Rudy Giuliani
Rudy Giuliani
Meet Your Host, Alan Weiss
Alan Weiss is one of those rare people who can say he is a consultant, speaker, and author and mean it.
His consulting firm, Summit Consulting Group, Inc., has attracted clients such as Merck, Hewlett-Packard, GE, Mercedes-Benz, State Street Corporation, Times Mirror Group, The Federal Reserve, The New York Times Corporation, Toyota, and over 500 other leading organizations. He has served on several boards of directors in various capacities.
His prolific publishing includes over 500 articles and 60 books, including his best-seller, Million Dollar Consulting (from McGraw-Hill) now in its 30th year and sixth edition. His newest is Your Legacy is Now: Life is not about a search for meaning but the creation of meaning (Routledge, 2021). His books have been on the curricula at Villanova, Temple University, and the Wharton School of Business, and have been translated into 15 languages.
Get to know AlanShow Notes
I’ve met Rudy Giuliani. We belonged to the same cigar club in New York (which has since lost its lease). Those were the days when he was still in the afterglow of “America’s Mayor” from the way he led after 9/11. And those were the days when crime in New York was way down. He and the police commissioner, Bill Bratton, instituted tough approaches to “minor” violations, believing they would lead to arrests and halting of major violations. So there were penalties for blocking intersections (today in Manhattan, city buses block intersections with impunity), for jumping turnstiles in subways, for the guys who tried to wash car windshields at red lights. And crime greatly diminished.
Today, we have district attorneys and other highly progressive politicians who have either made “minor” crimes acceptable or have refused to prosecute them. Here’s the simple math for those of you who never majored in math (I certainly didn’t): When shoplifters steal from stores without any worry about being prosecuted, fined, or jailed, the store ownership decides to close those stores in such areas because they can’t afford to conduct business at a loss. So the pharmacies, local retail shops, clothiers, and so forth close up or relocate. Instead of walking for a few minutes to pick up drug prescriptions it then requires a 20-minute drive or public transportation for 40 minutes to a store that’s in a safer neighborhood.
Activists demand that laws be passed preventing the chains from closing local stores, rather than laws preventing the “free” looting of local stores. Now ain’t that poor math?
And who’s most hurt by those pharmacies that close? The elderly, the disabled, the people without personal transportation, single parents, and so forth. If you don’t want stores to close, stop the cause: crime. And to stop crime, stop ALL crime. Once you forgive the “small stuff” people move on to the larger stuff. Have I mentioned that auto theft in the US and Canada is on a severe upward trend?
Alan Weiss’s The Uncomfortable Truth® is a weekly broadcast from “The Rock Star of Consulting,” Alan Weiss, who holds forth with his best (and often most contrarian) ideas about society, culture, business, and personal growth. His 60+ books in 12 languages, and his travels to, and work in, 50 countries contribute to a fascinating and often belief-challenging 20 minutes that might just change your next 20 years.
Introduction to the show recorded by Connie Dieken
