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Abundance
From bestselling authors and journalistic titans Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, Abundance is a once-in-a-generation, paradigm-shifting call to rethink big, entrenched problems that seem mired in systemic from climate change to housing, education to healthcare.
To trace the global history of the twenty-first century so far is to trace a history of growing unaffordability and shortage. After years of refusing to build sufficient housing, the entire country has a national housing crisis. After years of slashing immigration, we don’t have enough workers. After decades of off-shoring manufacturing, we have a shortage of chips for cars and computers. Despite decades of being warned about the consequences of climate change, we haven’t built anything close to the clean energy infrastructure we need. The crisis that’s clicking into focus now has been building for decades—because we haven’t been building enough.
Abundance explains that our problems today are not the results of yesteryear’s villains. Rather, one generation’s solutions have become the next generation’s problems. Rules and regulations designed to solve the environmental problems of the 1970s often prevent urban density and green energy projects that would help solve the environmental problems of the 2020s. Laws meant to ensure that government considers the consequences of its actions in matters of education and healthcare have made it too difficult for government to act consequentially. In the last few decades, our capacity to see problems has sharpened while our ability to solve them has diminished.
Progress requires the ability to see promise rather than just peril in the creation of new ideas and projects, and an instinct to design systems and institutions that make building possible. In a book exploring how can move from a liberalism that not only protects and preserves but also builds, Klein and Thompson trace the political, economic, and cultural barriers to progress and how we can adopt a mindset directed toward abundance, and not scarcity, to overcome them.
To trace the global history of the twenty-first century so far is to trace a history of growing unaffordability and shortage. After years of refusing to build sufficient housing, the entire country has a national housing crisis. After years of slashing immigration, we don’t have enough workers. After decades of off-shoring manufacturing, we have a shortage of chips for cars and computers. Despite decades of being warned about the consequences of climate change, we haven’t built anything close to the clean energy infrastructure we need. The crisis that’s clicking into focus now has been building for decades—because we haven’t been building enough.
Abundance explains that our problems today are not the results of yesteryear’s villains. Rather, one generation’s solutions have become the next generation’s problems. Rules and regulations designed to solve the environmental problems of the 1970s often prevent urban density and green energy projects that would help solve the environmental problems of the 2020s. Laws meant to ensure that government considers the consequences of its actions in matters of education and healthcare have made it too difficult for government to act consequentially. In the last few decades, our capacity to see problems has sharpened while our ability to solve them has diminished.
Progress requires the ability to see promise rather than just peril in the creation of new ideas and projects, and an instinct to design systems and institutions that make building possible. In a book exploring how can move from a liberalism that not only protects and preserves but also builds, Klein and Thompson trace the political, economic, and cultural barriers to progress and how we can adopt a mindset directed toward abundance, and not scarcity, to overcome them.
297 pages, Kindle Edition
First published March 18, 2025
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 805 reviews
February 24, 2025
This was a pretty big let down for me, I wanted to feel inspired and excited by the thinking in this book. Their thesis is very thin and feels more like two guys lecturing the reader on all that is wrong than actually providing a vision for a world of abundance instead of scarcity. Mostly it is a few essays expanded and tacked together, which is a bummer because we could use real rigorous thinking about how to create better futures and systems. The writing is good but the arguments are lacking.
March 23, 2025
Abundance is a brilliant work of synthesis, tying together a lot of ideas that have been developed in the policy community to make a whole that is larger than the sum of the parts. I find myself almost entirely in agreement with the book. But there is no fun in agreement so after briefly summarizing it I will spend most of this review talking about what I think is missing or could be extended. (I should say, with books where I disagree with the overall thesis I put my effort in the opposite direction, trying to figure out what I agreed with, learned from it, or was challenged by.)
I will let Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson summarize: “This book is dedicated to a simple idea: to have the future we want, we need to build and invent more of what we need. That’s it. That’s the thesis.� The book is in argument with the de-growthers and in supplement to the focus on the demand side. Underlying it is a political diagnosis that, “America developed a right that fought the government and a left that hobbled it� and a real anger at the way in which blue states, especially California, have failed their citizens—and helped discredit government in the process.
The book focuses on four areas: (i) the need for land use reform to build more housing and lower the cost, (ii) the massive amount of infrastructure that needs to be built for clean energy to be able to electrify everything (“The Interstate Highway System is forty-nine thousand miles of road. The interstate clean-energy system—the solar farms, the wind turbines, the geothermal land, the transmission lines, the pipes—will touch more than five hundred thousand miles of land.�), (iii) the need to build state capacity, and (iv) investing in science and innovation, including making sure existing dollars go further by, for example, funding earlier-stage scientists doing higher-risk research.
From my perspective (and Ezra and Derek may well agree), Abundance provides a useful motivation to find more tools for the toolkit. It is not close to a complete economic plan; taxes, subsidies, and redistribution are important, but it presents elements that are often underappreciated. Many of these have beneficiaries that are not local residents for housing or in the future for climate change or scientific research; helping to organize them into a movement, like NIMBYs, can help overcome some entrenched interests and help get more stuff done. Moreover, I am convinced Abundance provides a toolkit for governing and influencing the people who are governing, but I’m somewhere between agnostic and skeptical about it as a political movement to win elections.
Still, I would highlight six places where I either have disagreements with Ezra an Derek or have a complementary view that is underrepresented in their book (which is perfectly fair; you can’t cover everything):
1. Scarcity is a pervasive fact of life. Scarcity of money. Scarcity of the things people want, like great views from their houses or across natural vistas. Scarcity of time, attention, resources, and more. The authors are right to emphasize pushing out the production possibility frontier, but it will still be there with all the tradeoffs. Why does this matter? Because much of the opposition to their ideas will come from the people that are losing out—and it is pointless to deny that there are those losers.
2. What groups are the obstacles to their vision? As many have pointed out, the authors are coy about what Democratic interest groups they are against. Some of the environmental groups, like the Sierra Club, are clearly depicted as part of the problem. But how about labor unions? The authors are mostly silent on them. Or various identitarian groups? Or the Brahmin left? Why exactly is it that Republicans get this more right than Democrats? Is it because they are less in thrall to the “groups�? The authors want to build a big tent and not alienate anyone, but that may not be possible.
3. The focus on energy, housing, and medical innovation is too limited. From 1948 to 1973, productivity rose at 2.8 percent per year. Since then, it has risen at closer to 1.8 percent per year. This is the biggest factor in the slowdown of wage growth for typical families over the last half century. Housing matters, but it is only a fraction of the typical household’s budget. Energy needs to be cleaner for climate change, but one should not overstate how transformative it is. For most purposes, when you plug something into a socket, it works the same whether the electrons were generated by coal or by solar (cheaper electricity will open up new avenues for electrification, including most exciting carbon removal at scale). Ultimately, higher productivity growth is going to require innovation across the wide range of what people currently buy—plus all sorts of stuff that does not exist yet. I wish there was more on economic growth overall and not just these areas.
4. Does America really have a development failure? The book laments the fact that the United States invents stuff but then doesn’t make them, with examples including the elevator and solar power. This felt more anecdotal and less grounded in research than the rest of the book. I just do not know how pervasive an issue this is, what solutions are needed, and generally with limited exceptions prefer the government to stay as far towards the R side of R&D as possible. I am open to it being a bigger issue but would like to know more than just the solar example—which by itself was convincing but just because of the associated externalities.
5. Personnel matters. The saying “personnel is policy� is overstated; in my experience, personnel are often very responsive to the people above them—and ultimately elected leaders—helping to fill out their vision. But personnel is management (better phrases for that most welcome). A friend who has worked extensively with state welfare agencies said Republican ones are much better run because they hire experienced business people, often in a national search, whereas Democratic governors elevate a local do-gooder who cannot manage as effectively. Getting more business people into government would help advance a lot of their goals.
6. How to measure success—and not bullshit oneself. One advantage of demand policies is that it is often easier to figure out what was done at scale. Provide $200 tax credits limited to only a dozen children, and people will notice that you did not accomplish much. But now multiple blue-state governors are embracing the abundance rhetoric and talking about everything they are doing to streamline permitting and increase building. But are these token steps? More substantial? You have to be deeply immersed in the details to know (in fact, I often could not tell when I worked in the Obama administration which of our permitting reform efforts were more hype or more reality). So some way to establish metrics and accountability instead of just celebrating any rhetorical successes will be necessary for this approach to truly be a success. And maybe the business types working in government can help with that.
I will let Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson summarize: “This book is dedicated to a simple idea: to have the future we want, we need to build and invent more of what we need. That’s it. That’s the thesis.� The book is in argument with the de-growthers and in supplement to the focus on the demand side. Underlying it is a political diagnosis that, “America developed a right that fought the government and a left that hobbled it� and a real anger at the way in which blue states, especially California, have failed their citizens—and helped discredit government in the process.
The book focuses on four areas: (i) the need for land use reform to build more housing and lower the cost, (ii) the massive amount of infrastructure that needs to be built for clean energy to be able to electrify everything (“The Interstate Highway System is forty-nine thousand miles of road. The interstate clean-energy system—the solar farms, the wind turbines, the geothermal land, the transmission lines, the pipes—will touch more than five hundred thousand miles of land.�), (iii) the need to build state capacity, and (iv) investing in science and innovation, including making sure existing dollars go further by, for example, funding earlier-stage scientists doing higher-risk research.
From my perspective (and Ezra and Derek may well agree), Abundance provides a useful motivation to find more tools for the toolkit. It is not close to a complete economic plan; taxes, subsidies, and redistribution are important, but it presents elements that are often underappreciated. Many of these have beneficiaries that are not local residents for housing or in the future for climate change or scientific research; helping to organize them into a movement, like NIMBYs, can help overcome some entrenched interests and help get more stuff done. Moreover, I am convinced Abundance provides a toolkit for governing and influencing the people who are governing, but I’m somewhere between agnostic and skeptical about it as a political movement to win elections.
Still, I would highlight six places where I either have disagreements with Ezra an Derek or have a complementary view that is underrepresented in their book (which is perfectly fair; you can’t cover everything):
1. Scarcity is a pervasive fact of life. Scarcity of money. Scarcity of the things people want, like great views from their houses or across natural vistas. Scarcity of time, attention, resources, and more. The authors are right to emphasize pushing out the production possibility frontier, but it will still be there with all the tradeoffs. Why does this matter? Because much of the opposition to their ideas will come from the people that are losing out—and it is pointless to deny that there are those losers.
2. What groups are the obstacles to their vision? As many have pointed out, the authors are coy about what Democratic interest groups they are against. Some of the environmental groups, like the Sierra Club, are clearly depicted as part of the problem. But how about labor unions? The authors are mostly silent on them. Or various identitarian groups? Or the Brahmin left? Why exactly is it that Republicans get this more right than Democrats? Is it because they are less in thrall to the “groups�? The authors want to build a big tent and not alienate anyone, but that may not be possible.
3. The focus on energy, housing, and medical innovation is too limited. From 1948 to 1973, productivity rose at 2.8 percent per year. Since then, it has risen at closer to 1.8 percent per year. This is the biggest factor in the slowdown of wage growth for typical families over the last half century. Housing matters, but it is only a fraction of the typical household’s budget. Energy needs to be cleaner for climate change, but one should not overstate how transformative it is. For most purposes, when you plug something into a socket, it works the same whether the electrons were generated by coal or by solar (cheaper electricity will open up new avenues for electrification, including most exciting carbon removal at scale). Ultimately, higher productivity growth is going to require innovation across the wide range of what people currently buy—plus all sorts of stuff that does not exist yet. I wish there was more on economic growth overall and not just these areas.
4. Does America really have a development failure? The book laments the fact that the United States invents stuff but then doesn’t make them, with examples including the elevator and solar power. This felt more anecdotal and less grounded in research than the rest of the book. I just do not know how pervasive an issue this is, what solutions are needed, and generally with limited exceptions prefer the government to stay as far towards the R side of R&D as possible. I am open to it being a bigger issue but would like to know more than just the solar example—which by itself was convincing but just because of the associated externalities.
