Most of what I’ve read about Abundance is a general distrust for their arguments.
Alex Bronzini-Vender says abundance didn't work in practice in Colorado.
The abundance agenda’s fundamental sleight of hand is that, by unleashing the private sector from burdensome consumer protection, labor standards, and zoning regulations, American consumers might recover their lost purchasing power and living standards without the state directly tampering with workplace standards or wage levels. The private sector would supply more goods at lower costs—if only it could. That hasn’t panned out in Colorado, and it’s unlikely to elsewhere. (thebaffler.com)
David Sirota says the project is a scam because all it does is deregulate corporations without addressing medical care or the social safety net.
David Sirota, the founder of Lever News and a former Bernie Sanders speechwriter, summed up one stinging progressive critique of the whole project: “Abundance™ being defined as ‘kill zoning laws and corporate regulation’ but not ‘give everyone decent medical care’ — that’s the tell, and you’re the mark.” It’s true that this is not a focus among the advocates of abundance. Relaxing zoning laws won’t do anything to bring us universal health care or bolster the social safety net. It may not even, in the short term, do enough to create affordable housing. (nymag.com
He also argues that they ignore the real obstacles to efficiency and abundance: corporate corruption driving artificial scarcity.
[T]he takeaway from the broadband tale is that the biggest obstacles to efficiency and abundance are often corporate power and its corrupting influence on our politics — factors typically downplayed or unmentioned in the Abundance Discourse. … We could pass all the federal permitting reforms Klein and Thompson could dream of, but if powerful fossil-fuel interests continue to call the political shots, we’ll never achieve the clean energy build-out we desperately need. … In many of those areas, there’s no actual scarcity of structures that could be living space. It’s just that corporations and oligarchs hoarding wealth and land aren’t being compelled by zoning and tax laws to open up the space for housing.
As someone who’s actually read the book, have these criticisms been handled and no one noticed, or would they need to publish a revised edition?
If you’re down, absolutely.
What I’m getting so far (from the reviews and your comment) is that deregulation could incentivize more housing construction, but there’s a massive asterisk that Klein and Thompson are avoiding.
My opinion so far is they either earnestly believe in the neoliberal promise that “if you just get out of the way, the free market can solve anything” or (more cynically) they’re seeding the terrain edify buzzwords for a Democratic comeback campaign.
Either way, you’ve convinced me to put it on my to-read list.