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Wanted to start a discussion on how we got such different messages from the book. This isn't meant as an attack at all, rather I wanted to respond to some of your points in the essay and offer my differing opinion.

From my perspective the book basically advocates for developing more of the following:

1. Housing

2. Energy

3. Science and Innovation

4. A more effective government

A core tenet of the movement is to focus on outcomes not process and that today’s Democratic party is often failing to do the things that they say the advocate for:

> Democrats utterly dominate every branch of government here [California]. But it’s not effective in delivering progress in most people’s lives — we have the highest supplemental poverty rate in the country; we are “home” to a quarter of the national homeless population; our school outcomes rank in the bottom 20% nationally

I think many of the things you say in this essay resonate with Ezra and Derek.

> I refuse to prioritize solutions that are ineffective and only serve the interests of a wealthy few.

I think the authors wholeheartedly agree with this statement. But the solutions that are ineffective are the ones that the most progressive places have implemented.

It seems to those in this movement that the solutions championed by the most progressive parts of the country are the most ineffective. I believe your response to this might be that this is due to establishment democrats not being further left. Yet when I see the policies that have actually resulted in lower rent prices and overall lower Cost Of Living I see this has been achieved in places where people lean further to the center.

Austin was able to lower rents by 22% all by allowing more building (https://archive.ph/6hezB) and this didn’t use any public funds! It was all through making it easier to build through deregulation!

New Zealand (https://www.apricitas.io/p/new-zealands-building-boomand-what) and Minneapolis were both able to lower rents by up-zoning large swaths of the city and implementing many YIMBY reforms.

> Moreover, Ezra Klein’s Abundance Agenda parallels Reagan’s Trickle Down Economics in that they’re both rooted in this idea of a “meddling state”. If the government stopped getting in the way, then all will be better. Markets will reach equilibrium, leading to innovation, mass production, profits, and somehow reduced emissions within the time frame to prevent catastrophic climate breakdown. Haven’t we learned this is a lie?

I think the key piece that is missing here is that the “meddling state” often gets in the way of itself. Regulation keeps not only private actors from doing things it keeps the government from doing those same exact things. A key part of the book is that regulation needs to be reduced such that the state can have more capacity to do things we want it to do. This means the ability to build mass transit, affordable housing, and better public spaces all at cheaper costs. There is no reason we should need to pay $1.7Million dollars for a toilet (https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/28/opinion/san-francisco-public-toilet.html). When you look at why this is, it’s due to regulation.

> Do we need to address our permitting laws? Of course. But not with the intention of removing the state from clean energy or housing development.

I think this is a false equivalency, getting the government to remove or streamline its regulation doesn’t mean taking it out completely, it means finding the right balance, and right now that balance is too much regulation. In fact much of the book talks about how to make the government more capable and more involved.

> EV buses that are affordable and arrive every 10 minutes, walkable downtowns, transit-oriented development, widespread bike lanes

> Combining a prioritization of smaller EVs and investment in

mass transit in urban areas alone, we could reduce lithium mining by

79%. *Seventy-nine percent*.

I think the authors would wholeheartedly agree with you on this, and all of this is abundance. More supply of housing in dense areas allows all of this to happen! This is the very same future that they envision. The problem is that currently dense housing and transit development can’t happen due to regulation, or it happens very very slowly.

I know you say that:

> What if we didn’t expedite the solar permitting process for 17% of

Nevadan land and instead cut the laziness and put effort into planning

how much solar to implement and where, as California has done?

But the truth is that this extra time spent getting permitting increases development time and costs to the project, making it more and more likely that the project never happens. In this case all the time we spend putting effort into planning is time spent burning more fossil fuels. At a certain point the opportunity cost needs to be evaluated. The health of the desert ecosystem obviously matters but in the time we do all the necessary studies, will the ecosystem die off to climate change? A text book example is California High Speed Rail. It has become so overburdened with getting regulatory approval that at this point, it will never get built. So the status quo stays, and such the solar panels never get installed and the railroad never gets built.

Much of the transit oriented future you envision is the same future the Abundance Agenda envisions as well, but the Abundance Agenda recognizes that if we don’t decrease the costs associated with building the fundamental places people live and energy they consume, none of it will be possible.

I do encourage you to give the book a read through if you haven’t yet because I believe you’ll find out that it isn’t trickle down economics.

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