5. Personnel matters. The saying “personnel is policy� is overstated; in my experience, personnel are often very responsive to the people above them—and ultimately elected leaders—helping to fill out their vision. But personnel is management (better phrases for that most welcome). A friend who has worked extensively with state welfare agencies said Republican ones are much better run because they hire experienced business people, often in a national search, whereas Democratic governors elevate a local do-gooder who cannot manage as effectively. Getting more business people into government would help advance a lot of their goals.
6. How to measure success—and not bullshit oneself. One advantage of demand policies is that it is often easier to figure out what was done at scale. Provide $200 tax credits limited to only a dozen children, and people will notice that you did not accomplish much. But now multiple blue-state governors are embracing the abundance rhetoric and talking about everything they are doing to streamline permitting and increase building. But are these token steps? More substantial? You have to be deeply immersed in the details to know (in fact, I often could not tell when I worked in the Obama administration which of our permitting reform efforts were more hype or more reality). So some way to establish metrics and accountability instead of just celebrating any rhetorical successes will be necessary for this approach to truly be a success. And maybe the business types working in government can help with that.
March 22, 2025
Read this instead: /book/show/1..., by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson or /book/show/2... by Kate Raworth
I had heard a lot about this Abundance book on social media so decided to check it out. After all, my background is in environmental policy and I've also done quite of bit of electoral political volunteering and work, so I figured it would be interesting. However, it's clear it's written by two dudes who don't have expertise in or curiosity about some of the biggest problems facing our world today. My work now focuses on chemical pollution and chemicals in products, including issues about plastics. So after reading the frankly ridiculous and simplistic introduction, I then searched the book for some key phrases:
- PFAS (0 mentions)
- Chemicals (0 mentions)
- Substances (0 mentions)
- Planetary boundary (0 mentions)
- overconsumption (0 mentions)
- overproduction (0 mentions)
- lobbying (0) + lobbyist (2 mentions, one is about a "lobbyist from Sierra Club", an environmental organization)
- hoarding (0 mentions)
- public procurement (0 mentions - now, why did I include this phrase? public procurement would be a powerful way to create "green abundance" if used properly and in innovative ways, creating markets for more sustainable products).
- ecodesign (0 mentions - again, a powerful concept to create more sustainable products)
- doughnut economics OR Kate Raworth (a foundation of sustainable economic and development thought these days)
- plastic (3 mentions - 1 about covid dividers, 1 about medical devices, and 1 which is "microplastics". in a section that's a dismissive screed about "degrowth" and Jason Hickel, and not actually about microplastics. So basically the issue of plastics is not addressed whatsoever in this book).
- pollution (several mentions, which is encouraging, except that nearly all are about air pollution - a major topic, to be sure, but the book is not actually addressing the root causes of why air pollution is a problem nor how to solve it).
I will not therefore waste my time reading this book and I hope that my review will influence others to think twice about it. These writers may have expertise on other topics, but they surely are not innovative or creative thinkers about environmental issues. They are clearly not part of the conversations being had by environmentalist thinkers or leaders.
It's additionally quite troubling but not surprising that they don't reference Kate Raworth's work or Ayana Elizabeth Johnson's work, or even Naomi Klein's work - but why is this? Why do they focus on Jason Hinkel's Degrowth concept, but don't even acknowledge the work of the 3 women thinkers and writers?? ... I won't make an accusation here but I think it's illustrative of how seriously Ezra and Derek approach this topic, which is to say, not seriously at all.
Did not finish. If this topic interests you, there are many better books to read.
I had heard a lot about this Abundance book on social media so decided to check it out. After all, my background is in environmental policy and I've also done quite of bit of electoral political volunteering and work, so I figured it would be interesting. However, it's clear it's written by two dudes who don't have expertise in or curiosity about some of the biggest problems facing our world today. My work now focuses on chemical pollution and chemicals in products, including issues about plastics. So after reading the frankly ridiculous and simplistic introduction, I then searched the book for some key phrases:
- PFAS (0 mentions)
- Chemicals (0 mentions)
- Substances (0 mentions)
- Planetary boundary (0 mentions)
- overconsumption (0 mentions)
- overproduction (0 mentions)
- lobbying (0) + lobbyist (2 mentions, one is about a "lobbyist from Sierra Club", an environmental organization)
- hoarding (0 mentions)
- public procurement (0 mentions - now, why did I include this phrase? public procurement would be a powerful way to create "green abundance" if used properly and in innovative ways, creating markets for more sustainable products).
- ecodesign (0 mentions - again, a powerful concept to create more sustainable products)
- doughnut economics OR Kate Raworth (a foundation of sustainable economic and development thought these days)
- plastic (3 mentions - 1 about covid dividers, 1 about medical devices, and 1 which is "microplastics". in a section that's a dismissive screed about "degrowth" and Jason Hickel, and not actually about microplastics. So basically the issue of plastics is not addressed whatsoever in this book).
- pollution (several mentions, which is encouraging, except that nearly all are about air pollution - a major topic, to be sure, but the book is not actually addressing the root causes of why air pollution is a problem nor how to solve it).
I will not therefore waste my time reading this book and I hope that my review will influence others to think twice about it. These writers may have expertise on other topics, but they surely are not innovative or creative thinkers about environmental issues. They are clearly not part of the conversations being had by environmentalist thinkers or leaders.
It's additionally quite troubling but not surprising that they don't reference Kate Raworth's work or Ayana Elizabeth Johnson's work, or even Naomi Klein's work - but why is this? Why do they focus on Jason Hinkel's Degrowth concept, but don't even acknowledge the work of the 3 women thinkers and writers?? ... I won't make an accusation here but I think it's illustrative of how seriously Ezra and Derek approach this topic, which is to say, not seriously at all.
Did not finish. If this topic interests you, there are many better books to read.
February 20, 2025
For a book about political paradigms, this was great. Klein and Thompson set out to paint their theory of abundance across many sectors (housing, immigration, climate change, innovation) at a time when the political right had laid its bets on a message of scarcity and the fear of it. They argue that the government should serve the role of creating abundance where it's needed, but should do so by knowing how to be involved and where to get out of the way.
The authors trace the origins of some of the biggest challenges that our government and politics face today, such as the housing shortage, difficulty in building, climate change and expediting clean energy, immigration and worker shortages, and innovation hampered by bureaucracy and huge price tags. What they find is that the blame can often be laid at the feet of Democrats and liberals because actions taken decades ago to address decades-old problems have morphed into different beasts entirely.
In a very readable and engaging way, they explain how complex parts of our society interface with government and what the challenges are. As a Democrat, I found this to be illuminating and this book gave me more perspective on why Republicans and the conservative right are frustrated with government today. There are many examples of spending too much with too little to show for it. But, the authors argue, it doesn't have to be that way, and in fact we have many examples of the American government achieving incredible things in nimble and innovative ways that benefit society and Americans, and even citizens abroad.
This book gave me a bigger and deeper perspective of the American political landscape today, and helped me better understand how the government functions in certain sectors. There's a lot of room for improvement, but there's also abundant potential and ultimately the book left me feeling hopeful.
Although this is a book that talks a lot about government and politics, it's not just for readers who are Democrat. The authors mostly focus on thoughtful criticism of Democrats, and praise Republicans where praise is due. I would recommend this book to anyone who follows politics and enjoys thoughtful explorations of politics and government. I would especially recommend it to Democrats who feel outraged about the actions of the new administration. This book does not justify their actions, but I do think it helps give perspective to why we might have ended up here. Importantly, it offers a different vision of the future. I would love to think that this book will end up in the right hands of people with the power to implement many of the ideas in this book.
Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for providing an ARC of this book for review.
The authors trace the origins of some of the biggest challenges that our government and politics face today, such as the housing shortage, difficulty in building, climate change and expediting clean energy, immigration and worker shortages, and innovation hampered by bureaucracy and huge price tags. What they find is that the blame can often be laid at the feet of Democrats and liberals because actions taken decades ago to address decades-old problems have morphed into different beasts entirely.
In a very readable and engaging way, they explain how complex parts of our society interface with government and what the challenges are. As a Democrat, I found this to be illuminating and this book gave me more perspective on why Republicans and the conservative right are frustrated with government today. There are many examples of spending too much with too little to show for it. But, the authors argue, it doesn't have to be that way, and in fact we have many examples of the American government achieving incredible things in nimble and innovative ways that benefit society and Americans, and even citizens abroad.
This book gave me a bigger and deeper perspective of the American political landscape today, and helped me better understand how the government functions in certain sectors. There's a lot of room for improvement, but there's also abundant potential and ultimately the book left me feeling hopeful.
Although this is a book that talks a lot about government and politics, it's not just for readers who are Democrat. The authors mostly focus on thoughtful criticism of Democrats, and praise Republicans where praise is due. I would recommend this book to anyone who follows politics and enjoys thoughtful explorations of politics and government. I would especially recommend it to Democrats who feel outraged about the actions of the new administration. This book does not justify their actions, but I do think it helps give perspective to why we might have ended up here. Importantly, it offers a different vision of the future. I would love to think that this book will end up in the right hands of people with the power to implement many of the ideas in this book.
Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for providing an ARC of this book for review.
March 23, 2025
This book is more of a political manifesto (or as they say in the conclusion 'a new lens through which to see the world) of a certain movement of policy wonks than anything else. It looks at a number of policy areas and asks 'what is considered scarce that should be abundant', calling for a 'liberalism that builds'.
So much of the book is about planning reform (loosening of zoning codes in US cities to resemble something like Houston), limits to environmental impact assessments in construction projects, more ambitious and less formalistic scientific funding (to solve what they call the 'Kariko problem'), a stronger focus on diffusion mechanisms (for deployment of novel tech), and a strong critique of the US style (but I would say globally Western) of 'government by lawyers & lawsuits' and processes, rather than outcomes.
But it is not a detailed political agenda (there are only a handful of specific policy proposals, like an increase in the number of H-1B visas, more frequent use of Advance Market Commitments, especially in pursuing net zero goals, and DARPA-ish program managers for the National Institutes of Health). Most of all, it calls for a reshaping of the government's role as a 'bottleneck detective', that can accept trade offs and expand capacity in critical points that have disproportionate effects.
This book is the core component of a relatively wonkish movement that also includes recent books like 'Why Nothing Works' by Marc Dunkelman, 'On Housing Crisis' by Jerusalem Demsas, or 'Stuck' by Yonni Applebaum that have come out in the past couple months. But it also includes work in the blogosphere, on substacks and in institutes like Institute for Progress. The core message across these - which have already been called in the Anglo-American policy discourse 'the Abundance agenda', is that liberalism has been for the past 40 to 50 years too much focused on stopping things from happening (to protect the rights and privileges of the individuals) than on building things. The best historical analysis on this is in 'Why Nothing Works', but because of Ezra Klein's notoriety and the more accessible way this book is written, I am sure this book will eventually be more impactful.
I really enjoyed the book. It is brief, well written and enjoyable but also challenging towards the status quo across the political spectrum. It also captures experiences of people trying to build something or accelerate progress within the broader public spheres even outside of the United States - so much of the chapter on the necessary reforms of scientific funding in the US and on the process-focused governance culture chimed with my experiences in reforming RDI funding in Slovakia.
So much of the book is about planning reform (loosening of zoning codes in US cities to resemble something like Houston), limits to environmental impact assessments in construction projects, more ambitious and less formalistic scientific funding (to solve what they call the 'Kariko problem'), a stronger focus on diffusion mechanisms (for deployment of novel tech), and a strong critique of the US style (but I would say globally Western) of 'government by lawyers & lawsuits' and processes, rather than outcomes.
But it is not a detailed political agenda (there are only a handful of specific policy proposals, like an increase in the number of H-1B visas, more frequent use of Advance Market Commitments, especially in pursuing net zero goals, and DARPA-ish program managers for the National Institutes of Health). Most of all, it calls for a reshaping of the government's role as a 'bottleneck detective', that can accept trade offs and expand capacity in critical points that have disproportionate effects.
This book is the core component of a relatively wonkish movement that also includes recent books like 'Why Nothing Works' by Marc Dunkelman, 'On Housing Crisis' by Jerusalem Demsas, or 'Stuck' by Yonni Applebaum that have come out in the past couple months. But it also includes work in the blogosphere, on substacks and in institutes like Institute for Progress. The core message across these - which have already been called in the Anglo-American policy discourse 'the Abundance agenda', is that liberalism has been for the past 40 to 50 years too much focused on stopping things from happening (to protect the rights and privileges of the individuals) than on building things. The best historical analysis on this is in 'Why Nothing Works', but because of Ezra Klein's notoriety and the more accessible way this book is written, I am sure this book will eventually be more impactful.
