Abundance

Equipped with a half bottle of red wine from the hills near Carcassonne, I have just started reading Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson’s Abundance, a book that has sparked a lively debate after being published three weeks ago in the United States.

Opening with a truly ecomodernist vision of the future, one of rewilding and a world beyond scarcity, I find myself nodding along with much of what the authors are saying, even if some details seem to be more about coalition-building than internal consistency. In any case, I think the authors are correct in focusing a lot on housing and how unaffordable housing has become for many people due to zoning regulations, creating an ever-widening gap between market insiders and outsiders that directly fuels political resentment and cynicism. So far, I am surprised to see how little they seem to have to say about schools and other forms of social investments though, given how central they are to the task of achieving broadly shared economic growth.