Hey, you seem so sincere, enthusiastic, and well meaning. I appreciate that; one of the things I love about this forum is how many people on here are trying to âsave the worldâ in various sincere ways.
I apologize because I havenât actually read the Abundance book, but I am familiar with the ideas and I used to listen to Ezra Kleinâs NYT feed pretty often around the time it came out.
Where I agree:
better government services would be better; responsive government is good
instilling broadly positive bureaucratic norms (whatever that means)
probably zoning regulations should be more aggressively pro-housing, but I recognize there are trade offs there. I particularly like cheap prefab housing like Graceland portable buildings for example, but also urban infill generally seems broadly good to me.
pro-social scientific research is often good and maybe national governments should fund it more
the opportunity costs of delaying regulatory approval for medicine are often horrific; nations should probably have international reciprocity around drug testing; rapid turn around time for vaccines is a top priority of our time for both normal healthcare and plague prevention reasons
sometimes the state stands in the way of productive activity which would occur otherwise. For example, I did scouting as a kid and I can build a small shelter out of branches and brush in about an afternoon. It is a shame that it is illegal merely to even be homeless and that it is often illegal to improve land.
Where I disagree:
This shouldnât be a priority for EA. Supply-side progressivism via deregulation is distant from priority areas like global poverty abolition, existential risk prevention, and animal welfare. The benefits of eg. reforming zoning policy would be very indirect at best and yet itâs already backed by Open Phil and Emergent Ventures. I do not think there is a case that this should not prioritized more by scope sensitive, broad moral circle philanthropists on the margins.
Abundance is not neglected. It is an extremely mainstream idea popular within the democratic party in the US and elsewhere. It is also not terribly new if you donât mind my saying so. It is the current poster child of self-identified âcenter left reformistsâ who hold a good number of seats in the US legislature. It also already gets a lot of corporate sponsorship from tech and oil money.
There is not an infinite well of purely technocratic government cruft you can just keep cutting for more free lunches; you will hit a lot of very real tradeoffs very immediately.
Environmental health and safety is under-prioritized at least as often as it is over-prioritized. For example, there are well known contemporary stories about unacceptable lead pollution levels or entire poor black neighborhoods being suffocated by fumes at the mere whimsy of a tech oligarch. You hit real tradeoffs quickly and one could be forgiven for not agreeing that there is an infinite spool of environmental red tape left to cut.
Federal procurement requirements may or may not be overused as a policy tool. I donât have strong feelings here and it feels like a purely technocratic point. It is probably not a silver bullet, but I share your enthusiasm for excellence in government.
I strongly disagree with the assertions you are making about âeconomic growthâ as a singular target for welfare. That doesnât pass muster. Especially not to the exclusion of a focus on wealth inequality.
Raising peopleâs material standard of living is more complicated than this book and this post acknowledges. I donât really think that there are credible solutions to cost of living questions on offer here. For example, I think there are unaddressed tensions and unstated assumptions related to whether lowering prices is actually desirable. Lower housing prices could harm homeowners and lowering the CPI is considered contractionary.
Thatâs just my 2 cents. Hopefully some of that made sense :)
Abundance as I am referencing it is not what circles like the Abundance Institute is doing, where their metric isnât social good as much as free markets. I think the fact that Klein/âThompsonâs approach is often misunderstood as associated with just pro-business circles is proof that itâs neglected. I think if it was extremely popular within Democrats then it wouldnât be something only 1% of people have heard of, according to recent surveys.
As for environmental regulations, the fact that some environmental regulations donât protect people from bad outcomes is not proof that some environmental regulations donât provide environmental protection as intended. NEPA for example is often used by a small handful of environmental orgs to stop the building of clean energy plans, environmentally beneficial projects, apartments, and bike lanes. Within the environmental movement, thereâs ire about this kind of thing because itâs gotten in the way of better climate-friendly infrastructure.
Hey, you seem so sincere, enthusiastic, and well meaning. I appreciate that; one of the things I love about this forum is how many people on here are trying to âsave the worldâ in various sincere ways.
I apologize because I havenât actually read the Abundance book, but I am familiar with the ideas and I used to listen to Ezra Kleinâs NYT feed pretty often around the time it came out.
