打造美国最幸福城市的公式：迈阿密市长弗朗西斯·苏亚雷斯

Jason Calacanis (00:00:00): Forty third mayor of Miami, served two terms since 2017, and his tenure is gonna end in September because he's term limited. Although I hear these days that's flexible, please welcome Francis Suarez. Francis Suarez (00:00:12): We're ranked the happiest city in America, the healthiest city in America. The formula for success is simple. Keep taxes low, keep people safe, lean into innovation. How Jason Calacanis (00:00:23): are things going in Miami? Obviously, you know, we talked to you a couple years ago when we Speaker 3 (00:00:28): had Jason Calacanis (00:00:28): our first all in summit here. Francis Suarez (00:00:30): Yep. Jason Calacanis (00:00:30): And you had a no nonsense approach that you thought was gonna work with the homeless challenges that we're seeing. I think candidly, we discussed a large portion of the homeless problem in these major cities is an addiction problem. Giving a junkie a home doesn't exactly get them off the street. Francis Suarez (00:00:49): Just Jason Calacanis (00:00:49): doesn't And you were one of the first people to say that plainly. How are you dealing with it? Has it gotten worse? Is it an intractable problem? Yeah, take us through it. Francis Suarez (00:01:00): So in homeless specifically, we are at an eleven year low. We did our census, we do two census a year. We do one in January, '1 in the summer. And our January census had us at an eleven year low at five forty six homeless, unsheltered homeless in the entire city of Miami. We have a couple thousand sheltered. And I actually raise money on an annual basis as a mayor's ball. I I did my mayor's ball last year, and this year, I'll be doing it in May 31 to end homeless. We wanna be the first major American city to have zero homeless, and we think we can get there. We call it functional zero. And and frankly, the the strategy is not that complicated. You know, obviously, there's a macroeconomic strategy. We have the lowest unemployment in America. We have the highest median wage growth in America. We I lower taxes to the lowest level in history, and we've seen a 40% growth in nine years. So the economy is robust. We were ranked the happiest city in America, the healthiest city in America. Frankly, if you're happy, you're healthy, and you're working, you're probably not homeless. And then, of course, we've done innovative things in the homeless space. We've worked with charitable organizations that help people reunify families if they live in other parts of the country. And also we rent homes so that we can get around the building process and give all the same wraparound services, but we we sort of hack through that process. Jason Calacanis (00:02:16): Those 500 individuals who are categorized as homeless. Francis Suarez (00:02:22): Yeah. Jason Calacanis (00:02:22): How many of them are suffering from mental illness and or self medicatingaddicted to drugs? Francis Suarez (00:02:28): A very high percentage. I would say eighty percent plus. Right? And that's sort of anecdotal. But one And I've been out to the streets. I'll be out there before my homeless ball now on May 31. I'm actually gonna spend a night out in the street. And when you talk to them, when you engage in them, a vast majority of them are unfortunately. Jason Calacanis (00:02:47): Okay. So let me double click on that. This problem wasn't as acute before the super drugs, meth, like the serious Francis Suarez (00:02:56): Oh, you mean? Jason Calacanis (00:02:56): Yeah. Well, the really serious ones they're making out of Fentanyl. And fentanyl. Right? This combination seems to be, You know, we had people addicted to heroin like Miles Davis and like Philip Seymour Hoffman who produced incredible art and were addicts for thirty years and they went in and out of it. But this drug is pernicious, different, deadly, super addicting. How much of the problem are those two drugs specifically if you double clicked on it? Francis Suarez (00:03:23): A big part of the problem, heroin or opioids. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:03:26): He's asking for a friend, by David Friedberg (00:03:27): the way. Yeah. Just not I'm Jason Calacanis (00:03:28): asking if have a hookup. David Friedberg (00:03:29): It's just Francis Suarez (00:03:29): the regular, clearly. No, but I'm Jason Calacanis (00:03:31): being deadly serious because we had these homeless individuals in New York, you know, back in the day in the seventies, eighties, they were kind of like hobos and vagabonds, not seriously addicted, suffering where they're folding over and curled up in a ball from fentanyl. Francis Suarez (00:03:48): Well to your point, I mean meth and the opioids are incredibly addictive. And they're very hard to beat. I mean, even people who are wealthy and get addicted to these drugs have a very hard The recidivism rate is very high. And so, you just had Antonio on here a minute ago