know, there were Nazis. And I am, by birth, I'm half Jewish, half Irish. I don't really look Jewish. So, but my last name is relatively Jewish. So I went in there and like a Nazi greeted me and was, you know, asked me what my name, asked me for my paperwork. My name is Jared Klikstein. He, you know, his eyebrow raised a little bit, and then he looked me up and down.

34:01And he said, you know, he's like, are you German? And I just said, yeah, I'm German.

34:06Francis Foster:and uh and he loved that you know because he is one of us and uh but weeks later i figured out that they actually didn't have a problem with jews and um what what yeah i guess they were like they've had like a reformation or something or you know they're like they've dei has really hit the nazis i guess and prison nazis don't hate jews well i don't think they're like fond of them But also, this was like 2015, kind of a peaceful time in America. Like, people were getting along. So maybe they had sort of calmed down about that. But I found out there's a kosher meal in jail, and it's like worth the most money out of anything.

34:44So I actually came clean and admitted that I was Jewish. And the Nazis thought it was funny, and they thought it was fine. And they asked me about legal advice for their cases. and they sort of thought because I was Jewish, I could help them with their case. And to be honest, they were like, at first they were like, well, what are you doing? You know, if you're Jewish, what are you doing here? And they're like, can't you make a, doesn't your uncle own the prison or something? Like, can't you make a phone call? And I, because they had already gotten to know me as a normal guy. And they're like, this guy's just a street crackhead.

35:18And then when they realized I was Jewish, I think it opened up their mind to like, well, I guess a Jewish guy can just be a normal guy. I mean, I guess anything could happen. You know, people are just people. and I've stayed in contact with some of them. And one of the guys covered up his swastika tattoo and he's sort of like a normal, he got off drugs. And I don't think I did that, but I think I might have played a role in it, just kind of opening up people's minds to like, a Jewish guy can just be a guy. He doesn't have to own the prison or whatever. So I don't think he'd ever really met a Jewish person.

35:50Right.

35:51Francis Foster:So you joined the Pekka Woods and you mentioned, from what I know, which is nothing, There is a lot of tension between the different gangs on a racial basis. Was that going on when you were there? Yeah. So the Peckerwoods, or just really the whites, are linked up with the Mexicans. So the Mexicans, the Southsiders, they have an alliance against the Blacks and the Asians, which is like a very funny arrangement. So I don't know the history of that. I don't know why it's like that. I think it does date back to, like, meth-dealing agreements between neo-Nazis and the Southsiders. I'm not sure. But you're basically linked up with the Mexicans.

36:33And you're their ally. And really, the whites get a lot more benefit from this relationship than the Mexicans. So you have to be a worthy ally, which means you have to work out every day and keep up appearances. And, you know, you got to sort of pretend to give a shit about all this stuff. And there is tension, you know, mainly between the Mexicans and the blacks. The Asians and the whites are kind of on the sidelines.

36:57Francis Foster:Because those are the two biggest demographics in the prison? Those are the two biggest demographics. And also on the street, they have a huge rivalry for territory. There's a huge problem. Really, specifically in Los Angeles, where there's almost an ethnic cleansing of blacks by Mexicans, which is never reported in the news or talked about. But, you know, there are cities that blacks have essentially been, they call it greenlit, meaning like there's the green light to kill any black person if you're in a Mexican gang, you know, like places like Highland Park and places like, you know, Winneka and, you know, places in the valley.

37:33So that's sort of a war that isn't really reported. I don't know. Maybe it's died down a bit. I'm not sure.

37:38Francis Foster:But and how did how did this affect your life when you were in prison? All of this stuff that's going on? Well, since you're allied with the Mexicans. In jail, sorry. No, no, it's totally okay. You're allied with the Mexicans, so they sort of set the rules. I mean, they run the place. I mean, they run the place more than the guards. I mean, they're in charge. And because of that, you know, they view blacks as lesser than human. And the Mexicans are our allies, so we have to do what they say, really. And they make the rules, and the rules are that you can't share food with the blacks, and you can't shower with the blacks, and you can't sit on a black's bed, you can't get too friendly with a black.

