This is The Reason Interview with Nickalespi.

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My guest today is John Arnold, the former Enron Wunderkin turned billionaire philanthropist who's

determined to hack America's most expensive and least accountable public sector systems

in areas like criminal justice, education, and pensions. Fun fact, he was once called the

most hated man in pension land by governing magazine due to his reform efforts.

We talk about why those public pensions are so out of control and how to fix them,

how Medicare squeezes billions of unnecessary dollars out of taxpayers,

and how Enron scammed its investors, not despite regulations, but in full view of them.

And we discuss why, despite all our problems, he's still betting on America to get better, not worse.

Here is the reason interview with John Arnold.

John Arnold, thanks for talking to Reese.

Great to be.

So you and your wife, Laura, head up Arnold Ventures, which is a gigantic philanthropy.

I want to get into that, and I also want to start though by asking you, you signed on to the

giving pledge. Explain what the giving pledge is and, you signed on to the giving pledge.

Explain what the giving pledge is and why you said, yeah, this is us.

So the giving pledge is a non-binding pledge that somebody signs, it says we can give away

at least half of our assets to the philanthropic sector at some point. And it started in the early 2010s, right?

Thereabouts?

Exactly.

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