 Mark Shlov, the host of Think Tech Hawaii's Law Across the Sea program. Today, three of my friends, all very experienced international lawyers with whom I have crossed the sea many times, are joining me. Larry Foster is an emeritus law professor and the former dean of the University of Hawaii Law School. Roger Epstein is a Hawaii lawyer and currently the president of Maitreya Institute. Ben Lau is a New York lawyer and the founder of Haikeli Advisors. We call ourselves before amigos. We have often met and talked story as friends. I've asked my friends to share their thoughts about the major issues facing us in the New Year. Aloha. Nice to be here, Mark. Thank you. All right. Good to see all of you. We haven't got together as a group like this for about three years. I wonder why. But let me get started. We've just been through a big year, but I want to look ahead. What are the major issues facing the world, including the United States, in the New Year? We'll start with Larry, then go to Roger and Ben. Larry, what do you see as the major issues? Yeah, I'll start off with one anyway. Priority-wise, this is an existential issue, and that's climate change. Things are not going well on our planet, and there is no plan, planet B, and we need to redouble, triple our efforts to resolve these climate issues. Okay. All right. And that's sort of a continuing issue too, from the past year, because we've seen that. But that's what you're seeing as the major issue. Roger, where are you on this? Well, there are so many issues in terms of economics, in terms of educational problems, but I want to be more philosophical, more esoteric. And what I like to focus on and what I spend a lot of time with on the Maitreya Institute is looking at our approach to collaborating as a group, as Americans, as a human species. We've all spent a lot of time with China, and our perception of China is so much different than so many of our friends, because we know people there. And our experience at the United States throughout the world, excuse me, no matter what your ethnicity is, no matter what your background is, no matter what your education is, you really want to be happy. You really want to have a decent life. You want to have food, clothing and shelter. You want your kids to have an education, all these things that we really are missing out on. And I'll stay with us throughout the program. I went to Bhutan three years ago, spent a few weeks there where they focus and measure gross national happiness instead of GNP. So to sum up my thinking, we need to realize that we're all connected to each other, and we need to treat each other that way, and to start collaborating and coordinating instead of so much unhealthy competition that leads to, well, in the worst case, war. And so that's what you're seeing is a major issue facing up, going into the New Year. Okay. All right, Ben, where are you on all of this? What do you see a major issue facing the world? As we go into the New Year, as we ride in, as the four amigos ride into the New Year? You know, I cannot summarize it to one issue, like I said, but I will point out, distinguished gentlemen, and why I so appreciate being in your company and you having me as part of your club. You identify issues that relate to a much wider population and demographic than just ourselves. You're talking about a future that you guys clearly have interest in preserving for the benefit of others and the benefit of your offspring. I can't give you one issue, Mark. I would agree with Noriel and Beanie, who said that there's an intertwining. He reduces his in the book, Pathetic, called Megathreat. Getting the benefit of Larry and Roger Sot's existential, as well as climate, which is existential, I'd say there's more immediate things, and I'm trying not to be selfish and just focusing on my generation, but that concern us and the planet. And that would be with regards to sustainability. We're going to have a problem with just the way the world works in terms of debt and economics. That's what I'd say is the biggest in the immediate before we get the climate change before we get there existential. Okay. All right. And, you know, a lot of what all of you have said seems to be about people and communication and working together. And there seems to be a lack of that. And as we go into the new year, I wonder, are these issues that we've faced that the world has faced before and not solved? Larry, what are your thoughts? Yeah, these economic issues and Roger was talking about and climate change. Yeah, they these are not new issues. We haven't worked out a way to resolve them making progress on some of them. We have a lot more progress to make if we really want to have a happy, prosperous future for the whole world. Roger. Yeah. Is this history repeating itself? Is that what's happening I think it's not only history. It's history repeating itself in a cycle. And you see that these problems come up and we go through periods. So this is 60 years from the 60s when we had huge focus on these very same problems with the exception perhaps the climate change. But we were talking about air pollution at that time. So I guess dealing with the same problems in these cycles, we deal with something intensively and then it kind of let's go and we go to another phase. And I think we're making progress. I think it's a spiral going up. We deal with these problems and they seem terrible at the time. But those of us who have lived through it, we can see that they get a little better other problems. And then we deal with it again in another cycle. But I do like the Asian idea of the five elements and 12 animals. And this is 60 years from