and he was talking about immigration and the border. And one of the big problems with the border is that tens of thousands of people that die annually because of fentanyl that gets imported through China and through our border. And so there's a tie in between federal policy and local policy. But for us, again, in 1980 during the cocaine era, right? Different drug. We had two twenty homicides. So you had drugs hurting people, but you had the business of drugs very much hurting Yeah. Last So we started recording homicides in 1946 in Miami. Nineteen Forty Six, we had 32 homicides. From 1946 to today, the lowest number we ever had was 24. Last year, we had 27. Wow. Okay. We had 220 in 1980. This year, we're trending below the 24. So we may this may be the safest year in the history, recorded history of Miami. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:04:57): You connect those thoughts there? Like, I think I think when people think about social policy, everybody confuses the correlation and causation. But you've been in the seat now for a long time. You've seen what hasn't worked, what has worked, what maybe has been correlated. But if you had to lay out the roadmap for other cities, but frankly other states, the rest of the country, what's the road map? The Francis Suarez road map? Francis Suarez (00:05:24): The formula for success is simple. Keep taxes low, keep people safe, lean into innovation. Right? David Friedberg (00:05:31): That's for the city. Can we Chamath Palihapitiya (00:05:32): just double click those? Yeah, Francis Suarez (00:05:33): of course. I can double click Speaker 3 (00:05:35): on Chamath Palihapitiya (00:05:35): each one of Let's take the other side of these things just to help the conversation. Because I believe in them, but let's try to steel man the other side. Sure. Keep taxes low. What people say, if you look at California and if you look at New York, what they would say is, we have a duty to invest in the social services and the infrastructure to support everybody that isn't necessarily as well off or didn't get the right side of luck, and we need to raise taxes in order to generate the revenues to fund that. Francis Suarez (00:06:01): My my counter argument would be government is not a good purveyor of those services. It's not an efficient purveyor of those services. So so just to double click. Right? I lowered taxes to the lowest level in history. I and I took the city in 2009 as a councilman in bank out of bankruptcy. So I got it in bankruptcy. We decided this is sort of the doge before doge. We decided not to raise taxes. We cut costs. We we cut, you know, we didn't we didn't let anyone go, but we had tiered salary cuts, pension reform, and we balanced our budget. And we had ten years of prosperity. And that prosperity led to a tripling of the size of our government. So we went from a $500,000,000 government to a billion and a half dollar government while lowering taxes. So we we grew 200. Right? So the the resources that we had dedicate to these actually went up even though taxes went down. And then, you know, when you have a place where there's prosperity and where people are investing and where people are employed, they're obviously not there's not as many social problems. So they're not out there killing people. They're not out out there hurting people. So the nineteen eighties, we had you know, we're one of the murder capitals of America. And we're now one of the safest big cities in America. And then I think, you know, the the how can I help moment that you guys are all familiar with was this juxtaposition with what American cities were doing? Right? Famously, New York competes for and wins the Amazon HQ two prize. Right. And then rejects it. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:07:24): Rejects it. Yeah. Francis Suarez (00:07:24): And and and also famously in California, you had a, I guess it was a legislator that said f Elon Musk. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:07:29): Yeah. Elena Gonzalez. Francis Suarez (00:07:31): Exactly. And and he replied, message received and he left. David Friedberg (00:07:33): And then she went to run a union. Right? Speaker 3 (00:07:35): Is that where she Francis Suarez (00:07:36): ended up? Jason Calacanis (00:07:36): Yeah. I think she went to work for a union. David Friedberg (00:07:38): She's the CEO of one of the big unions now. Francis Suarez (00:07:40): But but the issue is what I tell people is, look, it's it's bad enough to kick out a trillion dollar company from your city or the richest person arguably in the world from your city. But think about the the signal. The signal to me is much, much greater. Right? The signal is if you wanna bring another headquarters or if you wanna be another company we just got FC Barcelona. Two days ago, we announced that FC Barcelona moved their headquarters from New York to Miami. Right? Every single day, we announced, you know, $900,000,000 of loans in two projects in the last two days in two buildings, you know, our stadium, our Inter Miami Stadium. Yeah. We have the FIFA World Cup headquarters 2026 in the in the world. Right? So, I mean, this formula for success would seem simple. Other cities are getting it wrong completely backwards. Right? Their taxes are high. It's not safe, and they're not leaning they're rejecting innovation. