Confirmation bias the thread.
Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson on the abundance agenda and liberals - Housing 🏠, Energy ⚡️, Infrastructure 🚊, Transportation 🛣️, etc
- Thread starter ☑︎#VoteDemocrat
- Start date
Confirmation bias the thread.
@Pull Up the Roots
www.multifamilydive.com
The city of Sacramento, California. simonkr via Getty Images
At the same time, while Texas charges less than $1,000 per unit for municipal impact and development fees on average, California charges $29,000 per unit — though this number can vary widely by municipality.
The report also found that California’s affordable housing projects are more expensive to build than its new market-rate housing and more than four times the cost of market-rate housing in Texas. RAND attributes this to the strict requirements for affordable developments in the state, including above-market wages for labor and large architectural and engineering fees.
At least one multifamily developer has chosen to leave its California markets in recent years. In July 2024, Atlanta-based Wood Partners announced it would not pursue any new opportunities on the West Coast. CEO Joe Keough did not provide a reason for the exit.
RAND’s policy recommendations for California include:
“This report provides previously unavailable data and analysis to assist policymakers and stakeholders in developing a better understanding of the high costs of housing production in
Housing more than twice as expensive to build in California as in Texas
Longer project timelines and more regulations contribute to the difference in cost, according to a new report.
Housing more than twice as expensive to build in California as in Texas
Longer project timelines and more regulations contribute to the difference in cost, according to a new report.
Mary Salmonsen
The city of Sacramento, California. simonkr via Getty Images
Dive Brief:
- The cost of building new multifamily housing is 2.3 times higher in California than it is in Texas, and 1.5 times more expensive than in Colorado, according to an analysis of over 100 projects compiled by Santa Monica, California-based policy research institute RAND.
- The report, which covers projects built between 2015 and 2024 in California, Texas and Colorado, attributes the gulf in construction costs in these states to differences in state and local policies, which in turn affect project timelines and development fees.
- Other factors, particularly in California, include higher land prices, more expensive labor, and seismic safety standards. California is the second most expensive U.S. state for housing and rental costs, second only to Hawaii, and has seven of the 10 most expensive municipalities in the nation, according to the report.
Dive Insight:
On average, the time required to see a market-rate project from start to finish in California is 48.9 months — 27.9 months for predevelopment and 21 months for construction, according to the report. This is 22 months longer than the 27-month average time required in Texas.At the same time, while Texas charges less than $1,000 per unit for municipal impact and development fees on average, California charges $29,000 per unit — though this number can vary widely by municipality.
The report also found that California’s affordable housing projects are more expensive to build than its new market-rate housing and more than four times the cost of market-rate housing in Texas. RAND attributes this to the strict requirements for affordable developments in the state, including above-market wages for labor and large architectural and engineering fees.
At least one multifamily developer has chosen to leave its California markets in recent years. In July 2024, Atlanta-based Wood Partners announced it would not pursue any new opportunities on the West Coast. CEO Joe Keough did not provide a reason for the exit.
RAND’s policy recommendations for California include:
- A policy similar to a state law in Texas in which local jurisdictions must approve or deny a project proposal within 30 days.
- Laws to speed up construction timelines.
- A review of the environmental and wage requirements for housing that are raising costs.
“This report provides previously unavailable data and analysis to assist policymakers and stakeholders in developing a better understanding of the high costs of housing production in
This is what @Pullup Pampers I mean @Pull Up the Roots wants you to defend:
www.inquirer.com
A rendering of the senior affordable apartment building slated for 3230-38 Diamond St. in Philadelphia.PHA
The Philadelphia Housing Authority has been trying to build dozens of affordable homes and apartments in Strawberry Mansion since 2019.
The project spans 14 city-owned lots in the neighborhood and is backed by federal, state, and local funds. But because the project has taken so long to break ground — unfolding over three presidential administrations — some of the funding may now be in peril.
Gregory Hampson, PHA’s vice president for capital projects, told the zoning board on April 22 that inflation had caused a $5 million increase in the project’s budget.
“If we do not [build] this project, we’re going to lose the $13 million Low Income Housing Tax Credit that we’ve been awarded,” he said. “And in light of some administrative changes that we’ve seen, we don’t know that this funding will ever come back.”
The housing authority and its development partner, Pennrose, argue that further delay could kill the project as tariff-driven inflation marches on and federal housing aid cuts are threatened by the Trump administration.
Pennrose and PHA’s plans have been subject to intensive neighborhood scrutiny, the clashing priorities of two successive City Council members, and multiple Zoning Board of Adjustment hearings. Even with all that vetting and the support of most local political actors and community groups, the project has not received final approval.