the 60s. And maybe we're into an intensive period now of dealing with these problems and maybe five, 10 years. And then we'll smooth them out in a way and then start over again. We're attacking the problems intensively now, I think. And Ben, you're the baby of our group. And I was wondering, how do you look at this? Do you mean this all new for you? Or do you see some historical repetition also? Let me start off by saying, I don't want to disagree with Roger openly. So thank you for acknowledging I am a baby. I know you're referring to my mother, not my number of years. I will hide behind the famous Samuel Longhearn Clements, who says that slight variation of what Roger said. History does not repeat. But it's from time to time rhymes. Samuel Clements is also known as Mark Twain. In response, in about it can be fixed. There's another senior gentleman like you guys that I will cite. That's Charlie Munger. And Charlie Munger says that this is a thing that we've had a problem with for a very long time. And he cites the Bible. He's lived long enough and he remembers growing up in the depression. He's older than you guys by quite a bit. And he recognizes some of the same things that he saw growing up. And he can't understand why we can have so much more than ever before. Of course, there's a huge range and it's for multi-billionaire to relate to the common person. It's going to be a tough thing. But his point was that, you know, he doesn't think that human beings are driven by grief. That's not the problem. Problem is envy. It's that we want more and we see somebody else having more and so we want that. And I think there's a very valid point to that. So he gets down to it and saying, well, if they're going to document that in the Bible, this has been a problem that's long running source of issues. Okay. Well, let me let me ask Larry first. Is there anything we can learn about solving these problems from history? Is there anything that we've neglected to see or that is out there just obvious that history teaches us how to deal with these current issues that are confronting us in the New Year? Yeah, I came over for Roger or Ben brought this point out. But these issues have been around for a while. And whether or not they repeat, they echo or whatever. But from a long, a long lived perspective, things are getting better. We're making progress on our environmental issues. We're making progress on social justice, all our economic issues. But at times, when you're doing the day to day, minute by minute, living through them, it seems we're moving very slowly or even moving backwards sometimes. I think if we step back and look at the lens of time that we are making progress. Okay. So you seem to think that somehow we're learning. Roger, where are you at? I mean, what can we learn from history on how to deal with these issues that you raised? Well, I think history is showing us that we haven't moved to a new level of collaboration. I think we keep getting whether it's greed or envy or fear. Somehow the leaders of our countries and the leaders of many of our states and communities, they can't get over into total collaboration thinking about what's in it for the best of the community. I think we have answers for a lot of problems, but we're not willing to put the money into it and the resources and the effort into it. I'll give you an example. When I started out as an internal revenue agent 50 years ago, the highest tax rate was 70%. And we had the atomic situation in the history of the world. Now we are pretty 5%. And it went to 37%. People went crazy. And so we're not willing. And that's why we've gone to this and this is the problem we didn't discuss directly, but it's a huge problem. It's the inequality. United States used to be one of the most equal places in the world in terms of economics and being able to own your own house. It used to be that the CEO was making 30 times or 40 times what the guy on the factory floor was making. And now it's 400 times, 500 times. So I would say since the 80s, since the neoliberal concept of the government isn't here to help you, the government's the problem. There's a balance somewhere. So I think history is showing us what Einstein says, you don't solve the problems by doing the same thing that got you there. And that's why I got a little perhaps too esoteric and fundamental. But I really do think we have to change our concept of community. Is there a role in the government to make sure everybody has food, clothing, shelter, medicine? And then how do we spread the food around? There's plenty of food to feed people. And people will tell you with food insecurity, it's not the places that have the most food that eliminated the problem. It's where people collaborate with each other. So we're covering a lot of territory in a short time. But I would say that the thing we've learned from history is we've got to find another solution between ultra competitive capitalism and ultra socialistic communism, that somehow balances government and the people that are taking it out with a shovel need to put some back in so we can solve some of the problems on a communal basis. Okay, Ben, now you cited some quotes and some thoughts, but what are some of the solutions that you can take from that? And look, we may not all agree on this. And we've had this discussion before, and we're all friends. We four amigos can talk about this stuff and not have anger. But anyway, I just wanted to comment because we about that. But Ben, what do you see? It switched up on me. I was processing what your first question was, and I had a nice answer already set for that. I would say, you know, I certainly don't have any