Unaffordable Abundance

The Democratic Party, a political party that promotes the disparate goals of different identities, is going through an identity crisis of its own. Election results from 2024 show the Democrats losing support among youth and minorities, precisely the groups that the Democrats have been counting on for decades. While hardcore leftist progressives are filling the streets with protestors suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome, more moderate traditional Democrats along with independent centrists (including many deep-pocketed donors) wonder what the Democratic Party actually stands for. These frustrations will be center stage at this week’s meeting of the Democratic National Committee as will the leadership of DNC chairman Ken Martin.

Democrats (some of them at least) are coming to realize that Trump Derangement Syndrome is not likely to lead them to the majority in the 2026 off-year elections. TDS is great at getting the base across the country to march in protest of Trump and his policies (widely reported by the newspapers and television stations that lean left anyway) but at a cost of the working class and independents. Democrats seeking to erase Republican majorities in the House and Senate in 2026 and to prepare for presidential elections in 2028 are seeking platforms that appeal to wider audiences.

One trendy idea that is gaining support is the so-called Abundance Movement, based on the recent book, Abundance, by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson. The book tries to convince Democratic readers that they should support policies that generate growth and development instead of the traditional Democratic approach of strapping builders and innovators with burdensome rules and regulations that inhibit growth.

The authors argue, for example, that eliminating zoning restrictions and burdensome building codes would encourage residential construction of housing, making housing more affordable as supply increases. In the wake of the devastating wild fires in Los Angeles, California Governor (and likely presidential candidate) Gavin Newsom suspended permitting and review requirements to accelerate rebuilding. Rent control, as recommended by the socialist candidate for mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani, would choke off building new housing, making housing less available and less affordable.

The authors concede that the United States will need massive increases in energy production in the coming decades to power an electrified transportation system, the voracious energy demands of artificial intelligence and the growing need for desalination to replace disappearing water resources due to climate change. They also admit that this need will outstrip the ability of wind and solar energy production. They assert that, “simply put, energy abundance might be the single most important technological bottleneck of our time.”

Given that the authors of Abundance admit that economic growth, building infrastructure and producing energy are essential to the abundant future they envision one would think that the general public and even some Republicans would be supportive of the Abundance Agenda (a new bi-partisan Build America Caucus has just been formed in the House of Representatives). And it is true that the far left progressives hate the Abundance Movement for distracting people from the urgent need to fight against anything President Trump supports. But a lot of the Abundance Agenda is little more than wishful thinking.

First of all, the authors believe that government will be the driving force behind this movement despite the fact that most of the changes they propose is to get rid of the rules and regulations imposed by government to stifle growth and progress. There is no such thing as a lean and mean bureaucracy. Innovation, cost cutting and increasing production in the private sector are driven by the entrepreneurs’ desire for profit and that means competing against other companies to make things or provide services the public wants. But those competitive incentives are lacking in government. Government workers benefit from expanding the scope of bureaucracy if they want to move from grade 12 step 10 to grade 13 step 1, not by serving the public.

The authors cite the government’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) as an example of how government can foster innovation. It is true that DARPA set in motion many innovations such as the Internet (originally ARPANET), GPS and many others. But the key word in DARPA is Defense. Domestically, the government has a monopoly of power and faces no competition so there is little incentive to innovate and a lot of incentive to maintain control (although there is a lot of competition for who gets to control all that government power). But across the globe the US government faces a lot of competition and that competition against foreign adversaries helped create the atomic bomb, the fighter jet and that is what motivates DARPA. Look at all the innovation Ukraine is creating right now as it competes for its very survival.

Another example of government innovation the authors wrote about was Operation Warp Speed to develop a vaccine to fight Covid. And it is true that Operation Warp Speed developed vaccines in record time but it was private sector companies that developed the vaccines and the government eliminating the hurdles it imposes and accelerating its approval process that made such rapid deployment possible.

The real problem with the Abundance Agenda is that it is the government’s agenda, not yours or mine. The authors support the government’s key role in the Abundance Agenda because they believe (naively perhaps) that the government’s agenda and their agenda are perfectly matched. In closing they quote Marx’s Communist Manifesto, that the search for profit was “fettering the economy” preventing the most wonderous and useful technology from being invented. Presumably, this would be unprofitable innovation that the government wants (the surveillance technology and social score card of the Chinese Communist Party come to mind) and not stuff the people actually want and are willing to pay for.

In the end, the Abundance Movement is not a centrist bi-partisan approach to making America a better place where people can pursue their unique American Dream but a better and more efficient way to implement their progressive agenda. The price of their progressive abundance is too high, it comes at the cost of our liberty.