38:14but you have to respect them, you know, to prevent a race war. So it's actually a very respectful place, although there is this sort of nasty racial stuff going on. And, um, and the whites in jail that I, at least in my experience, kind of didn't care about any of it, but they just had to follow these rules in order to sort of impress the Mexicans. It's all about impressing the Mexicans.

38:39It's a different world. And were you worried? Because you're watching movies about these types of institutions, and you're always constantly there, eye over the shoulder, looking around, thinking someone's going to attack me, beat me up. Or is that just not true? Well, I think it really is different across the United States. This is very specific to Los Angeles, really greater California, and maybe even the southwest of America. It's all pretty standard. I mean, these gangs, this is a gang culture. It's the Beckerwoods, the Soussiders, and the blacks. And these are the rules. And really, there was a lot of violence, but it was inflicted by your own race.

39:23So if a Mexican saw you spitting trash into the urinal or something, which is a rule, you can't break that rule, they would then inform your shotcaller, and your shotcaller, to show respect to the Mexicans, would do an in-house punishment. So three white guys would beat you up for 23 seconds. Why 23 seconds? Because W is the 23rd letter in the alphabet, and W stands for wood, because we're woods, I guess. And so there's really, the majority of the violence is actually inflicted by your own race to show respect to the other races. if something disrespectful occurs.

40:00Francis Foster:So it's maintaining this. It's not like random violence where someone is like, oh, you're new here. I'm going to beat you up or rape you or whatever. I think that definitely goes on in other states and other regions of America, but it's non-existent really in Los Angeles. And how come there are no drugs in prison? Because we keep being in jail. It's totally okay. How come I keep... No, I want to be accurate. How come there are no drugs in jail? Because what we hear is there's more drugs in jail than anywhere. Well, there are drugs in jail. That is a common line by anti, I guess, what's the word for someone that's against prison?

40:38Oh, abolitionists. Yeah. So that's a big talking line from them is that there's more drugs in jail than there are in the streets. I mean, that's absolutely not true. There are drugs in jail. They're very limited quantities. They're primarily reserved for the shot callers and anyone, they call it politics, like anyone high politics in jail, they're incredibly expensive. I mean, if you want to get a single, you know, serving of heroin in jail, you know, you have to have someone on the outside wire money to someone else's family, like$100 for like a tiny little$5 piece of heroin. So it's a 20x, you know, price increase.

41:13So yeah, there's drugs in jail. It's very, it's, they're very expensive.

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41:54Francis Foster:Clinical studies show that users lost twice as much weight as those using traditional diets alone, and 94 % maintained that weight loss more effectively over time. It's not about hacks, it's about fixing the deeper programming. Hypnosis based programs reduced BMI and emotional eating significantly compared to standard diets. So what are you waiting for? Use our link in the description box and pinned comment and grab 15 % off your first subscription. And was there a sobriety program that you attended in jail in a way? And so like a 12 step program in order to help you become clean and sober? Yeah, they would bring AA meetings into jail, you know, various 12 step meetings into jail.

42:34I'd go to the meetings. You know, I enjoyed it. But the real problem was that, you know, you go to jail and then they just sort of let you go. They just let you out of jail after six months and there's no real like landing pad for you to hit. Um, so that, that was the, you know, I was like wishing that they would mandate me to a treatment place after jail. And, uh, and I was even writing letters to, to treatment places to try to get them to, to take me in. But, um, but yeah, so, so it was really easy for me to stay sober in jail, but once I got out of jail, you know, they sort of just let you out at two o 'clock in the morning, right next to skid row.

43:09So it's, it's pretty, you know, it's tough. So you ended up right back there? Yeah, my intention was to stay sober, but I was in a release pod with someone that I knew that had money. You know, they were getting released with 40 bucks. So we went and got high. And, you know, there's nothing I could really do. So this is like, you know, people accuse me of being like a very pro jail. Like, let's just send everyone to jail. And I'm not, you know, that's not what I'm saying. You know, there's that we really need an all encompassing, you know, solution to this. And jail alone is not that solution.

