How did Robert Moses gain so much power without being elected, according to Dwarkesh Patel?

Dwarkesh Patel, drawing on Robert Caro's The Power Broker, says Robert Moses was the most powerful person in New York for more than 30 years without winning an election. He drafted the laws that governed his own agencies, held 12 government posts at once so no single mayor or governor could remove him, delivered popular parks and highways within one election cycle, and controlled the engineering plans that attracted federal money.

• Moses built 672 of the 899 miles of highway completed in New York State by 1964.
• By 1936 New York received one seventh of the federal money set aside for Depression-era work relief nationwide.
• In his first four months as parks commissioner, Moses finished 1,700 park renovations.

▸In their words

“Part of the answer is that Moses wrote the laws that governed him.” Dwarkesh Patel · at 2:10 — open in the transcript →

Source: our own transcription of the episode. The full conversation is on Dwarkesh Podcast (2026-10-29). Read the whole episode summary →

▸More from this episode