Over six years, the project’s cost has ballooned even as the number of units has shrunk. Political and regulatory hurdles created with good intentions have repeatedly stymied the project.
Academic research on public engagement has found that participants in meetings generally aren’t representative of their larger communities: They are older, more likely to be homeowners, and more likely to oppose new development.
Its an “ad hoc process that isn’t really representing community interests because there’s an unrepresentative group of people who typically participate in these hearings,” said Katherine Levine Einstein, professor of politics at Boston University and author of Neighborhood Defenders.
Gathering of input also eats up a lot of time as the development process drags on to that point where “we’re also not getting housing that the city of Philadelphia desperately needs,” said Einstein.
The struggles of this project point to the larger barriers that face Mayor Cherelle L. Parker’s administration and the Philadelphia Housing Authority, which both have ambitious plans to expand the city’s housing options in coming years. Multiply this experience across the city’s housing industry, and the scale of the challenge becomes clear.
Winning support from Council and neighbors
PHA issued a request for proposals on the site in early 2019 and selected Pennrose as its development partner later that year.
Because the project is being built on city-owned land, the district Council member is required to introduce legislation to move property from the city’s control to the developers. That meant they had to first meet the requirements of former City Council President Darrell L. Clarke, and his chosen Registered Community Organization (RCO), the Strawberry Mansion Community Development Corp.
Those priorities were hashed out over the course of multiple neighborhood meetings between 2020 and 2024 and negotiations with the Strawberry Mansion Community Development Corp.
To win support of Clarke and the community, they agreed to restrict the scope of the project. Among other concessions, the number of units was reduced from 77 to 57, plans for duplexes were scrapped in favor of single-family townhomes, and the size of a senior apartment building was reduced while moving it from 33rd and York Streets to 3230-38 Diamond St.
Finally in 2023, a resolution introduced by Clarke was sent to City Council to transfer the city-owned land to the housing authority.
Former Council president Darrell Clarke (left) and Councilmember-elect Jeffery “Jay” Young in City Council chambers in 2023.Tom Gralish / Staff Photographer
New Council member, new neighborhood group
Six months later, when Clarke was succeeded by Jeffery “Jay” Young, the main hurdle left for the developers was minor approvals from the city’s Zoning Board of Adjustment (ZBA).
Zoning Board approval is fraught with delays under the best circumstances, especially since the pandemic. But in this case, the new Council member also made his displeasure with the project known, which further postponed its hearing.
During his first year in office, Young chose a new group to replace Strawberry Mansion Community Development Corp. as the coordinating Registered Community Organization (RCO).
That group is Strawberry Mansion Community Concern, which is led Young’s staffer Bonita Cummings and is known for opposing most new housing in the neighborhood. (She retired in December but was working in Young’s office when he made her group the coordinating RCO.) The developers unsuccessfully sought to meet with Cummings, delaying the zoning board meetings further.
When the hearing was finally held, the board heard supportive testimony from a variety of neighborhood groups, labor leader Ryan Boyer, a close ally of Mayor Cherelle L. Parker; a local pastor, and letters from the area’s state representative and senator.
“I strongly support this project, as we need more units in Philadelphia,” Boyer said. “It is a great project to have, and I’m firmly in support of all 14 parcels.”
But Young contends there is widespread opposition to the proposal, although when asked on April 22 to name other opponents, Cummings was unable to do so.
“At every meeting that I went to talk about this project, there was opposition to this project at open public community meetings,” Young said at the hearing.
Young specifically alleges there haven’t been public meetings on the proposed location for a 21-unit senior apartment building on Diamond Street, which was moved from York Street in response to earlier feedback from Clarke’s favored neighborhood groups.
Young did not respond to a request for comment.
Cummings, who served as a special-projects liaison in Young’s office, is more broadly critical of the project.
“Like the Tuskegee syphilis experiment, like the high-rise public housing experiment, you’re being asked today to allow us to be an experiment of low rises that will have us on top of each other in terms of the number of units that some of these locations are asking you to approve,” Cummings said at the April 22 meeting.
At the meeting, the zoning board approved many of the variances the developers needed to move forward with the project. But when the hearing stretched on so long that they were forced out of the meeting room, board members delayed approving the Diamond Street project for another week.
The project narrowly avoided being detained by yet more public engagement April 22 when the Planning Commission’s David Fecteau suggested he could postpone his testimony — and the Diamond Street project’s consideration by the ZBA — until Young and Cummings held another community meeting.
“We’ve made many, many attempts to have open public community meetings, and they’ve all been ignored,” said Alex Goldberg, the developers’ zoning lawyer. “We’ve gotten to a point where this doesn’t move forward, the project may die.”
Goldberg got his way, and the Diamond Street project was approved April 30, although the ZBA will not address the project’s final permissions until June.