43:38Jail plays a role in the solution, but there has to be a process of graduated reintroduction into society and most importantly, preparation for joining society in the form of job training. Absolutely. Because one of the things, and you know better than me, about addiction is that you literally put a pause button on your life. So when you're an addict, you don't care about acquiring skills, getting better, becoming a better person, progressing in a career. yeah so when you get sober you've you you're behind a lot of people yeah it's i mean you basically don't have anything on your resume you know you get tattoos that you probably regret you know like me you know i just got all these tattoos now and now i have a little bit of a criminal record you know i have a felony on my criminal record uh obviously now i have a facial scar it becomes more difficult to get a job um we are obviously going to need a lot of people working in the coming 10 years, you know, in various industries, we should really have like a labor expert, you know, examine this, you know, where do we need people?

44:43Are we going to need 300 ,000 electricians to support the grid? If so, let's maybe do some training programs for these people. I unfortunately didn't get anything like that, but I did have carpentry skills. So I was always willing to do construction and do carpentry and, and eventually landed at a nonprofit long term rehab where they allowed me to go look for work. I got a decent paying carpentry job. And that's sort of that's where I got sober. So jail sort of helped me get to that point. But jail was not the the actual all encompassing solution.

45:16Francis Foster:And speaking of solutions, I mean, one of the things that I can sort of sense in reading between the lines of everything you're saying is getting clean is the most important thing and it sounds like a very, very, very, very, very hard thing to do by yourself. Yeah, it's incredibly hard. What makes it infinitely more hard is that, or more difficult, is that the state currently in places like California are doing everything in their power to make it as easy as possible to keep getting high. And when it's easy to get high and when it's easy to keep doing what you're going to, I mean, addicts will take the path of least resistance.

45:50You know, they really don't have agency. I mean, I've been there. You're really not you. Um, I mean, you will do anything to get drugs. I mean, you will rob your grandmother. You will, you know, sacrifice, you know, you would sacrifice, uh, an entire relationship with a family member for$20. I mean, you know, you're not really making the decision. So if you just let that thing coast, it's just going to keep coasting towards death. I mean, that's what's going to happen. So, um, every incentive we currently have is to, is for people to keep doing what they're doing. And we need every incentive in place, uh, to be encouraging people gets over what does that look like that that looks like at least in california where i'm familiar what i'm familiar with um recriminalizing crime crime has essentially across the board be been decriminalized um this is not good uh as a drug addict when i was out there um before prop 47 which was the which was the decriminalization of shoplifting i didn't shoplift i mean you actually got consequences for that you could get a felony you know if you stole enough things i just didn't do it.

46:53I would panhandle or whatever. I remember, you know, we wouldn't smash car windows because there was a thing in LA where if you smashed a car window and you entered the car, you could get breaking and entering, you could get a felony, you'd go to prison. I've never smashed a car window. Once they got rid of that, now it's like the biggest problem in California is smashing windows. So, you know, people will do what you let them do. So we need to recriminalize crime, especially property crime, which is probably the crime that most addicts do to get drugs. So So we need to recriminalize that, and then we need to actually arrest people for doing these crimes.

47:27And if they happen to be drug addicts, we have to give them the option. Do you want to get punished for this crime, or do you want to be mandated to a long-term treatment program? That's going to take a lot of money. That's going to take a lot of work. I understand why people don't want to do that. The biggest problem is that it's the least easy path to launder and steal money by, you know, non-profit, you know, globs or whatever you want to call them. You know, people that have made billions off this industry. It's a lot more easy to get a$5 million contract to hand out crack pipes because there's no, you know, you just need a cart and crack pipes and you just need to hand them out.

48:03And you just pay someone with an art history degree to hand them out for$30 an hour, and you get to pocket millions of dollars. That's really easy. What's not easy is pocketing a million dollars from actually having to do some work and help people. Not that people should be pocketing millions of dollars, but it's become a grift. California spent$24 billion on homelessness and addiction in the last five years. And until last year, the number just steadily climbed. you know do you think that that's a reason why a lot of crime has been decriminalized because it's just easier than actually tackling it or do you think there's an ideological basis behind that policy decision well there was definitely an ideological uh basis for this decision i mean during the time of criminalization we'll call it you know uh i'd say pre-2016 especially pre-2020, people were getting arrested for doing drugs and selling drugs.

