First of all, re: Charlie Kirk, his murder unnerved me, but I don’t see a point to saying anything more on the subject beyond freedom of speech is good, and gunning down a young man in front of his children is unequivocally wrong.
It’s been, what…6 months and we are still workshopping Abundance takedowns because we haven’t found any real talking points that land?
The funny thing to me is it seems pretty clear to me that Klein nor Thompson ever expected “Abundance” to be seen as this big national project (quite frankly, all the examples in the book focus on State and Local reforms for a reason, with the exception of Energy & Permitting reform for Transmission / Nuclear), but a handful of Hipster Antitrust folks came out swinging and caused a Streisand Effect for what would have been a small wonky movement of likeminded policy nerds at State and Local levels who would eventually rise through the ranks.
It seems pretty clear that the “Abundance Movement” (whatever that is) doesn’t make much sense because it was never really the point of the book. And so yes, it feels sort of slapdash-y….but hey, probably shouldn’t waste the energy I guess and there are plenty of worse things that Democrats could be talking about, I guess. I am not sure if “Abundance Movement” ever really needs to *make* sense since it’s at it’s most basic a localized effort …but i guess we will see what, if anything, can be done with all this energy / attention. Kind of a miracle so far it hasn’t already backfired at the State level in Red states if you ask me…
You raise some really good points, and you’re absolutely right that there are some real prioritization issues that the Abundance movement hasn’t even begun to address. But one service Abundance has already provided us is to make some of these choices a lot more legible and explicit. Abundance is laying out why, exactly, housing is so expensive in NYC and exposing the levers available to fix that. You’re right that intra-coalitional politics may mean that it doesn’t get fixed, but at least the choices are a lot clearer now, and I do think that’s an improvement to where we were. You write well and have thought provoking things to say- I’m looking forward to reading more of your work.
It’s been, what…6 months and we are still workshopping Abundance takedowns because we haven’t found any real talking points that land?
The funny thing to me is it seems pretty clear to me that Klein nor Thompson ever expected “Abundance” to be seen as this big national project (quite frankly, all the examples in the book focus on State and Local reforms for a reason, with the exception of Energy & Permitting reform for Transmission / Nuclear), but a handful of Hipster Antitrust folks came out swinging and caused a Streisand Effect for what would have been a small wonky movement of likeminded policy nerds at State and Local levels who would eventually rise through the ranks.
It seems pretty clear that the “Abundance Movement” (whatever that is) doesn’t make much sense because it was never really the point of the book. And so yes, it feels sort of slapdash-y….but hey, probably shouldn’t waste the energy I guess and there are plenty of worse things that Democrats could be talking about, I guess. I am not sure if “Abundance Movement” ever really needs to *make* sense since it’s at it’s most basic a localized effort …but i guess we will see what, if anything, can be done with all this energy / attention. Kind of a miracle so far it hasn’t already backfired at the State level in Red states if you ask me…
You raise some really good points, and you’re absolutely right that there are some real prioritization issues that the Abundance movement hasn’t even begun to address. But one service Abundance has already provided us is to make some of these choices a lot more legible and explicit. Abundance is laying out why, exactly, housing is so expensive in NYC and exposing the levers available to fix that. You’re right that intra-coalitional politics may mean that it doesn’t get fixed, but at least the choices are a lot clearer now, and I do think that’s an improvement to where we were. You write well and have thought provoking things to say- I’m looking forward to reading more of your work.