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Move fast, break things: A review of Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson

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Re: Move fast, break things: A review of Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson

#31

Post by decimalenough »

vvpan wrote: post #13

I've come to loath Mark Andreessen as just an out-of-date reactionary who cannot take it that culture around him has moved on. Apparently he is also big hypocrite: > Two years after Marc Andreessen published “It’s Time to Build,” The Atlantic’s Jerusalem Demsas uncovered that Andreessen’s town of Atherton, CA had planned to do just that — build multifamily homes! — but was met with ferocious opposition from, well, a…

Marc Andreessen also has nothing whatsoever to do with the book, except the reviewer's dubious assertion that it contains some of the "techno-utopianism of Marc Andreessen".

Re: Move fast, break things: A review of Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson

#32

Post by tgma »

dralley wrote: post #30
tgma wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both advocate deregulation and increasing economic growth. Of course you can debate the difference at the margin ad nauseam, something the authors are doing more authoritatively than you and I could on every single podcast on the planet, trying hard to differentiate themselves from libertarians that preceded them decades ago. I remain unconvinced.

> both advocate for ... increasing economic growth Fucking everyone does. That's like saying my moral code is the same as Ted Cruz's because we both think murder is wrong. Trump wants to throw out most environmental laws and drill baby drill, Ezra wants to prune the ones that prevent us from actually saving the environment, which he highly values. These are worlds apart, you can't just toss them both in the "deregula…

> Fucking everyone does

No. Many people don't. Lots more don't have it as a priority. Ted Kaczynski and all the climate-change crowd come to mind.

Also you conveniently deleted my first word "deregulation."

Re: Move fast, break things: A review of Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson

#33

Post by rayiner »

tptacek wrote: post #28
rayiner wrote: post #20

I like Ezra Klein a lot. But what’s odd about his Abundance theory is that he can’t bring himself to admit that nowhere in the U.S. comes closer to what he’s describing than Ronald Reagan or Richard Nixon’s California. The tragedy of muscular-government urbanism today is that it’s stuck in a political coalition with toxic empaths that will fill your nice public spaces with drug addicts, criminals, and illegal aliens.…

Have you read the book? This is not a point he avoids, at all.

I have not, just listened to him on some podcasts. I started to insert a parenthetical caveating that but it was unwieldy.

Re: Move fast, break things: A review of Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson

#34

Post by energy123 »

davidw wrote: post #14

I just started reading it, but the housing part of it is spot on, something I know very well from years of working to try and make my city and state's housing situation better. The effects of the housing shortage are very real and something that can absolutely be worked on at the local and state level. Not enough housing means: * Longer commutes, which means more CO2, less time with friends and family, more stress, a…

For people who don't want to live in density, the counter intuitive thing is that it'll be easier to buy a single detached house if you allow more condos, especially 2/3 bedroom units, because there will be less competition. It's the pigeon hole principle.

Re: Move fast, break things: A review of Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson

#35

Post by energy123 »

rayiner wrote: post #20

I like Ezra Klein a lot. But what’s odd about his Abundance theory is that he can’t bring himself to admit that nowhere in the U.S. comes closer to what he’s describing than Ronald Reagan or Richard Nixon’s California. The tragedy of muscular-government urbanism today is that it’s stuck in a political coalition with toxic empaths that will fill your nice public spaces with drug addicts, criminals, and illegal aliens.…

Ezra Klein will be the first to admit that housing policy in Austin, Texas is closer to his vision than anywhere in California. He has spent the last few years criticizing California for their terrible local governance and partly blames their terrible governance for the recent election loss at the federal level.

Re: Move fast, break things: A review of Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson

#37

Post by [deleted] »

tptacek wrote: post #26
pj_mukh wrote: post #9

“ Okay. So the abundance agenda calls for an expert-laden, big-government apparatus to build high-speed rail, and a lean skeleton crew that outsources all the key logistics and execution layers to the private sector for a mass vaccination campaign. It’s difficult to detect a usable framework here.” Having read about 4 different critiques of the book, this maybe closest to a well thought out one. However, it still giv…

The "Abundance Agenda" doesn't demand an "expert-laden big-government apparatus" or a harnessing of private enterprise; it demands that if we're going to spend tens of billions on an HSR project, that the project actually work. The review jazz-hands around the fact that Klein is obviously right about California HSR, and he's obviously right about Operation Warp Speed.

[deleted]

Re: Move fast, break things: A review of Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson

#38

Post by kuboble »

energy123 wrote: post #34
davidw wrote: post #14

I just started reading it, but the housing part of it is spot on, something I know very well from years of working to try and make my city and state's housing situation better. The effects of the housing shortage are very real and something that can absolutely be worked on at the local and state level. Not enough housing means: * Longer commutes, which means more CO2, less time with friends and family, more stress, a…

For people who don't want to live in density, the counter intuitive thing is that it'll be easier to buy a single detached house if you allow more condos, especially 2/3 bedroom units, because there will be less competition. It's the pigeon hole principle.

But this is exactly the issue.

It's not the wannabe home owners who are protesting but the current home owners who are rightly afraid that it will immensely reduce value of their homes.

Re: Move fast, break things: A review of Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson

#39

Post by Panzer04 »

I think the crux of the matter is, as the author states: "even a positive-sum world contains winners and losers"

The core of the problem is that we don't want to trample the losers (lest those tools be used against us), but at the same time, someone is often going to come worse (from their perspective) from some very worthwhile changes. In some cases, it seems like we can just use money to compensate them, but inevitably it's going to be difficult to price that, or it'll get abused. I don't rightfully know how to address that.

It's easy enough to justify paying for compulsory acquisitions - but in more abstract circumstances it's unlikely we want to be paying existing homeowners to stop opposing removal of zoning regulations.

I don't know, its a complex topic. If one asked me I'd probably splash out a lot more money in direct compensation for aggrieved parties rather than the current status quo - it would not surprise me if people would accept even relatively token amounts relative to the theoretical benefits, given otherwise there's no difference to saying yes/no to them. Would be an interesting experiment.

Re: Move fast, break things: A review of Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson

#40

Post by davidw »

kuboble wrote: post #38
energy123 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For people who don't want to live in density, the counter intuitive thing is that it'll be easier to buy a single detached house if you allow more condos, especially 2/3 bedroom units, because there will be less competition. It's the pigeon hole principle.

But this is exactly the issue. It's not the wannabe home owners who are protesting but the current home owners who are rightly afraid that it will immensely reduce value of their homes.

Here's a specific hearing that I attended where exactly that dynamic played out

https://bendyimby.com/2024/04/16/the-hearing-and-the-housing...

A room full of angry, wealthy, older people who showed up at 11AM on a weekday to stop homes for people who doubtless earn less than they do. And in that case, they were successful, sadly.

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