I listen to both Ezra’s and Derek’s podcasts regularly and was pretty familiar with the outline of “Abundance” the concept from Klein mulling over his thoughts over the past four years on the Ezra Klein Show. I’m broadly sympathetic to the aims of the book but I felt like Abundance fell short of crafting the most convincing argument for “a liberalism that builds.”

I don’t know if the felt lack of insight from the book is because I listen to the authors on a weekly basis or if the book was aimed at a wider audience who have been less exposed to these ideas. Regardless, I wish they had focused a bit more attention on explaining why an Abundance agenda will be difficult politics.

The “Build” chapter glosses over safety regulation pretty quickly without engaging at all with how workplace accidents can become media sensations or the real the tradeoffs that would need to be made to make safety regulations less onerous.

In “Invent”, much of the focus is on how the NIH and the American academic establishment let Katalin Karikó and her research on mRNA vaccines slip through the cracks. While the $450 million Stimulus/DoE loan that Tesla recieved is mentioned, the similar grant paid to Solyndra before the company went bankrupt never is. Wanting government to be less risk averse is a good aim that I support, but taking on risk and uncertainty does lead to a higher likelihood of undesirable outcomes. There’s a political communication problem in helping the public understand that a single failed company in a startup program doesn’t indicate waste or foul play.

The specific DoE program that funded Tesla and Solyndra made it into the black by 2015, but beyond the economics of this one program, the ways in which it supports American businesses should be accounted for separately. Tesla very likely wouldn’t be where it is today without that Stimulus loan, and I think that’s worth at least half a dozen Solyndras.

A specter hanging over the book is that the authors seem to be advocating for something that on the surface has the same goals as Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy’s Department of Government Effeciency had when it was announced after the election. This book is both timely and ill-timed — the authors have had to spend a lot of time in interviews distancing themselves from DOGE as Musk has “deleted” federal programs and agencies left and right. I worry that any effective implementation of Abundance on the national level will be held back by negative associations with the ramifications of this push for “effeciency” that the country will be feeling for years go come.

I think Abundance is still worth reading, if only to understand its place in the recent discourse, and especially if you’re not particularly familiar with the authors or topic areas. The book is more of the beginning of the discussion rather than the final word.