Abundance - BookWyrm

Audiobook

English language

Published March 18, 2025 by Simon & Schuster Audio.

ISBN:: 978-1-7971-6860-9
OCLC Number:: 1509446896
Goodreads:: 176501336

(1 review)

To trace the history of the twenty-first century so far is to trace a history of unaffordability and shortage. After years of refusing to build sufficient housing, America has a national housing crisis. After years of limiting immigration, we don't have enough workers. Despite decades of being warned about the consequences of climate change, we haven't built anything close to the clean-energy infrastructure we need. Ambitious public projects are finished late and over budget—if they are ever finished at all. The crisis that's clicking into focus now has been building for decades—because we haven't been building enough.

Abundance explains that our problems today are not the results of yesteryear's villains. Rather, one generation's solutions have become the next generation's problems. Rules and regulations designed to solve the problems of the 1970s often prevent urban-density and green-energy projects that would help solve the problems of the 2020s. Laws meant to ensure …

To trace the history of the twenty-first century so far is to trace a history of unaffordability and shortage. After years of refusing to build sufficient housing, America has a national housing crisis. After years of limiting immigration, we don't have enough workers. Despite decades of being warned about the consequences of climate change, we haven't built anything close to the clean-energy infrastructure we need. Ambitious public projects are finished late and over budget—if they are ever finished at all. The crisis that's clicking into focus now has been building for decades—because we haven't been building enough.

Abundance explains that our problems today are not the results of yesteryear's villains. Rather, one generation's solutions have become the next generation's problems. Rules and regulations designed to solve the problems of the 1970s often prevent urban-density and green-energy projects that would help solve the problems of the 2020s. Laws meant to ensure that government considers the consequences of its actions have made it too difficult for government to act consequentially. In the last few decades, our capacity to see problems has sharpened while our ability to solve them has diminished.

Progress requires facing up to the institutions in life that are not working as they need to. It means, for liberals, recognizing when the government is failing. It means, for conservatives, recognizing when the government is needed. In a book exploring how we can move from a liberalism that not only protects and preserves but also builds, Klein and Thompson trace the political, economic, and cultural barriers to progress and propose a path toward a politics of abundance. At a time when movements of scarcity are gaining power in country after country, this is an answer that meets the challenges of the moment while grappling honestly with the fury so many rightfully feel.

5 editions

Steel Rabbit reviewed Abundance by Derek Thompson

Abun-Dunce

1 star

I borrowed this as an eBook through my local library. That way, I wouldn't have to pay for it, and no one on public transit would see me reading it. I was convinced to read this because of two reasons: 1. If you really want to criticize something, you should read it. Especially so that if someone accuses you of misrepresenting any aspect of it, you can assure them that you did, in fact, read the book. 2. It is short.

The biggest problem of the book is that it doesn't address the core issue beneath all of their lamentations about the decline in American manufacturing and 'progress'. That is: moneyed interest. Instead they claim that while there may be a common thread throughout all the deficits in American gumption they cite as examples, each case is really unique in as much as they cannot be addressed by a lack …

I borrowed this as an eBook through my local library. That way, I wouldn't have to pay for it, and no one on public transit would see me reading it. I was convinced to read this because of two reasons: 1. If you really want to criticize something, you should read it. Especially so that if someone accuses you of misrepresenting any aspect of it, you can assure them that you did, in fact, read the book. 2. It is short.

The biggest problem of the book is that it doesn't address the core issue beneath all of their lamentations about the decline in American manufacturing and 'progress'. That is: moneyed interest. Instead they claim that while there may be a common thread throughout all the deficits in American gumption they cite as examples, each case is really unique in as much as they cannot be addressed by a lack of spirit or an 'abundance' of red tape. Honestly, there's not much more to say about that. They just miss it, or choose to ignore it.

As for the actual writing and craft of the book: it reads as a precocious teen's essay. Long-winded stories used as examples to emphasize a point, repetition, jumping around. Thankfully it's not written with the intent to challenge, so like reading the transcript to a podcast, you could just zone out and let your eyes do the reading.

Don't make the same mistake I did. Don't bother reading this. Disengage from those who want to talk about this book with you, or if you really can't, watch/read/listen to a critique of this book instead.