Assuming no further delays, the process will have taken over 6½ years from PHA’s request for proposals and the project breaking ground.
But that’s assuming no federal funding cuts.
How many meetings does it take in Philadelphia to build 57 affordable homes? A lot.
The Philadelphia Housing Authority and developer Pennrose have been trying to get project approval since 2019. The cost has risen, and federal funding could be at risk.
www.inquirer.com
How many meetings does it take in Philadelphia to build 57 affordable homes? A lot.
A rendering of the senior affordable apartment building slated for 3230-38 Diamond St. in Philadelphia.PHA
The Philadelphia Housing Authority has been trying to build dozens of affordable homes and apartments in Strawberry Mansion since 2019.
The project spans 14 city-owned lots in the neighborhood and is backed by federal, state, and local funds. But because the project has taken so long to break ground — unfolding over three presidential administrations — some of the funding may now be in peril.
Gregory Hampson, PHA’s vice president for capital projects, told the zoning board on April 22 that inflation had caused a $5 million increase in the project’s budget.
“If we do not [build] this project, we’re going to lose the $13 million Low Income Housing Tax Credit that we’ve been awarded,” he said. “And in light of some administrative changes that we’ve seen, we don’t know that this funding will ever come back.”
The housing authority and its development partner, Pennrose, argue that further delay could kill the project as tariff-driven inflation marches on and federal housing aid cuts are threatened by the Trump administration.
Pennrose and PHA’s plans have been subject to intensive neighborhood scrutiny, the clashing priorities of two successive City Council members, and multiple Zoning Board of Adjustment hearings. Even with all that vetting and the support of most local political actors and community groups, the project has not received final approval.
Over six years, the project’s cost has ballooned even as the number of units has shrunk. Political and regulatory hurdles created with good intentions have repeatedly stymied the project.
Academic research on public engagement has found that participants in meetings generally aren’t representative of their larger communities: They are older, more likely to be homeowners, and more likely to oppose new development.
Its an “ad hoc process that isn’t really representing community interests because there’s an unrepresentative group of people who typically participate in these hearings,” said Katherine Levine Einstein, professor of politics at Boston University and author of Neighborhood Defenders.
Gathering of input also eats up a lot of time as the development process drags on to that point where “we’re also not getting housing that the city of Philadelphia desperately needs,” said Einstein.
The struggles of this project point to the larger barriers that face Mayor Cherelle L. Parker’s administration and the Philadelphia Housing Authority, which both have ambitious plans to expand the city’s housing options in coming years. Multiply this experience across the city’s housing industry, and the scale of the challenge becomes clear.
Winning support from Council and neighbors
PHA issued a request for proposals on the site in early 2019 and selected Pennrose as its development partner later that year.
Because the project is being built on city-owned land, the district Council member is required to introduce legislation to move property from the city’s control to the developers. That meant they had to first meet the requirements of former City Council President Darrell L. Clarke, and his chosen Registered Community Organization (RCO), the Strawberry Mansion Community Development Corp.
Those priorities were hashed out over the course of multiple neighborhood meetings between 2020 and 2024 and negotiations with the Strawberry Mansion Community Development Corp.
To win support of Clarke and the community, they agreed to restrict the scope of the project. Among other concessions, the number of units was reduced from 77 to 57, plans for duplexes were scrapped in favor of single-family townhomes, and the size of a senior apartment building was reduced while moving it from 33rd and York Streets to 3230-38 Diamond St.
Finally in 2023, a resolution introduced by Clarke was sent to City Council to transfer the city-owned land to the housing authority.
Former Council president Darrell Clarke (left) and Councilmember-elect Jeffery “Jay” Young in City Council chambers in 2023.Tom Gralish / Staff Photographer
New Council member, new neighborhood group
Six months later, when Clarke was succeeded by Jeffery “Jay” Young, the main hurdle left for the developers was minor approvals from the city’s Zoning Board of Adjustment (ZBA).
Zoning Board approval is fraught with delays under the best circumstances, especially since the pandemic. But in this case, the new Council member also made his displeasure with the project known, which further postponed its hearing.
During his first year in office, Young chose a new group to replace Strawberry Mansion Community Development Corp. as the coordinating Registered Community Organization (RCO).
That group is Strawberry Mansion Community Concern, which is led Young’s staffer Bonita Cummings and is known for opposing most new housing in the neighborhood. (She retired in December but was working in Young’s office when he made her group the coordinating RCO.) The developers unsuccessfully sought to meet with Cummings, delaying the zoning board meetings further.
When the hearing was finally held, the board heard supportive testimony from a variety of neighborhood groups, labor leader Ryan Boyer, a close ally of Mayor Cherelle L. Parker; a local pastor, and letters from the area’s state representative and senator.
