By Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson.

Got this book as a Christmas gift and have looked forward to reading it.

Abundance is a frame of thinking where we have “abundant” cheap housing, cheap energy, a clean environment, and in general folks are happy. In the last 3-4 decades states and cities that are under Democratic leadership aren’t delivering on this. The book argues that Democrats bought into the Reagan Administration’s idea that government should offer minimum regulation and the private sector can solve everything, but what really needs to happen is smart government regulation.

Highly recommended!

Here are some notes I wrote down on each chapter.

1. Growth

Cities are great at creating wealth but aren’t delivering. We aren’t building enough housing. In 2023 San Francisco had less than 1 housing permit per 1k people. Seattle had about 2. However, Austin, TX had around 30!

What is the cause of homelessness? Unemployment has an inverse relationship. Drug use has 5% relationship. The main cause is the cost and availability of housing.

Around 1971 Reagan as governor of California passed CEQA, which allowed for environmental review. This helped to stop housing projects.

2. Build

“Industrial animal agriculture … is a moral stain upon modernity”.

Climate policy is a political loser but we have to do it.

Electrify everything!

“What matters is what gets built.”

California’s “no speed” rail. Environmental and legal delays. “We got so good at stopping things that we forgot how to build things.”

Construction workers in 2020 produce less than those in 1970. No one thing is reason why. Construction today is much safer. They didn’t do 15 min warm up calisthenics back then. Construction has to involve a lot of stakeholders.

The prevalence of lawyers in America is unusual. 4 times as many as France.

3. Govern

Tahanan housing in San Francisco used private funding to avoid regulations, was built much quicker/cheaper.

It should not be that hard to serve the public.

A government that chooses is a government that works. “In the absence of focus, absurdity reigns.”

Better metrics… number of days to clearance on new housing projects. Number of building permits. Average cost per unit.

4. Invent

mRNA vaccine as an example of power of invention. We can choose to take invention more seriously.

Unsolved problems are harder now.

Current government is “biased against young scientists and risky ideas”.

USA spends less on R&D per capita over last 60 years.

“Too many scientists are all looking at same few trees.”

Scientists can spend half their time on paperwork.

It’s hard to research NIH effectiveness.

We should have a National Invention agenda, with a “well-tempered” balance of experiments.

1. Deploy

Elevators cost 4x more in the US than in Switzerland.

One person discovered penicillin, but it took the US committee on Medical Research and thousands of people to make it a usable reality.

“Eureka myth”. To build what we invent takes a lot of tinkering, scaling.

Wright’s law… for every quadrupling of production, costs fall by 1/3.

Push vs pull funding.

Focus is a choice, unfortunately it usually takes a crises.