Hey I read that book. Bastani is never going to be confused with Ezra Klein, but at least he acknowledges that major public works projects do not happen from private investment. Bastani's work, on the other hand, argues that innovation is the cause, not the effect - he points out that the advent of cheap solar power and cell phones has done more for African independence than anything else because for a thousand bucks you can turn a hut in the Congo into a no-grid modern bastion and that price is only coming down. Both Bastani and Hinkel point out that it isn't the abundance, it's the choke points and Klein wants rich people to control them. ice burn And nobody talks about this enough: “Wealth - any income that is at least $100 more a year than the income of one's wife's sister's husband.” - H. L. Mencken Society is striation and striation is driven by resources. If you would like to increase striation, increase resources. If you would like to decrease striation, decrease resources - you can do this by ensuring everyone is poor, or you can do this by ensuring that excess wealth is distributed into the common good via taxes, much like they were during the era of American prosperity. The basic problem is that we all keep up with the Joneses, I don't care where your civilization is, and if the Joneses are taxed so poorly that they can start rival space launch companies nobody is going to sit around thinking "well, my commute is shit and there's nowhere to park in my neighborhood but at least all these young immigrant families from Honduras have a roof over their heads." Bastani misses it, Klein misses it. Hinkel doesn't; his whole point is that global trade is a mechanism by which rich nations make poor nations poorer. McKibben gets it; his whole point is that the more we focus on keeping things local and within our own communities the less the global competition matters. Klein is being disingenuous if he actually pretends that California high speed rail was ever anything other than a long shot. It was always a "if we build it they will hand over their property rights" project in one of the most corrupt states in the nation. You know what Klein doesn't believe in? Corruption. Whatever could that something be Uhhhmmmm capital is reluctant to enter industries it won't make money from. This is why there's no malaria vaccine. Until the Gates foundation stepped in because there were no capitalist or communist economies big enough to fund the development of a malaria vaccine. The abundant solution to a lack of housing is to stop treating housing like a profit center and start treating housing like a human right. Let's take the "deregulate it" argument and apply it to medicine. How we all feelin' now? fucking YIMBY dipshits Bastani would like a word Yeah sounds about right Why doesn't anyone read Wallerstein This is such a stupid way to look at it. Most people would rather have abundance in comparison to the relative scarcity of those around them. Given a choice between living in a trailer in Alabama in 2025 or being Henry VIII, most people would choose the Tudor even though that dude never got to see a single episode of Bake-off, taste a twinkie or be a Walmart shopper. bad ideas writ large are still bad, film at 11 Haha the Middle East was under relative peace while completely under the thumb of the Ottoman Empire. People like to pretend it's always about oil without noticing that Israel doesn't sport a whole lotta wells. Yup, let's just wish things were different and then complain when they're not.They introduce the text by asking the reader to imagine the year 2050—the same year Schwartzman envisioned for solar communism—replete with desalinated ocean water flowing from the taps, skyscraper farms growing our food indoors, and “star pills” manufactured in space. Clean air and super-fast planes. Lest we confuse this scenario with science fiction, Klein and Thompson remind us what it was like to live in New York City between 1875 and 1905, when the streets filled with novelty: “automobiles powered by new internal combustion engines, people riding bicycles in rubber-soled shoes—all recent innovations.” The world has changed very fast before. Why not now?
Once these clogs are cleared, there’s no reason to believe we won’t supply ourselves with the high-pressure spray of ever-improving goods and services that is the American birthright. If there appears to be a problem regarding scarce resources or conflicting values, we should just innovate our way out. Lab-grown meat means we get to have our animals and eat them too. This isn’t the focused solar-communist prediction about the increasing efficiency of photovoltaic modules, it’s an all-purpose ideological faith in novelty.
Klein and Thompson are skilled presenters, and Abundance is hardly the worst thing for sale at the airport.
If anyone can persuade America’s selfish liberal homeowners to stop thinking of every new housing development within their real estate market as a personal attack, it might be these two.
The state’s voters approved startup funding for the train plan in the fall of 2008. It should have been a gimme; but almost twenty years later, we’re still flying between LA and San Francisco, at an absurd cost to the climate.
Clearly, something is sabotaging society’s rational development. We should have those trains, and some big solar-powered apartment buildings near the stations.
For example: capital is reluctant to enter industries that are easy to enter, for fear competition will drive out the profit.
The abundant solution to a lack of housing is to make it easier for developers to build for increased density: the more units that come onto the market, the less landlords will be able to charge.
Permitting single-stair apartment buildings, ending single-family zoning, and eliminating parking requirements are all strong housing reform ideas, but no one seriously believes such an updated regulatory program will yield abundant housing for America’s poor
The only way to guarantee real housing abundance is deep and concerted public support, by adding the necessary state capacity to build and maintain a home for everyone who needs one. Something analogous goes for health care and food—not to mention clean air and water, parks, schools, transportation, news reporting, universities, scientific research, museums, and worthwhile artistic production in general.
The authors acknowledge, but decline to unravel, the ways that private demand for profit itself is a fetter on production, leading to a confused moment in the conclusion where they cite Karl Marx in their argument for unleashing the capitalist forces of production from government standards.
But why can’t decent liberals like Klein and Thompson bring themselves to interrogate America’s trillion-dollar defense budget?
Would you rather have abundance or scarcity? Easy: more is better than less.
Ultimately, the Abundance authors ask too little of themselves and their readers. In adapting their short-form work, Klein and Thompson haven’t challenged themselves to go deeper or contend with their strongest critics.
Imagine the Middle East at peace, with popular governments devoted to using their national fossil fuel reserves to transition their societies to solar utopia, rather than on American-made weapons or weapons to shoot back at American-made weapons.
Let us instead embrace the Schwartzmans’ solar utopian credo: