it also advocates for the government of California to in-house the engineering of its high-speed rail project rather than try to outsource it to private contractors
Hence my initial mention of “high state capacity”? But I think it’s fair to call abundance a deregulatory movement overall, in terms of, like… some abstract notion of what proportion of economic activity would become more vs less heavily involved with government, under an idealized abundance regime.
Sorry to be confusing by “unified”—I didn’t mean to imply that individual people like klein or mamdani were “unified” in toeing an enforced party line!
Rather I was speculating that maybe the reason the “deciding to win” people (moderates such as matt yglesias) and the “abundance” people, tend to overlap moreso than abundance + left-wingers, is because the abundance + moderates tend to share (this is what I meant by “are unified by”) opposition to policies like rent control and other price controls, tend to be less enthusiastic about “cost-disease-socialism” style demand subsidies since they often prefer to emphasize supply-side reforms, tend to want to deemphasize culture-war battles in favor of an emphasis on boosting material progress / prosperity, etc. Obviously this is just a tendency, not universal in all people, as people like mamdani show.
FYI, I’m totally 100% on board with your idea that abundance is fully compatible with many progressive goals and, in fact, is itself a deeply progressive ideology! (cf me being a huge georgist.) But, uh, this is the EA Forum, which is in part about describing the world truthfully, not just spinning PR for movements that I happen to admire. And I think it’s an appropriate summary of a complex movement to say that abundance stuff is mostly a center-left, deregulatory, etc movement.
Imagine someone complaining—it’s so unfair to describe abundance as a “democrat” movement!! That’s so off-putting for conservatives—instead of ostracising them, we should be trying to entice them to adopt these ideas that will be good for the american people! Like Montana and Texas passing great YIMBY laws, Idaho deploying modular nuclear reactors, etc. In lots of ways abundance is totally coherent with conservative goals of efficient government services, human liberty, a focus on economic growth, et cetera!!
That would all be very true. But it would still be fair to summarize abundance as primarily a center-left democrat movement.
Hence my initial mention of “high state capacity”? But I think it’s fair to call abundance a deregulatory movement overall, in terms of, like… some abstract notion of what proportion of economic activity would become more vs less heavily involved with government, under an idealized abundance regime.
I guess it depends what version of abundance you’re talking about. I have in mind the book Abundance as my primary idea of what abundance is, and in that version of abundance, I don’t think it’s clear that a politics of abundance would result in less economic activity being heavily involved with government. It might depend how you define that. If laws, regulations, or municipal processes that obstruct construction count as heavy involvement with the government, then that would count for a lot of economic activity, I guess. But if we don’t count that and we do count higher state capacity, like more engineers working for the government, then maybe abundance would lead to a bigger government. I don’t know.
I think you’re right about why abundance is especially appealing to people of a certain type of political persuasion. A lot of people with more moderate, centrist, technocratic, socially/culturally less progressive, etc. tendencies have shown a lot of enthusiasm about the abundance label. I’m not ready to say that they now own the abundance label and abundance just is moderate, centrist, technocratic, etc. If a lot of emos were a fan of my favourite indie rock band, I wouldn’t be ready to call it an emo band, even if I were happy for the emos’ support.
There are four reasons I want to deconflate abundance and those other political tendencies:
It’s intellectually limiting, and at least partially incorrect, to say that abundance is conceptually the same thing as a lot of other independent things that a lot of people who like abundance happen to also like.
I think the coiners and popularizers of abundance deserve a little consideration, and they don’t (necessarily, wholeheartedly) agree with those other political tendencies. For instance, Ezra Klein has, to me, been one of the more persuasive proponents of Black Lives Matter for people with a wonk mindset, and has had guests on his podcast from the policy wonk side of BLM to make their case. Klein and Thompson have both expressed limited, tepid support for left-wing economic populist policies, conditional on abundance-style policies also getting enacted.
I’m personally skeptical of many of the ideas found within those other political tendencies, both on the merits and in terms of what’s popular or wins elections. (My skepticism has nothing to do with my skepticism of the ideas put forward in the book Abundance, which overall I strongly support and which are orthogonal to the ideas I’m skeptical of.)