I really enjoyed the book. It is brief, well written and enjoyable but also challenging towards the status quo across the political spectrum. It also captures experiences of people trying to build something or accelerate progress within the broader public spheres even outside of the United States - so much of the chapter on the necessary reforms of scientific funding in the US and on the process-focused governance culture chimed with my experiences in reforming RDI funding in Slovakia.
March 19, 2025
Intellectually-vacuous garbage. The fact that this got a book deal is offensive.
March 26, 2025
I’m writing an abundantly long review here, mainly for myself. I agree with most and disagree with some but all things considered, I really enjoyed reading this book. I would even consider it to be required reading for those of us on the left, although if you use Twitter, listen to podcasts etc., you probably couldn’t avoid it even if you tried lol.
The core thesis is fairly simple: we need to be building more � more affordable housing, more clean energy, and more lifesaving medical technologies. This requires us to address the current impediments in doing so.
"Changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard requires confrontations with whether the systems liberals have built really reflect the ends they've sought".
I liked this quote. We cannot lose sight of what we are actually trying to achieve, which is to build a more prosperous, equitable world for all. Complex environmental reviews and bureaucratic processes before construction are incredibly important, and they sprung up in response to a genuine issue of unrestrained midcentury growth. That said, we should at least do an honest accounting of our current state and understand the tradeoffs involved. If our processes today mean we cannot build enough affordable housing and instead push people to live in encampment tents, can anyone say this is working as intended? This is a genuine “if�, not a rhetorical one, as I’m not well-versed enough in housing policy to know the extent to which this is true.
I thought the clean energy discussion was interesting too. It sounds like we have three options moving forward:
1) “drill baby drill�
2) degrowth
3) more clean energy
Hopefully we can all agree that number one is not the best option lol. Number two has advantages and I think the authors were a bit dismissive of it, but I agree it’s not realistic to put all of our eggs in that basket. It requires long-term behavior change over a time horizon we may not have, given the urgency of the climate crisis, not to mention the fact that much of the country does not view this as a worthwhile goal to pursue. Of course we should continue to persuade people here but we also need to focus on solutions not contingent on this happening.
Re: YIMBY/NIMBY stuff, the main uphill battle will be convincing people with a vested interest in their own houses appreciating to get on board. I sincerely wish those well who take on that fight as it will not be easy.
On the topic of invention, I loved the examples of penicillin, mRNA vaccines etc. The rise of penicillin was a great illustration of how inventing the thing is only one part of the equation � we also need to evaluate it rigorously and produce/distribute it for it to be valuable to society. The book was very techno-optimist and I get that but they should have spent more time explaining how important it is to be intentional in developing new technologies, ensuring they help who they are supposed to help. You can’t wait until after the fact to try and rein things in.
While there are genuine issues with the book, I've been surprised to see the response it's gotten from certain people on the left. Some have offered thoughtful criticism, e.g., that Klein and Thompson should touch more on how these gains would be distributed fairly within society. For example, while we absolutely need to build more housing, solely relying on market-driven housing is almost definitely not sufficient. This could lead to only luxury housing being built, and while this may pull high-income renters away from more affordable options, eventually making more of those units available, we likely need to go further. Investments in better, more efficiently-built public housing and ensuring new construction doesn’t solely benefit the already well-off is important.
However, others have dismissed this book as some kind of centrist, neoliberal manifesto, many of whom doing so while openly admitting they have not read the book lmao. To frame this book as a kind of centrist concession akin to bringing Liz Cheney on the campaign trail does not make sense to me -- it operates on a different dimension. It’s not a question of “should we partner more or less closely with republicans?�. In fact, a lot of the book is predicated on the fact that republicans operate in bad faith and are increasingly relying on scarcity rhetoric, e.g., baseless claims like "these immigrants are coming in and taking your housing!". The question the book asks is “should we build more or not?�, and it’s hard for me to understand how the latter is our path forward. The book advocates for more state capacity, not less, and absolutely does not push the idea that if we only get out of the way of corporations, they’ll do the right thing. This is naive and we have enough evidence by now to know this is not how things will play out. Companies� goal will always be to maximize profits, so we cannot rely solely on their goodwill and an unencumbered free market. Lastly, the conclusion explicitly describes the rise and fall of the neoliberal order and does not seem to suggest their ideas fitting within its paradigm.
With the latest election results, the democratic party’s popularity at a low, and everything that’s happening right now in our federal government, we cannot afford a lack of self-reflection. The working class has been rapidly moving away from the party at a concerning rate. We can criticize the opposition party all day long, and believe me when I say that would be longer than this review, but we also need a positive vision for the future. The 2024 campaign promise was “we aren’t the other people� and that may have worked in 2020 but it’s clearly not a viable path forward. We need a compelling vision and the one presented here � better and more affordable housing, clean energy, medical advancements etc. � seems like a great contrast to the “us against them� mentality heralded by the opposition. Translating this into a winnable campaign strategy is for someone with more expertise than me but I don’t think it’s impossible. I genuinely do not believe the ideas here are at odds with what AOC and Bernie are saying. If centrist dems feel good about this book and Bhaskar Sunkara from Jacobin says he agrees with 70% of it, that’s good enough for me.
If you’re still here, thank you for taking the time to read all of this.
The core thesis is fairly simple: we need to be building more � more affordable housing, more clean energy, and more lifesaving medical technologies. This requires us to address the current impediments in doing so.
"Changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard requires confrontations with whether the systems liberals have built really reflect the ends they've sought".
I liked this quote. We cannot lose sight of what we are actually trying to achieve, which is to build a more prosperous, equitable world for all. Complex environmental reviews and bureaucratic processes before construction are incredibly important, and they sprung up in response to a genuine issue of unrestrained midcentury growth. That said, we should at least do an honest accounting of our current state and understand the tradeoffs involved. If our processes today mean we cannot build enough affordable housing and instead push people to live in encampment tents, can anyone say this is working as intended? This is a genuine “if�, not a rhetorical one, as I’m not well-versed enough in housing policy to know the extent to which this is true.
I thought the clean energy discussion was interesting too. It sounds like we have three options moving forward:
1) “drill baby drill�
2) degrowth
3) more clean energy
Hopefully we can all agree that number one is not the best option lol. Number two has advantages and I think the authors were a bit dismissive of it, but I agree it’s not realistic to put all of our eggs in that basket. It requires long-term behavior change over a time horizon we may not have, given the urgency of the climate crisis, not to mention the fact that much of the country does not view this as a worthwhile goal to pursue. Of course we should continue to persuade people here but we also need to focus on solutions not contingent on this happening.
Re: YIMBY/NIMBY stuff, the main uphill battle will be convincing people with a vested interest in their own houses appreciating to get on board. I sincerely wish those well who take on that fight as it will not be easy.
On the topic of invention, I loved the examples of penicillin, mRNA vaccines etc. The rise of penicillin was a great illustration of how inventing the thing is only one part of the equation � we also need to evaluate it rigorously and produce/distribute it for it to be valuable to society. The book was very techno-optimist and I get that but they should have spent more time explaining how important it is to be intentional in developing new technologies, ensuring they help who they are supposed to help. You can’t wait until after the fact to try and rein things in.
While there are genuine issues with the book, I've been surprised to see the response it's gotten from certain people on the left. Some have offered thoughtful criticism, e.g., that Klein and Thompson should touch more on how these gains would be distributed fairly within society. For example, while we absolutely need to build more housing, solely relying on market-driven housing is almost definitely not sufficient. This could lead to only luxury housing being built, and while this may pull high-income renters away from more affordable options, eventually making more of those units available, we likely need to go further. Investments in better, more efficiently-built public housing and ensuring new construction doesn’t solely benefit the already well-off is important.
However, others have dismissed this book as some kind of centrist, neoliberal manifesto, many of whom doing so while openly admitting they have not read the book lmao. To frame this book as a kind of centrist concession akin to bringing Liz Cheney on the campaign trail does not make sense to me -- it operates on a different dimension. It’s not a question of “should we partner more or less closely with republicans?�. In fact, a lot of the book is predicated on the fact that republicans operate in bad faith and are increasingly relying on scarcity rhetoric, e.g., baseless claims like "these immigrants are coming in and taking your housing!". The question the book asks is “should we build more or not?�, and it’s hard for me to understand how the latter is our path forward. The book advocates for more state capacity, not less, and absolutely does not push the idea that if we only get out of the way of corporations, they’ll do the right thing. This is naive and we have enough evidence by now to know this is not how things will play out. Companies� goal will always be to maximize profits, so we cannot rely solely on their goodwill and an unencumbered free market. Lastly, the conclusion explicitly describes the rise and fall of the neoliberal order and does not seem to suggest their ideas fitting within its paradigm.
With the latest election results, the democratic party’s popularity at a low, and everything that’s happening right now in our federal government, we cannot afford a lack of self-reflection. The working class has been rapidly moving away from the party at a concerning rate. We can criticize the opposition party all day long, and believe me when I say that would be longer than this review, but we also need a positive vision for the future. The 2024 campaign promise was “we aren’t the other people� and that may have worked in 2020 but it’s clearly not a viable path forward. We need a compelling vision and the one presented here � better and more affordable housing, clean energy, medical advancements etc. � seems like a great contrast to the “us against them� mentality heralded by the opposition. Translating this into a winnable campaign strategy is for someone with more expertise than me but I don’t think it’s impossible. I genuinely do not believe the ideas here are at odds with what AOC and Bernie are saying. If centrist dems feel good about this book and Bhaskar Sunkara from Jacobin says he agrees with 70% of it, that’s good enough for me.
If you’re still here, thank you for taking the time to read all of this.
April 15, 2025
Informative and interesting perspective on infrastructure, health, AI, science, etc in the states. I really enjoy reading or listening to anything Ezra Klein has to offer.
March 18, 2025
Given all of the debate around YIMBY-ism on the left, I was anxious to dive into Klein's argument for new 'abundance'-centered politics. I will admit I had my doubts, being a bit to the left of him and having people I listen to not be his biggest fans.
But I was proven wrong. The book was amazing. I really feel that here Klein so effectively diagnoses the problem with a purely 'redistributionary' and/or litigious model for liberal governance that has surrendered the active role of government and of the executive. And how even when they want to get back to their roots, paperwork and bureaucracy designed with well intent, gets in the way.
Klein here is vastly different than past harbringers of a new regime -- I'm talking about the Third-Way-ers of the 90s and 00s. Unlike them, he thinks the government should lean in, not lean out. His paper is littered with New-Deal references, Keynes, and more. This is a manifesto for a 21st century liberal/progressive who wants to harness technology for good via the government, rather than taking the false dilemma of 'degrowth or bust'. And I feel that even when he critiques the choices if liberals from the past decades, he takes the time in understanding why they did what they did, which I think is indicative of a degree of journalistic care. Even those skeptical of him would do good to read the book. It is amazing. And hopefully just a bit of what is to come from this burgeoning school of thought.
P.S: I want to add that I don’t view this lens as a singular way to go about the political moment � it couples nicely with other views. But i view it as a fundamental one.
But I was proven wrong. The book was amazing. I really feel that here Klein so effectively diagnoses the problem with a purely 'redistributionary' and/or litigious model for liberal governance that has surrendered the active role of government and of the executive. And how even when they want to get back to their roots, paperwork and bureaucracy designed with well intent, gets in the way.
Klein here is vastly different than past harbringers of a new regime -- I'm talking about the Third-Way-ers of the 90s and 00s. Unlike them, he thinks the government should lean in, not lean out. His paper is littered with New-Deal references, Keynes, and more. This is a manifesto for a 21st century liberal/progressive who wants to harness technology for good via the government, rather than taking the false dilemma of 'degrowth or bust'. And I feel that even when he critiques the choices if liberals from the past decades, he takes the time in understanding why they did what they did, which I think is indicative of a degree of journalistic care. Even those skeptical of him would do good to read the book. It is amazing. And hopefully just a bit of what is to come from this burgeoning school of thought.
