Abundance: Ok, what’s next?

Tl;Dr: Abundance was a good book, but it leaves me wanting next steps (like Katie Wilson)

BerkClerb read Abundance. I’m glad we did, it made me think a lot about my political affiliation, and how to orient towards a future that works well.

Here are a couple big thoughts from the book and me:

• We’re (getting) stuck. The American Dream isn’t really feasible for most, because of our laws. There are still chances for upward economic mobility, but far fewer.
  • A cause is laws: our government is a collection of laws-on-laws-on-laws, making it hard to grow, build, invent and deploy.
• Build homes to end homelessness: case in point – want fewer unhoused? Build low cost housing! What’s standing in the way? Zoning  laws backed by NIMBY homeowners (self interested investment protectors, but still)
• We’ve regulated ourselves out of innovation. Not just the government but primarily through regulations imposed by governmental agencies like the National institute for health.
• Burning everything to the ground is not a solution. but neither is status quo. Even though there are still positive signs (some people still have upwards economic mobility, but primarily a very small percentage of the already wealthy).

The book has a large collection of well-researched examples. The development of the covid vaccines are an example of rapid innovation which is basically not available outside of emergency circumstances, California high-speed rail is an example of building projects that have been regulated out of existence. San Francisco housing building example of a social housing built quickly because it was not built using government funds, many many more. So many it gets a bit perplexing at times. But in general, the book was very persuasive and seemed to be well researched.

Sooooo… What next? Voting Democratic seems mostly be pointing us in (perversley) a direction that maintains the status quo.

The Conservative political party strangely enough promotes change (and most of that change is re-gressive – eliminating protection). But the change is mostly bad.

If you think about it like Dungeons and Dragons Alignment – Trump (at the head of the Conservative party, but maybe not really representing it) is basically chaotic evil. The most charitable interpretation of his actions (and the intentions of many of his coalition) are: Remove protection, let Nature (and the market) take it’s course. If you layer in Trump’s sociopathic, narcissistic perspective and add in ‘the art of the deal’ strategies (just do Random Shit), it’s a pretty good characterization of the current government.

The silver lining of current conservative politics is change. Burning down the jungle is… A kind of change. And usually seen as a healthy, natural event. Weirdly, we seem to have elected this. With any luck we will see the pendulum swing back toward constructive intentions in the future.

But it’s not clear that a Blue Wave of Democrats will actually do much besides drive us back into the same cul de sac that ended up driving voters to Trump.