Two Cheers for Abundance: Tech Policy and the Politics of Growth

Over the last year, the Abundance movement has gained traction in American political discourse. Driven by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson’s book of the same name, Abundance challenges the progressive left to focus on overcoming scarcity by rebuilding America’s capacity to build. The framework breaks down in places, and its prescriptions should not be accepted uncritically.

But from a center-right perspective, particularly in the tech policy space, there is much to like about the authors’ diagnosis of what has gone wrong in American policymaking and in their insistence that the solution is to remove obstacles to growth. Two pieces of the Abundance thesis stand out. First is its refreshing optimism: The authors place significant faith in growth and innovation as the key drivers to fix America’