“I strongly support this project, as we need more units in Philadelphia,” Boyer said. “It is a great project to have, and I’m firmly in support of all 14 parcels.”
But Young contends there is widespread opposition to the proposal, although when asked on April 22 to name other opponents, Cummings was unable to do so.
“At every meeting that I went to talk about this project, there was opposition to this project at open public community meetings,” Young said at the hearing.
Young specifically alleges there haven’t been public meetings on the proposed location for a 21-unit senior apartment building on Diamond Street, which was moved from York Street in response to earlier feedback from Clarke’s favored neighborhood groups.
Young did not respond to a request for comment.
Cummings, who served as a special-projects liaison in Young’s office, is more broadly critical of the project.
“Like the Tuskegee syphilis experiment, like the high-rise public housing experiment, you’re being asked today to allow us to be an experiment of low rises that will have us on top of each other in terms of the number of units that some of these locations are asking you to approve,” Cummings said at the April 22 meeting.
At the meeting, the zoning board approved many of the variances the developers needed to move forward with the project. But when the hearing stretched on so long that they were forced out of the meeting room, board members delayed approving the Diamond Street project for another week.
The project narrowly avoided being detained by yet more public engagement April 22 when the Planning Commission’s David Fecteau suggested he could postpone his testimony — and the Diamond Street project’s consideration by the ZBA — until Young and Cummings held another community meeting.
“We’ve made many, many attempts to have open public community meetings, and they’ve all been ignored,” said Alex Goldberg, the developers’ zoning lawyer. “We’ve gotten to a point where this doesn’t move forward, the project may die.”
Goldberg got his way, and the Diamond Street project was approved April 30, although the ZBA will not address the project’s final permissions until June.
Assuming no further delays, the process will have taken over 6½ years from PHA’s request for proposals and the project breaking ground.
But that’s assuming no federal funding cuts.
California high-speed rail leader pushes state to support private investment
The new chief executive of California’s embattled high-speed rail project says it is time to get serious about how to pay for it.
apnews.com
California high-speed rail leader pushes state to support private investment
The Tied Arch Bridge construction site, which will take high-speed trains over State Route 43, is shown in an aerial view Tuesday, April 15, 2025, in Fresno County, Calif. (AP Photo/Godofredo A. Vásquez)
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — A long-delayed project promising nonstop rail service between San Francisco and Los Angeles in under three hours may be able to secure the private funding it desperately needs if California agrees to pay the investors back, its chief executive told The Associated Press.
Ian Choudri, who was appointed CEO of the California High-Speed Rail Authority in August, is tasked with reinvigorating the nation’s largest infrastructure project amid skyrocketing costs and new fears that the Trump administration could pull $4 billion in federal funding.
“We started this one, and we are not succeeding,” Choudri said, describing what drew him to the job after work on high-speed systems in Europe. “That was the main reason for me to say, let’s go in, completely turn it around, and put it back to where it should have been. Fix all the issues, get the funding stabilized, and demonstrate to the rest of the world that when we decide that we want to do it, we actually will do it.”
Ironworkers with the California High-Speed Rail Authority work on the Hanford Viaduct, Tuesday, April 15, 2025, in Kings County, Calif. (AP Photo/Godofredo A. Vásquez)
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Voters first approved $10 billion in bond money in 2008 to cover about a third of the estimated cost with a promise the train would be up and running by 2020. Five years past that deadline, no tracks have been laid and Choudri acknowledges it may take nearly two more decades to complete most of the San Francisco-to-Los Angeles segment, even if funding is secured.
Funding woes
The project’s price tag now exceeds $100 billion, more than triple the initial estimate. It has mostly been funded by the state through the voter-approved bond and money from the state’s cap-and-trade program. A little less than a quarter of the money has come from the federal government.
The authority has already spent about $13 billion. The state is now out of bond money, and officials need to come up with a financing plan for the Central Valley segment by mid-2026, according to the inspector general’s office overseeing the project.
Garth Fernandez, Central Valley regional director for the California High-Speed Rail Authority, talks about the Cedar Viaduct, Tuesday, April 15, 2025, in Fresno, Calif. (AP Photo/Godofredo A. Vásquez)
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“The managers of the project were in trouble from the very beginning because they never had the financing – certainly not stable and predicting financing — that they would have needed to manage the project efficiently,” said Lou Thompson, who led a peer review group that analyzes the state’s high-speed rail plans.
Losing money from the federal government “would require a real hard rethinking of what do we do to survive the next four years,” he said.
Rail leaders are in talks with Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration and state lawmakers on what will be needed to secure private investment, Choudri said, adding that without the private sector money the state may have to take out federal loans or issue new bonds. At an industry forum in January, private investors expressed interest in the project but need some form of security, he said.
