The Abundance Agenda

People need stuff.

People need housing, food, medical care, transportation, and physical manufactured objects. People need energy and shipping and trucking.

And all stuff comes from somewhere. Food comes from farms and factories and eateries. Manufactured goods are made in factories and transported on ships, trains, and trucks. Energy comes from power plants and gas lines.

Damage to the means of production — the sources of stuff people need — means material deprivation for humans. Invariably, more vulnerable humans (poorer, sicker, less privileged) suffer the most from this.

By contrast, expanding supply is good for humans. More stuff (and stuff getting where it needs to go) means fewer shortages. More stuff means lower prices and expanded access. More stuff means better lives.

This is the basic thesis of what Derek Thompson calls the "abundance agenda”, Ezra Klein calls “supply-side progressivism”, Noah Smith calls “new industrialism”, Katherine Boyle of Andreessen Horowitz calls “American dynamism”, and the Institute for Progress simply calls “progress.”

The common theme is that the US (and other industrialized countries) need to change policy to encourage more supply, and particularly to fight the rising cost of sectors like education, childcare, medical care, energy, housing, and public transportation.

Abundance Requires Unblocking

There are regulatory barriers that block us from expanding production. Things like:

near-total bans on new nuclear power plants
intense restrictions on construction of all types of power generation, storage, transmission, and interconnection
restrictions on building new housing in cities
restrictions on new factory construction
restrictions on new hospital construction
restrictions on manufacturing and sale of drugs, diagnostic tests, and medical devices
restrictions on shipping and infrastructural improvement

and many more.

Breaking through regulatory barriers is an essential pillar of an “abundance agenda.” While many abundance advocates are also interested in expanding government funding (for R&D, infrastructure, or providing goods free to the public), most acknowledge that removing obstructionist regulations is necessary as well.

We can’t build unless we’re allowed to.

Projects can’t get off the ground if they’re stuck indefinitely waiting for bureaucracies to grant permits or approvals.

Unblocking vs. Deregulati

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Policy