Noah Smith at Noahpinion:
The debate over abundance liberalism unleashed by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson’s book has, so far, been pretty lopsided. On one hand, you have the abundance liberals themselves, who walk on eggshells to avoid offending the sensibilities of people to their left, in the hope of building a big tent. On the other side, you have a collection of Warrenite progressives and Bernie-faction leftists who simply assume that the abundance liberals are just a bunch of deregulators, and excoriate them for being corporatists and ignoring the dangers of billionaires and oligarchy and such.
Many things frustrate me about this debate. One is that most of the progressive critics of the abundance idea appear not to have actually read Klein and Thompson’s book; they lazily assume it’s all about deregulation, when in fact Klein and Thompson spend more time calling for building up state capacity and the power of the bureaucracy. Another frustrating thing is that the progressive critics seem to assume that their preferred ideas — such as antitrust — are alternatives to abundance, when in fact they usually don’t conflict, and sometimes complement each other.
But what frustrates me most is that by insisting on degrowth over abundance, progressives are hurting themselves much more than they’re hurting any billionaires, oligarchs, or conservatives.
More here.
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