Choudri is pushing Newsom and lawmakers to consider a program that would eventually commit the state to paying back private investors, possibly with interest. That would give the state more time to cover the cost.
The Tied Arch Bridge construction site, which will take high-speed trains over State Route 43, is shown in an aerial view, Tuesday, April 15, 2025, in Fresno County, Calif. (AP Photo/Godofredo A. Vásquez)
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Some Democrats say they remain hopeful for the project’s future, but they haven’t unveiled any proposals this year in the Legislature to set aside additional funding.
Rebecca Bauer-Kahan, a Democratic member of the state Assembly, said at a budget hearing Wednesday that her constituents “overwhelmingly believe” high-speed rail spending “has been irresponsible.”
Choudri plans to provide lawmakers this summer with an updated timeline and price tag.
An ambitious vision
Choudri aims to fulfill the original vision of building a pioneering system — already common in Europe and Asia — that spurs economic growth, curbs planet-warming emissions from cars and planes, and saves drivers hours on the road.
At speeds up to 220 miles (354 kilometers) per hour, it would be the nation’s fastest way to travel by ground.
Amtrak’s Acela train transports passengers at speeds up to 150 miles (241 kilometers) per hour to major cities including New York, Boston and Philadelphia. Another rail line in Florida operating at speeds up to 125 miles (201 kilometers) per hour shuttles people from Orlando to Miami.
The Hanford Viaduct construction site is shown in an aerial view, Tuesday, April 15, 2025, in Kings County, Calif. (AP Photo/Godofredo A. Vásquez)
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Construction is underway for a mostly privately funded high-speed system to carry riders from Las Vegas to Southern California.
California’s construction is far from completion. Of the 119 miles (192 kilometers) of construction underway in the Central Valley, only a 22-mile (35-kilometer) stretch is ready for the track-laying phase, which isn’t set to start until next year.
Finishing the line in the Valley is just the first step. Next, the train has to extend north toward the San Francisco Bay Area and south toward Los Angeles. Choudri’s goal within the next 20 years is to build to Gilroy, about 70 miles (113 kilometers) southeast of San Francisco. Under current public transit, it would then take at least one more train transfer to get into the city.
Southward, he envisions building to Palmdale, 37 miles (60 kilometers) northeast of Los Angeles. From there, it takes more than one hour to drive or two hours on an existing train line to reach Los Angeles.
“In the ideal world, you can take the 500 miles, build it in your warehouse and then just drop it and everybody’s happy,” Choudri said. “But the programs are never built like that. You build incrementally and that’s what we’re doing right now.”
Doubts for the future
Critics say the project will never be completed and may leave towering and unusable infrastructure stretching through the state’s agricultural heartland. More than 50 structures have already been built, including underpasses, viaducts and bridges to separate the rail line from existing roadways for safety.
The Cedar Viaduct, designed to take high-speed trains over Cedar and North avenues and State Route 99, is shown in an aerial view, Tuesday, April 15, 2025, in Fresno, Calif. (AP Photo/Godofredo A. Vásquez)
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“We’ve now spent billions of dollars and really no tracks have been laid,” said Republican state Sen. Tony Strickland, who is vice chair of the Senate Transportation Committee.
Doug Verboon, chair of the Kings County Board of Supervisors, who has fought the High-Speed Rail Authority in court over farmers’ loss of land due to the project, said the people who should be most upset by delays are its longtime supporters.
“It doesn’t seem to me like the state government is in a hurry to finish it,” he said.
@A-dotty @Adeptus Astartes @dora_da_destroyer @Rekkapryde @Neo. The Only. The One. @the cac mamba @Uachet @Absolut @Sterling Archer @TheDarkCloud @Max Power @Pressure
Leftists in democratic run areas have fukked up. It’s time to grow up and own it.
An Abundance Reading List
An Abundance Reading List
Why are there so many obstacles to getting things done? These writers have the answer.
Francis Fukuyama
A crane, not in California. (Photo by Jarama via Getty.)
Just so you know: In addition to this column, Francis Fukuyama also writes for the main Persuasion mailing list. That means that if you don’t subscribe to Persuasion, you might miss out on receiving some of his essays!
Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson’s new book Abundance has gotten a good deal of well-deserved attention, and I would like to say up front that I am one hundred percent onboard with their argument and movement.
Their basic argument is that modern democratic countries, and particularly the United States, have created too many barriers to building things and implementing new ideas. The ability to build could help human beings live better and deal with the enormous challenges of the present, like unaffordable housing or climate change. At the present moment, the Trump administration, Elon Musk, and DOGE all seem intent on undermining the American state and reducing its capacity to govern. But at the core of Abundance’s analysis lies the observation that many of the biggest obstacles to doing things have been put in place by progressives who, while well-intentioned, have promoted counterproductive policies that have made achievement of their goals nearly impossible.
