This might be a correct description of some people who have adopted the abundance label, but itâs not a correct description of the book Abundance or its authors, Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, who coined and popularized abundance (or abundance liberalism) as a political term and originated the abundance movement thatâs playing out in U.S. politics right now. Abundance is deregulatory on NIMBY restrictions to building housing and environmental bills that are perversely used to block solar and wind projects. However, 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. There is a chapter on government science funding, of which it is strongly in favour. Abundance is in favour of the government getting out of the way, or deregulating, in some areas, such as housing, but in other areas, itâs in favour of, for lack of a better term, big government.
Others are of course free to read Abundance and run with it any direction they like, even if the authors disagree with it. Nobody owns the abundance label, so people can use it how they like. But I think the framing of abundance as necessarily or inherently moderate, technocratic, or deregulatory is limiting. Thatâs one particular way that some people think about abundance, but not everybody has to think of it that way, and not even the originators of the idea do. The progressive mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani, is a fan of Abundance and recently voiced his support for YIMBY housing reform in the state of New York. Abundance is not synonymous with either the moderate or progressive wings of the Democratic Party; itâs a set of ideas that is compatible with either a moderate or progressive political orientation.
Klein and Thompson, and of course Mamdani, are not âunified in their opposition to lefty economic proposalsâ.
I think saying that abundance implies moderate politics or technocracy is not only limiting and at least partially inaccurate, it also encourages progressives to oppose abundance when, as weâve seen in Mamdaniâs case, it is compatible with progressivism and largely independent from and orthogonal to (in the figurative sense) the disagreements between moderates and progressives.
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 âhigh state capacityâ? But I think itâs 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 âunifiedââI didnât mean to imply that individual people like klein or mamdani were âunifiedâ in toeing an enforced party line!
Rather I was speculating that maybe the reason the âdeciding to winâ people (moderates such as matt yglesias) and the âabundanceâ people, tend to overlap moreso than abundance + left-wingers, is because the abundance + moderates tend to share (this is what I meant by âare unified byâ) opposition to policies like rent control and other price controls, tend to be less enthusiastic about âcost-disease-socialismâ 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 /â prosperity, etc. Obviously this is just a tendency, not universal in all people, as people like mamdani show.
FYI, Iâm 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 itâs an appropriate summary of a complex movement to say that abundance stuff is mostly a center-left, deregulatory, etc movement.
Imagine someone complainingâitâs so unfair to describe abundance as a âdemocratâ movement!! Thatâs so off-putting for conservativesâinstead 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 âhigh state capacityâ? But I think itâs 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 youâre talking about. I have in mind the book Abundance as my primary idea of what abundance is, and in that version of abundance, I donât think itâs 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 donât 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 donât know.
I think youâre 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/âculturally less progressive, etc. tendencies have shown a lot of enthusiasm about the abundance label. Iâm 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 wouldnât be ready to call it an emo band, even if I were happy for the emosâ support.
There are four reasons I want to deconflate abundance and those other political tendencies:
Itâs 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 donât (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.
Iâm personally skeptical of many of the ideas found within those other political tendencies, both on the merits and in terms of whatâs 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 Iâm skeptical of.)
Itâs politically limiting to conflate abundance and these other political tendencies when this isnât 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 canât it have broad appeal? Why try to make it into a factional issue rather than a more inclusive liberal/âleft 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 itâs 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 youâre talking about. If youâre 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 donât think thatâs an accurate summary of that particular version of abundance.
If youâre 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 donât want to limit how I define to âabundanceâ to just that version, for the reasons I gave above.
I donât think it makes sense to call it âspinâ or âPRâ 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 thatâs why you have the impression that abundance simply is centrist, moderate, etc. and that saying otherwise is âuntruthfulâ or âPRâ. There is no âcanonicalâ 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 isnât straightforwardly wrong. Itâs just avoidably limited.
Imagine someone complainingâitâs so unfair to describe abundance as a âdemocratâ movement!! Thatâs so off-putting for conservativesâinstead 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 âA Liberalism That Buildsâ, which explicitly addresses this topic.
