Abundan/ce

• Abundance

  • Overview

    • Abundance is a condition in which people can obtain enough of the goods, services, infrastructure, and opportunities needed to live and act well. In politics, an abundance agenda asks how institutions can make essential things easier to build and provide.
    • The word names both a material condition and a political project. A promise of abundance is not evidence that a technology will make every scarce resource plentiful or that its benefits will reach everyone.

  • What can become abundant

    • Greater productive capacity can make some goods cheaper or more accessible. Housing, energy, health care, transportation, and scientific discovery each depend on distinct technologies, institutions, and constraints.
    • Lower costs can increase demand. Jevon's Paradox describes cases where improved efficiency makes a resource cheaper to use and total use rises, potentially offsetting some expected savings.

  • Abundance and prices

    • More supply can ease prices in the market where supply expands, but a technology's productivity gains do not automatically reduce every price. Demand, bottlenecks, market power, and distribution shape who benefits.
    • A local wealth shock can raise bids for a scarce asset such as housing even while another sector experiences falling production costs. Those effects can coexist; neither alone describes the overall price level.

  • A political account

    • Person/Ezra Klein/Book/25/Abundance by Person/Ezra Klein and Person/Derek Thompson argues for a politics that can build more housing, clean energy, and other public goods, and examines institutions that limit that capacity.
    • Simon & Schuster's publisher page for Abundance describes the book's argument and identifies both authors.