It’s politically limiting to conflate abundance and these other political tendencies when this isn’t intellectually necessary. Maybe moderates enjoy using abundance as a rallying cry for their moderate politics, but conflating abundance and moderate politics makes it a polarized, factional issue and reduces the likelihood of it receiving broad support. I would rather see people try to find common ground on abundance rather than claim it for their faction. Gavin Newsom and Zohran Mamdani are both into abundance, so why can’t it have broad appeal? Why try to make it into a factional issue rather than a more inclusive liberal/left idea?
Edit: I wrote the above before I saw what you added to your comment. I have a qualm with this:
But, uh, this is the EA Forum, which is in part about describing the world truthfully, not just spinning PR for movements that I happen to admire. And I think it’s an appropriate summary of a complex movement to say that abundance stuff is mostly a center-left, deregulatory, etc movement.
I think it really depends on which version of abundance you’re talking about. If you’re talking about the version in the book Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, or the version that the two authors have more broadly advocated (e.g. on their press tour for the book, or in their writing and podcasts before and after the book was published), then, no, I don’t think that’s an accurate summary of that particular version of abundance.
If you’re referring to the version of abundance advocated by centrists, moderates, and so on, then, okay, it may be accurate to say that version of abundance is centrist, moderate, etc. But I don’t want to limit how I define to “abundance” to just that version, for the reasons I gave above.
I don’t think it makes sense to call it “spin” or “PR” to describe an idea in the terms used by the originators of that idea, or in terms that are independently substantively correct, e.g. as supported by examples of progressive supporters of abundance like Mamdani. If your impression of what abundance is comes from centrists, moderates, and so on, then maybe that’s why you have the impression that abundance simply is centrist, moderate, etc. and that saying otherwise is “untruthful” or “PR”. There is no “canonical” version of abundance, so to some extent, abundance just means what people who use the term want it to mean. So, that impression of abundance isn’t straightforwardly wrong. It’s just avoidably limited.
Imagine someone complaining—it’s so unfair to describe abundance as a “democrat” movement!! That’s so off-putting for conservatives—instead of ostracising them, we should be trying to entice them to adopt these ideas that will be good for the american people! Like Montana and Texas passing great YIMBY laws, Idaho deploying modular nuclear reactors, etc. In lots of ways abundance is totally coherent with conservative goals of efficient government services, human liberty, a focus on economic growth, et cetera!!
To the extent people care what Abundance says in deciding what abundance is, one could quote from the first chapter of the book, specifically the section “A Liberalism That Builds”, which explicitly addresses this topic.
Hence my initial mention of “high state capacity”? But I think it’s fair to call abundance a deregulatory movement overall, in terms of, like… some abstract notion of what proportion of economic activity would become more vs less heavily involved with government, under an idealized abundance regime.
Sorry to be confusing by “unified”—I didn’t mean to imply that individual people like klein or mamdani were “unified” in toeing an enforced party line!
Rather I was speculating that maybe the reason the “deciding to win” people (moderates such as matt yglesias) and the “abundance” people, tend to overlap moreso than abundance + left-wingers, is because the abundance + moderates tend to share (this is what I meant by “are unified by”) opposition to policies like rent control and other price controls, tend to be less enthusiastic about “cost-disease-socialism” style demand subsidies since they often prefer to emphasize supply-side reforms, tend to want to deemphasize culture-war battles in favor of an emphasis on boosting material progress / prosperity, etc. Obviously this is just a tendency, not universal in all people, as people like mamdani show.
FYI, I’m totally 100% on board with your idea that abundance is fully compatible with many progressive goals and, in fact, is itself a deeply progressive ideology! (cf me being a huge georgist.) But, uh, this is the EA Forum, which is in part about describing the world truthfully, not just spinning PR for movements that I happen to admire. And I think it’s an appropriate summary of a complex movement to say that abundance stuff is mostly a center-left, deregulatory, etc movement.
