The Case for the Abundance Network

@thisismattbell recently wrote up a pitch for the Abundance Network:

The movement seems to be driven by progressive technocrats who recognize that many past Democratic policies have had highly dysfunctional results.

Much of what they write sounds good. According to their website, their stated principles are as follows:

Supply-side liberalism. When incumbents capture the policy process, they constrain the supply of key goods (e.g. housing, clean energy, transportation infrastructure, doctors, good schools). Our current political system exacerbates this by making it easy to say No to new supply and hard to say Yes.
State capacity. To fix our problems we need to improve our government's ability to get things done. Winning elections and passing legislation is a start, but real outcomes require effective government operations and implementation. We built the Golden Gate Bridge in 4 years. Today it takes a decade to build a bike lane.
Outcomes as North Star. Real world outcomes are very hard to achieve. We need to relentlessly pursue outcomes and not be satisfied with press releases, speeches, even elections and legislation. We can applaud intermediate milestones because the value chain of social change is long. But real world outcomes are what make the difference in people’s actual lives.
Enlightenment Values: Our society is big and complex. We all want to live secure and dignified lives, but people should be able to define flourishing broadly. To build a society that works for everyone, we need to embrace pluralism. We also need to approach public policy questions with humility & curiosity—hard problems are hard! Dogma won’t get us where we want to go."

More on their specific proposals at their blog Modern Power

In his pitch for the cause, Matt writes:

Abundance favors deregulation so that it's easier for individuals to build housing, start and operate businesses, and provide low cost medical care.

That sounds great! It would be wonderful if Abundance Democrats reduce zoning regulations, eliminate rent control, and make it easier to start and run a business in California.

However, Abundance also favors increasing state capacity so that the government can effectively provide high quality services (eg quickly issuing building permits) to its citizens.

This doesn't sound so great.

Weren't the Democrats of the past similarly well-intentioned?

What will the Abundance movement do differently so that the new "state capacity" doesn't result in the same dysfunction that previous increases in "state capacity" caused:

(None of this is to say the Republicans are much better--they have their own, somewhat different, pathologies.)

I think it has a lot to offer moderate Republicans who want deregulation, high individual freedom, and a business-friendly environment.

If the Abundance movement wants to

succeed in reducing dysfunctional government
receive more support from the libertarian right

I recommend that they spend some time studying the literature on "public choice" economics, the branch of economics that applies economic theory to governance:

For many on the libertarian right, opposing coercive government is also an ethical stance.

Abundance Democrats would be able to market themselves better if they spent more time understanding the libertarian approach to ethics.

I also recommend that they do a better job of walking the talk.

As we speak, a number of Democrat-controlled AI firms are lobbying heavily for strict regulation of AI that would throttle startups and open source AI models:

https://x.com/pmarca/status/1666112772919410690
https://x.com/pmarca/status/1852102767005044823

If the Abundance movement reduces dysfunctional regulation in some industries (such as housing), but they impose dysfunctional regulation on others (such as AI), it will be hard for the libertarian right to regard that as a net win.

That said, it's great that some Democrats are acknowledging the ill effects of some of their previous policies.

And there are many on the libertarian right who will happily support them where our views overlap, such as (possibly):

housing
immigration
free trade
nuclear power

Even though imperfect, the growth of the Abundance movement is probably a good thing on net. I hope they can succeed in moving the Democratic party in a more pro-liberty, economically literate direction.