The abundance movement walks a thin tightrope. Zoning and land-use regulations are valuable. Community input matters, and government should retain meaningful authority over what gets built where. The problem is not that these mechanisms exist; it is that they have metastasized beyond their original purpose, giving both institutions and neighbors veto power they were never meant to hold.
Abundance sometimes reads as though deregulation is the destination rather than a tool. Push too far in that direction, and you hand siting power back to utility executives and developers whose accountability runs to shareholders, not the public. That arrangement has a track record, and it is not a good one. But the answer to bad regulation is not its absence; it is better government, wielded with more discretion and less deference to whoever shows up to object.
The movement needs to reckon with this. You cannot build a liberalism that builds while flinching from the idea that someone, somewhere, with real public authority, has to make a hard call and be held to it.
This piece does a terrific job of highlighting the unintended consequences of a progressive pre-occupation with protecting citizens against the abuse of public authority. But its call for a better middle ground straddles two very different visions:
(i) One vision is hierarchical- give someone the authority to decide. (As in, to quote the article: "When three doctors with different specialties hover over a patient during an operation, one has to prevail in moments of disagreement or risk a fatality.")
(ii) A second vision is more horizontal - empower small groups to decide collectively, in ways that make the whole greater than the sum of its parts. (As in: "When three military commanders have different ideas about how to pursue victory in the heat of battle, they either settle on a shared strategy or potentially yield to the enemy."
The contrast in Why Nothing Works between Hamiltonian and Jeffersonian approaches to bureaucracy directs attention to (i). However, a vibrant literature on more "socially-embedded bureaucracies" points to the value of (ii) - and thus of cultivating norms within bureaucracies that are adaptive & coalitional, rather than ones that are hierarchical/legalistic and arms-length/adversarial. See the piece below for an overview, anchored in some of the main conceptual and empirical contributions. https://workingwiththegrain.com/2025/12/08/achieving-abundance-from-vision-to-action/
I am somewhat perplexed by this argument: why isn't the answer "staff of the executive branch of government decide how to build, and have significant authority to do so", just as they have authority to enact other laws? Why do you feel construction will be caught between Moses-or-the-void (after ad hoc procedural obstruction mechanisms are removed), when other government functions aren't?
I think the point of this article is to advocate for less red tape in decisions regarding housing construction (although I'm not sure). Assuming that's the case, let me point to Houston as an example of what happens when a city has essentially no meaningful zoning laws. In Houston, it's common to see people living directly across the street from chemical plants and refineries. So obviously, there must be a balance between allowing developers to build whatever they want wherever they want, and the need for more housing. Furthermore, the issue is much more complex. Zoning and other impediments to new housing are only part of the problem. Like almost everything these days, the costs of building a house has risen faster than earnings. For instance, compare the cost to build a modest 1,500 sq. foot house in the U.S. In 2011, which was $127,500 – $142,500; in 2016 it was $157,500 – $172,500; in 2021 it was $202,500 – $232,500; and in 2026 it is $243,000 – $300,000 (https://www.builderleadconverter.com/). So we see that cost to build a house has almost doubled in the last 15 years (91%). Now let's look at wages. in 2011 the average wage was $42,980; in 2016 it was $48,642; in 2021 is was $60,575; and in 2026 it is about $74,000 (SSA). So we see that from 2011 to 2026, wages have only increased by about 72%. This doesn't even consider the increased cost of financing. You can make similar comparisons to the cost of cars, food, etc., all of which serve to further erode the funds the average prospective home buyer has available for housing. Now consider how changes in the work force have made the process of building a new house more difficult: Data from the Home Builders Institute (HBI) shows that more than 40% of the current construction workforce is near retirement, and the average age of a skilled tradesman has risen (HBI). You don't need an economist to tell you what the effect ICE has had on this labor force and the cost of their labor. Now consider the construction materials supply chain. Any builder will tell you that materials must now be ordered months in advance and logistical software must be used to manage bottlenecks, whereas 15 years ago a builder could easily manage with a phone call to a local building supply store and a set of blueprints. I'll spare you the details concerning the effect private equity has had on home prices, availability, and the conversion of many homes to rentals. Even after having somehow acquired a house, a family must now contend with the increased cost of ownership, including in many markets a staggering increase in property taxes. So we see that like most issues plaguing society today, there is no silver bullet, and the problem has increased in complexity with the passage of time. Band-Aid approaches aren't going to address the problem. But there is one, clearly definable association between all of these issues: society's relationship with the consolidation of "big money," algorithmic housing cartels, and corporate monopolies.
Your housing/infrastructure distinction here maps cleanly onto the Hamilton/Jefferson framework from Why Nothing Works. In that sense, housing abundance is fundamentally Jeffersonian (pushing power down to the property owner), while infrastructure abundance is fundamentally Hamiltonian (empowering centralized authority to make hard tradeoffs and get things done over the objections of property owners). What's interesting is that housing and infrastructure are both "abundance" and usually opposed by the same blocking coalitions, but they're actually quite different fights — different in who's empowered, who's disempowered, and in failure modes. I wonder if this could be structured as an argument that abundance, properly understood, is a version of the Jeffersonian-Hamiltonian balance you argue for in Why Nothing Works.
Name names!