Imagine someone complaining—it’s so unfair to describe abundance as a “democrat” movement!! That’s so off-putting for conservatives—instead of ostracising them, we should be trying to entice them to adopt these ideas that will be good for the american people! Like Montana and Texas passing great YIMBY laws, Idaho deploying modular nuclear reactors, etc. In lots of ways abundance is totally coherent with conservative goals of efficient government services, human liberty, a focus on economic growth, et cetera!!
That would all be very true. But it would still be fair to summarize abundance as primarily a center-left democrat movement.
I guess it depends what version of abundance you’re talking about. I have in mind the book Abundance as my primary idea of what abundance is, and in that version of abundance, I don’t think it’s clear that a politics of abundance would result in less economic activity being heavily involved with government. It might depend how you define that. If laws, regulations, or municipal processes that obstruct construction count as heavy involvement with the government, then that would count for a lot of economic activity, I guess. But if we don’t count that and we do count higher state capacity, like more engineers working for the government, then maybe abundance would lead to a bigger government. I don’t know.
I think you’re right about why abundance is especially appealing to people of a certain type of political persuasion. A lot of people with more moderate, centrist, technocratic, socially/culturally less progressive, etc. tendencies have shown a lot of enthusiasm about the abundance label. I’m not ready to say that they now own the abundance label and abundance just is moderate, centrist, technocratic, etc. If a lot of emos were a fan of my favourite indie rock band, I wouldn’t be ready to call it an emo band, even if I were happy for the emos’ support.
There are four reasons I want to deconflate abundance and those other political tendencies:
It’s intellectually limiting, and at least partially incorrect, to say that abundance is conceptually the same thing as a lot of other independent things that a lot of people who like abundance happen to also like.
I think the coiners and popularizers of abundance deserve a little consideration, and they don’t (necessarily, wholeheartedly) agree with those other political tendencies. For instance, Ezra Klein has, to me, been one of the more persuasive proponents of Black Lives Matter for people with a wonk mindset, and has had guests on his podcast from the policy wonk side of BLM to make their case. Klein and Thompson have both expressed limited, tepid support for left-wing economic populist policies, conditional on abundance-style policies also getting enacted.
I’m personally skeptical of many of the ideas found within those other political tendencies, both on the merits and in terms of what’s popular or wins elections. (My skepticism has nothing to do with my skepticism of the ideas put forward in the book Abundance, which overall I strongly support and which are orthogonal to the ideas I’m skeptical of.)
It’s politically limiting to conflate abundance and these other political tendencies when this isn’t intellectually necessary. Maybe moderates enjoy using abundance as a rallying cry for their moderate politics, but conflating abundance and moderate politics makes it a polarized, factional issue and reduces the likelihood of it receiving broad support. I would rather see people try to find common ground on abundance rather than claim it for their faction. Gavin Newsom and Zohran Mamdani are both into abundance, so why can’t it have broad appeal? Why try to make it into a factional issue rather than a more inclusive liberal/left idea?
Edit: I wrote the above before I saw what you added to your comment. I have a qualm with this:
I think it really depends on which version of abundance you’re talking about. If you’re talking about the version in the book Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, or the version that the two authors have more broadly advocated (e.g. on their press tour for the book, or in their writing and podcasts before and after the book was published), then, no, I don’t think that’s an accurate summary of that particular version of abundance.
If you’re referring to the version of abundance advocated by centrists, moderates, and so on, then, okay, it may be accurate to say that version of abundance is centrist, moderate, etc. But I don’t want to limit how I define to “abundance” to just that version, for the reasons I gave above.
I don’t think it makes sense to call it “spin” or “PR” to describe an idea in the terms used by the originators of that idea, or in terms that are independently substantively correct, e.g. as supported by examples of progressive supporters of abundance like Mamdani. If your impression of what abundance is comes from centrists, moderates, and so on, then maybe that’s why you have the impression that abundance simply is centrist, moderate, etc. and that saying otherwise is “untruthful” or “PR”. There is no “canonical” version of abundance, so to some extent, abundance just means what people who use the term want it to mean. So, that impression of abundance isn’t straightforwardly wrong. It’s just avoidably limited.
To the extent people care what Abundance says in deciding what abundance is, one could quote from the first chapter of the book, specifically the section “A Liberalism That Builds”, which explicitly addresses this topic.