49:05And it did ruin some people's lives. And some people had to go to prison for 20 years for selling crack cocaine. And, you know, that's, you know, a bit harsh. I agree. I think we did go over the line a little bit. And the system wasn't working perfectly. So those in charge said, this system's not working perfectly. Let's do the exact opposite. You know, it's never going to work perfectly. It definitely some lives got ruined, but a lot of lives, you know, did, you know, get saved by getting the threat of these repercussions really did encourage people to change their lives and get sober. If you go to any AA meeting or NA meeting, a lot of people will tell you the reason why I got a judge sent me here or, you know, I was facing a prison sentence and they told me to come here.

49:46And now I've been sober for 20 years. So definitely ideological. Also, we were just running into an issue where jails were getting full. I mean, people were committing crimes and going to jail and we were running out of space and and then COVID happened and they wanted to let everyone out of jail so they wouldn't spread spread COVID. I mean, it's all kinds of horrific, terrible mistakes made. because also the other problem is in going back to the discussion about fentanyl you've got this deadly drug on the streets so you need some kind of policies in place because if your whole thing is you know what we're just going to let it run rampant and then people come and see us when they see us if you've got a drug that's killing people at the rate fentanyl is most people aren't going to be around for that long yeah so now we're seeing a drop in ods and i'm wondering are we you know are we doing the right thing and that's why it's dropping or are we just running out of people to OD.

50:36I mean, 806 people OD'd last year in San Francisco. San Francisco is not a huge city. I mean, you know, there's, I don't know, 700 ,000 people in San Francisco. It has the highest per capita OD rate at 80 per 100 ,000 residents. It also spends the most amount per capita on harm reduction and, you know, homelessness services. It spends the most per capita probably on anything. And the number has just steadily increased. I mean, we spent$1.1 billion to address homelessness and addiction in 2022. That's a 500 % increase from 2016. Meanwhile, homelessness rose 64 % in that timeframe. So the more money that we throw at it doing the wrong thing, it seems to just actually increase the level of ODs, the level of addiction, the level of homelessness.

51:21Francis Foster:Right. Because you're doing the wrong thing. We're doing the complete wrong thing. Right. Yeah. And your book has a forward by our friend Michael Schellenberger. Yes. And one of the things he's talked about a lot, and he talked about San Francisco, he talked in San Francisco about this, his book, San Francisco, is the mental illness part of it. Yes. And one of the things that I've always been persuaded by, I'm happy to be corrected, obviously, is that when the decision was made to deinstitutionalize people, that is to say, close the mental asylums and basically let people, you know, live their life whatever way they can with mental illness, that became a big part of the problem.

51:59Francis Foster:How much of a problem do you think that is and how much of this can be solved by creating facilities where people who are not mentally well can be given the help they need instead of like, hey, you're free. This is America. Go and live on the street. Yeah. I definitely think that that played a big role in the problem. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest came out in, I don't know, 1976 or something like that. And rightfully so. It sort of enraged a lot of people that this could possibly, not that it's a real story, but that story's happened. Of course, some people have ended up in mental institutions that shouldn't have been there.

52:32This was really, you know, Reagan did this. Reagan did this as governor of California as sort of like a deal with the libertarian left of California. Like this was a freedom issue and he sort of cut this deal. So of course he got something out of the deal by cutting the budget. You know, that's what he wanted to do. And then they got something out of the deal by increasing freedoms for people. And then, you know, here we are 30 years later or 40 years later or 50 years later. I don't even know. But, you know, now there's really no place for these people to go. And, you know, when I was out there and I was on meth and I was going crazy, you know, I went to mental institutions.

53:08They take you for three days and then they let you loose. I don't even think they're taking you for three days anymore. This is an issue. It seems like people have gotten crazier due to the lower quality of meth. Meth is very low quality right now. It's very cheap. It's made, we used to make it in America and it was pretty good. You know, it was the greatest, not my words. I mean, you know, meth is terrible. No one should do meth. Even great meth, people shouldn't do it. But meth, you know, you used to kind of, you used to be able to somewhat, you know, function. You'd start to go crazy after like three days or something like that.