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:08:24): Are downsides to growing this fast? Are there things that have to keep up that are harder to change? Like building code, housing density, those sort of cost of living things. Have you guys been able to drive reform there or is that not where you want it to be? Francis Suarez (00:08:40): So Ken Griffin recently was interviewed in a fireside chat like this and said, I'd rather have the problems of success than the problems of failure. And so there's no doubt that there are problems that stem from success. Right? In housing prices, we had a tremendous amount of inflation in the last administration. And you you you sort of couple that with hyper demand here in Miami and you get hyper inflation. Right? So housing costs have certainly gone up significantly. And we do everything we can to leverage public dollars and public assets like land to try to build projects at a 15 to one or 20 to one leverage rate. So for a hundred million dollars invested, we'll get $2,000,000,000 worth of projects. There's a five five million housing shortage across the country. And Miami has its fair share just like any any other major city. Traffic, I know none of you guys have experienced any bad traffic this last few days. David Friedberg (00:09:28): I was in the car two two hours and forty minutes going over to that. Francis Suarez (00:09:31): I'm not gonna tell you how far along we are with the boring company on trying to find underground boring systems or with some of the e V Toll companies that we're working with. But I do think that transportation generally has to sort of turn the page from you know, last generations archaic solutions to the Jason Calacanis (00:09:46): next How did that train? What what do David Friedberg (00:09:48): you call it? Jason Calacanis (00:09:48): The sunshine line or something? Francis Suarez (00:09:50): Bright Line. Yeah. Jason Calacanis (00:09:50): The Bright Line. Yeah. How did you get that done so quick? And everybody says it's the greatest thing ever. Francis Suarez (00:09:54): That's a private sector project Okay. That was done by a company. We had a piece of it, which was we did a piece from with tri rail to bring it into the station. And when we did that piece, we made it free for inner city residents to be able to use. So it was something that I was very proud of. It part of my legacy. Jason Calacanis (00:10:09): So a private company built it. Correct. You gave them the right of way? Francis Suarez (00:10:13): No. They have they bought the right of way. Speaker 3 (00:10:15): It was Francis Suarez (00:10:15): totally private. Speaker 3 (00:10:16): Got it. Francis Suarez (00:10:16): So look, we have micro mobility options that are private like scooters. David Friedberg (00:10:19): So all you did was just not get in the way? Exactly. Francis Suarez (00:10:22): Shocking, by the way. Speaker 3 (00:10:23): Shocking. Wow. What an idea. Well, thank Let me ask you. David Friedberg (00:10:29): How how how can Francis Suarez (00:10:31): It's like the Hippocratic oath. Do no harm. Do no harm. Yeah. David Friedberg (00:10:33): How can mayors address they they come into office with a reform motivation and they're elected on, hey, we've gotta fit we don't have what what Miami has. We gotta fix this. We gotta get the city working again. Gotta attract business. We gotta attract growth. And they inherit this regulatory morass, this massive infrastructure. Like San Francisco recently, I I got all caught up in the fact that you can't put these phone booths in your office. You know, lot of startups. Right. Speaker 3 (00:11:02): I don't Jason Calacanis (00:11:02): if any David Friedberg (00:11:02): of you guys have these, these phone booths, you gotta have someone go in and make a call, you put the phone booth in and all my startups, all the companies I've ever Wait, you Jason Calacanis (00:11:08): can't put one in San Francisco? David Friedberg (00:11:09): So you put these phone booths in and then you can go in and make calls. So when everyone's in an open desk configuration but you gotta do a private call, you hop them in. So everyone loads up their offices with these phone booths. In San Francisco, they're illegal. Turns out that you need to run you and there's a piece of paper which I was actually gonna tweet because it's insane. It's like three pages long. All the things you need to know about the phone booths that you wanna put in your office. You gotta get an architect review, an