P.S: I want to add that I don’t view this lens as a singular way to go about the political moment � it couples nicely with other views. But i view it as a fundamental one.
March 22, 2025
Infuriating and hopeful in equal measure.
April 6, 2025
Ezra Klein is an American journalist I like and trust. I followed Klein’s podcast until November 2024 when I had to cut myself off Internet to preserve my sanity. These days I don’t seek political books, but Abundance is an exception. I read it amid mass federal layoffs, funding cuts, attack on science, ICE raids, measles outbreaks and the stock market crash. This book is not about the criticism of American Right, but how American Left/Liberals/Progressives need to change. I get what the two authors are saying: the mentality of scarcity leads nowhere; liberals and progressives have lost sight of the better future they hope for because they try to achieve everything everywhere all at once; too many outdated regulations and too little progress; Democrats focus too much on redistribution and forget how to build, how to increase supply, and let Republicans lead them astray, etc..etc�
They are probably correct. And yet, I still think the major question today is not what the American Left has done wrong, but why the American Right has become so dangerous. The two (I think) direct causes: the Citizen United vs FEC ruling and the unchecked, corporate controlled media like Fox News and Newsmax.
They are probably correct. And yet, I still think the major question today is not what the American Left has done wrong, but why the American Right has become so dangerous. The two (I think) direct causes: the Citizen United vs FEC ruling and the unchecked, corporate controlled media like Fox News and Newsmax.
March 24, 2025
I was excited about this book after reading Klein’s *Why We’re Polarized* and hearing his introduction of *Abundance* on Stephen Colbert’s Late Show. I was disappointed to find that the spiel was more exciting to me than the book itself.
Some parts of this book were excellent and would have been deserving of five stars on their own. Klein and Thompson explored the flaws of the Democratic Party, a callout by liberals for liberals to point out the failures and shortcomings of the execution of democratic policy. I never expected myself to be so enthralled by urban planning, something I have never had an interest in, but Klein managed to make it feel exciting and important. However, other chapters were a bit of a letdown, just a dry retelling of facts, many of which did not seem to be in the author’s wheelhouse � many parts of the book felt unexciting, did not seem to bring anything new to the conversation, and only focused on one or two specific cities.
Overall, I felt that while the book as a whole was alright, some parts were great. The ideas are fairy new and much needed.
Some parts of this book were excellent and would have been deserving of five stars on their own. Klein and Thompson explored the flaws of the Democratic Party, a callout by liberals for liberals to point out the failures and shortcomings of the execution of democratic policy. I never expected myself to be so enthralled by urban planning, something I have never had an interest in, but Klein managed to make it feel exciting and important. However, other chapters were a bit of a letdown, just a dry retelling of facts, many of which did not seem to be in the author’s wheelhouse � many parts of the book felt unexciting, did not seem to bring anything new to the conversation, and only focused on one or two specific cities.
Overall, I felt that while the book as a whole was alright, some parts were great. The ideas are fairy new and much needed.
March 24, 2025
From start to finish this lands as someone writing into Chat GPT “Please update Clintonism.� The so-called “BIG IDEAS� play as technocratic cover for mutations of old policy that has proven faulty again and again. Like Matt Yglesias, who also writes with a similar, purposeful allergy to reality, these guys are excited by the sound of their own voices echoing in the salons of Georgetown condos, while normal folks choke outside.
April 21, 2025
Abundance is not the first "hot take" in book form. 33 years ago, Francis Fukuyama declared the "end of history" and Klein and Thompson seem to suffer from the same hubris. Abundance offers a tired cornucopian vision for the future without respecting the considerable scholarship on the issues it explores. For example, nuclear power is offered as a technological solution to our climate crisis, which economists and historians would find puzzling given the failure of nuclear power to deliver on its promises.Klein and Thompson echo the optimism of the 1950s, or the libertarian futurists staffing think tanks like the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Thompson and Klein differ from Peter Thiel and Elon Musk's technological optimism in details: Social problems can be solved by bold thinking and gutting regulation to unleash technological potential.
The main failure of abundance is its own laziness. The problems the book explores are not new, but Klein and Thompson betray a shallow understanding of how they emerged and continue. At multiple points in the book, the authors hold out hope that humanity will deploy technology to prevent the 1,5 degrees of warming set as a benchmark by the Paris Climate Agreement. It is telling that the authors seem unaware that we have already passed the warming mark this past year with no sign of technology coming to the rescue. The book was obsolete before it hit bookshelves.
The main failure of abundance is its own laziness. The problems the book explores are not new, but Klein and Thompson betray a shallow understanding of how they emerged and continue. At multiple points in the book, the authors hold out hope that humanity will deploy technology to prevent the 1,5 degrees of warming set as a benchmark by the Paris Climate Agreement. It is telling that the authors seem unaware that we have already passed the warming mark this past year with no sign of technology coming to the rescue. The book was obsolete before it hit bookshelves.
April 11, 2025
braiding sweetgrass but for tech
April 14, 2025
This book is a collaboration between two prominent political writers/pundits, Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, who still hold prestigious positions in legacy media publications, NYT and The Atlantic. Abundance is a short book developed from essays by each author: Klein's essay concerned the effect of local zoning restriction (aka NIMBYism) on home prices and Thompson's essay concerned the effects of government policy on research science productivity. There isn't a huge need for this book. Klein and Thompson have largely been on the "abundance" beat since the failures of COVID era policy became overwhelming. Anytime there is a lull in current events, both will be pushing narratives consistent with the Abundance worldview, which alternatively goes by the moniker "supply-side progressivism." Nonetheless, this book has been greeted with a lot of attention and fanfare.
In many ways, I'm predisposed favorably to the arguments made by the book despite not being an ideological ally. Generally, Klein and Thompson are advocating smart deregulation, increased bureaucratic efficiency, greater and smarter state investment in research and development, and cooperation (rather than antagonism) with capital and corporations. What's to hate there? For most of the actual policy proposal (or more like policy positioning), I have few objections, but I think this reveals a thinness to their work. I don't agree with Klein and Thompson about a lot of things and even on topics where we have share diagnoses we may disagree on prescriptions.
This book should have been a great deal wonkier instead of a retread of messaging they've already done in essays and podcasts. They could have done this without sacrificing the hoped for large general audience too simply by bracketing off the wonky sections. Instead they've opted mostly for summation of familiar research study findings, illustrative anecdotes with a human interest angle (e.g. Katalin Karikó), drive-by political punditry about some of the political mistakes of the recent past, and fantasizing about future possibilities. This approach makes it clear Thompson and Klein are trying to win over hearts and minds who they worry have lost the plot by which I mean have diverged sharply from the long-term interests of America and the general sentiments of its voting population.
I have some additional concerns about the political viability of the "abundance" project. It doesn't appear to have a real constituency among the core of the Democratic party. Democrats are a coalitional party comprised by interest groups (often referred to as "the groups") to which their leader deeply depend on. These factions that represent specific minority interests: racial political advocacy groups, sex and gender activist groups, environmentalist groups, and public/private labor unions. These groups stand little to gain from the abundance agenda and likely have a great deal to lose since the regulations and policies that have contributed to the problems Klein and Thompson identify were created to benefit these very interest groups. Unfortunately, Klein and Thompson have written a book for a party that doesn't exist or perhaps more charitably the smaller and more elite subdivision of the party comprised of affluent, college-educated urban (often white) liberals.
I also feel that there wasn't enough critical self-reflection from at least Ezra Klein. He has been on a (mostly salutary) political journey, but he was a genuinely malign political force in the Obama years through much of the 2010s. He's supported ludicrous political policies like killing the Senate filibuster, packing SCOTUS, and depriving young American men on college campuses of their due process right (i.e. the Obama administration's Dear Colleague letter under Title IX). It's not necessarily event the policy specific. He participated in the great teleological delusion that the Republican party was a dying entity to be washed away by the rapid demographic change taking place in America (Google contemporary discussions of The Emerging Democratic Majority for more context).
My final criticism concerns Klein and Thompson omission of concerns about public (dis)order. If memory serves, there is no real discussion of crime and the failures in race-related politics. This is an enormous factor in home prices and urban sprawl/city design. It can't be left out of a book like this no matter how sensitive of a subject it is with their intended audience.
Ultimately, this is an attempt to persuade the core voting base of the left-liberal party in America, the Democrats, who so far as I can tell are really uninterested in this message. Klein and Thompson are asking their own compatriots to sacrifice and accept tradeoffs in the here-and-now for a more prosperous future. This is never a tradeoff that any American constituency jumps at. This is something an elite consensus would have to force top-down onto the body politics and would need to produce results and massage messaging around the costs that emerge early in the process to make work. To some extent, we're witnessing how painful this is as another administration tries to return to a perhaps equally utopian dispensation (i.e. an industrialized America with single-income households and 2.1+ TFR). Our only seemingly viable hope is that American military might preserves the world order just long enough for private American ingenuity to find enough ways to innovate and build despite the many barriers to progress and geopolitical threats/chaos.
In many ways, I'm predisposed favorably to the arguments made by the book despite not being an ideological ally. Generally, Klein and Thompson are advocating smart deregulation, increased bureaucratic efficiency, greater and smarter state investment in research and development, and cooperation (rather than antagonism) with capital and corporations. What's to hate there? For most of the actual policy proposal (or more like policy positioning), I have few objections, but I think this reveals a thinness to their work. I don't agree with Klein and Thompson about a lot of things and even on topics where we have share diagnoses we may disagree on prescriptions.
This book should have been a great deal wonkier instead of a retread of messaging they've already done in essays and podcasts. They could have done this without sacrificing the hoped for large general audience too simply by bracketing off the wonky sections. Instead they've opted mostly for summation of familiar research study findings, illustrative anecdotes with a human interest angle (e.g. Katalin Karikó), drive-by political punditry about some of the political mistakes of the recent past, and fantasizing about future possibilities. This approach makes it clear Thompson and Klein are trying to win over hearts and minds who they worry have lost the plot by which I mean have diverged sharply from the long-term interests of America and the general sentiments of its voting population.
I have some additional concerns about the political viability of the "abundance" project. It doesn't appear to have a real constituency among the core of the Democratic party. Democrats are a coalitional party comprised by interest groups (often referred to as "the groups") to which their leader deeply depend on. These factions that represent specific minority interests: racial political advocacy groups, sex and gender activist groups, environmentalist groups, and public/private labor unions. These groups stand little to gain from the abundance agenda and likely have a great deal to lose since the regulations and policies that have contributed to the problems Klein and Thompson identify were created to benefit these very interest groups. Unfortunately, Klein and Thompson have written a book for a party that doesn't exist or perhaps more charitably the smaller and more elite subdivision of the party comprised of affluent, college-educated urban (often white) liberals.
I also feel that there wasn't enough critical self-reflection from at least Ezra Klein. He has been on a (mostly salutary) political journey, but he was a genuinely malign political force in the Obama years through much of the 2010s. He's supported ludicrous political policies like killing the Senate filibuster, packing SCOTUS, and depriving young American men on college campuses of their due process right (i.e. the Obama administration's Dear Colleague letter under Title IX). It's not necessarily event the policy specific. He participated in the great teleological delusion that the Republican party was a dying entity to be washed away by the rapid demographic change taking place in America (Google contemporary discussions of The Emerging Democratic Majority for more context).
My final criticism concerns Klein and Thompson omission of concerns about public (dis)order. If memory serves, there is no real discussion of crime and the failures in race-related politics. This is an enormous factor in home prices and urban sprawl/city design. It can't be left out of a book like this no matter how sensitive of a subject it is with their intended audience.
Ultimately, this is an attempt to persuade the core voting base of the left-liberal party in America, the Democrats, who so far as I can tell are really uninterested in this message. Klein and Thompson are asking their own compatriots to sacrifice and accept tradeoffs in the here-and-now for a more prosperous future. This is never a tradeoff that any American constituency jumps at. This is something an elite consensus would have to force top-down onto the body politics and would need to produce results and massage messaging around the costs that emerge early in the process to make work. To some extent, we're witnessing how painful this is as another administration tries to return to a perhaps equally utopian dispensation (i.e. an industrialized America with single-income households and 2.1+ TFR). Our only seemingly viable hope is that American military might preserves the world order just long enough for private American ingenuity to find enough ways to innovate and build despite the many barriers to progress and geopolitical threats/chaos.
