Abundance is Not “Moderate” or “Progressive” and Pundits Need to Learn This

Abundance is really a radical framework that challenges all Dem party factions (and Republicans too!) and I don’t understand why pundits cannot get this

There’s nothing moderate about wanting to undo a century of federal, state, and local land use policy to 10x the rate of housing construction. Or break the labor cartels created by doctors, lawyers, and other white collar professions to push up costs for everyday consumers. Or remake America’s transportation system by building thousands of miles of high-speed rail. Or transform our energy grid with tons of new clean energy and infrastructure. I could go on—abundance envisions big changes!

In our broken polarization framework, ideas that represent a huge shift from the status quo get framed as “moderate” because they sometimes involve markets rather than state intervention. But exclusionary zoning and doctor cartels and veto-ridden planning don’t fit on the moderate-progressive spectrum, or even the left-right spectrum. They are just bad policies with massive negative consequences—namely higher costs for consumers and taxpayers—that earlier generations supported and entrenched interests continue baking into American life

The cool thing about abundance is it completely breaks the political polarization framework. Ultra-progressive NYC mayor Zohran Mamdani worked with moderate New York Governor Kathy Hochul to reform environmental laws that blocked sustainable housing and transit. Super-lefty California State Senator Scott Wiener passed the state’s biggest upzoning in history with votes across factional and party lines. Texas has exponential clean energy growth because their permitting is more chill

The abundance framework can help people who identify with any faction deliver better results. Whether it gets broadly adopted across issue areas remains to be seen because it’s still early days. The most politically developed abundance-y movement, YIMBYism, is barely a decade old. Everything else is nascent. But lawmakers are learning: Abundance-coded bills like The Road to Housing Act passed with overwhelming bipartisan majorities and support across factional lines. To me, passing historic federal legislation with support from across the Democratic Party suggests the abundance framework is doing just fine

I wrote a full article here about abundance’s impact and defiance of political polarization