To take one example from the book, consider housing. Blue states like California, Washington, and New York have seen an enormous increase in housing prices over the past couple of generations. Conventional statistics like Gini coefficients that seek to measure income inequality understate the degree to which inequality has widened, because they do not take into account the unaffordability of housing for working-class people. No one on the salary of a schoolteacher, policeman, or fireman can afford to live in the city of San Francisco; people doing these jobs have to spend an hour or two commuting into the city from a very distant suburb.
The reason for this escalation in costs is a very simple matter of supply and demand: supply of housing in virtually every blue state has not kept up with population growth. And the reason that supply has been constrained is that liberal voters have enacted permitting and zoning rules that make new construction very difficult. In previous blog posts I’ve talked about CEQA, the California Environmental Quality Act, which gives standing to all 40 million residents of the state to sue any project, public or private, that they don’t like.
It’s not just housing that can’t be built. The phenomenon that I labeled in Political Order and Political Decay as “vetocracy” blocks everything. In the United States today, the leading producers of alternative energy are Texas and Oklahoma, red states which nonetheless have produced massive wind farms not just because of the prevailing winds, but also because of lighter permitting rules. The problem today is a failure to build transmission lines to get that electricity from where it is produced to where it is needed, like the West Coast. The time to complete a transmission line is nearly 10 years, which means that the United States will have a very hard time meeting its climate goals. And this is before the Neanderthals in the Republican Party launch their latest effort to undermine existing environmental regulation.
So, left-leaning liberals and progressives have played a huge role in crippling America’s ability to implement the policies that these groups say they are in favor of. At this point, there is substantial literature on how this came about, and the following is a short reading list of works that explain how we got here.
Perhaps one of the clearest statements of the problem is a Michigan Law Review article by Nicholas Bagley on the “procedure fetish.” Bagley was counsel to Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer, and is now a law professor at the University of Michigan. Bagley explains that progressives want to use the government to do things like reduce inequality and pursue social justice goals, but they also believe that legitimacy lies in ever-increasing layers of proceduralism. This proceduralism then prevents progressives from actually achieving the ends they seek. He notes that ordinary people tend to regard concrete outcomes as more important than procedural correctness, and will reward politicians who actually get things done.
Paul Sabin’s Public Citizens traces the rise of public interest law, beginning most famously with Ralph Nader and his Public Citizen organization. Nader argued that the regulatory agencies founded during the New Deal had been captured by corporate interests, and were working hand-in-glove with the auto industry, pharmaceutical companies, oil and gas interests, and other sectors contributing to pollution, unsafe vehicles, consumer fraud, and other wrongs. His movement inspired a couple of generations of progressive law students to go not into government, but rather to become litigators suing government agencies in an effort to block their activities. Nader and other public interest activists did as much as Ronald Reagan to reshape Americans’ view of the federal government as a malevolent force that needed to be constrained and weakened.
This view was put in a broader historical perspective by Marc Dunkelman, whose book Why Nothing Works I discuss in my Persuasion article “Our Hamiltonian Moment.” Dunkelman describes two trends in progressive thought, a “Hamiltonian” one that sees government as a potential force for good, and a “Jeffersonian” one that regards government with suspicion and seeks to distribute power as widely as possible to ordinary citizens. The Jeffersonian impulse was what powered the sort of public interest litigation described in Sabin’s book, as well as the many participatory mechanisms that were increasingly built into U.S. government decision-making. This institutional diffusion of authority makes collective action hard if not impossible, and leads to vetocracy.
Abundance recommends permitting reform as a means of shifting gears to a more Hamiltonian approach of building things. This is of course necessary; there are both policy changes and institutional reforms that could reduce veto points and facilitate collective action. However, the state itself needs to build capacity and increase its effectiveness by undergoing a thorough reform. The best book I know on the dysfunctions of contemporary American government is Jennifer Pahlka’s Recoding America. Pahlka founded Code for America, an NGO devoted to helping state and local governments better utilize digital technology. She went to Washington on the eve of the rollout of Obamacare and saw the debacle of a failing policy up close, and in response helped to found the U.S. Digital Service (now taken over and rebranded by Musk and DOGE). Among the many ills she describes, existing bureaucrats are incentivized to comply with the many complex rules governing their behavior. Americans have never trusted the government, and civil servants have been hemmed in over the years by layers of rules and regulations. Moreover, they attach much higher prestige to being a policy-maker rather than being a policy-implementer, which means that well-meaning policies (like Obamacare) end up being badly executed. Once again, procedure gets in the way of results.