March 31, 2025
The quintessential example of people that are not experts in anything but comment on everything. Read this book due to it being a staple in the new cultural zeitgeist, Americans will try to revive the corpse of neoliberalism’s worst outcome, the pervasiveness of the public-private partnership, which causes so many legal, political, and economic ills.
The first part on building misses so much context on the legal hoops that are caused by the preference for public-private options. Not a mention of the hundreds of legal challenges being poised by competing private companies, the lobbying and court cases that has killed so many public projects for broadband access (or improvements!) and the favoritism towards consulters that they too criticize.
The second part on inventing is just nothing more than American exceptionalism as a funny fable. They laud the abundance of invention after world war 2, did they ever ask why there were many qualified professionals in America at that time? There is no mention on the cost of education, the meager wages that researchers get when working in academia which causes them to ultimately work at a higher paying company which is focused on short-term profit seeking due to fiduciary responsibility, no mention on the thousands of failed and insanely costly areas of research that were caused by the revival of the system they argue for!
I am not discarding the main idea of the book of removing government’s self-inflicted red tape, but if it’s presented as the end solution, that is a great omission of bigger factors.
In short, if this is the agenda that the centrist liberals aim to take to make up for their loss in public confidence, we are all cooked.
The first part on building misses so much context on the legal hoops that are caused by the preference for public-private options. Not a mention of the hundreds of legal challenges being poised by competing private companies, the lobbying and court cases that has killed so many public projects for broadband access (or improvements!) and the favoritism towards consulters that they too criticize.
The second part on inventing is just nothing more than American exceptionalism as a funny fable. They laud the abundance of invention after world war 2, did they ever ask why there were many qualified professionals in America at that time? There is no mention on the cost of education, the meager wages that researchers get when working in academia which causes them to ultimately work at a higher paying company which is focused on short-term profit seeking due to fiduciary responsibility, no mention on the thousands of failed and insanely costly areas of research that were caused by the revival of the system they argue for!
I am not discarding the main idea of the book of removing government’s self-inflicted red tape, but if it’s presented as the end solution, that is a great omission of bigger factors.
In short, if this is the agenda that the centrist liberals aim to take to make up for their loss in public confidence, we are all cooked.
March 19, 2025
Klein and Thompson’s “Abundance� is a well argued, intuitive, and succinct call to action—to move from a politics of scarcity to one that aims to deliver abundant energy, housing, innovation, prosperity. In “Abundance,� Klein and Thompson show how liberals have come over the past decades to put process above outcomes and in the process placed barriers in the way of building more apartments, more green energy, more innovations, more of everything. While many of these process changes were well intentioned, and in some cases effective, responses to the environmental crises of the 1960s and 1970s, those same policies and systems—veto points and paperwork—now stand in the way of transitioning to a green economy and to developing the new breakthrough technologies we need to address the crises of today. But as Klein and Thompson illustrate through well-chosen examples (e.g., Operation Warp Speed, Austin’s housing policies, DARPA, solar energy’s development), this does not have to be the case: the United States is capable of inventing, building, and deploying at scale to address crises. To do so, Klein and Thompson argue, we have to accept tradeoffs and design policies and regulations that achieve the aims we set and not prioritize process and everything-bagel liberalism over those outcomes.
April 10, 2025
I really like Ezra Klein’s writing / reading style and enjoyed the book. However, despite its grand and utopic pitch, I was left feeling like the goals of the book fell short.
I generally agree with the thesis (which I’ll paraphrase as: abundance is possible, but limitations of politics and policy create barriers to achieving it, or at least achieving it equitably for the majority of society). But I struggled with the take aways from some of the major examples (ie SF housing and DARPA) and found that many of the most convincing were those I’d read in other books (shout out to Recoding America, which I still think about frequently).
I generally agree with the thesis (which I’ll paraphrase as: abundance is possible, but limitations of politics and policy create barriers to achieving it, or at least achieving it equitably for the majority of society). But I struggled with the take aways from some of the major examples (ie SF housing and DARPA) and found that many of the most convincing were those I’d read in other books (shout out to Recoding America, which I still think about frequently).
March 26, 2025
My evaluation of this book is prejudiced by the unforgettable trauma from growing up in a city polluted by the noranda mines psychopathic extraction of copper and gold in the 60's and 70's with a landscape of orange mars-like mine tailings next to our backyard fence, so, before my overall perception, I'll first submit the unbiased evaluation from WizardLM-2 for the text of the first few pages of chapter 2, Build. I asked it about its usefulness, correctness and its opinion. In a second run, how likely it estimated the book's propositions were to be accepted by a tRump autocracy/kakistocracy. WizardLM-2 hallucinates a lot less than chatgpt3.5. One point I'd like to make concerning "Los Angeles (&London) got richer and its residents now breathe clean air", fact-checking would have revealed that brake pads and tire wear of either electric or ICE vehicles produce toxic micro-particles that humans breathe in causing cardiovascular and respiratory illnesses.
Usefulness:
The text is useful in several ways. It:
- Provides a concise overview of how climate change challenges traditional political categories.
- Introduces the concept of "degrowth" as a response to climate change and places it in the context of broader societal changes.
- Discusses the historical underpinnings of our current ecological crisis, linking them to philosophical paradigms like Cartesian dualism and capitalist growth imperatives.
- Highlights the urgency of climate action by emphasizing the limited time window available for effective mitigation.
- Offers a case study on the impact of meat and dairy production on climate change and the political challenges of addressing it.
- It provides a critical perspective on the degrowth movement by highlighting the political challenges inherent in reducing energy consumption and economic activity.
- It presents a historical context showing that energy abundance has been closely linked to societal progress and well-being.
- It emphasizes the importance of considering energy inequality when discussing climate action, particularly between developed and developing nations.
- It underscores the risks of political backlash against climate policies that are perceived as threatening the current energy paradigm.
- Highlights the political challenges associated with imposing scarcity or restrictions on energy consumption.
- Provides historical examples of energy-related protests and their impact on political stability.
- Discusses the relationship between economic growth, energy consumption, and environmental quality.
- Offers insights into the global inequality of energy access and the importance of clean energy transitions.
Correctness:
The text is well-informed and aligns with current discussions in environmental science, economics, and politics. It accurately reflects the core tenets of the degrowth movement and its critiques of mainstream economic policies. The statistics cited regarding land use for agriculture and the water footprint of beef production are consistent with available research. However, it is important to note that while the text presents a strong case for degrowth, there are diverse perspectives on how to address climate change, and many argue for technological innovation and green growth as viable alternatives. It references historical events and trends that are accurate and relevant to the discussion of climate change mitigation efforts. The statistics on air pollution deaths and the examples of past environmental crises are consistent with known data. The assertions about energy inequality and its implications for global health align with research findings in environmental justice. However, it is important to note that while the text presents a strong case for the challenges of implementing degrowth policies, there is ongoing debate within the environmental community about the best path forward, with some advocating for green growth and technological innovation as alternatives to degrowth. The text is based on factual data and historical references that support its arguments. The statistics on air pollution deaths are in line with World Health Organization reports, and the examples of energy-related political unrest are well-documented. The assertion that wealthier societies tend to have cleaner environments due to their ability to invest in cleaner technologies is consistent with trends observed in environmental economics. However, the text may present a simplified view of the transition to clean energy and the potential for innovation to mitigate environmental impacts without requiring degrowth.
Opinion:
The text effectively challenges readers to think beyond conventional solutions to climate change by considering the deeper roots of our environmental predicament. It suggests that addressing climate change requires not just technical adjustments but also profound shifts in societal values and economic structures. The author's argument is compelling in its call for a reevaluation of what constitutes progress and prosperity, questioning whether endless growth is compatible with ecological sustainability.
However, the text also acknowledges the political reality that significant changes, such as reducing or eliminating meat and dairy production, face substantial resistance due to cultural habits and economic interests. The author's recognition of the difficulty in implementing radical changes like a global meat tax reflects the complexity of balancing environmental imperatives with social and political feasibility. It offers a compelling argument that achieving a sustainable future requires more than just reducing energy consumption; it demands a restructuring of society's relationship with energy and economic growth. The author effectively communicates the urgency of addressing climate change while acknowledging the complexity of transitioning to a low-carbon economy without inciting social unrest or political upheaval.
The text also highlights the importance of considering the global distribution of wealth and energy access when formulating environmental policies. The suggestion that developed nations have a responsibility to lead the transition to clean energy, while ensuring that developing countries are not left behind, is an important point in the broader conversation about climate justice.
The text effectively underscores the tension between the urgent need to address climate change and the reality of political resistance to policies perceived as restricting access to energy. It rightly points out that energy abundance is deeply intertwined with modern conceptions of prosperity and that any transition to a low-carbon future must take into account the societal benefits derived from energy consumption. The author's perspective on energy inequality and the importance of clean energy access for improving global health is particularly poignant. It suggests that the solution to climate change does not necessarily lie in reversing growth but rather in harnessing technology to create a more sustainable and equitable distribution of energy resources. The text also raises an important point about the transition from dirty to clean energy sources being part of the natural progression as societies become wealthier. This aligns with the Environmental Kuznets Curve hypothesis, which posits that environmental quality tends to worsen during the early stages of economic growth but improves as countries achieve a certain level of wealth and technological development.
In conclusion, the text serves as a valuable contribution to the ongoing dialogue about climate change action and the role of politics, economics, and philosophy in shaping our response. It is a thought-provoking piece that encourages critical thinking about our responsibilities as stewards of the planet and raises important questions about the feasibility and necessity of transformative approaches like derowth in addressing the climate crisis.
Considering that Donald Trump won the 2024 presidential election and chose a cabinet of incompetent persons to head his administration, how likely are the propositions of this text to be adopted and implemented?
Bot
Given the hypothetical scenario where Donald Trump has won the 2024 presidential election with a cabinet of individuals perceived as incompetent, the likelihood of the propositions from the text being adopted and implemented would depend on several factors:
1. Trump's Policy Priorities: Trump's administration would likely prioritize policies that align with his campaign promises and personal beliefs. During his previous term, Trump was known for favoring deregulation, fossil fuel industries, and economic growth over environmental concerns. He previously withdrew the United States from the Paris Agreement and rolled back numerous environmental protections. If these positions are indicative of his future policy direction, it is unlikely that he would adopt proposals aligned with degrowth or radical restrictions on energy use.
2. Cabinet Influence: The competency and influence of cabinet members can significantly impact policy implementation. A cabinet perceived as incompetent may struggle to effectively develop and execute complex environmental policies, especially if they are at odds with the president's agenda.
3. Congressional Support: The U.S. Congress plays a crucial role in passing legislation and funding initiatives. Even with a supportive president, policies require the backing of lawmakers. Given the polarized nature of U.S. politics and the potential for Congress to be divided along partisan lines, significant environmental legislation may face substantial opposition.
4. Public Support: Public opinion can sway policy adoption, especially in a democratic system. If Trump's reelection was based on a platform that downplayed climate change or emphasized energy abundance, it would be challenging to implement policies that limit economic growth or energy consumption without significant public pushback.
5. Economic Considerations: Economic performance and stability are often central concerns for any administration. Trump has historically emphasized economic growth as a primary objective. Policies that could potentially harm economic interests, such as those proposed by the degrowth movement, might be deemed too risky by his administration.
6. Legal and Regulatory Challenges: The implementation of radical environmental policies would likely face legal challenges and regulatory hurdles. A Trump administration would need to navigate a complex web of existing laws and potential litigation from both pro-environmental and pro-industry groups.
7. International Relations: Climate change is a global issue requiring international cooperation. Trump's previous skepticism towards multilateral agreements suggests that his administration might not prioritize collaborative efforts to address climate change, potentially undermining the effectiveness of any domestic environmental policies.
8. Political Capital and Legacy: Presidents often consider their legacy and how they want to spend their political capital. Trump may choose to focus on issues he believes will define his presidency, which historically have not included climate change mitigation or environmental sustainability.