53:43But meth now, you take a hit and you're just crazy. And it's like$20 an eight ball. You know, not that that means anything to you guys, but it's gotten very cheap. And people are going insane. insane. And people have the right to be insane. You know, I believe people have the right to do drugs. I mean, I think if you have your little apartment and you want to do drugs in your apartment, do drugs. But if you're smoking fentanyl on the train around children, I mean, that's not a freedom issue. That's almost like a civil rights issue for the people on the train. You know, they don't want to inhale fentanyl.

54:16So we're sort of living in this age where, yeah, we are feeling the effects of closing down those mental institutions. I don't really understand the path, how we get back to creating those and sort of changing the laws and being able to mandate some people to these facilities. Do you think this is the action over reaction over reaction

54:37Francis Foster:over reaction sequence playing itself out? Like you talked about, there would have been a time when people were very harsh on these things, very harsh on people with mental illness, you know, like the stuff that used to happen in mental asylum is like horrific yeah so the reaction is the overreaction is we've got to have more freedom right so then you end up with a position that we've ended up in and hopefully there is a move to a recriminalize crime i mean that's just insane right the fact that you can commit crimes you can steal things without being punished for it and hopefully we can now move back to a kind of more sensible middle position where it's like Crimes are crimes, but we aren't going to throw you in an institution and throw away the key.

55:19Francis Foster:Do you think that's likely or are you seeing something else? All right. Bit of an unexpected one for you, but this actually got my attention. The other day I was scrolling online and came across this video from none other than Chuck Norris. Yes, that Chuck Norris. He's in his 80s now and according to him, he still feels like he's in his 50s. and honestly watching it, I could believe it. The video goes through three specific foods he says you should avoid like the plague and a few other things he's doing to keep in shape and stay sharp. I was skeptical at first. The stuff he suggests is genuinely simple and actually makes a lot of sense.

56:00If you're interested in health, energy or just curious what Chuck Norris swears by at 80 plus, this is worth your time. Watch the video now at chuckdefense.com slash trigger that's chuckdefense.com slash trigger and we put the link in the description below to make it easy the perfect lunch combo that first bite of your favorite sub followed

56:26Francis Foster:by ice cold pepsi add a couple of friends and now that's next level suddenly the laughs get louder the stories keep flowing and the food tastes better because pepsi brings out more flavor more fun and more of the moment food deserves pepsi grab a pepsi zero sugar today well that's definitely the way we need to go now is it likely i'm not sure we're already sort of seeing the overreaction i mean even in california you know 70 of people voted for prop 36 which governor newsom did not endorse and kamala harris did not endorse and it turned into a 70 30 issue in the most liberal state in America. And what was the proposition?

57:06Proposition 36 was essentially the recriminalization of crime. I mean, especially retail theft. Now we're, so it's like the people want it. I mean, the people voted, I think, 65 % in San Francisco to tie welfare benefits to drug testing. In San Francisco, the most liberal city in the world, the people overwhelmingly voted for tying a negative drug test in order to receive your welfare. We're seeing the overreaction, but we're not seeing the politicians really reacting to the will of the people. And it's already bit a lot of them in the ass. I don't really know what's going to happen, but we're also seeing...

57:46In places like San Francisco, they voted out the DA, they voted in more of a moderate DA, and then we're running into more roadblocks where we see activist judges just not charging people. So we got the DA, but now we're like, okay, now we have to get the judges. When are the judges up for re-election? Now we have to wait another two years. Will people just eventually overreact and say, okay, we're just going to elect Hitler or something? Are we just going to elect the guy that's going to be the most extreme? Because we're not getting anywhere with these little moderate steps. So it would really benefit everybody if politicians started listening to the will of the people.

58:22Jared, this is a, how can I put it, a provocative question, but I think it's one that needs asking. when I look and I love America but when I come here I'm always shocked and horrified and depressed by what I see when it comes to the homelessness is that just a symptom of a society that's sick in some way yeah we got some major problems uh it I love America you know I love this country this my family came here uh from Ukraine you know that's where they came from and they built a beautiful life. My great-grandparents. My father, with high school education, was able to make a very good living as a blue-collar union worker and owned a house by the time he was 30 and was able to support a family, although he was a crackhead and a heroin addict.