My Stanford colleague Bruce Cain wrote a book a few years ago called Democracy More or Less. He notes the Jeffersonian impulse among progressives to diffuse power by creating ever-more mechanisms of public participation. These began with early 20th century institutions like California’s initiatives, referenda, and recalls, and continue through the extensive requirements for public hearings, notice-and-comment, and other ways of getting democratic input. The problem, according to Cain, is that these mechanisms are often captured by powerful, well-organized interest groups that do not necessarily represent a general democratic consensus. Public participation is necessary for modern government to work, but too much participation increases the time and cost of decision-making, and sometimes makes collective action altogether impossible.
Finally, I would point to a piece that I recently published in the Journal of Democracy, co-authored with Stanford colleagues Beatriz Magaloni and Chris Dann. Here we take issue with democracy expert Tom Carothers, who argued that democratic backsliding was not related to failures to deliver concrete outcomes like citizen security, economic growth, or public infrastructure. His empirical methodology was wrong, and a fuller analysis shows that failure to achieve real-world results is indeed one of the causes of the general weakness of democracies worldwide.
These are not simply academic arguments. During the 2024 presidential campaign, Kamala Harris pitched a lot of her case for being president on the threat that Donald Trump posed to American democracy. As we understand all-too-well now, these threats were real and American democracy is in the process of being undermined as we speak. But voters were much less moved by the procedural violations committed by Trump (such as fomenting the January 6 assault) than by everyday problems with inflation and failure to control the southern border. Procedure is important, but if politicians lose sight of their ability to bring about substantive changes to the lives of their constituents, they will continue to lose elections.
This suggests that the main way Trump’s opponents can win back power is by focusing on something like the agenda proposed in Abundance. The Democrats in particular need not simply to complain about Donald Trump’s many violations of law and the Constitution; they need also to have a forward-looking vision of what kind of America they hope to bring about if they return to power. Building things and restoring an abundant society are good places to start.
An Abundance Reading List
An Abundance Reading List
Why are there so many obstacles to getting things done? These writers have the answer.
Francis Fukuyama
A crane, not in California. (Photo by Jarama via Getty.)
Just so you know: In addition to this column, Francis Fukuyama also writes for the main Persuasion mailing list. That means that if you don’t subscribe to Persuasion, you might miss out on receiving some of his essays!
Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson’s new book Abundance has gotten a good deal of well-deserved attention, and I would like to say up front that I am one hundred percent onboard with their argument and movement.
Their basic argument is that modern democratic countries, and particularly the United States, have created too many barriers to building things and implementing new ideas. The ability to build could help human beings live better and deal with the enormous challenges of the present, like unaffordable housing or climate change. At the present moment, the Trump administration, Elon Musk, and DOGE all seem intent on undermining the American state and reducing its capacity to govern. But at the core of Abundance’s analysis lies the observation that many of the biggest obstacles to doing things have been put in place by progressives who, while well-intentioned, have promoted counterproductive policies that have made achievement of their goals nearly impossible.
To take one example from the book, consider housing. Blue states like California, Washington, and New York have seen an enormous increase in housing prices over the past couple of generations. Conventional statistics like Gini coefficients that seek to measure income inequality understate the degree to which inequality has widened, because they do not take into account the unaffordability of housing for working-class people. No one on the salary of a schoolteacher, policeman, or fireman can afford to live in the city of San Francisco; people doing these jobs have to spend an hour or two commuting into the city from a very distant suburb.
The reason for this escalation in costs is a very simple matter of supply and demand: supply of housing in virtually every blue state has not kept up with population growth. And the reason that supply has been constrained is that liberal voters have enacted permitting and zoning rules that make new construction very difficult. In previous blog posts I’ve talked about CEQA, the California Environmental Quality Act, which gives standing to all 40 million residents of the state to sue any project, public or private, that they don’t like.
It’s not just housing that can’t be built. The phenomenon that I labeled in Political Order and Political Decay as “vetocracy” blocks everything. In the United States today, the leading producers of alternative energy are Texas and Oklahoma, red states which nonetheless have produced massive wind farms not just because of the prevailing winds, but also because of lighter permitting rules. The problem today is a failure to build transmission lines to get that electricity from where it is produced to where it is needed, like the West Coast. The time to complete a transmission line is nearly 10 years, which means that the United States will have a very hard time meeting its climate goals. And this is before the Neanderthals in the Republican Party launch their latest effort to undermine existing environmental regulation.
So, left-leaning liberals and progressives have played a huge role in crippling America’s ability to implement the policies that these groups say they are in favor of. At this point, there is substantial literature on how this came about, and the following is a short reading list of works that explain how we got here.