Considering these factors, it seems unlikely that an administration led by Donald Trump with a cabinet perceived as incompetent would prioritize or successfully implement the types of environmental policies discussed in the text. The administration would more likely focus on deregulation, economic growth, and the promotion of traditional energy industries, which could further exacerbate the challenges outlined by the degrowth movement and the broader fight against climate change. However, it is important to note that unexpected events or shifts in public opinion can influence policy directions, and any administration must contend with dynamic political landscapes.
Now is my personal evaluation:
I like Ezra's YT channel and watch it regularly because he usually talks with fascinating guests. Wish he'd interview Jared Diamond before he passes. This book is political, has no technical calculation at all of the energy needed to get the changes he wants. Abundance, although presenting well-documented reflexion, is a bit out of E&D's comfort zone, about a very complex societal problem. When Ezra and Derek are ready to take their pink sunglasses off and leave the alt world of utopian wishful thinking to write a book on the abundance of human waste products and sustainable degrowth which they are afraid would push populations to the far right, there are two sites they could get inspiration from: one is from a now deceased environmentalist who passed a couple of years ago harveymead.org the other, ourfiniteworld.com is from an actuary who worked most of her life on energy resources and their relationship to the economy, maybe start with this post from her explaining why solar and wind are not the solution to oppose to degrowth : . Harvey wrote a few books one of which /book/show/3... explains it is already too late to save our lifestyle and the best we can do is to soften the shock of the collapse a bit. It is a french book but i could translate it if they wish. Or they may read E.O. Wilson's Half-Earth from 2016 which has not been implemented yet despite being an interesting proposition. And earth's overshoot day comes a bit earlier every year.
Solar cells, EVs and wind turbines will not save civilization from its waste products. For example, Stablex is fighting to get some more space in Blainville to dump garbage in wetland nearby. The ~250 petrochemical companies between Baton Rouge and New Orleans have externalities causing the area to be called: cancer alley. These externalities are left untold by most media who live on advertising revenues from our capitalist system, so many of us enjoy the good life while ignoring the price paid by the few. Contrary to E&D's belief that nuclear is clean, the waste products last for tens of thousands of years and when generation has design bugs, the areas contaminated can be quite extensive. If you don't believe that, I've got some Fukushima fishes and Chernobyl grass-fed cows for sale. Wind turbines last about 20 years, then you must get rid of unrecyclable fiberglass blades. Same goes for solar panels. Nuclear plants last 80 years, then, "cleanup" gets complicated. Mead had developed a way of calculating the "real index of progress" in countries, which Ezra and Derek should study and include in their next book. It is very different from GDP.
Extracting resources and making products is one thing, getting rid of the waste produced by extraction and consumption is another. I was born in Rouyn-Noranda, a mining town founded in 1926. Within 50 years the cheaply exploitable ore was depleted. During those extractive years, the Horne’s towering chimneys were farting 20 tons of mercury vapor plus millions of tons of H2S a year in the environment, The beautiful lake Osisko between Rouyn and Noranda got so poisoned by the tailings that no fish survived and it was even dangerous to take a swim. Now, the Horne foundry (Glencore) processes (burns) 600,000 tons a year of various electronic circuits, computers, cell phones and contaminated waste. Of course the government is trying to get Glencore to lower arsenic emissions under the present 30 ng/m3 to the provincial norm of 3 ng/m3. Arsenic is only one of the ~ 15 major contaminants emitted. Biologists doing research in the surroundings even find Thallium (a Putin favorite to terminate enemies) in plants and animals. A major gold deposit (2 to 4g/ton) was found under nearby Malartic 20 years ago. Have a look on google maps at what it looks like now after strip mining the surface since. Each ton of ore is ground to dust as fine as flour and mixed with cyanide to get the gold, leaving a ton of poisoned mud.
Last year they found another deposit underground containing 5 million ounces (~142 million grams) at about 4g/ton, so about 35 million tons more of poisoned mud at the other end of the pipe. 75 % of the gold ends up in jewelry for Indian weddings. 5-10% goes for industrial uses.
Please forgive me for not being very optimistic on humankind’s chances of surviving the 6th major life extinction. Especially considering that Elon Musk is too dumb to figure how to make a livable backup of earth but is planning to burn enough methane to get the CO2 levels past 500 ppm with a thousand Starships for his mars “colony�. Since he's shutting down the 68-year old Mauna Loa Observatory with his tragic DOGE farce, CO2 increases won't be detected there (reminiscent of tRump asking to stop testing for Covid to stop the pandemic). EVs haven't reduced the CO2 rate of increase. Near 2050 the ocean's acidification will have turned coral reefs to dust and most animals with a calcium carbonate shell will be unable to grow one.
On another front, we would need a world government to educate people about eating something else than meat, the one change in human habits that would veer us on the way to some degree of sustainability. Ezra and Derek dream about growing meat in bioreactors. The energy necessary for this production would be prohibitively expensive. The alternative, only poultry and soylent green?
Pipe dreams are only that when you start calculating the energy needed to modify the dissipative structures that human societies are...
Usefulness:
The text is useful in several ways. It:
- Provides a concise overview of how climate change challenges traditional political categories.
- Introduces the concept of "degrowth" as a response to climate change and places it in the context of broader societal changes.
- Discusses the historical underpinnings of our current ecological crisis, linking them to philosophical paradigms like Cartesian dualism and capitalist growth imperatives.
- Highlights the urgency of climate action by emphasizing the limited time window available for effective mitigation.
- Offers a case study on the impact of meat and dairy production on climate change and the political challenges of addressing it.
- It provides a critical perspective on the degrowth movement by highlighting the political challenges inherent in reducing energy consumption and economic activity.
- It presents a historical context showing that energy abundance has been closely linked to societal progress and well-being.
- It emphasizes the importance of considering energy inequality when discussing climate action, particularly between developed and developing nations.
- It underscores the risks of political backlash against climate policies that are perceived as threatening the current energy paradigm.
- Highlights the political challenges associated with imposing scarcity or restrictions on energy consumption.
- Provides historical examples of energy-related protests and their impact on political stability.
- Discusses the relationship between economic growth, energy consumption, and environmental quality.
- Offers insights into the global inequality of energy access and the importance of clean energy transitions.
Correctness:
The text is well-informed and aligns with current discussions in environmental science, economics, and politics. It accurately reflects the core tenets of the degrowth movement and its critiques of mainstream economic policies. The statistics cited regarding land use for agriculture and the water footprint of beef production are consistent with available research. However, it is important to note that while the text presents a strong case for degrowth, there are diverse perspectives on how to address climate change, and many argue for technological innovation and green growth as viable alternatives. It references historical events and trends that are accurate and relevant to the discussion of climate change mitigation efforts. The statistics on air pollution deaths and the examples of past environmental crises are consistent with known data. The assertions about energy inequality and its implications for global health align with research findings in environmental justice. However, it is important to note that while the text presents a strong case for the challenges of implementing degrowth policies, there is ongoing debate within the environmental community about the best path forward, with some advocating for green growth and technological innovation as alternatives to degrowth. The text is based on factual data and historical references that support its arguments. The statistics on air pollution deaths are in line with World Health Organization reports, and the examples of energy-related political unrest are well-documented. The assertion that wealthier societies tend to have cleaner environments due to their ability to invest in cleaner technologies is consistent with trends observed in environmental economics. However, the text may present a simplified view of the transition to clean energy and the potential for innovation to mitigate environmental impacts without requiring degrowth.
Opinion:
The text effectively challenges readers to think beyond conventional solutions to climate change by considering the deeper roots of our environmental predicament. It suggests that addressing climate change requires not just technical adjustments but also profound shifts in societal values and economic structures. The author's argument is compelling in its call for a reevaluation of what constitutes progress and prosperity, questioning whether endless growth is compatible with ecological sustainability.
However, the text also acknowledges the political reality that significant changes, such as reducing or eliminating meat and dairy production, face substantial resistance due to cultural habits and economic interests. The author's recognition of the difficulty in implementing radical changes like a global meat tax reflects the complexity of balancing environmental imperatives with social and political feasibility. It offers a compelling argument that achieving a sustainable future requires more than just reducing energy consumption; it demands a restructuring of society's relationship with energy and economic growth. The author effectively communicates the urgency of addressing climate change while acknowledging the complexity of transitioning to a low-carbon economy without inciting social unrest or political upheaval.
The text also highlights the importance of considering the global distribution of wealth and energy access when formulating environmental policies. The suggestion that developed nations have a responsibility to lead the transition to clean energy, while ensuring that developing countries are not left behind, is an important point in the broader conversation about climate justice.
The text effectively underscores the tension between the urgent need to address climate change and the reality of political resistance to policies perceived as restricting access to energy. It rightly points out that energy abundance is deeply intertwined with modern conceptions of prosperity and that any transition to a low-carbon future must take into account the societal benefits derived from energy consumption. The author's perspective on energy inequality and the importance of clean energy access for improving global health is particularly poignant. It suggests that the solution to climate change does not necessarily lie in reversing growth but rather in harnessing technology to create a more sustainable and equitable distribution of energy resources. The text also raises an important point about the transition from dirty to clean energy sources being part of the natural progression as societies become wealthier. This aligns with the Environmental Kuznets Curve hypothesis, which posits that environmental quality tends to worsen during the early stages of economic growth but improves as countries achieve a certain level of wealth and technological development.
In conclusion, the text serves as a valuable contribution to the ongoing dialogue about climate change action and the role of politics, economics, and philosophy in shaping our response. It is a thought-provoking piece that encourages critical thinking about our responsibilities as stewards of the planet and raises important questions about the feasibility and necessity of transformative approaches like derowth in addressing the climate crisis.
Considering that Donald Trump won the 2024 presidential election and chose a cabinet of incompetent persons to head his administration, how likely are the propositions of this text to be adopted and implemented?
Bot
Given the hypothetical scenario where Donald Trump has won the 2024 presidential election with a cabinet of individuals perceived as incompetent, the likelihood of the propositions from the text being adopted and implemented would depend on several factors:
1. Trump's Policy Priorities: Trump's administration would likely prioritize policies that align with his campaign promises and personal beliefs. During his previous term, Trump was known for favoring deregulation, fossil fuel industries, and economic growth over environmental concerns. He previously withdrew the United States from the Paris Agreement and rolled back numerous environmental protections. If these positions are indicative of his future policy direction, it is unlikely that he would adopt proposals aligned with degrowth or radical restrictions on energy use.
2. Cabinet Influence: The competency and influence of cabinet members can significantly impact policy implementation. A cabinet perceived as incompetent may struggle to effectively develop and execute complex environmental policies, especially if they are at odds with the president's agenda.
3. Congressional Support: The U.S. Congress plays a crucial role in passing legislation and funding initiatives. Even with a supportive president, policies require the backing of lawmakers. Given the polarized nature of U.S. politics and the potential for Congress to be divided along partisan lines, significant environmental legislation may face substantial opposition.
4. Public Support: Public opinion can sway policy adoption, especially in a democratic system. If Trump's reelection was based on a platform that downplayed climate change or emphasized energy abundance, it would be challenging to implement policies that limit economic growth or energy consumption without significant public pushback.
5. Economic Considerations: Economic performance and stability are often central concerns for any administration. Trump has historically emphasized economic growth as a primary objective. Policies that could potentially harm economic interests, such as those proposed by the degrowth movement, might be deemed too risky by his administration.
6. Legal and Regulatory Challenges: The implementation of radical environmental policies would likely face legal challenges and regulatory hurdles. A Trump administration would need to navigate a complex web of existing laws and potential litigation from both pro-environmental and pro-industry groups.
7. International Relations: Climate change is a global issue requiring international cooperation. Trump's previous skepticism towards multilateral agreements suggests that his administration might not prioritize collaborative efforts to address climate change, potentially undermining the effectiveness of any domestic environmental policies.
8. Political Capital and Legacy: Presidents often consider their legacy and how they want to spend their political capital. Trump may choose to focus on issues he believes will define his presidency, which historically have not included climate change mitigation or environmental sustainability.
Considering these factors, it seems unlikely that an administration led by Donald Trump with a cabinet perceived as incompetent would prioritize or successfully implement the types of environmental policies discussed in the text. The administration would more likely focus on deregulation, economic growth, and the promotion of traditional energy industries, which could further exacerbate the challenges outlined by the degrowth movement and the broader fight against climate change. However, it is important to note that unexpected events or shifts in public opinion can influence policy directions, and any administration must contend with dynamic political landscapes.
