Abundance 101

While away a day getting up to speed on the Abundance Movement.

Per Ezra Klein & Derek Thompson's forthcoming book, "to pursue Abundance is to pursue institutional renewal." What does that look like in practice?

The reading list below—4 hours of written content, 4 hours of podcasts—is meant to ground you in the key content of the Abundance Movement. It should help you speak fluently and confidently about Abundance, informed by the work of a range of public intellectuals, scholars, and political actors.

Part 1: Political ~Theory

What is Abundance?

Abundance is a political program focused on more high-quality supply and lower prices for the building blocks of a good life.

The following articles give a good overview of the problems that constrain supply and/or reduce quality, focusing on issues like narrow interest capture, weak state capacity, and a focus on procedures over outcomes.

• A Simple Plan To Solve All of America’s Problems (9 min)

• The Economic Mistake the Left is Finally Confronting (10 min)

• The Procedure Fetish (25 min)

• The What How and Why of Abundance (10 min)

• Abundance & State Capacity Are Twin Flames (9 min)

Total read time: 63 min.

Related podcasts:

• Procedure Fetish podcast (81 min)

• Ezra podcast on Abundance (to be released)

Diving into State Capacity

Many people exploring Abundance are already YIMBYs, and so are familiar with the ill-effects of reducing the supply of housing through convoluted land use decision-making processes. A less familiar pillar of Abundance is the focus on “State Capacity,” which refers to the government’s ability to execute on its policy intentions.

Building on “The Procedure Fetish,” the following articles look at the historical roots of our crisis of state capacity.

• State Capacity: What Is It, How We Lost It, And How To Get It Back (40 min)

• Kludgeocracy in America (27 min)

• Recoding America Book Summary (22 min)

Total read time: 89 min.

Related podcasts:

• Recoding America podcast (75 min)

• In This House We’re Angry When Government Fails (70 min)
  

Part 2: Political ~Strategy

Fixing the issues outlined above will require mobilizing a generational reform movement. In the following section, we’ll review the basics of how we might source and arrange the requisite financial and social capital.

Elite Responsibility

Every story needs a villain. In our telling, the villain is us. We believe elites have abdicated responsibility for the well-being of society, and to fix things, we need to organize a new generation of civic elites to build 21st century government. This is what we call the Abundance Movement.

The articles below expand on this argument.

• Dream Hoarders (15 min)

• College-Educated Voters Are Ruining American Politics (7 min)

• What the Old Establishment Can Teach The New Tech Elite (10 min)

• Tech leaders should help (4 min)

Total read time: 36 min.

Related podcasts:

• Dream Hoarders (62 min)
  

Building a Political Faction

We need to organize a political faction around the ideas of Abundance.

The content below outlines where Abundance fits into the overall landscape and how we might go about building factional infrastructure.

• The Rise of the Abundance Faction (23 min)

• Alternative Governing Coalition Model (5 min) (Note: this is very academic)

• Movement vs. Abundance Progressives (10 min)

• Abundant vs. Moderate (9 min)

• Building the YIMBY Faction (4 min)

• Faction thesis (5 min)

Total read time: 56 min.