Abundance
by Ezra Klein
View on GoodreadsEzra Klein and Derek Thompson's 2025 manifesto for "abundance liberalism" — the argument that progressive governance has come to be defined by procedural protections that prevent the building of housing, energy, transit, and capacity at the scales the politics requires.
Core ideas
- The diagnosis: progressive coalitions in blue states have accumulated veto-point protections (environmental review, community input, zoning, contracting requirements) that individually have rationales but cumulatively produce paralysis on the projects the coalition's own goals require.
- California's housing crisis, blue-state high-speed-rail failures, and the slow build-out of clean energy infrastructure are the load-bearing case studies — situations where the same political coalition wants the outcome and prevents it.
- The fix isn't deregulation in the libertarian sense; it's "supply-side liberalism" — government that can actually deliver, with procedural reform that preserves the underlying values while removing the structural paralysis.
Published2025
Pages304
ISBN9781668023488
ReadJan 2026