Now is my personal evaluation:
I like Ezra's YT channel and watch it regularly because he usually talks with fascinating guests. Wish he'd interview Jared Diamond before he passes. This book is political, has no technical calculation at all of the energy needed to get the changes he wants. Abundance, although presenting well-documented reflexion, is a bit out of E&D's comfort zone, about a very complex societal problem. When Ezra and Derek are ready to take their pink sunglasses off and leave the alt world of utopian wishful thinking to write a book on the abundance of human waste products and sustainable degrowth which they are afraid would push populations to the far right, there are two sites they could get inspiration from: one is from a now deceased environmentalist who passed a couple of years ago harveymead.org the other, ourfiniteworld.com is from an actuary who worked most of her life on energy resources and their relationship to the economy, maybe start with this post from her explaining why solar and wind are not the solution to oppose to degrowth : . Harvey wrote a few books one of which /book/show/3... explains it is already too late to save our lifestyle and the best we can do is to soften the shock of the collapse a bit. It is a french book but i could translate it if they wish. Or they may read E.O. Wilson's Half-Earth from 2016 which has not been implemented yet despite being an interesting proposition. And earth's overshoot day comes a bit earlier every year.
Solar cells, EVs and wind turbines will not save civilization from its waste products. For example, Stablex is fighting to get some more space in Blainville to dump garbage in wetland nearby. The ~250 petrochemical companies between Baton Rouge and New Orleans have externalities causing the area to be called: cancer alley. These externalities are left untold by most media who live on advertising revenues from our capitalist system, so many of us enjoy the good life while ignoring the price paid by the few. Contrary to E&D's belief that nuclear is clean, the waste products last for tens of thousands of years and when generation has design bugs, the areas contaminated can be quite extensive. If you don't believe that, I've got some Fukushima fishes and Chernobyl grass-fed cows for sale. Wind turbines last about 20 years, then you must get rid of unrecyclable fiberglass blades. Same goes for solar panels. Nuclear plants last 80 years, then, "cleanup" gets complicated. Mead had developed a way of calculating the "real index of progress" in countries, which Ezra and Derek should study and include in their next book. It is very different from GDP.
Extracting resources and making products is one thing, getting rid of the waste produced by extraction and consumption is another. I was born in Rouyn-Noranda, a mining town founded in 1926. Within 50 years the cheaply exploitable ore was depleted. During those extractive years, the Horne’s towering chimneys were farting 20 tons of mercury vapor plus millions of tons of H2S a year in the environment, The beautiful lake Osisko between Rouyn and Noranda got so poisoned by the tailings that no fish survived and it was even dangerous to take a swim. Now, the Horne foundry (Glencore) processes (burns) 600,000 tons a year of various electronic circuits, computers, cell phones and contaminated waste. Of course the government is trying to get Glencore to lower arsenic emissions under the present 30 ng/m3 to the provincial norm of 3 ng/m3. Arsenic is only one of the ~ 15 major contaminants emitted. Biologists doing research in the surroundings even find Thallium (a Putin favorite to terminate enemies) in plants and animals. A major gold deposit (2 to 4g/ton) was found under nearby Malartic 20 years ago. Have a look on google maps at what it looks like now after strip mining the surface since. Each ton of ore is ground to dust as fine as flour and mixed with cyanide to get the gold, leaving a ton of poisoned mud.
Last year they found another deposit underground containing 5 million ounces (~142 million grams) at about 4g/ton, so about 35 million tons more of poisoned mud at the other end of the pipe. 75 % of the gold ends up in jewelry for Indian weddings. 5-10% goes for industrial uses.
Please forgive me for not being very optimistic on humankind’s chances of surviving the 6th major life extinction. Especially considering that Elon Musk is too dumb to figure how to make a livable backup of earth but is planning to burn enough methane to get the CO2 levels past 500 ppm with a thousand Starships for his mars “colony�. Since he's shutting down the 68-year old Mauna Loa Observatory with his tragic DOGE farce, CO2 increases won't be detected there (reminiscent of tRump asking to stop testing for Covid to stop the pandemic). EVs haven't reduced the CO2 rate of increase. Near 2050 the ocean's acidification will have turned coral reefs to dust and most animals with a calcium carbonate shell will be unable to grow one.
On another front, we would need a world government to educate people about eating something else than meat, the one change in human habits that would veer us on the way to some degree of sustainability. Ezra and Derek dream about growing meat in bioreactors. The energy necessary for this production would be prohibitively expensive. The alternative, only poultry and soylent green?
Pipe dreams are only that when you start calculating the energy needed to modify the dissipative structures that human societies are...
April 1, 2025
"What matters is not what gets spent. What matters is what gets built."
"Whether government is bigger or smaller is the wrong question. What it needs to be is better. It needs to justify itself not through the rules it follows but through the outcomes it delivers."
A book that is both frustrating and inspiring- Abundance has a very clear point: we gotta build more shit and we need to build it better, bigger, faster, cleaner and cheaper. We design the future we want through our policies, norms, and ultimately through what we tolerate. That future can be one of "abundance"- of ideas, stuff and security that we cant even conceive of, or it can be one of scarcity that fuels inequality and hate.
Abundance looks at our world and analyzes lots of our problems and successes through this lens- why does homelessness surge in blue cities, why we cant build high speed rail, why is China winning the clean energy race, why were we able to launch the covid vaccine in 10 months.
The answers have a lot to do with our ability to build the shit we want. Housing prices and the availability of housing is a supply issue. We developed a system that makes building almost impossible- zoning laws put in place to establish and maintain "community" (cough home prices) have made it impossible for cities to keep up with the demand for housing.
"In the 1950s and 1960s, California routinely built more than 200,000 homes each year. Since 2007, California has never once permitted more than 150,000 new homes.... The point is not that cities wanted the homelessness crises they now face. They didn’t. Their hope was that people who couldn’t afford the kind of housing they allowed would leave."
The problem with this is access to industry, to knowledge, ideas and capital are still tethered to these cities - "Mobility, Chetty found, is a product of place. A child born poor in San Jose has three times the likelihood of ending up wealthy as a child born poor in Charlotte."
People cant afford to live in the places that give them a chance at a better life because the people and policies already there have made it impossible to build new homes.
"In the �70s, rising inflation and slowing home building turned the homes people did own into the center of their wealth. But how do you protect the value of that asset? You can insure a home against fire, but you can’t insure it against rising crime rates or local schools slipping in quality or a public housing complex being built down the block. To manage those risks, you need to control what happens around your home. You do that through zoning and organizing.
We are really good at building and developing consumer goods and apps, but really bad at building big stuff that changes our lives (housing, medicine, clean energy)
"We have a startling abundance of the goods that fill a house and a shortage of what’s needed to build a good life."
Much of this book talks about how process and rules, once required to prevent reckless and dangerous construction and abuse, are now bottlenecks to progress.
This quote is so wild- "In the time California has spent failing to complete its 500-mile high-speed rail system, China has built more than 23,000 miles of high-speed rail"- how is that possible? The answer is rooted in genuinely good natured policy. To protect our environment, our workers and the people that use our infrastructure, we passed lots of laws that slow stuff down. We need impact assessments, we need negotiations.. everything takes forever now.
This democrat led framework to protect has been corrupted by the right to stymie progress- they use delay tactics and lawsuits to stop green projects from being built or democratic led infrastructure plans from kicking off.
"China does not spend years debating with judges over whether it needs to move a storage facility. That power leads to abuse and imperiousness. It also leads to high-speed rail."
"But that bargain has broken down. The problem we faced in the 1970s was that we were building too much and too heedlessly. The problem we face in the 2020s is that we are building too little and we are too often paralyzed by process."
Then the book talks about our inability to make scientific breakthroughs and they reasonably assess that there is a culture and bureaucracy problem here. We want to give funding to things we know will work and are less keen on giving money to long shots. We require scientists to spend 40% of their time doing paperwork to justify the investment instead of using that time to actually invent. It also often takes a crisis for us to get shit done.
Look at Covid- Operation Warp Speed was insane and we were able to do things most people thought were impossible because of focus, clear goals, empowering people to try and lots of government money. We can do hard scientific things when we want to, we just have to want to do it more and hopefully it doesnt take a fucking plague to make it happen. We decide what a crisis is- we decide what is worth an operation warp speed
"We have—even if by accident—designed a system that often privileges the game of performing the act of science over the actual practice of science."
This book is inspiring because it imagines a future that seems objectively good but also objectively plausible. The book ends with the world's fair in NYC in the 60s and they reflect on the world's fair 30 years prior. in 1930 the vision of the future was a cross country flight that would only take *24 hours*. 20 years after that they went to the fucking MOON. we can do this stuff if we remember how and find the spirit of invention, ambition and growth.
I genuinely appreciate a liberal's critical lens on the democratic party. Your enemy's target is not always your asset. San Fran can learn from Houston. It is unequivocally bad that our most prosperous, famous, important cities are all run by democrats and also have the worst homelessness and impossibly high costs of living. It shouldnt be this easy for republicans to point at democratic runs cities- the pinnacles of society like NYC, LA- and say look at these shitholes
We can have near limitless clean energy, universal blood tests, unlimited food, maybe even a train for ezra. We need to remove the self imposed bottlenecks. We need to inspire and promote invention through smart government incentives. Could be lit?
"Politics should take technology more seriously. Innovation can make impossible problems possible to solve, and policy can make impossible technologies possible to create. The fundamental link between the two is not at the core of the Democratic or the Republican agenda. Instead, we are stuck between a progressive movement that is too afraid of growth and a conservative movement that is allergic to government intervention."
"Whether government is bigger or smaller is the wrong question. What it needs to be is better. It needs to justify itself not through the rules it follows but through the outcomes it delivers."
A book that is both frustrating and inspiring- Abundance has a very clear point: we gotta build more shit and we need to build it better, bigger, faster, cleaner and cheaper. We design the future we want through our policies, norms, and ultimately through what we tolerate. That future can be one of "abundance"- of ideas, stuff and security that we cant even conceive of, or it can be one of scarcity that fuels inequality and hate.
Abundance looks at our world and analyzes lots of our problems and successes through this lens- why does homelessness surge in blue cities, why we cant build high speed rail, why is China winning the clean energy race, why were we able to launch the covid vaccine in 10 months.
The answers have a lot to do with our ability to build the shit we want. Housing prices and the availability of housing is a supply issue. We developed a system that makes building almost impossible- zoning laws put in place to establish and maintain "community" (cough home prices) have made it impossible for cities to keep up with the demand for housing.
"In the 1950s and 1960s, California routinely built more than 200,000 homes each year. Since 2007, California has never once permitted more than 150,000 new homes.... The point is not that cities wanted the homelessness crises they now face. They didn’t. Their hope was that people who couldn’t afford the kind of housing they allowed would leave."
The problem with this is access to industry, to knowledge, ideas and capital are still tethered to these cities - "Mobility, Chetty found, is a product of place. A child born poor in San Jose has three times the likelihood of ending up wealthy as a child born poor in Charlotte."
People cant afford to live in the places that give them a chance at a better life because the people and policies already there have made it impossible to build new homes.
"In the �70s, rising inflation and slowing home building turned the homes people did own into the center of their wealth. But how do you protect the value of that asset? You can insure a home against fire, but you can’t insure it against rising crime rates or local schools slipping in quality or a public housing complex being built down the block. To manage those risks, you need to control what happens around your home. You do that through zoning and organizing.
We are really good at building and developing consumer goods and apps, but really bad at building big stuff that changes our lives (housing, medicine, clean energy)
"We have a startling abundance of the goods that fill a house and a shortage of what’s needed to build a good life."
Much of this book talks about how process and rules, once required to prevent reckless and dangerous construction and abuse, are now bottlenecks to progress.
This quote is so wild- "In the time California has spent failing to complete its 500-mile high-speed rail system, China has built more than 23,000 miles of high-speed rail"- how is that possible? The answer is rooted in genuinely good natured policy. To protect our environment, our workers and the people that use our infrastructure, we passed lots of laws that slow stuff down. We need impact assessments, we need negotiations.. everything takes forever now.
