Review of Abundance and Why Nothing Works for Democracy Journal, with Further Thoughts
Letting Substack readers know about a joint book review I wrote, plus some things I'd add now.
I just published a long review of Why Nothing Works: Who Killed Progress—and How to Bring It Back by Marc Dunkelman and Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson in Democracy Journal here. I hope you check it out.
If you already have seen enough coverage, my review adds value by:
I walk through the events of the past 8 years leading to why this agenda is getting more attention now, even outside the recent electoral loss.
I try to help explain why this isn’t just a ‘deregulatory’ or ‘small government’ pitch and how readers should approach that question.
The pushback and criticisms I have are unique compared to other critical reviews.
I wrote it in late January and the world is quite different now. I shared a twitter thread that I want to include here. A few things I would have added or clarified:
Because of the authors' media footprint, Abundance will get a lot of attention. But if you are interested in the topic, do check out Why Nothing Works. I thought it was a big achievement but also a little too unwieldy to easily summarize or reference. But worth it! It also benefits from being a longer project not unfolding specifically from the month-by-month debates of the Biden administration.
There’s been some debate about the role of ‘groups’ in Democratic politics. The abundance movement is purely driven by 'groups' meaning academics, media savvy opinion leaders, and foundation spending. Nothing wrong with that, but it's unknown if this is a political winner or not. It may be left best to technocratic horse-trading. (One of the biggest 'groups' you deal with inside are the opinion writers.) Before it becomes the pitch of the Democratic Party it would be good to know if it actually connects with voters. It's an empirical question, and wouldn't displace the priority of still addressing the issues.
That so much of the diagnosis is localism causing a collective-action problem solved by preemption almost concedes that the agenda is unpopular as a political matter, especially with a 'burn it all down' electorate.
Too early to fully tell, but the DOGE onslaught poses a unique challenge to this kind of messaging. Saying we can do 'efficiency, but right' unintentionally concedes what we shouldn't—that DOGE is something more than a billionaire on a ketamine bender plundering and dismantling the government.
I mentioned this briefly in the piece, but with how DOGE is unfolding, I would emphasize even more that the idea of 'good governance' serving as democratic protection against right-wing forces feels inadequate. The CFPB was designed very well. That didn't matter.
That the intellectual story essentially stops in 1980 limits how well it applies now, to an era with more corporate consolidation, more privatization and outsourcing of government activity, and a Right far more radical on administration. This is where a lot of the critical reviews are coming from. I think it’s a “yes, and” response, but they should just address it.
In kill your darlings, I did delete how the real story is the 1800s administrative state, and Dunkelman starting the clock in the 20C forces it into a libertarian framework. But did you need 1,000 words on 19th century steamboat regulations? (Now that I write it, yes.)
But I'd be an ultra on this part of Abundance, that administration is actually how our freedoms are operationalized, but that take is generally a bit too hot. I wrote this 2015 Boston Review piece on bureaucracy and freedom, and it still holds up.
Wait: wasn't the accusation against Joe Biden by both now Republicans in Congress and the Pope of Economics, Larry Summers, that the Biden people shoveled too much cash, too many benefits to the consumer and the economy couldn't cope with the deluge of consumer demand, resulting in bad inflation. Wasn't that a case which shows how anti-abundance the establishment is when the largesse goes to the bottom 60% as opposed to the help the Fed has dished out since 2008 which guarantees the stock market won't crash? I just shake my head when I read Klein won't touch the abundance of $51 trillion which the RAND study from 2020 - which the Dems never mentioned in the campaign, yeah working class Joe, Union Bro and Capitalist Bro juggling act...that $51 trillion which went from the bottom 60% to the top 10% via all sorts of tax cuts, tax havens, and a whole host of policies which meant labor was going to get a smaller share of the national pie - but now we'll ignore that 51 trillion and just produce more by regulatory changes...no social security baseline increase (since Nixon!) no mention of cutting credit card interest rates to 10%...no national living wage...no job guarantee via a giant expansion of the a modern CCC? About what I expect someone who works for the Times to be limited to...if he went Bernie bro he'd be fired in a flash.
And here's why I left the Dems myself: https://williamrneil.substack.com/p/memories-of-party-train-wrecks-1972
The question whether the abundance concept is politically saleable is a good one even though there’s no doubt that the underlying problem: everything takes too long is certainly staring us in the face, from housing to environmental regulation to school reform. A British friend of mine called almost every public policy here “the nanny state” but I think he was wrong. Society is much more complex now, and the private sector is much more concentrated, with finance again playing an outsized role. And in that complexity people and government are more risk averse, the consequences are not only greater but they are more visible to everyone and more subject to litigation. Fixing that combination will take more than “abundance” in the most abundant country in the world (and to be clear, I don’t think the abundance narrative is addressed to those who are least abundant at all … it’s a good middle class idea that is worthy but not sufficient).