engineering review, a design review. You gotta get sign off from the engineer. You gotta submit the permitting fees. It gets reviewed by the city inspector's office. You gotta design fire sprinklers that have to go into the phone booth. Francis Suarez (00:11:41): It's nuts. David Friedberg (00:11:42): In case there's a fire in the phone booth, someone needs to put out the fire of the person. Jason Calacanis (00:11:45): That's hilarious. David Friedberg (00:11:46): So I was talking I was talking to some folks about like, what are you gonna do about this? But the mayor's kind of like, I don't know if there's enough action that I can take because it's in law that there's all this kind of regulatory stuff. How do you advise mayors that are stuck with this sort of environment? And this is not just San Francisco. There's a lot of big cities in this country that have books and books of this stuff. And we can talk about philosophically why this has happened sociologically, why this has happened. Books and books of this stuff where the city can't get out of the way. Yeah. What do the mayors do? And when you guys get together, is there any advice or are we stuck? Like, what's the what's the solution? Francis Suarez (00:12:23): We're not stuck. I think it's cultural. Right? At some level. You have to inculcate a culture where you empower your employees to innovate and to de conflict. I think when people come to me with a problem, say, look, first issue is, if there's something that's blocking it that doesn't make sense, why don't we just change it? We're legislators. That's what we do. We legislate so we can fix it. Maybe it happened. Maybe it made sense twenty years ago. Maybe it made sense fifty years ago. Doesn't make sense today. Let's just change it. I think regulation is the other side of the coin from innovation. So regulation is telling you what you oftentimes what you can't do or how to do something. Innovation is To protect loss. It's sort of a first principle thinking. We want to do this. We want to make this work. And I think I always, not always, but regularly fall on the side of innovation. And I think you as a public official, frankly, who's elected by the people really are the one that has to push the bureaucrats, the bureaucrat class. The bureaucrat class, they get very accustomed to saying no. They're risk averse. You know, they're not incentivized oftentimes. There's no incentive structure that says, hey, if you innovate, you're gonna get x or y or z. David Friedberg (00:13:30): Yeah. Francis Suarez (00:13:30): And then I think the third piece of it is artificial intelligence. I really feel that there's a breakthrough that's gonna come. It's not just in transportation. We're talking about EV tolls and and underground boring and all that. But I think in zoning codes and all that, it's gonna be computer to computer. So the codes are all straightforward. We had the same code for fifteen years. Probably 97 or 8% all known decisions have already been made under this code. So all you have to do is be replicated Chamath Palihapitiya (00:13:57): going forward. Francis Suarez (00:13:58): Unless the code changes and then you just change the coding and you make the decisions all over again. So it's not that complicated. You should be able to submit something. The computer should be able to spit it out immediately. If it needs changes, it should tell you what the changes are. A computer could look at that, make the changes and spit it back in. Right? And if you were to do that, you know, it takes to get a permit on a on a home in most places in America or on a building in most places in America, you know, six months, nine months, a year, a year and a half. I mean it's insane. It should be done instantly. And it could literally be done instantly with the technology that we already have available to us Hundred billion dollar business by the way, case anybody's It's a great idea. Jason Calacanis (00:14:33): A killer idea. I think some startups have worked on it too. Know multiple that are working on Yeah, work on the other side of it. Building on Freiburg's point, the two best proposals I heard about regulations, and I'm curious if you could steel mill them or you know, how practical you think they are. Putting a time limit on regulations. So if you fought for some regulations around these phone boots, back when phone boots, you know, Superman changed his costume in them from the sixties and seventies, like back from that era, maybe it lasts for twenty years and then it expires. Or you wanna add two regulations to office space regulations. You gotta take one off the books. Those were the two proposals I've heard. Some way of timing these out, or if you wanna add, you gotta you gotta find something to take off. Are either those practical? Francis Suarez (00:15:21): I kinda like the first one better than the second one because the second one, I mean, this sort of one for one. I mean, there's gotta be a reason to do one or the other. Right? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:15:28): Okay. Francis Suarez (00:15:28): I like the first one better. Actually, what we normally do in government is the opposite. What we do is we do what we call pilots. Right? So you'll do something that goes away very quickly. Right? In other words, you implement a piece of legislation, say, oh, we're gonna do Speaker 3 (00:15:39): it for Francis Suarez (00:15:39): a year. Let's test it out. Right? And it's a pilot. And then it goes away. I like what you're saying in terms of big part of regulatory culture can probably be phased out over a fifteen, twenty year period. David Friedberg (00:15:54): Yes. Francis Suarez (00:15:54): As being anachronistic. It just doesn't Jason Calacanis (00:15:57): work at five percent a year get reviewed. The government's responsible for reviewing 5% a year for twenty years and they recertify it or Chamath Palihapitiya (00:16:05): %. Francis Suarez (00:16:05): Right, and then you have the ability to reimplement it if you think it makes sense. But I think what happens is you go back down to zero. You were asking and Tony and I was listening to the conversation. Cause we did it like I said, we had to cut our budget by 20% in one year. And part of the problem is budgeting is like layering. Right? It all layers on top of each other. Same as regulation, it layers on top of each other. So if you were to be able to strip it down in a mechanical way, right? In an instantaneous way, as opposed to having to fight the structures. In our case, we were very lucky. There was a state statutory vehicle that allowed us to implement the cuts. Otherwise, we'd have to bargain for them in a union process. And obviously, one would ever bargain to cut their salaries or no never bargain to cut Nothing would have happened. Nothing would have happened. Would have gone we would have been bankrupt. And then a court would have taken us over. We would have looked like a joke. And instead, we we cut costs and we and we survived and we thrived. Right? Going forward. And by way, my employees now love me. They were not happy the first couple years when we did it. But now they they they I don't even have to go to a union interview when I when I run for office. They just support me right away. Jason Calacanis (00:17:06): You wanna be governor? Francis Suarez (00:17:08): I don't think it's quite that simple. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:17:10): I wanna dunk. Francis Suarez (00:17:11): I wanna dunk. Yeah. I wanna be able to dunk too. Look, I think that I'm a republican, for those of you who don't know. And, you know, the president's already weighed in the republican primary. I respect the president's perspective. I have a good relationship with congressman Donald's. So I I think politics is very circumstantial. We've talked about that a lot in the Yeah. So, you know, things sometimes conspire in your in your favor. Sometimes things sometimes things don't. Right? And I do think it is circumstantial. So I think you have to weigh the circumstances. You know, I ran for president because I had a I had a thesis. The thesis was urban voters, Hispanics, and young voters, if they went republican, would favor the Republican candidate or Republican candidate would win. And it they did. It just wasn't me. Right? It was a different candidate. But, you know, the president did a great job on podcasts. Right? Going on all these podcasts that, you know, the vice president didn't do. And he got young voters and he got urban voters. Look, the republicans never gonna win Philadelphia. Right? Trump lost Philadelphia to Biden by 85%, but he lost Philadelphia to Kamala by 75%. And and that delta, the 75, 80 five, that 10% delta gave him Pennsylvania. David Friedberg (00:18:21): Yeah. That's the election. Francis Suarez (00:18:22): Which was such a crucial state. Right? Yeah. Like, arguably the the winning state. You you know, Republicans are never gonna necessarily win urban votes or the urban population centers throughout America. But you're also seeing and I think it's important to note, you're seeing Democratic mayors lose across America. London Breed lost in San Francisco. Yeah. Teshara Jones lost in St. Louis. The mayor of of Chicago, Lori Lightfoot lost. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:18:46): On that point, you were the or still are the Francis Suarez (00:18:48): head of No. I was. I was a president of US conference manager for a year and a half. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:18:51): Okay. If if if we had to ask you, you can't live in Miami. Yep. You met all those mayors. Who where are two places that you think are actually well that aspire, you know, to do something great and have their shit together? Francis Suarez (00:19:05): Cities? