Imagine a world where the scarcity of modern American society is a conception of the past. A world where the things people need most — housing, clean water and energy — are not only easily available, but properly supplied and cheaply produced. In this image, the climate crisis has been solved and artificial intelligence has been integrated into our daily lives to maximize efficiency, reducing civilian workload and allowing for shorter workdays. A utopian vision if there ever was one. 

This is the world enviably described in the introduction to “Abundance,” co-authored by journalists Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson. What follows is a comprehensive understanding of how liberal governance can best achieve such a vision, and the fundamental problems it has created for itself in the process of chasing this reality.

Klein and Thompson, liberal-leaning journalists for The New York Times and The Atlantic, respectively, fault a liberalism too preoccupied with procedural processes and complex webs of regulatory policy that overshadow and negate intended outcomes. 

Deriving this thesis from an extensive collection of studies, books and articles, “Abundance” pieces together an inclusive explanation for the inefficiencies of 21st-century American governance, while positing the startling notion that the solutions that worked for the problems of the past have become obstacles when trying to create solutions for the present. 

Despite being densely populated with economic analysis and references to historical precedent, Klein and Thompson have written a book that is straightforwardly categorized through five hyper-focused chapters, making for a neat and accessible read.

They argue that regulation is essential in holding the government to an accountable standard and ensuring that public funds are directed into the right projects. However, in the swift and robust environmental movement of the late 1960s and early ‘70s, environmental lawyers like Ralph Nader raised a war of litigation against a federal bureaucracy doing too little to protect the earth. The aftermath, they say, has ensured that the implementation of nationwide legislation must be excessively vetted and evaluated by numerous parties. 

As a barrage of crises surrounding climate, housing, energy and affordability continues to unfold during the 21st century, Americans need a government willing to act decisively on large-scale initiatives to address the most existential issues of our time. The pair say layers of regulatory measures like permitting, environmental review standards and repeated auditing — all intended to produce equitable and sustainable legislative roll-outs — have bogged down the ability for public services to easily implement large-scale projects.

Klein and Thompson repeatedly cite the turbulent history of California’s high-speed rail construction as the foremost example. A project passed by statewide ballot in 2008 and later championed under former governor Jerry Brown, high-speed rail was proposed to better connect Californians by means of high-speed trains covering the state. Despite completion of a Los Angeles to San Francisco track having been promised by 2020, construction has only just begun on a track connecting Merced to Bakersfield this year.

Klein and Thompson refer to this fiasco as the epitome of the current status of our suffocating regulatory system: a legalistic culture that values process over results.

So how can liberals pass the broad, necessary legislation that will meet the growing demands of a growing nation and a decaying climate? 

Klein and Thompson raise this dilemma while providing an astonishingly simple, almost revelatory, solution. In order to address the problems of the present, we need a politics of abundance for the future. They argue that liberals have become defenders of a government and a set of legal procedures that are slow, costly and eventually ineffective. 

For our government to properly address the needs of its people, it must be designed to welcome wide-ranging change that increases output and embraces new technology. That means a government that makes its nucleus a policy of growth and innovation; one that spurs large-scale production across all levels, with fundamental changes in the way we procure green energy, develop new affordable housing, implement new modes of transport and execute legislation. 

The United States cannot grow if it is unwilling to embrace change, and “Abundance” serves as a call to action for a liberal party that is unable to advance progressive agendas. It proposes a radical change in thinking around American liberalism that has deep resonance in our current cultural and political divide. As Democrats struggle under President Donald Trump 2.0 to coalesce around a collective vision of the future, Klein and Thompson chart a clear path forward. 

As a reader, it’s hard not to feel as though what you’re reading isn’t cracking some kind of code. Klein and Thompson describe “a new theory of supply” politics as an answer to a conservatism that works to make government fail and a liberal legalism that refuses to allow government to work. 

In the plentiful vision that “Abundance” puts forth, the deficits of the 21st century have been reversed, and an embrace of forward-thinking and effective governance allows for the infrastructure necessary to create the future of our dreams.