The buzzwords of the past few weeks are AbundanceEzra Klein and Derek Thompson's new book is about why we can no longer build things in America and how it destroys our country. (Klein is a co-founder of Vox and is now a columnist for the New York Times. Thompson writes for the Atlantic.)
AbundanceThe core papers of the article are almost impossible to dispute. It takes a daunting amount of money and time to build bridges and trains in the United States. This is clearly inevitable as it is not true elsewhere in the world. And because they can't build, progressives can't provide the safety net, climate action, affordable housing that they say they want.
The central paper is difficult to discuss, so most of the discussion about the book was about the authors. (Are they just trying to sneak deregulation into a democratic platform? Are they willing to talk to a new righteous personality?
As for me, I enjoy this book and agree with 90% of it. But there is one serious concern that I have never seen anyone else raise it.
Learn to love small government
I have found myself thankful for the past few years, especially for the existence of federalism.
Here in the US, elections are held in states rather than central government, making it much more difficult for White House authoritarians to support elections.
It is the states, not the central government that run the schools, and in order to change the schools' policies, the central government must either persuade the local people, or at least bliss them. Because the government does not directly control healthcare providers, there are few measures to prevent insurance coverage for unconsensible procedures, such as transitions and abortions. I think it's a very good thing, as the state and federal governments do not have the power to effectively order neighborhoods to bulldozer for the highways.
Of course, it's far from all the benefits. Federalism also allows injustice to continue in the past when there was sufficient national support to abolish them. If that were left to the states, I think many states would not have legalized gay marriages.
Part of the reason the word has such a bad reputation on the left is the frequency that was used to prevent the horrific racism of the Southern Citizenship Act from becoming a public concern. And as Abundance Exploring in detail, delegating the system to local control generates a locally popular but disastrous policy. Few people want more housing next doors, but few are happy with the state that currently houses America's biggest city.
It has a very serious drawback. But the advantage of our sometimes Kludgy Federal System is the backstop against tyranny that I have been very grateful for these days.
A government where the government has more power is good if it is, or at least most, doing good. But if you think government power is frequently used to hurt you and people like you, you rediscover that you prefer a system with low state capabilities, delegation to local control, and a lot of rejection points.
Is weaker than strong?
Or maybe not. In fact, there is argument that if the system has too many rejection points, it actually empowers the dictator rather than create a barrier.
You can argue that people are sympathetic to behavior like doge destruction or hacking. And at that point, why did you quip the exact rules break? In this view, state capabilities and the rule of law are strengthened against each other. Paralysis is unsustainable and the way it bursts, as we may see now, would usually be ugly.
I may find myself persuaded by that argument, but I would love to see it made. You really don't find it Abundanceis one way to clarify what was written primarily to affect potential democratic regimes. Certainly, the book was originally intended to be published mid-presidential elections in the summer of 2024.
But instead came out in March 2025. This comes months after the second Trump administration, which appears to be even darker than the worst fears of many. Abundance It is a vision for the future of a large government, and all the news we see from the White House now appreciates government restrictions.
I think if the Trump administration had more state capabilities, things would get worse. And I think we should count the failures that brought us to this stage and the dislike of using it effectively. Find a way to build it for sure. But when our enemies wield it, we are happy that it has.
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