Perhaps one of the clearest statements of the problem is a Michigan Law Review article by Nicholas Bagley on the “procedure fetish.” Bagley was counsel to Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer, and is now a law professor at the University of Michigan. Bagley explains that progressives want to use the government to do things like reduce inequality and pursue social justice goals, but they also believe that legitimacy lies in ever-increasing layers of proceduralism. This proceduralism then prevents progressives from actually achieving the ends they seek. He notes that ordinary people tend to regard concrete outcomes as more important than procedural correctness, and will reward politicians who actually get things done.
Paul Sabin’s Public Citizens traces the rise of public interest law, beginning most famously with Ralph Nader and his Public Citizen organization. Nader argued that the regulatory agencies founded during the New Deal had been captured by corporate interests, and were working hand-in-glove with the auto industry, pharmaceutical companies, oil and gas interests, and other sectors contributing to pollution, unsafe vehicles, consumer fraud, and other wrongs. His movement inspired a couple of generations of progressive law students to go not into government, but rather to become litigators suing government agencies in an effort to block their activities. Nader and other public interest activists did as much as Ronald Reagan to reshape Americans’ view of the federal government as a malevolent force that needed to be constrained and weakened.
This view was put in a broader historical perspective by Marc Dunkelman, whose book Why Nothing Works I discuss in my Persuasion article “Our Hamiltonian Moment.” Dunkelman describes two trends in progressive thought, a “Hamiltonian” one that sees government as a potential force for good, and a “Jeffersonian” one that regards government with suspicion and seeks to distribute power as widely as possible to ordinary citizens. The Jeffersonian impulse was what powered the sort of public interest litigation described in Sabin’s book, as well as the many participatory mechanisms that were increasingly built into U.S. government decision-making. This institutional diffusion of authority makes collective action hard if not impossible, and leads to vetocracy.
Abundance recommends permitting reform as a means of shifting gears to a more Hamiltonian approach of building things. This is of course necessary; there are both policy changes and institutional reforms that could reduce veto points and facilitate collective action. However, the state itself needs to build capacity and increase its effectiveness by undergoing a thorough reform. The best book I know on the dysfunctions of contemporary American government is Jennifer Pahlka’s Recoding America. Pahlka founded Code for America, an NGO devoted to helping state and local governments better utilize digital technology. She went to Washington on the eve of the rollout of Obamacare and saw the debacle of a failing policy up close, and in response helped to found the U.S. Digital Service (now taken over and rebranded by Musk and DOGE). Among the many ills she describes, existing bureaucrats are incentivized to comply with the many complex rules governing their behavior. Americans have never trusted the government, and civil servants have been hemmed in over the years by layers of rules and regulations. Moreover, they attach much higher prestige to being a policy-maker rather than being a policy-implementer, which means that well-meaning policies (like Obamacare) end up being badly executed. Once again, procedure gets in the way of results.
My Stanford colleague Bruce Cain wrote a book a few years ago called Democracy More or Less. He notes the Jeffersonian impulse among progressives to diffuse power by creating ever-more mechanisms of public participation. These began with early 20th century institutions like California’s initiatives, referenda, and recalls, and continue through the extensive requirements for public hearings, notice-and-comment, and other ways of getting democratic input. The problem, according to Cain, is that these mechanisms are often captured by powerful, well-organized interest groups that do not necessarily represent a general democratic consensus. Public participation is necessary for modern government to work, but too much participation increases the time and cost of decision-making, and sometimes makes collective action altogether impossible.
Finally, I would point to a piece that I recently published in the Journal of Democracy, co-authored with Stanford colleagues Beatriz Magaloni and Chris Dann. Here we take issue with democracy expert Tom Carothers, who argued that democratic backsliding was not related to failures to deliver concrete outcomes like citizen security, economic growth, or public infrastructure. His empirical methodology was wrong, and a fuller analysis shows that failure to achieve real-world results is indeed one of the causes of the general weakness of democracies worldwide.
These are not simply academic arguments. During the 2024 presidential campaign, Kamala Harris pitched a lot of her case for being president on the threat that Donald Trump posed to American democracy. As we understand all-too-well now, these threats were real and American democracy is in the process of being undermined as we speak. But voters were much less moved by the procedural violations committed by Trump (such as fomenting the January 6 assault) than by everyday problems with inflation and failure to control the southern border. Procedure is important, but if politicians lose sight of their ability to bring about substantive changes to the lives of their constituents, they will continue to lose elections.
This suggests that the main way Trump’s opponents can win back power is by focusing on something like the agenda proposed in Abundance. The Democrats in particular need not simply to complain about Donald Trump’s many violations of law and the Constitution; they need also to have a forward-looking vision of what kind of America they hope to bring about if they return to power. Building things and restoring an abundant society are good places to start.