59:12But my dad, as a heroin and a crack addict, was able to own a house, whereas I can barely rent an apartment. So we're seeing a loss of hope. You know, my generation, I think, is looking at the future grimly. You know, we don't see a lot of opportunity out of this. I think there is just a loss of hope. I mean, my generation went to college in droves and came out with really not a lot of opportunities. And I'm not saying let's make fake opportunities for them, you know, but it's like we were sort of sold a lie about, and that's our fault. You know, we all got liberal arts degrees and we were basically worthless.

59:50um so there's just a general loss of hope and um and the leaders i mean i they're like i can't name one leader that's like gives me any sort of hope you know and that's a real issue because it doesn't matter how bad things get if you've got hope you're probably going to be okay yeah the moment the real darkness sets in is when you see no hope there is no light that's when you lead to despair and despair leads you to do some very, very dark things and dark places. Yeah, we need to create opportunity. I mean, the reason why I was able to, you know, get off the streets and stay sober was because I saw some kind of path to self-sufficiency and self-esteem, you know, with the carpentry stuff.

1:00:35And I was building, and I was, you know, I was building America. You know, I was like building things and contributing to society. And we need to figure out how to provide that to a larger pool of people, you know, Not everyone can be as lucky as me and wake up missing body parts and get shook and awake from this nightmare. A lot of people are just going to wake up, or they're not going to wake up. They're just going to die. And you said about liberal arts degrees. I really have a lot of empathy for people of your generation and our generation. I did a liberal arts degree, and I was told that that was a thing to do, and you need to go to university.

1:01:12You're 18 years old. What do you know about life? All your life you're told by your parents what to do, how to do it, when to do it, or your guardians and your teachers. So why wouldn't you follow them at that point? Why would you choose to reject them? Yeah, listen, my dad didn't go to college. He was making$51 an hour as a carpenter in 1998, and he wouldn't let me touch his tools. He was like, you can't go down this horrible path of making$51 an hour. You have to go to college where you'll make$30 an hour in 30 years. You know, he didn't know that. He just assumed that, well, if I make$51, people at college must make$500 an hour.

1:01:50You know, but he was uneducated. He just didn't, he didn't know, you know, just a very funny situation.

1:01:57Francis Foster:Well, listen, brother, it's been great having you on. And it sounds weird, but I'm really proud of you, man. Thank you. It's so great to see you well. And after that kind of journey and you spreading your message, I think is really important because one of the things that really worries me, you know, and I think it's partly because of the way America is structurally is you guys don't walk a lot. Yeah. You drive. And so all the people who have money, all the people who have power, all the people who have influence, those DAs and judges and politicians and whatever, they can just drive past the shit and they don't see it.

1:02:33Francis Foster:But for us, when we walk around in America, like we would do our episode with Joe Rogan will be out by the time this comes out. We talked about this as like just walking down the streets in D.C. and fully mentally ill, drug addicted people are just there making their own lives hell and everyone else's lives hell. And all of that's going on. But I think it's very easy, especially in this country, just for that reason alone, for people not to see it and not to talk about it. And you've been there and you and, you know, when when someone says we need to recriminalize crime, everyone goes, yeah, yeah.

1:03:07Francis Foster:But when you're talking about it, I think it lands in a different way. so I'm really excited about the fact that you are now getting your voice out there and spreading your thoughts on this because it's really really important so thanks I hope everybody gets a crooked smile and reads it and I hope people who have influence hear that message it's very important well thank you so much it's been an honor and I just really appreciate this opportunity and the final question we end every interview with is what's the one thing we're not talking about that we really should be before Jared answers the final question at the end of the interview make sure you click the link in the description, go to our sub stack where you will see this.

1:03:42Francis Foster:Do you think California and other places like it are just too soft, allowing homelessness by not scraping tents, etc. away and jailing people for small crimes? Is social media kind of a drug that the young minds get hooked on? Clickbait and outrage clips are a continuous dopamine hit. I mean, people are talking about this a little bit, but I think it needs to be taken a lot more serious. The labor market over the next five years, it just seems like I've been playing around with some AI stuff, and I just really think we need to actually formulate a real plan. I mean, I know people talk about UBI, but I think there is a situation where we just need to prepare for the worst.

