What is Abundance?

I’ve been writing about Abundance recently, and in the process, some have asked what I mean. There are books on this, and I could point to those, but I thought it was a fair question that deserved a shorter, personal answer.

The Philosophy: More with Purpose

You could start with the word itself, of which I’d choose the definition: “plentifulness of the good things of life.” The usefulness of picking apart definitions has its limits, but words can reveal something not explicitly said. To me, what’s useful here is that while "abundance" connects with the idea that more is better, it also conveys a sense of judgment in deciding what constitutes the "good things." It’s not a blind "more" for the sake of more, but more with purpose. The goal is to identify what is needed, and then ensure we have more than that quantity, so that scarcity is no longer the default condition.

This focus on balance distinguishes Abundance from full-blown ideologies that often have a singular, unchecked priority. Libertarianism elevates liberty, and communism elevates equality. As goals, both have value, but as absolute priorities, they lead to nonsense. Liberty has never been clearly defined philosophically, and while equality is easy to define in terms of slices of a pie, its meaning in a complex society is left wanting. No one can live on liberty or equality alone. Abundance, in contrast, doesn’t attempt to define a singular goal but acknowledges a set of general ones, appreciating both the value of markets and the necessity of state capacity and effective governance. It retains support, for example, for healthcare as a public good that markets alone cannot provide.

The Agenda: A Pragmatic Political Project

The Abundance “movement” or “agenda” is a political project with specific policy changes in mind. It proposes policies to allow for more housing, more energy production, and more energy distribution. These policies are designed to get us out of our own way by deliberately avoiding vetocracy and ineffective regulations.

While it's important to know what these policies are, it's also useful to understand that for me, and I think many others, this list is incomplete and better thought of as examples. There’s a conceptual middle between the goals and the specific policies that has room for more. To assume any one person can fill in all those details would be folly. The policies of Abundance aren’t written in stone, but it’s possible to talk about what they are today:

• Housing: Zoning should not obstruct building things people need. While single-family homes are and will continue to be the primary form of housing in the US, single-family zoning should not be used to ban other options. When an area demands more housing, providing it via denser forms should be allowed by default. Parking requirements shouldn’t exist; buildings and businesses should build what they need. If a city can’t provide the incremental growth in housing needed to keep pace with demand, it prevents people from participating in its economy.

• Energy: Energy should be abundant, and the infrastructure that supports it should not be outlawed. Preferences, incentives, subsidies, and even penalties are all fair game, but we should not accept a situation in which all options are blocked. Our priority should be enabling clean energy and the necessary infrastructure for clean energy. The fossil fuel lobby is still creating obstructions and a general mess, as evidenced by the energy parts of the “One Big Beautiful Bill”. The story was different four years ago, but today, those obstructions are less meaningful than other obstructions.

• Manufacturing: US manufacturing should expand. While this will bring jobs, it shouldn’t be pursued as a jobs program. The priorities should be productivity, efficiency, and scale. Automation should be encouraged, not blocked, with an even higher priority placed on high-complexity, high-value manufacturing.

• Research and Education: These are critical to abundance. Because their full value can’t be monetized by markets, we should expect markets to underfund, and a great return to society from public support. At the same time, we must maintain a continual dialogue about ossification within these institutions and remind them of their purpose when they become resistant to necessary change. Public institutions must be effective and efficient, which requires different mechanisms. You cannot build strong institutions by tearing them down, but you also cannot have institutions using your trust to avoid change. Change is disruptive, and at a personal level we are inclined to avoid it. That inclination unchecked, motivates institutions that protect their own place, over achieving their intended purpose.

This agenda must also be adaptable. Rural abundance, for instance, has been called for as a necessary perspective. Energy abundance is universally valuable, but abundant density is illogical in a rural context. Urban areas thrive on the density of connections, commerce, and housing. Rural areas thrive on abundant land. Without urban density, rural land has to be shared more broadly. As much as the current political environment pits these perspectives as enemies, it’s more appropriate to think of them as yin-and-yang—inseparable allies that require balance.

A Note on Cities and Governance

This urban-rural dynamic is a good place to talk about a specific challenge: the narrative around "Blue Run Cities." There's a common story that they are ineffective and failing. I’m sympathetic to parts of this, but it also misstates reality. Governing a city is a challenge, and we should be careful not to attack those who try without acknowledging this, nor should we accept the caricature of cities as horrible, crime-ridden places.

