Book Review: Klein, E., & Thompson, D., (2025), Abundance, Profile Books

This short book (220 pages) discusses modern politics, particularly from a US perspective, and California-based examples feature heavily. The book offers a critique of the ways that liberals have governed and thought for the past fifty years. The two authors, Klein and Thompson, are journalists working for The New York Times and the Atlantic respectively. They claim that society shall not be able to solve its problems with a supply-only focus. To gravitate towards abundance, the authors identify a long list of policy issues to ease so-called blockages when it comes to value creation in society. To rely on conventional market-based supply factors is perhaps not enough!

However, this book does not represent a “swing towards socialism”. On the contrary, many of the blockages the authors discuss are linked with what has become over-regulation, thereby slowing down speed, particularly when it comes to project implementation.

The book discusses ways to cope with societal value creation, when seen through five complementary “lenses” (grow; build; govern; invest; and deploy). While being US-centric, as noted, the book does nevertheless have a much broader relevance. Governmental (over-) regulation appears to slow things down in many economies. In the EU, for instance, key processes seem to be implemented at an increasingly slower pace, none the least due to excessive regulation. The former head of the European Central Bank and former Italian Prime Minister, Mario Draghi, recently wrote a report suggesting a dramatic reduction in most regulation, for instance. In Norway, a new book, Landet Som Ble For Rikt, written by the former head of McKinsey Norway, Mr. Bech Holte, comes up with many of the same conclusions. The search for a revised political agenda, with less blockages so as to achieve more growth and abundance, seem to be central in many places. Abundance is therefore highly relevant more broadly, not merely in a US context.

One final introductory observation. The authors quote a large number of researchers who have come up with ways to tackle business for societal value creation. We shall not refer to any of these here in this short review, but merely refer to the book, for those interested.

A starting premise is that society needs to invest more than what it needs. The challenge of course is that such interventions – “investments” – must be wise. Governments may be both the “problems” as well as the “solutions”!

Here are four key issues that the authors seem to particularly emphasize when it comes to growth. First, cities seem to be particularly important when it comes to this. And, cities are typically focused on particular sectors, such as New York when it comes to finance or San Francisco/Silicone Valley when it comes to technology. This brings us to the second issue, namely that you need to locate business in cities where the best talents are when it comes to particular industries. Walmart, for instance, headquartered in Arkansas, located its e-commerce business in the San Francisco area. This subsequently became a huge success, second only to Amazon.

Cities play two major roles in particular. They spearhead innovation and they enhance mobility.

Our discussion regarding innovation started in 1962 with Rachel Carson’s book, Silent Spring. An abundance of housing is essential to enhancing mobility. Cost of housing is critical, but even if housing is rather expensive, competent elites seem willing to move to these areas. We see, for instance, that housing is particularly expensive in California!

Focusing now on build, the second issues the authors dig into. Here there are another four issues to be highlights, all to do with energy. There must be enough energy! The first task would be to convert the energy coming from the burning of fossil fuels, so as to minimize emissions. High-speed rail systems for transportation may also be effective when it comes to curtailing emission – less cars on the road, less air traffic! But construction of such systems has come more or less to a standstill in California, in contrast to, say, in Japan and France. The main reason is the excessive negotiation process, coupled with legal actions. Generalizing this, we see that productivity in the construction sector is falling, seemingly largely due to a growing abundance of regulation and paperwork.

There are often particular coalitions put in place to get specific tasks done, frequently labelled lobbying. We see, for instance, that the elderly, as a group, have become relatively more influential. But these types of activities must be legitimate and there should be accountability. We can often see a lack of accountability, even though legitimacy might be high, such as the nation’s commitments to CO₂ emissions reduction.

Let us now consider governing. As a start, governments often seem to have imposed so many regulations, calls for permits, etc., that things slow down. When government funding is called for the construction of new housing projects, for instance, bureaucratic delays due to often excessive reporting and permitting, typically leads to higher expenses also, in addition to misspent time. Such delays may, in the end, lead to society forgoing some options which otherwise might have been attained. Delays can be particularly expensive!

Thus, governments should increasingly focus on making choices, and getting things done! Speed is a priority, and speed is gained not only through dismantling excessive regulations, but perhaps even more through inventions, doing things in a smarter way! Governments may play important roles here, more than merely regulating! The authors discuss how the mRNA vaccines were developed largely without government funding, as it was seen as too risky! American science increasingly seems to have become biased against the very thing that might drive progress: taking risky decisions!

Governmental institutions, such as the National Science Foundation (NSF) or the National Institute of Health (NIH) appear to have become increasingly more conservative, with biases against novelty, risk an edgy thinking. The authors propose the recreation of idea factories, such as those we had when there was a competition to be the first to land on the moon. Experimenting seems to be particularly important here! To say it another way, a readiness/willingness to invest in more innovative ways is to be called for!

The fifth and final dimension, deploy, seems to represent, in many ways, a summary of the book. A central argument is that while the US looks to be at the forefront when it comes to spearheading more basic scientific progress, the implantation side of this often seems to be lacking. Accordingly, the authors recommend that technology be taken more seriously. There should be a strong shift towards such implementation, to “build what we vest”, the authors state. The government should clearly support implementation, while, of course, not losing track of the importance of inventions either. To be a “bottleneck detective” so as to speed things up seems important. The experience of the speedy introduction of COVID vaccines comes to mind, namely for the government to commit to purchase a number of items upfront, so-called “advance market commitment”, or AMC. Government might thus become a more active agent of innovation. To make a choice of focus seems fundamental. For instance, while the US government appropriately seems to want to stimulate its country’s advance over China when it comes to AI, to stimulate the development of data centers so that many effective uses of AI can be more easily made, also seems important. But this requires the availability of ample energy. Is the US government sufficiently focusing on new, clean, electricity generation? (Wind, water, solar, nuclear, …).

In conclusion, a new political order seems to be called for in order to bring economies back in high gear to generate more wealth and abundance. This might imply a combination of less regulations, which could slow things down excessively! More focus on investing in supporting technologies, particularly on implementation, and perhaps most importantly, political leadership that can be more action-orientated than excessive debates and largely juridical processes. Paradoxically, while much of the “speeding up” intended consequences put in motion by the liberals (US focus; conservatives in Europe) seem to have led to more of opposite, i.e., slowdowns, a new “abundance agenda” may have to be staked out in order to ease the blockages we fear. This might counterbalance the slide towards more scarcity.

This reviewer finds the book, Abundance, to be highly relevant. As we know, President Trump may have come up with an agenda which contains many unpredictable, even erratic, sides (foreign policy; health; …). While much of this clearly seems to be inappropriate, there are also elements of shifts in government policies intended to speed things up, dismantling blockages (bidding procedures; various regulations; …). In this reviewer’s opinion, this might be welcomed. As indicated in the beginning of this review, similar dismantling of bureaucratic dysfunctionalities seem to be taking place in other parts of the world too, such as in Europe. My sense is that this book should be a “must read”, perhaps by politicians above all!