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:19:06): Take your time. I I Don't jump to an answer. Speaker 3 (00:19:08): I'll I'll Francis Suarez (00:19:09): I'll say this. I'll tell you a mayor that I like. How about that? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:19:11): Okay. Francis Suarez (00:19:12): Justin Bibb. Justin Bibb is mayor of Cleveland. We got a couple Cleveland people here? Jason Calacanis (00:19:17): Apparently. Francis Suarez (00:19:18): There we go. Justin is a good friend. I have a lot of friends that are mayors. I'm a mayor, you know, I love all my mayors because I was president of that institution. But I think Justin is a young, dynamic guy who's smart, not super partisan, cares tremendously about his city. And and we talk a lot about it because obviously Miami and Cleveland are a little different. Right? Jason Calacanis (00:19:39): On the margins. Francis Suarez (00:19:39): That's fair. And and we joke about it. He says, you know, I wish I had the kind of problems you have. Talk to go back to sort of the Ken Griffin quote. You know, they they don't struggle with affordable housing. They got plenty of affordable housing because people don't necessarily wanna live there. Sorry, Jay. Sorry, Jay. I love you, bro. But but it's true. Right? It's kinda true. So he's dealing with economic development. He's dealing with he wants to be the Miami of Ohio in terms of getting investment, getting the tech community there, getting people, special people to move into his community and believe in his vision. And I think the company building is hard, as you guys know, you guys have built some incredible companies. Ecosystem building is even harder. Right? It's it's it's a thousand x harder than building a big company. Jason Calacanis (00:20:26): I mean, companies take years into decades and ecosystems take decades into centuries. Yeah. It's too different. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:20:33): Is there something that inside of the next gubernatorial campaign, let's say you don't run for governor Francis Suarez (00:20:39): Yeah. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:20:39): That's a high impact job at the state level? Francis Suarez (00:20:42): Not really. I get to practice and I have a private sector life. I have a 11 year old and a seven year old. So, I mean, if the president called me and said, you know, I want you to be The US Ambassador to, you know, a country that I have a passion to help, in terms of The United States, in terms of their relationship and world peace and things of that nature, which I think are high ROIs for for the time investment and the financial sacrifice that you have to make, I would strongly consider it. But other than that, mean, live a very blessed life. Know, I I I'm the mayor of the best city on the planet. You know? Yeah. And I have incredible, incredible, incredible bosses. These are my bosses. I have the best bosses in the world. Yeah. And they're constantly encouraging me. They're constantly cheering me on. And I live and breathe for them. I wake up early in the morning, I go to bed late, and I carry their problems, their hopes, and their dreams in my soul. Jason Calacanis (00:21:34): Alright. Give it up for Francis Suarez, your mayor. Speaker 6 (00:21:40): Thank you to our friend Francis Suarez, the mayor of Miami for joining us on stage at our f one event, and thanks to you, the audience, for tuning in. Give us a like, a thumbs up, a subscribe, write a review, whatever you're into. Maybe send it to a friend. If you wanna come to our next event, it's the All In Summit in Los Angeles. Fourth Year for All In Summit. Go to All In dot com slash events to apply. A very special thanks to our new partner, OKX, the new money app. OKX was the sponsor of the McLaren f one team, which won the race in Miami. Thanks to Haider and his team, an amazing partner and an amazing team. We really enjoyed spending time with you. And OKX launched their new crypto exchange here in The US. If you love All In, Francis Suarez (00:22:22): go Speaker 6 (00:22:22): check them out. And a special thanks to our friends at Circle. They're the team behind USDC. Yes. Your favorite stablecoin in the world. USDC is a fully backed digital dollar redeemable one for one for USD. It's built for speed, safety, and scale. They just announced the Circle Payments Network. This is enterprise grade infrastructure that bridges the gap between the digital economy and outdated financial. Go check out USDC for all your stablecoin needs. And special thanks to my friends, including Shane over at Polymarket, Google Cloud, Solana, and EVNK. We couldn't have done it without y'all. Thank you so much. Speaker 3 (00:23:04): We'll let your winners ride. Rain man gave it. And it said we open sourced it to the fans, and they've We should all just get a room and just have one big huge orgy because they're all just useless. It's like it's like sexual tension that they just need to release somehow. Wet