Exploring Abundance
Stop fighting over slices. Start baking more pie.
While political leaders fixate on culture wars and other manufactured issues meant to rile us up for elections, many Americans are left wondering: What about the real problems actually shaping our lives?
If you’re in high school or college, you’re getting ready to enter a job market that’s being upended by AI. The tech industry is racing forward with a clear intent to replace human labor, and new graduates can’t even find entry-level roles — all while government isn’t even pretending to acknowledge the obvious disruption.
If you’ve just entered the workforce in the past few years, you’re probably hoping to buy a home now or in the near future. You want the promise we all heard growing up: a partner, kids, dogs, a yard. You open Zillow and the results are bleak. Within commuting range, homes in your budget are few and far between. Bidding wars take homes off the market mere days after being listed. Investors and private-equity buyers snatch up inventory just to rent it back to you. You’d move farther away, but a two-hour commute each way is hardly living — and “high-speed-rail” is nonexistent in the richest country in the world.
This isn’t a new problem. The squeeze has steadily tightened for decades, ironically punctuated by several “once-in-a-lifetime” economic crises. Before you ever get a chance to recover from one crisis, the next one happens. And when we’re not fighting culture wars, we fight within a narrow policy box. Either we divide a shrinking pie so nobody’s happy, or we let the strongest — or luckiest — few take most of the pie while everyone else fights over the crumbs. Nobody ends up happy there either.
We’ve been so conditioned to pick one end of the spectrum that we stop asking the basic question: Why not bake more pie? That’s the heart of Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson — a reinvigorating call to return to a politics of plenty that built post-WWII America and expanded wealth, opportunity, and the American dream.
The Ship is Sinking
If you ask Americans whether they still believe in the American dream, you’ll hear a resounding no. About 70% of American, in fact. They don’t think the ship is just taking on water anymore; they’re sending proverbial distress signals while the vessel once named “Opportunity” begins to sink.
The chaos isn’t the same for everyone. Some passengers — the Elon Musks and his peers — have their own yachts following the ship. They were never really passengers on our ship anyway; they occasionally popped in to enjoy our amenities but by the time the alarm bells are sounding, they’re already gone. They’ll be fine. It’d be too risky to help our passengers escape, though.
Some are lucky enough to reach the lifeboats. They already have established careers and were lucky enough to buy homes. Maybe their kids can stay with them to save for a down payment. Maybe they’ll buy their kids a starter home. The trip to shore will be uncomfortable, but they’ll probably make it. Unfortunately, there just aren’t enough lifeboats to go around.
Some of the other passengers have life vests. They can float — for now — but the water is cold. Hypothermia and exhaustion begin to creep in while they either wait for help that may never come or they struggle to swim toward shore, hopeful that it’s not too far; that the cold doesn’t catch up; that their tired muscles don’t give out.
Most people don’t have a lifeboat or a vest. They desperately cling to pieces of furniture; to barely buoyant fixtures that fell off the ship and litter the water around it. A gig job here, a payday loan there — anything to keep them afloat until they find another piece of debris to grab on to. They’re fighting stay afloat and to swim, at the same time.
So why do we accept a scramble for too few lifeboats? Why not build more before the disaster ever happens? We’re certainly not lacking land. We’re the richest country in the world, so we definitely don’t lack resources. What we do lack is homes. Why?
Smooth is Fast
There’s an intersection where Market Street meets Public Avenue. If one side gets all the green lights, the other side ends up gridlocked. Effective stewardship of the system means balancing the signals, adding new lanes when they’re needed, and proactively retiming the lights as conditions begin to change.
When the market’s light stays green forever, capital gets through quickly, but everyone else piles up on the red light. When the government’s light stays green too long, private initiative begins to stall. A capitalism that functions properly and works for everyone requires efficiently managing the intersection. It means relieving pressure where it builds, keeping traffic moving, and constantly adjusting to a rapidly shifting reality.
Take housing, for example. Private equity firms aren’t buying homes because its executives are evil caricatures (even if I personally find the practice gross); they’re just responding to market incentives. When homes are scarce and prices begin to rise, buying and renting them back is rewarded by the system. If we really want more homeowners, the answer is to build more homes — and that means changing the rules that are keeping supply limited.
What’s in the way? Complex layers of well-intended regulations that no longer work with our modern world: restrictive zoning laws, procedural chokepoints, environmental review processes designed for a different era, and local veto points that lets a few individuals block what the many need. Neighbors show up to oppose apartments next to subdivisions. Rules originally meant to prevent harm become tools to prevent anything happening at all.
When the consumer side is stuck at a perpetual red light and the producer side cruises on through, the equilibrium is broken. Government can’t shrug and say, “Those are the rules.” The job of governance is to fix the lights — and if that requires revising rules that once made sense but no longer work, that’s not sacrilege. It’s good stewardship. When rules no longer serve us, we change them.
The Point of Abundance
Abundance politics starts with a simple observation: whether left, center, or right, people broadly experience the same material stressors. When you take inventory of your real-world anxieties, I’d bet culture-war items aren’t at the top — if they make the list at all. You’re probably thinking:
“I’m graduating soon, AI is replacing entry-level jobs, and no one in power seems to have a plan or even care about the problem.”
“I want to buy a house, but there’s nothing I can afford. Rates are high, listings are few and far between, and I’m losing bidding wars for fixer-uppers.”
“I work full-time — more than full-time — and I still need a roommate to make rent.”
The common theme is a sad realization: the American dream no longer feels real. Into that void rush outrage, doomscrolling, and nihilism. Abundance is the counter: a governing posture that builds instead of barricades — more homes, more transit, more energy, more productive capacity — so ordinary people can actually live decent lives.
For a deeper dive, I highly recommend you read Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson (I’m not sponsored and this is isn’t an affiliate link. I just really believe in their ideas). The core idea isn’t partisan, it’s practical. It focuses politics on things actually affecting people: lower costs, better services, faster building, and dignity in daily life. Common desires among all Americans. That’s the politics we need to revive — not because it gives us our regular dose of outrage dopamine, but because it delivers the very things that made the American dream possible in the first place.
Please feel free to reach out if you have questions or just want to chat! Links to my other platforms are available below:
Substack: https://www.unaligned.sh
Twitter: https://x.com/just_becs
Email: rebecca@unaligned.sh