solution. The smartest people on the planet are trying to figure out solutions. There are certainly a lot of very bright minds trying to figure out how to exploit the situation, contributing to the problems and all of that. I was going to talk about how I couldn't give you as a typical lawyer a yes or no answer to your original question, not this question. And hedge it by saying, so I'm taking advantage of the setup and my thoughts of trying to concoct an answer. And that would have been that to the points that were made by Larry and Roger, you know, there's a big thing that happened last year, right? In the last few years, we've lost a lot of people around the globe. And yet we celebrated or we noticed that the world population got to 8 billion. That's a lot of people. That's a lot of problems. So no matter what anyone says, we are facing things that are unprecedented in terms of numbers and numbers have a lot to do with everything. On the other hand, we're not dealing with the same old problems. If you read Nicole Pearl Ruth, the New York Times journalist columnist and author of the book, this is how they tell me the world will end. Cyber security, we're already in wars. We're at war with at least four nations or more in cyber space, not in the traditional way. And most of us don't know that. We don't pay attention to that every day and not all of it's reported. But there are battles going on every moment of every day when you tune in to that bandwidth of what little is coming through by way of information. So we're at war with other nations, not just the ones we read about where there's bloodshed, but we're at war over pressure, over gold, over territory, over resources. You asked about what are some of the, let me hedge that on the other side of that equation. Take a moment to self promote. Mark, you had me as a guest host on a show. I couldn't figure out why one of the shows that I was able to host because of your generosity was playing every night of this past week. And then I was told it was a top 10 show of last year. The important part is this, the hope for the future is our future. That show was about the millennials. And the great thing was you had four young people come together very quickly, give their independent responses, and they were all about service of others. They were all nontraditional answers from my peer level. They weren't after pursuing gold and riches on Wall Street. There are those in their generation who are doing that. They wanted to serve, feed, help. They wanted to do like Larry's daughter go out and treat and cure the problems. And like Rogers, educate people in the world. That's the hope. What are the features we have to get together? We have to address envy. We have to address greed. The other risks here, I'll point one thing out. It's very interesting. I don't know how it relates exactly, but General Petraeus, Admiral Stavratis, they talk about the traditional threats by Navy and by land and by air. Petraeus is with KKR. Admiral Stavratis is with Carlisle Group, both financial behemoth on the buyout side. We have our military geniuses at financial machines that are the leaders of our current day and age in the modern world. What's the solution? We need to get KKR and Carlisle and the other leading firms with the brightest minds to collaborate with Larry's daughter, Rogers' children, these millennials, and hire people who aren't just about money but solving solutions and not just for a profit motive. We could do it. How you incentivize them to motivate that behavior, I have no idea. Well, all right. Now, I asked you all on because you're my friends, and you've all shared your thoughts about the major issues, and this is a long discussion. We could be talking on and on about this, but you've given us all a lot to think about. Where are each of you? What are each of you personally looking at? What are you all facing? Personally, for within our group, within our Four Amigos group, what can you tell us about what you're facing in the new year? Larry? Let me back up first and then I'll address that. I am an incurable optimist, and I like to see myself during my career being a good problem solver, and those two kind of go hand in hand. So I think optimism, hope is a very important thing to have. For me, personally, I'm about to go through a life transition. My wife and I are poised to leave Hawaii. My family's been here since 1957. Brenda was born at Queens Hospital, and yet we're leaving Hawaii. We're leaving for family reasons and for, I'll probably call it medical reasons. I'm very reluctantly, but we keep telling ourselves we're going to make the best possible transition as we move into the next stage of our life. Okay. All right. That's interesting to hear. Roger? Yeah. I'm going to stay in Hawaii, and my feeling is that the old saying, think globally and act locally, I feel strongly that Hawaii is a place that could find a way to create a society that fulfills what I've been talking about, collaboration and working together, and wanting to see a community that's happy. I think I mentioned I was in Bhutan, and they have this Gross National Happiness Measurement. We're trying to do a conference this year to blend Gross National Happiness and Aloha. The first author of the program in Bhutan that started formally in 2011, I guess originally started in 72. He's getting an award at Harvard. He's going to hopefully come back, and we're going to do a two or three-day seminar here on what does it look like if we lived Aloha? What does it look like if we really measured, are we happy? Are we satisfied instead of, are we making more money? If you read a book that I'd be happy to