This might be a correct description of some people who have adopted the abundance label, but itâs not a correct description of the book Abundance or its authors, Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, who coined and popularized abundance (or abundance liberalism) as a political term and originated the abundance movement thatâs playing out in U.S. politics right now. Abundance is deregulatory on NIMBY restrictions to building housing and environmental bills that are perversely used to block solar and wind projects. However, 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. There is a chapter on government science funding, of which it is strongly in favour. Abundance is in favour of the government getting out of the way, or deregulating, in some areas, such as housing, but in other areas, itâs in favour of, for lack of a better term, big government.
Others are of course free to read Abundance and run with it any direction they like, even if the authors disagree with it. Nobody owns the abundance label, so people can use it how they like. But I think the framing of abundance as necessarily or inherently moderate, technocratic, or deregulatory is limiting. Thatâs one particular way that some people think about abundance, but not everybody has to think of it that way, and not even the originators of the idea do. The progressive mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani, is a fan of Abundance and recently voiced his support for YIMBY housing reform in the state of New York. Abundance is not synonymous with either the moderate or progressive wings of the Democratic Party; itâs a set of ideas that is compatible with either a moderate or progressive political orientation.
Klein and Thompson, and of course Mamdani, are not âunified in their opposition to lefty economic proposalsâ.
I think saying that abundance implies moderate politics or technocracy is not only limiting and at least partially inaccurate, it also encourages progressives to oppose abundance when, as weâve seen in Mamdaniâs case, it is compatible with progressivism and largely independent from and orthogonal to (in the figurative sense) the disagreements between moderates and progressives.
Hence my initial mention of âhigh state capacityâ? But I think itâs 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 âunifiedââI didnât mean to imply that individual people like klein or mamdani were âunifiedâ in toeing an enforced party line!
Rather I was speculating that maybe the reason the âdeciding to winâ people (moderates such as matt yglesias) and the âabundanceâ people, tend to overlap moreso than abundance + left-wingers, is because the abundance + moderates tend to share (this is what I meant by âare unified byâ) opposition to policies like rent control and other price controls, tend to be less enthusiastic about âcost-disease-socialismâ 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 /â prosperity, etc. Obviously this is just a tendency, not universal in all people, as people like mamdani show.
FYI, Iâm 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 itâs an appropriate summary of a complex movement to say that abundance stuff is mostly a center-left, deregulatory, etc movement.
Imagine someone complainingâitâs so unfair to describe abundance as a âdemocratâ movement!! Thatâs so off-putting for conservativesâinstead 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 youâre talking about. I have in mind the book Abundance as my primary idea of what abundance is, and in that version of abundance, I donât think itâs 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 donât 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 donât know.
I think youâre 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/âculturally less progressive, etc. tendencies have shown a lot of enthusiasm about the abundance label. Iâm 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 wouldnât be ready to call it an emo band, even if I were happy for the emosâ support.
There are four reasons I want to deconflate abundance and those other political tendencies:
Itâs 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 donât (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.
Iâm personally skeptical of many of the ideas found within those other political tendencies, both on the merits and in terms of whatâs 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 Iâm skeptical of.)
Itâs politically limiting to conflate abundance and these other political tendencies when this isnât 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 canât it have broad appeal? Why try to make it into a factional issue rather than a more inclusive liberal/âleft 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 youâre talking about. If youâre 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 donât think thatâs an accurate summary of that particular version of abundance.
If youâre 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 donât want to limit how I define to âabundanceâ to just that version, for the reasons I gave above.
I donât think it makes sense to call it âspinâ or âPRâ 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 thatâs why you have the impression that abundance simply is centrist, moderate, etc. and that saying otherwise is âuntruthfulâ or âPRâ. There is no âcanonicalâ 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 isnât straightforwardly wrong. Itâs 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 âA Liberalism That Buildsâ, which explicitly addresses this topic.