The abundance movement walks a thin tightrope. Zoning and land-use regulations are valuable. Community input matters, and government should retain meaningful authority over what gets built where. The problem is not that these mechanisms exist; it is that they have metastasized beyond their original purpose, giving both institutions and neighbors veto power they were never meant to hold.
Abundance sometimes reads as though deregulation is the destination rather than a tool. Push too far in that direction, and you hand siting power back to utility executives and developers whose accountability runs to shareholders, not the public. That arrangement has a track record, and it is not a good one. But the answer to bad regulation is not its absence; it is better government, wielded with more discretion and less deference to whoever shows up to object.
The movement needs to reckon with this. You cannot build a liberalism that builds while flinching from the idea that someone, somewhere, with real public authority, has to make a hard call and be held to it.
- Stephen
This piece does a terrific job of highlighting the unintended consequences of a progressive pre-occupation with protecting citizens against the abuse of public authority. But its call for a better middle ground straddles two very different visions:
(i) One vision is hierarchical- give someone the authority to decide. (As in, to quote the article: "When three doctors with different specialties hover over a patient during an operation, one has to prevail in moments of disagreement or risk a fatality.")
(ii) A second vision is more horizontal - empower small groups to decide collectively, in ways that make the whole greater than the sum of its parts. (As in: "When three military commanders have different ideas about how to pursue victory in the heat of battle, they either settle on a shared strategy or potentially yield to the enemy."
The contrast in Why Nothing Works between Hamiltonian and Jeffersonian approaches to bureaucracy directs attention to (i). However, a vibrant literature on more "socially-embedded bureaucracies" points to the value of (ii) - and thus of cultivating norms within bureaucracies that are adaptive & coalitional, rather than ones that are hierarchical/legalistic and arms-length/adversarial. See the piece below for an overview, anchored in some of the main conceptual and empirical contributions. https://workingwiththegrain.com/2025/12/08/achieving-abundance-from-vision-to-action/
I am somewhat perplexed by this argument: why isn't the answer "staff of the executive branch of government decide how to build, and have significant authority to do so", just as they have authority to enact other laws? Why do you feel construction will be caught between Moses-or-the-void (after ad hoc procedural obstruction mechanisms are removed), when other government functions aren't?
I think the point of this article is to advocate for less red tape in decisions regarding housing construction (although I'm not sure). Assuming that's the case, let me point to Houston as an example of what happens when a city has essentially no meaningful zoning laws. In Houston, it's common to see people living directly across the street from chemical plants and refineries. So obviously, there must be a balance between allowing developers to build whatever they want wherever they want, and the need for more housing. Furthermore, the issue is much more complex. Zoning and other impediments to new housing are only part of the problem. Like almost everything these days, the costs of building a house has risen faster than earnings. For instance, compare the cost to build a modest 1,500 sq. foot house in the U.S. In 2011, which was $127,500 – $142,500; in 2016 it was $157,500 – $172,500; in 2021 it was $202,500 – $232,500; and in 2026 it is $243,000 – $300,000 (https://www.builderleadconverter.com/). So we see that cost to build a house has almost doubled in the last 15 years (91%). Now let's look at wages. in 2011 the average wage was $42,980; in 2016 it was $48,642; in 2021 is was $60,575; and in 2026 it is about $74,000 (SSA). So we see that from 2011 to 2026, wages have only increased by about 72%. This doesn't even consider the increased cost of financing. You can make similar comparisons to the cost of cars, food, etc., all of which serve to further erode the funds the average prospective home buyer has available for housing. Now consider how changes in the work force have made the process of building a new house more difficult: Data from the Home Builders Institute (HBI) shows that more than 40% of the current construction workforce is near retirement, and the average age of a skilled tradesman has risen (HBI). You don't need an economist to tell you what the effect ICE has had on this labor force and the cost of their labor. Now consider the construction materials supply chain. Any builder will tell you that materials must now be ordered months in advance and logistical software must be used to manage bottlenecks, whereas 15 years ago a builder could easily manage with a phone call to a local building supply store and a set of blueprints. I'll spare you the details concerning the effect private equity has had on home prices, availability, and the conversion of many homes to rentals. Even after having somehow acquired a house, a family must now contend with the increased cost of ownership, including in many markets a staggering increase in property taxes. So we see that like most issues plaguing society today, there is no silver bullet, and the problem has increased in complexity with the passage of time. Band-Aid approaches aren't going to address the problem. But there is one, clearly definable association between all of these issues: society's relationship with the consolidation of "big money," algorithmic housing cartels, and corporate monopolies.
Your housing/infrastructure distinction here maps cleanly onto the Hamilton/Jefferson framework from Why Nothing Works. In that sense, housing abundance is fundamentally Jeffersonian (pushing power down to the property owner), while infrastructure abundance is fundamentally Hamiltonian (empowering centralized authority to make hard tradeoffs and get things done over the objections of property owners). What's interesting is that housing and infrastructure are both "abundance" and usually opposed by the same blocking coalitions, but they're actually quite different fights — different in who's empowered, who's disempowered, and in failure modes. I wonder if this could be structured as an argument that abundance, properly understood, is a version of the Jeffersonian-Hamiltonian balance you argue for in Why Nothing Works.