But we should also be willing to admit that cities could be run better. There are clear policy areas where the status quo is non-optimal, and where political leaders and interest groups, instead of fixing these problems, drown them in nonsense. The reality is that cities have many inherent advantages in supplying things people want and need, and the tragedy is that they are wasting much of that potential. This is especially true of American cities like Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York, where the cost of housing and lack of responsive zoning describe this wasted opportunity.

There is sometimes an instinct that the best way to spur change is to describe a crisis. I think that’s ineffective here. Sending the message that cities are horrible places to live does more to promote the motivation to flee and disinvest than it does to improve and make them more vibrant. You can’t improve cities by assaulting them. You improve them by using more rational methods of governance, supporting those who will use those methods, and engaging with them directly.

On a personal note, I think there’s a lot of great things about cities, and while I know many will continue to disagree, I have no qualms about making that case honestly, and letting people decide. I’d love to see more demand to live in cities. I’d also like cities to realize more of their potential. These two are implicitly symbiotic.

I find this perspective important to highlight in the context of Abundance. A number of its policies focus on cities. Without understanding that many of us love our cities, it can be confusing why we want to work so hard to improve them. Lacking that understanding also makes it easier to believe the narrative that we’re pursuing policies to force everyone into cities. I do want to make cities more appealing, and welcome the people that will draw in.

The Neoliberalism Question: A Case Study in Mislabeling

In the course of writing about this, I realized how unproductive the term "neoliberalism" is. A common critique describes Abundance as “repackaged neoliberalism.” Responding to this forced me to learn the history of the word, and I discovered it’s mostly useless. Very few people ever used the word to describe themselves. Those who did, like Charles Peters in his 1983 "A Neoliberal's Manifesto," saw it as a balanced "Third Way" between laissez-faire capitalism and Marxist communism, advocating for a strong state that wasn't an enemy to markets.

So, why was I ready to equate neoliberalism—a term last used by individuals who argued for balance—with an ideology without balance? Because that’s how the term is used today. The critics, who look rather similar to the critics of Abundance, took control of the term and turned it into a strawman. The version used today is a caricature used to group together policies as diverse as Ronald Reagan's, Barack Obama’s, and even Deng Xiaoping's, and classify them all as an absolute belief in perfect markets. It has become a pejorative that almost defies definition.

So, is Abundance Neoliberalism? Yes, no, and definitely not.

• Yes, in that it carries the original spirit of balance and collaboration between markets and a state.

• No, because the term was never descriptive enough, the policies are different, and there is no connective tissue between then and now.

• Definitely not, in the sense that the modern, pejorative version has no descriptive value.

This vulnerability is why choosing a label matters. Consider one of our most enduring political labels: the New Deal. It’s not particularly descriptive of its policies either, but the name itself contains the idea of balance. A "deal" is an agreement between parties, a new social contract. That framing made it resilient and hard to caricature. "Neoliberalism," in contrast, was abstract. It didn’t describe what was new about neoliberalism, leaving it an empty vessel that critics could easily fill with their own meaning, ignoring its original intent.

The Conundrum of Balance

The history of neoliberalism teaches a valuable lesson: it’s hard to communicate balanced positions. They are easily caricatured by ideologues. Balance also involves nuance and adjustment. An ideologue can, in theory, remain consistent. A balanced viewpoint, however, must adapt as the world changes. These adjustments can be misconstrued as mistakes, but they are essential. While a balanced approach will inevitably include errors, the sum of its outcomes will be better than the rigid application of an ideology that refuses to acknowledge reality.

An important detail about balance in this context to take note of, it’s not a singular point. You do not automatically accept a midpoint between two extremes. Rather, you reason individually. Understanding the weaknesses, and strengths of two systems allows you to see where to use, or favor one or the other, in a way that an ideology doesn’t allow for.

Why Abundance?

I share a feeling with others that the Democratic Party is often ineffective. While I’ve never considered myself a partisan, I have profound disagreements with the Republican Party, especially since its turn toward populism and its denial of climate change under Donald Trump.

This leaves me with an interest in the Democratic Party succeeding. In my mind, the best way for it to do that is to be effective at achieving goals I agree with. Abundance offers a path for this. It is a pragmatic, builder-oriented framework focused on solving tangible problems. It seeks win-win scenarios, embraces balance, and aims to create a society where the good things in life are plentiful for everyone. That is a project worth writing about.