Where I agree:
better government services would be better; responsive government is good
instilling broadly positive bureaucratic norms (whatever that means)
probably zoning regulations should be more aggressively pro-housing, but I recognize there are trade offs there. I particularly like cheap prefab housing like Graceland portable buildings for example, but also urban infill generally seems broadly good to me.
pro-social scientific research is often good and maybe national governments should fund it more
the opportunity costs of delaying regulatory approval for medicine are often horrific; nations should probably have international reciprocity around drug testing; rapid turn around time for vaccines is a top priority of our time for both normal healthcare and plague prevention reasons
sometimes the state stands in the way of productive activity which would occur otherwise. For example, I did scouting as a kid and I can build a small shelter out of branches and brush in about an afternoon. It is a shame that it is illegal merely to even be homeless and that it is often illegal to improve land.
Where I disagree:
This shouldnât be a priority for EA. Supply-side progressivism via deregulation is distant from priority areas like global poverty abolition, existential risk prevention, and animal welfare. The benefits of eg. reforming zoning policy would be very indirect at best and yet itâs already backed by Open Phil and Emergent Ventures. I do not think there is a case that this should not prioritized more by scope sensitive, broad moral circle philanthropists on the margins.
Abundance is not neglected. It is an extremely mainstream idea popular within the democratic party in the US and elsewhere. It is also not terribly new if you donât mind my saying so. It is the current poster child of self-identified âcenter left reformistsâ who hold a good number of seats in the US legislature. It also already gets a lot of corporate sponsorship from tech and oil money.
There is not an infinite well of purely technocratic government cruft you can just keep cutting for more free lunches; you will hit a lot of very real tradeoffs very immediately.
Environmental health and safety is under-prioritized at least as often as it is over-prioritized. For example, there are well known contemporary stories about unacceptable lead pollution levels or entire poor black neighborhoods being suffocated by fumes at the mere whimsy of a tech oligarch. You hit real tradeoffs quickly and one could be forgiven for not agreeing that there is an infinite spool of environmental red tape left to cut.
Federal procurement requirements may or may not be overused as a policy tool. I donât have strong feelings here and it feels like a purely technocratic point. It is probably not a silver bullet, but I share your enthusiasm for excellence in government.
I strongly disagree with the assertions you are making about âeconomic growthâ as a singular target for welfare. That doesnât pass muster. Especially not to the exclusion of a focus on wealth inequality.
Raising peopleâs material standard of living is more complicated than this book and this post acknowledges. I donât really think that there are credible solutions to cost of living questions on offer here. For example, I think there are unaddressed tensions and unstated assumptions related to whether lowering prices is actually desirable. Lower housing prices could harm homeowners and lowering the CPI is considered contractionary.
Thatâs just my 2 cents. Hopefully some of that made sense :)
Thanks Jacob! I appreciate your comment.
I think we agree on a lot of the things. I think the crux is diverging beliefs in how much economic growth has solved absolute poverty in the global north. I was basing that on the Center for Global Developmentâs work, as well as the work on a lot of evidence-focused global poverty focused orgs. Economic growth /â avoiding stagnation is what Our World in Data noted as the main factor for whether a country is on track to raise GDP + incomes. https://ââourworldindata.org/ââdata-insights/ââthe-world-has-made-huge-progress-in-reducing-extreme-poverty-could-this-be-coming-to-an-end
Abundance as I am referencing it is not what circles like the Abundance Institute is doing, where their metric isnât social good as much as free markets. I think the fact that Klein/âThompsonâs approach is often misunderstood as associated with just pro-business circles is proof that itâs neglected. I think if it was extremely popular within Democrats then it wouldnât be something only 1% of people have heard of, according to recent surveys.
As for environmental regulations, the fact that some environmental regulations donât protect people from bad outcomes is not proof that some environmental regulations donât provide environmental protection as intended. NEPA for example is often used by a small handful of environmental orgs to stop the building of clean energy plans, environmentally beneficial projects, apartments, and bike lanes. Within the environmental movement, thereâs ire about this kind of thing because itâs gotten in the way of better climate-friendly infrastructure.
Lower housing prices might harm homeowners but it benefits everyone, including homeowners, in so many ways that people donât often realize: https://ââworksinprogress.co/ââissue/ââthe-housing-theory-of-everything/ââ