Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

networked.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 134 posts

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

#41

Post by dralley »

tgma wrote: post #32
dralley wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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."

Fine, 98% of the population would like to see increased economic development. The point is that you would be very hard pressed to find any issue in American politics less controversial. Degrowth is incredibly fringe. You wouldn't even get 10% at a Bernie Sanders rally to agree.

Pointing to the unibomber is hardly a great way to prove the position is mainstream.

I started with your latter point because it was just so absurd. I didn't ignore "deregulation", that was what the entire rest of my comment was about.

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

#42

Post by tgma »

pj_mukh wrote: post #24
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.

NIMBY-ism vs YIMBY-ism isn't some margin difference. It's Klein's whole thesis.

It was not me who characterized the respective ideologies with those simplified labels. I don't characterize either of them with those labels to sensibly debate the point.

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

#43

Post by tptacek »

rayiner wrote: post #33
tptacek wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Even podcast Klein is open about this. It's a point he uses to motivate (or alarm) Democrats. I don't think your critique here is on point.

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

#44

Post by ilrwbwrkhv »

I gave this criticism to Peter Thiel a long time back that he complains about. We were promised flying cars but all we got is 140 characters and yet the startup that he has is basically a chartjs version of a database with an aggressive sales strategy like Oracle. Not exactly world changing now and that is the problem with most of these critics of society, just like movie critics. They can make a great argument over why movies or in this case society is bad but they cannot actually create a better society.

Same with Marc Andreessen who has never actually had a successful startup. Bizarre isn't it?

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

#45

Post by pj_mukh »

tgma wrote: post #42
pj_mukh wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NIMBY-ism vs YIMBY-ism isn't some margin difference. It's Klein's whole thesis.

It was not me who characterized the respective ideologies with those simplified labels. I don't characterize either of them with those labels to sensibly debate the point.

You're calling a President hammering every nail with a Tariff hammer and who wants every neighborhood to use zoning to sue property rights out of existence but calling it "deregulation", who's using simplified labels here?

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

#46

Post by Panzer04 »

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.

Its interesting to consider the effects. Assuming you must live in a house, you actually lose nothing in a devaluation.

If you own outright, all houses being cheaper means you can buy exactly as much house as you already owned if you sold.

If you don't own, houses being cheaper lets you buy more house.

Houses being cheaper relative to everything else means that if you sold your house you can buy less of other stuff with that money, but given you need a home anyway you've not actually lost anything in a fundamental sense. It's probably a bit too abstract to convince people to look at it this way though, and realistically you are losing value relative to everything but housing.

It's overall just a short-term mindset, sadly. Most people derive the majority of their income from things unrelated to property, so cheaper property lets them buy more house than otherwise regardless.

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

#47

Post by tgma »

dralley wrote: post #41
tgma wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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."

Fine, 98% of the population would like to see increased economic development. The point is that you would be very hard pressed to find any issue in American politics less controversial. Degrowth is incredibly fringe. You wouldn't even get 10% at a Bernie Sanders rally to agree. Pointing to the unibomber is hardly a great way to prove the position is mainstream. I started with your latter point because it was just so…

It might be absurd to you, but clearly not absurd to the authors who have tried to address some of these explicitly. In any case, I leave it between you and the authors to hash out a left-accelerationist agenda—I am out of here as a simpleton reader.

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

#48

Post by tptacek »

velcrovan wrote: post #17

From another good review of the book: > “One of the personally amusing aspects of reading Abundance is that it kept reminding me of a two-hour discussion I had with Ezra Klein in 2019 about Medicare for All. […] In our discussion, Klein balked at making Medicare for All the centerpiece of a Democratic health care agenda because he thought it was not politically practical. […] At one point in the discussion, he asks h…

And I mean, again, here's the crux of the opposition Abundance gets from the left.

The project of the Progressive movement is a decisive takeover of the state and national Democratic parties, which is what they'd need in order to get single payer, their signature policy, passed.

The notion that there's an alternative long game for the Democrats to play, that instead of enacting a massive (and controversial) change to the health care system, the party can instead just build a track record of demonstrable competency, is a problem for their movement. Why pay attention to whether the party governs well where it holds power today (that is: in essentially every major population center in the country)? That's just a distraction from the real goal, which is reworking the entire system.

Breunig is saying the quiet part loud, which is pretty typical for him.

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

#49

Post by [deleted] »

pj_mukh wrote: post #45
tgma wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was not me who characterized the respective ideologies with those simplified labels. I don't characterize either of them with those labels to sensibly debate the point.

You're calling a President hammering every nail with a Tariff hammer and who wants every neighborhood to use zoning to sue property rights out of existence but calling it "deregulation", who's using simplified labels here?

[deleted]

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

#50

Post by hollerith »

ilrwbwrkhv wrote: post #44

I gave this criticism to Peter Thiel a long time back that he complains about. We were promised flying cars but all we got is 140 characters and yet the startup that he has is basically a chartjs version of a database with an aggressive sales strategy like Oracle. Not exactly world changing now and that is the problem with most of these critics of society, just like movie critics. They can make a great argument over…

>Marc Andreessen who has never actually had a successful startup.

He was a founder of Netscape. But maybe you meant for your statement to apply only to his career as a VC.

Post reply on HN