give you guys a copy of that was written by this Dr. Tote and his history, it's very fascinating. I think we could do it here with a million people. Everybody really has a sense of Aloha here. You may not be able to live it, but you talk to the CEO of any company and you say Aloha, they don't start laughing. It has some meaning to them. It has some sense. I think if we could put it together in a practical way, we could do a lot of good, but we're going to have to recognize that you can't have everything at once. You might not have the most money, but what if you just had a life and you really appreciated it and people didn't have to work two or three jobs? Why has the value of a hotel gone up 10 times and wages have stayed steady in the last four years? I see some wonderful people interested, good programs. We got a new governor. I think my intention is to focus on Hawaii and how we could make changes, how we could deal with Asia. We've talked about being a hub, but it's not a hub for goods, but it could be a hub for discussion, for meaningful ways of thinking about what a society should look like. That's where I'm putting a lot of energy now. I pretty much phased out practicing law, except for people that have a few here and there. That's where I want to go in the next years to come. Ben, personally, give a few comments. What do I have? Like five seconds to answer? Maybe 10. Look, I love Hawaii. I love you guys. Thank you for having me. I love parts of Hawaii. I'm not long Hawaii like you guys are because Hawaii can't figure out what to do with me. I've been trying to, as you know, that's how we all got together thanks to Roger, is trying to do something in the U.S.-China corridor, which has shrunk, if not closed tight, very quickly. I'm looking to the horizon to do something new, something that may be related to law, but maybe not practicing law. Something, I don't know, something that can figure out what to do with me that I can do it, but it most likely won't be in Hawaii. Larry's leaving. I know, Mark and Roger, you'll be here. Larry, you broke up for me, Gus. Okay, look, we just have a, I like each of you just quickly tell me, we just have a minute left, basically, in our program. Do you have hope for the future? And is there anything in particular hopeful that you'd like to mention as we move forward? Larry, I know you're, I'm sorry that you're leaving Hawaii, but I know you're going, I think you're going to be with your grandkids, right? But anyway, sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you. Do you have hope? And if so, do you have anything specific? Just quickly. I've already declared myself a incurable optimist. I've been listening to Ben and Roger. I think we're all doing, reaching out and we've reached out over the years, the decades, the millennia, to make the world Hawaii a better place. And we'll continue doing that regardless of where we are. Okay, Roger? Well, I have enormous optimism. I think there's some fantastic things that we didn't have time to talk about. There's so many positive changes going on in the world. And you know, for every positive change, there's a negative repercussion. So we're never going to get to panacea, but we can make things better, as I was saying, spiraling up and up. And I think we're poised to do that throughout this decade. Okay, Ben? For better or worse, I went to law school. So I'm trained to see the negatives. And I like those. But if you know me, you know, I'm an eternal optimist. I'm not a perpetual optimist. It's very hard. So I think optimism takes some discipline. It takes good friends like you guys to prop one up and focus in a certain direction in your eyes on the horizon. But if there's no hope, there's no reason to be here. Well, one thing I just want to close is the four amigos. I mean, that is the optimistic, hopeful sign that I see. The four of us. We may not agree all the time. We have different paths sometimes. But we're all friends. And we have learned through our law practices to make friends all over the world. Now, if only, if only more of that could happen. I think I hear a lot of you saying that. But anyway, I want to thank you for this first talk. Can I have one word, Mark? Yeah. You've dedicated your life to going across overseas and building bridges, establishing brand new associations, oftentimes with Larry's help, sometimes with Roger's help. That is exactly what the world needs. So I don't know how you do it and how you pass that on to future generations. I have another group of friends. They're all elite athletes, Olympian, world record holder, former world record holders, gold medalists, silver medalists, runners. Their view is that you need elite athletes to get together to help run the world. Why? They've met one another. They've competed with each other. They wanted to win. But they got to know people. They got to know their competition. They put their heart to soul into getting the best they could, which means beating the other. But there's no way they'd ever go to war with one another. There's no way they'd want to deprive the other side of anything. And in that regard, you guys are true Olympians too. You have that spirit. You have that international mind and heart. Okay. Well, I want to thank you all for being my guest today. And maybe lawyers are kind of like Olympic athletes. What do you think? Well, anyway, we can save that for another discussion. But Aloha. Aloha, all of you. Thank you very much. Talk to you again. We'll get together. The four amigos will ride into the new year together. Aloha. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. 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