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Abundance, a recent book by New York Times commentator Ezra Klein and Atlantic writer Derek Thompson, argues “that in order to ensure a better future, America needs to build and invent more in order to combat problems such as affordable housing, climate change, and food and medicine inaccessibility.” WBUR
The left is divided about the book.
“Why care about ‘abundance’ when the president is threatening judges and trying to deport legal residents for their political beliefs? It’s a fair argument… What has become obvious, though, is that the United States, despite its inordinate wealth, is not matching its twentieth century dynamism…
“Could this government — Republican or Democratic-run — stand up another interstate highway system? A network of railroads? Could this Department of Defense effectively invent the internet?… If we are going to save our climate or guarantee every American an affordable place to live, these debates must be had — now.”
Ross Barkan, New York Magazine
“The MAGA movement is not the reason why New York can’t build enough housing, California can’t build high-speed rail, and Massachusetts can’t build a transmission line between its cities and Quebec’s hydropower plants. Democrats have full control of government in some of America’s largest and wealthiest states. They have the power to prove that they can deliver rising living standards and falling costs for ordinary people…
“There are many reasons why blue states have had such limited success on these fronts. But one is that progressives have not mounted a unified front against zoning restrictions that help landlords gouge tenants, environmental laws that enable rich NIMBYs to block renewable energy, and liberal policies that seek to advance so many disparate priorities that they end up achieving none. With any luck, Abundance will bring us a little closer to such a consensus.”
Eric Levitz, Vox
Others argue, “[The authors] write with awe about how Bell Labs, in its mid-20th-century heyday as the development arm of the telephone giant AT&T, came up with the electronic transistor… What [they] don’t say is that AT&T wasn’t interested in exploring the potential of the transistor its own scientists invented out of fear that it would compete with its existing vacuum tube business…
“Only after the Federal Trade Commission brought an antitrust suit against AT&T for hoarding valuable technology did the company agree to license its patent for the transistor and other technologies to outside companies like Motorola and a start-up called Texas Instruments. It was the government’s suit against AT&T, said Intel founder Gordon Moore, that ‘started the growth of Silicon Valley.’…
“With a leading member of the tech oligarchy having seized control of the federal bureaucracy and actively decimating its capacity in constitution-defying ways, now might be a good time for abundance liberals to expand their thinking about what the real roadblocks are to a more plentiful America.”
Paul Glastris and Nate Weisberg, Washington Monthly
The right is cautiously supportive of the book.
The right is cautiously supportive of the book.
“Conservatives should welcome this outbreak of pragmatism on the Left… Klein and Thompson are mostly talking to their fellow liberals. They want the government to take a more aggressive role in promoting and, if need be, subsidizing housing, medical research, green technology, and other sectors they think will enhance people’s lives. But the authors also want these progressive programs to work…
“[They] tend to gloss over the risk that lavish subsidies can lead to rent-seeking and corruption on the part of politically connected industries. For example, the book’s index contains no mention of Solyndra, the notorious Obama-era solar energy startup that soaked up $500 million in federal loans on its way to bankruptcy. Abundance is on firmer ground in recommending the government diversify its funding of fundamental science and tech research.”
James B. Meigs, Washington Examiner
“The introduction of a fresh idea into the intra-progressive discourse is a welcome development. It will have to contend with many obstacles if it is to be widely adopted by the authors’ political allies. Foremost among them is the Democratic Party’s thuddingly unimaginative leadership caste, which remains wedded to the embittering economic misconception that the economy is a zero-sum game and success is to be, to some extent, resented.”
Noah Rothman, National Review
Others argue, “‘Scarcity Is a Choice,’ the authors declare… [But] Scarcity, as understood in economics, is not a choice but a fact: There are 24 hours in a day, and an hour dedicated to x is an hour that cannot be dedicated to y; an acre of land that is dedicated to growing corn cannot simultaneously be used as a parking lot; $1 paid in taxes is $1 not available for private consumption or investment; etc…
“The authors simply take Bastani’s ‘luxury communism’ model (scarcity effectively eliminated by technology) and run with it: Never mind the actual real-world physical limitations on our ambitions and our utopian desires—just assume technology will take care of it. And if technology doesn’t take care of it, then give a great deal of central-planning power to people such as Ezra Klein—and the class of people he represents—and they’ll flip the politico-economic switches to produce the desired result…
“Their position is, in effect: ‘Just give us the power and we’ll give you the laser-ignited fusion.’… [But] Why on earth would we believe that the central planners in Washington in 2025 or 2029 are going to be any more effective than the central planners in Petaluma, California, were in 1971 when, as the authors lament, they introduced the ‘Petaluma Plan’ that set the benchmark for how to go about choking off the supply of new housing?”
Kevin D. Williamson, The Dispatch
Oldest wild bird Wisdom has more than doubled her life expectancy and become a grandma.
Guinness World Records
