How an Abundance Agenda Could Transform America

Derek Thompson: “This is the manifesto I wrote in early January, when I saw the winter COVID-testing shortage as a sign of what’s to come. I said that the U.S. doesn’t have enough houses, enough doctors, or enough clean energy. To fix this crisis of scarcity, I proposed an agenda of abundance. Since then, rising tensions with China, a key node of our global supply chain, has made me even more certain that the U.S. needs a policy to ensure that the supply of key materials doesn’t rely on a geopolitical adversary.”

DT: “In this article, Ezra Klein connects the material case for abundance to the emotional case for educated optimism about our capacity to make the world better. It’s rather gloomy for adults to look at children as little more than carbon-emitting nodes or passive consumers of a worsening world. Young people have agency to change the world they inherit, and they can be agents of hope.”

DT: “Heather McGhee’s story of a drained pool in Alabama is the most powerful metaphor I’ve ever read for the ways that private selfishness deprives us all of public goods. This is a beautiful synthesis of her astonishing book.”

DT: “Few have thought more about the case for housing abundance than Matt Yglesias. In this intelligent piece, he explains why ‘housing should be abundant, not ‘affordable.’”

DT: “Jerusalem Demsas is one of the great observers of American housing policy. In this article, she introduces us to the concept of ‘citizen voice’ and explains why this innocuous-sounding phenomenon is at the root of our housing crisis.”

DT: “Abundance isn’t just about fulfilling our obligation to build houses and other things that we already know how to do. It’s about building things that don’t yet exist that can make us happier, reduce pain, and increase human empowerment. This is a fantastic overview of the frontier of technologies that don’t fully exist yet.”

DT: “The discovery of the smallpox vaccine and the eradication of the world’s worst disease is one of the more remarkable accomplishments in our history. It also offers an incredible lesson: Progress isn’t just about science and technology. It’s about laws, ingenuity, and progressivism. An invention that’s never scaled affordably is, for most people, little better than no invention at all.”

DT: “The policies of abundance won’t be simple. Some efforts to fortify the supply of products such as microchips can backfire. This is a great overview of semiconductor subsidies and how they work.”

DT: “There is a lot of research into extending human life spans. This can scare some people into thinking that we’re on the verge of building some kind of Frankenstein’s monster or giving eternal life to evil men. But for me, progress is two things: It’s reducing pain and increasing power, for the many. It’s hard to imagine a technology more empowering than therapies that extend our health span. This is a wonderful account of the history of using technology to live longer and healthier lives.”

DT: “Progress requires an ongoing balancing act between putting out the fire in the burning house of the present and preparing for future fires. I think it’s rather astonishing that the U.S. hasn’t done more to address the possibility—scratch that, the inevitability—of future global pandemics. This is a brilliant summary of how to do that.”

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