1:04:21What are we going to do? What does society look like if 50 % of people are out of work and 50 % aren't? Where's this go? I basically just hear people mumbling about UBI. I don't know if that's the solution. I don't know what we do. but it seems to be something that i keep obsessing about as i sort of figure out what i'm going to do

1:04:39Francis Foster:with my life well let me ask you a question on that since you bring up ubi universal basic income which is the idea that as automation and ai and robots take over there's not going to be that many jobs there's going to be a lot of wealth created by ai and robots and whatever so what we need to do is redistribute it and give it to people as a form of like a monthly paycheck for not actually for work and just, you know, we've got loads of money, let's give it to people. And I always wonder about that because when you tell your story, I'm not hearing I got clean and straight and decided to like focus on my life and make my life better when someone gave me money.

1:05:15Francis Foster:You got that clarity when A, you had time to be away from that shit, when you couldn't get drugs and B, when you had something in your life that gave you purpose and meaning, which I think is so important to people. So I guess what I'm wondering is when you were living on Skid Row, if someone came in and gave you a thousand dollars a month, wouldn't you just stay on Skid Row forever taking those drugs? Yeah. This is a, this is like a giant thing that people talk about. Like, what if we just give them money? Uh, first of all, I got money. I got food stamps and I got general relief. I got about five 50 a month.

1:05:54I spent it within three days, two or three days. So, and then people ask, well, what if we gave them housing? I got housing while I was on Skid Row. I got kicked out of housing twice for getting blood everywhere and causing a ruckus. But, you know, the housing did not help me get off drugs. And if, and a lot of people would get housing and actually sell it. Now that means rent it out to like a pimp or rent it out to their drug dealer. you will take anything given to you and try to convert it into a way to get drugs if you are terminally addicted to drugs. But giving people UBI in general, it could go either way.

1:06:29It could give people enough time to actually find that passion and that purpose in life. Or if you're already sort of prone to doing drugs and things like that, it could create a crisis. I'm not sure. We're going to have to, I guess we'll see how that plays out.

1:06:41Francis Foster:Well, I just think what's true of what you're saying as an addict is also true of all human beings but when you don't have meaning and you don't have purpose having more money just gives you more leverage to do things that are bad for you yes yeah so it's like do we incentivize people do we open up like art studios everywhere and you know axe throwing and you know you know make a clay pot over you know like do we open up all these arts and crafts stuff so people can get started with hobbies i mean we're gonna have to really try to because people a lot of people will take the path of least resistance, just like drug addicts, and they will lock into Netflix, and that can become a very dark future.

1:07:18Francis Foster:The reason I'm honing in on this is, I know, Francis and I, we both have addictive personalities in different ways, right? For me, work and having a job and then family, that's kind of where I channel that energy. But if you create a world in which I don't need to go to work, and no one around me goes to work, I am not sure I come out of that situation a better person. I really am not. Well, I'm not that good at anything, so I don't know what kind of hobby I'd take up. I mean, I'm not like exceptionally good at drawing or playing basketball or anything. I don't know where I, I mean, I'd figure something out, but a lot of people, yeah, I don't know if I think it could be detrimental.

1:07:57Yeah. You know, particularly a lot of people and understandably so find a great deal of meaning and men in particular of having a family doing a job that actually they don't really like yeah you know it's a grind it's a bit miserable but they get a hell of a lot of pride and deservedly so and putting food on the table for their family and you take that away from them then you take away pride and self-respect and men in particular and i'm saying this from my own experience i wouldn't cope very well with that if at all i would go down a very very dark path yeah i totally agree i mean we're seeing it i mean that you can go to san francisco there's not a lot of smiles i mean there's a lot of people that can make just enough to barely survive there's no chance of like you know having a wife that doesn't have to work or being able to afford a kid i mean no there of course are people like that but the majority you know are people that you know are my age that like couldn't even dream of having a family not that you know what are we going to do

1:08:59Francis Foster:about that i don't know yeah yeah brother like i say great to have you on appreciate your time uh head on over to substack where we ask jared your questions if drugs were legalized or re-legalized even that would immediately take the criminal element out of it make drugs cheaper make drugs safer and make lower dose drug taking i.e opium smoking more likely what do you think

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