This democrat led framework to protect has been corrupted by the right to stymie progress- they use delay tactics and lawsuits to stop green projects from being built or democratic led infrastructure plans from kicking off.
"China does not spend years debating with judges over whether it needs to move a storage facility. That power leads to abuse and imperiousness. It also leads to high-speed rail."
"But that bargain has broken down. The problem we faced in the 1970s was that we were building too much and too heedlessly. The problem we face in the 2020s is that we are building too little and we are too often paralyzed by process."
Then the book talks about our inability to make scientific breakthroughs and they reasonably assess that there is a culture and bureaucracy problem here. We want to give funding to things we know will work and are less keen on giving money to long shots. We require scientists to spend 40% of their time doing paperwork to justify the investment instead of using that time to actually invent. It also often takes a crisis for us to get shit done.
Look at Covid- Operation Warp Speed was insane and we were able to do things most people thought were impossible because of focus, clear goals, empowering people to try and lots of government money. We can do hard scientific things when we want to, we just have to want to do it more and hopefully it doesnt take a fucking plague to make it happen. We decide what a crisis is- we decide what is worth an operation warp speed
"We have—even if by accident—designed a system that often privileges the game of performing the act of science over the actual practice of science."
This book is inspiring because it imagines a future that seems objectively good but also objectively plausible. The book ends with the world's fair in NYC in the 60s and they reflect on the world's fair 30 years prior. in 1930 the vision of the future was a cross country flight that would only take *24 hours*. 20 years after that they went to the fucking MOON. we can do this stuff if we remember how and find the spirit of invention, ambition and growth.
I genuinely appreciate a liberal's critical lens on the democratic party. Your enemy's target is not always your asset. San Fran can learn from Houston. It is unequivocally bad that our most prosperous, famous, important cities are all run by democrats and also have the worst homelessness and impossibly high costs of living. It shouldnt be this easy for republicans to point at democratic runs cities- the pinnacles of society like NYC, LA- and say look at these shitholes
We can have near limitless clean energy, universal blood tests, unlimited food, maybe even a train for ezra. We need to remove the self imposed bottlenecks. We need to inspire and promote invention through smart government incentives. Could be lit?
"Politics should take technology more seriously. Innovation can make impossible problems possible to solve, and policy can make impossible technologies possible to create. The fundamental link between the two is not at the core of the Democratic or the Republican agenda. Instead, we are stuck between a progressive movement that is too afraid of growth and a conservative movement that is allergic to government intervention."
March 21, 2025
Some ideas are so correct that I don’t just want people to champion policies around them, I want them to be so widely accepted that they become part of the background noise of politics. I feel that way about this book.
For decades, we took it for granted that we would zone cities in a way that prioritizes neighborhood character over making sure everyone could afford a home. People might have debated specific zoning rules, but it was taken for granted that zoning would exist and that its purpose was to prevent the building of new homes. That created the housing crisis of today, prevented young adults from moving to the next stage of life, and locked millions of people out of a better life because they couldn’t move to where the jobs were.
The abundance lens flips that. Cities should be building enough homes so that people who want to live there can afford to do so. Everything else is secondary.
It is not just housing. On issues like healthcare, green energy, scientific research, and the implementation of government programs, policy has been so oriented around preventing what could go wrong that we stopped trying to build and grow. It is really amazing how much these seemingly distinct issues rhyme with each other, and the book is great at illustrating how things like regulations that protect minority interests, procedural constraints on the government doing its job, and excessive risk aversion cause problems again and again.
It is too bad that this book has been swept into the whirlpool of discourse about how Democrats can win in 2028. It could be helpful—it has a cohesive and optimistic vision and good ideas about issues that people care about—but it is a policy book not a political one. There is so much that Democrats need to learn from this book on the policy level and embracing or dismissing it on the merits of its politics is the easy way out of those tough conversations. And as much as the book is a liberal critique of other liberals, abundance and state capacity are a useful lens for Republicans too.
The book is only 222 pages and doesn’t make a list of policy prescriptions, so this has to just be the start of the conversation. But it is really heartening to see how much attention this book is getting and how much debate it is generating.
For decades, we took it for granted that we would zone cities in a way that prioritizes neighborhood character over making sure everyone could afford a home. People might have debated specific zoning rules, but it was taken for granted that zoning would exist and that its purpose was to prevent the building of new homes. That created the housing crisis of today, prevented young adults from moving to the next stage of life, and locked millions of people out of a better life because they couldn’t move to where the jobs were.
The abundance lens flips that. Cities should be building enough homes so that people who want to live there can afford to do so. Everything else is secondary.
It is not just housing. On issues like healthcare, green energy, scientific research, and the implementation of government programs, policy has been so oriented around preventing what could go wrong that we stopped trying to build and grow. It is really amazing how much these seemingly distinct issues rhyme with each other, and the book is great at illustrating how things like regulations that protect minority interests, procedural constraints on the government doing its job, and excessive risk aversion cause problems again and again.
It is too bad that this book has been swept into the whirlpool of discourse about how Democrats can win in 2028. It could be helpful—it has a cohesive and optimistic vision and good ideas about issues that people care about—but it is a policy book not a political one. There is so much that Democrats need to learn from this book on the policy level and embracing or dismissing it on the merits of its politics is the easy way out of those tough conversations. And as much as the book is a liberal critique of other liberals, abundance and state capacity are a useful lens for Republicans too.
The book is only 222 pages and doesn’t make a list of policy prescriptions, so this has to just be the start of the conversation. But it is really heartening to see how much attention this book is getting and how much debate it is generating.
April 22, 2025
It starts with an embedded capitalist’s utopia, which is not much of a utopia ideologically for me. I thought the false binary of degrowth vs. abundance lacked imagination, but if you accept their axioms at face value Klein and Thompson cooked. The text is well structured, legible, and had a ton of specific policy examples I was not aware of and was happy to learn about. It should be the new lib bible, but I suspect it might not be that popular with libs—which is wild.
I cackled thinking about the proposal of supporting and trusting leadership instead of processes—which works under the lack of creativity that defines the false paradigm when it comes to organizing outside of bureaucracy or top down leadership� in the context of Trump and his chosen officials. I wonder if the administration’s incompetence will bring a new shine to stalling and inefficient processes or if it not being stalled by the most complex and inefficient system people could built will bring about new conceptualizations of power and its constraints.
I cackled thinking about the proposal of supporting and trusting leadership instead of processes—which works under the lack of creativity that defines the false paradigm when it comes to organizing outside of bureaucracy or top down leadership� in the context of Trump and his chosen officials. I wonder if the administration’s incompetence will bring a new shine to stalling and inefficient processes or if it not being stalled by the most complex and inefficient system people could built will bring about new conceptualizations of power and its constraints.
April 4, 2025
^notes above
April 2, 2025
3.5 Klein and Thompson are great writers and this book is a necessary part of the sociopolitical conversation, but I'm not sure the large part of the book really accomplishes it's aim. The authors spend most of their time outlining the current blocks to the abundance agenda and less time arguing for it's merit. I'm compelled by the broad appeal of the message but it's not fleshed out enough for me to be fully invested in it. Good critique of modern liberal governance and the necessity of a clear vision for the future that seems to be lacking in progressive circles.
March 28, 2025
Hmmmmm not really sure how to rate this one - it wasn’t really what i expected going in but was a solid read for me. It ended up being more of a compilation of information and statistics from other sources and quotes instead of their own input or thoughts; their own ideas were relegated to short 2-3 page essays at the end of a chapter and a section at the end.
I personally enjoyed and was most engaged with the beginning chapters that focused on housing and immigration and i wish there was more focus on that instead of diving so much into the NIH, vaccines and SO much covid talk.
As someone not super knowledgeable about this field I personally enjoyed all the stats and facts but I don’t think people who already follow Klein/Thompson or the subject in general will gain much from this book bc of its lack of input from the authors.
I personally enjoyed and was most engaged with the beginning chapters that focused on housing and immigration and i wish there was more focus on that instead of diving so much into the NIH, vaccines and SO much covid talk.
As someone not super knowledgeable about this field I personally enjoyed all the stats and facts but I don’t think people who already follow Klein/Thompson or the subject in general will gain much from this book bc of its lack of input from the authors.
March 26, 2025
Must read for anyone interested in a future that doesn’t suck
April 11, 2025
one of my coworkers saw me carrying this book into the office and all but shrieked, "you WOULD be abundance pilled!!!!!! you WOULD read ezra klein!!!" I said "what's wrong with ezra klein??" he said "oh, nothing. i read ezra klein." if you knew him, this would be way more entertaining.
it really did strike a chord in me. my friend read the first few pages and said, i can't believe you think this sounds inspiring, it sounds dystopian to me. and I think that's fair. but lately i've been identifying with techno-optimism, because I am an optimist at heart, and I believe that scarcity mindset is not the way. of course, there are critiques - it's "a lens" not a solution. i'd love to see more of this show up in people's platforms in the coming weeks, months, years, and i'm mostly interested in how young professionals like me can internalize this more. i learned so much and there's a lot to think about.
it really did strike a chord in me. my friend read the first few pages and said, i can't believe you think this sounds inspiring, it sounds dystopian to me. and I think that's fair. but lately i've been identifying with techno-optimism, because I am an optimist at heart, and I believe that scarcity mindset is not the way. of course, there are critiques - it's "a lens" not a solution. i'd love to see more of this show up in people's platforms in the coming weeks, months, years, and i'm mostly interested in how young professionals like me can internalize this more. i learned so much and there's a lot to think about.
April 20, 2025
if you've been reading or listening to Ezra Klein or Derek Thompson over the past 6 months, nothing here is especially new or surprising, but that doesn't mean it's not helpful to read Klein and Thompson's diagnosis of the current failures of liberalism and vision for an abundant future in full.
The major thrust: through a focus of proceduralism and coalition politics, the liberal state has lost the ability to generate supply - of houses, energy, infrastructure, and technology. Blue cities which should be the exemplars of leftist government at its best are too unaffordable compared to cities like Houston where homelessness is near zero.
A lot of this was familiar to me from Jenn Pahlka's excellent Recoding America and podcast episodes on anecdotes like California's high speed rail, but it doesn't make it less frustrating to realize the artificial scarcity we've created for ourselves. Government has a role to play in building and subsidizing, hastening green alternatives to cement and the upgrades to our grid necessary to support AI. The most compelling argument for me was a concrete articulation of a future with more: more houses, trains, renewable energy, and new discoveries.
The major thrust: through a focus of proceduralism and coalition politics, the liberal state has lost the ability to generate supply - of houses, energy, infrastructure, and technology. Blue cities which should be the exemplars of leftist government at its best are too unaffordable compared to cities like Houston where homelessness is near zero.
A lot of this was familiar to me from Jenn Pahlka's excellent Recoding America and podcast episodes on anecdotes like California's high speed rail, but it doesn't make it less frustrating to realize the artificial scarcity we've created for ourselves. Government has a role to play in building and subsidizing, hastening green alternatives to cement and the upgrades to our grid necessary to support AI. The most compelling argument for me was a concrete articulation of a future with more: more houses, trains, renewable energy, and new discoveries.
April 16, 2025
I heard about this book from Pod Save America and it was an interesting read. It’s hard to hear criticisms of our own party while the right is running our country amuck, but if we want to have plans (and successes) in future elections it’s important to look internally at where we need to improve. They bring up a good argument of how democrats at times can be too focused on policy and procedure, rather than actual results.
“We are stuck between a progressive movement that is too afraid of growth and a conservative movement that is allergic to government intervention.�
“One of the most dangerous political pathologies is the tendency to defend whatever your enemies attack. Decades of attacks on the state have turned liberals into reflexive champions of government. But if you believe in government, you must make it work. To make it work, you must be clear-eyed about when it fails and why it fails.�
“We are stuck between a progressive movement that is too afraid of growth and a conservative movement that is allergic to government intervention.�
“One of the most dangerous political pathologies is the tendency to defend whatever your enemies attack. Decades of attacks on the state have turned liberals into reflexive champions of government. But if you believe in government, you must make it work. To make it work, you must be clear-eyed about when it fails and why it fails.�
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