[baron816]

> Engineers, he explains, are driven to build while lawyers are driven to argue, and obstruct.

This is kind of the criticism that’s provided in Abundance. American Progressives intentionally made it extremely difficult to build anything by giving everyone a veto to block anything they don’t like.

There’s a lot of people on the Left (Center Left, at least) who want to revisit this approach and make it easier to build things again.

I also want to note that they point out that the current administration has a policy of scarcity. Even if we get rid of a lot of regulation, tariffs, deportations, and high government deficits make it hard to buy materials, hire labor, and finance projects.

[jacquesm]

The USA has two right-of-center parties, and no credible left-of-center party. That they call it left and right is a massive misdirection and should not fool anybody, but unfortunately it does.

[trhway]

>American Progressives intentionally made it extremely difficult to build anything by giving everyone a veto to block anything they don’t like.

It is reaction to the old situation when interests of a small guy were completely tramped by the big guys - ie. the situation of private profits, public losses. And we can't go back to it.

The first step to move forward is to give everybody, whose interests are negatively impacted by a project, a stake in the project's benefits/profits. Ie. private profits - private losses, and public losses - public profits.

[regularization]

1% of people make decisions of what to build and how in any real sense. A movement ("abundance") to exclude the other 99% from having a say is not a left movement, the left is the opposite of that. Only in the US where class relations are so lopsided on the side of the heirs over the workers could that idea be called left.

[righthand]

The bigger issue might be confusing “progressives” with “NIMBYs”. There are plenty of people across the political spectrum that want to build more as well as people blocking the building. Progressives particularly are aggressive on the desire for more housing. Literally to the point that Nyc and other large cities see huge handouts to developers (even when those developers continuously under deliver on affordable housing).

[davidw]

The NIMBY/YIMBY divide really doesn't fall along traditional political lines. There are very progressive people who are raging NIMBYs, as well as very conservative NIMBYs. There are both progressive and conservative YIMBYs too.

[linguae]

It depends on the progressive, however. Yes, I’m hearing more calls to build from progressives. However, for a long time between the 1960s until the past few years, there were two drivers of NIMBYism that progressives championed: (1) local control of neighborhoods and (2) environmentalism. The first was a reaction to urban development plans of the 1950s and 1960s that fundamentally reshaped neighborhoods, but often in ways that did not consider the residents of those neighborhoods. For example, San Francisco once had a historical Japanese American and African American district named The Fillmore with plenty of Victorian homes, but this was largely demolished in the 1960s and replaced with housing projects and a widened Geary Blvd. While I’m still on San Francisco, there were plans in the 1950s to build a network of freeways criss-crossing the city. This was deeply unpopular.

Unpopular plans to dramatically reshape urban cities led to “freeway revolts” (organized, grassroots opposition to freeway projects, which sometimes succeeded) and increased local input over planning. The second was brought on by environmental crises in the 1960s, such as badly polluted rivers and the famous oil spill near Santa Barbara. California, especially its coastal areas, was quite affected by both drivers of NIMBYism, and this became the dominant way of thinking from the 1970s onward.

Local control over neighborhoods sounds reasonable, but unfortunately it’s led to neighborhoods being museum pieces that do not scale upwards to meet demand, thus incentivizing urban sprawl. Restricting development had also significantly boosted the property values in those areas. However, urban sprawl directly conflicts with environmental goals, since it requires more transportation infrastructure and more energy to move people across longer distances than across shorter distances. Thus, we end up with situations where homes get built in far-flung exurbs whose politicians support growth (until the towns get large enough to where some residents want to halt growth to “preserve our quality of life,” thus pushing development to the next closest area friendly to development), environmentalists blocking road-widening and other infrastructure-improving efforts in an attempt to stop/discourage the sprawl, and NIMBYs blocking the construction of denser housing near job centers that could have provided affordable alternatives to exurban housing.

This has been the story of California since the 1970s, and the obscene housing prices and unsustainable mega-commutes are a result of this. Thankfully more people are seeing the consequences of 50 years of broken housing policy, and we’re finally seeing some efforts, even if they’re baby steps, to address this.

[metabagel]

It’s not progressives. It’s NIMBYism, which is cross-party.

[andy99]

Canada is like this (possibly worse). Nobody ever wants to do the ostensible thing that they say they are doing, if that makes sense.

Take some kind of government procurement, say to buy a truck. The truck ends up being a pretense for all sorts of political things like regional development or righting some perceived historical inequality, doing an environmental study, subsidising some industry that's not doing well. Nobody cares about actually getting the truck.

I can imagine a world where they just buy the best truck and don't try to make it a pretext for wealth redistribution and solving all the worlds problem, but I've never seen it.

Multiply this by every single things the government spends money on (and in canada the oligopolies as well) and you see why nothing happens.

[fooker]

> There’s a lot of people on the Left

Great, I guess then it won’t be too difficult to name ..say.. five prominent politicians who have made this stance clear?

[davidw]

The governor of Oregon, Tina Kotek, has been very pro-housing. She liked my 'legalize housing' hoodie so much she wanted a photo with it: https://bsky.app/profile/tinakotek.bsky.social/post/3lkea36k...

[majormajor]

In California Gavin Newsome has talked it and signed some stuff loosening CEQA, we'll see what happens with SB79. As for four more - just grab some of the authors/supporters of SB79.

[lkey]

The abundance folks are Reagan Era neolibs and conservatives. They want to 'revisit' an imagined past. The reality is they wish to retvrn to is the exact moment Reagan and Clinton broke the New Deal. We must first remake a Deal to break it once more, they're skipping steps.

Their proximate goals are to break the remaining unions and environmental protections we have, in service of the 'free market' which definitely is real and important. They want to give up on 'social issues' like access to reproductive care, medicare for all, and supporting the marginalized.

The speaker list includes the AEI, The Manhatten Institute, R street, Niskanen Center, etc...

American Leftists and Progressives do not hold power and the 'barriers' that abundance claims exist were put in place by those with power, not AOC or Zohran or whatever local cabal they point to in the book. Cherry-picking Austin as their exemplar is worth its own comment, but the book is frustrating across the board.

Klein has missed every moment of late and I expect the trend to continue.

Regardless, if your primary critique on a lawless and deeply authoritarian administration is their 'policy of scarcity', then you have utterly lost the plot. Mussolini made Italians grow and eat rice to induce a feeling of scarcity, there is no doubt, but that is not anyone's primary critique of his tyranny.

[thrance]

The "Left" has never held any meaningful power in this country. Blaming the Progressives for this sad state of affairs is not only completely wrong, it's extremely disingenuous.

If you're speaking of the Democrats, they've been following the Neoliberalist playbook to the letter for decades: deregulate businesses, defund social programs, reduce taxes. This (the housing crisis) is the direct result of their half-competent technocratic stewardship of the economy. (And let's not spare the actually malevolent Republicans from sharing the blame in turning this land from an actual country into a billionaire's playground).

This "Abundance" movement is to be taken as a rebranding of the same tired and destructive Neoliberalist policies, and nothing else. It is ported by the same old people and politicians that have been slowly running this country to the ground. There is absolutely nothing new to be found in their manifestos: deregulate businesses, defund social programs, reduce taxes.

Housing can either be affordable or an investment vehicle, but not both at the same time. Actual leftists understand this very basic premise, but the astroturfed Abundance "movement" remains blind to it. Left-wing populism is slowly gaining ground in the face of an extremely complacent and ineffective Democratic establishment, and Abundance is a last-ditch effort to sold democratic voters on the same garbage they've been eating since the 1980s.

[pnutjam]

The one thing Democrats and Republicans always agree on is "No Progressive's allowed".