Let’s start with “Movement” — it’s the critical piece. A new set of political ideas (Abundance) in the absence of political power is a white paper. We’re here for outcomes.

At the core of this Movement are citizens from all walks of life who look around at their cities and states and think, “why are so many things not working?” 

The Movement
  • Why is housing so unaffordable?
  • Why are good public schools only available in rich neighborhoods?
  • Why don’t public spaces feel safe and vibrant?
  • Why does it take so long to do anything? (e.g. for small businesses to open up in shuttered storefronts; for new bike lanes to be built; for granny flats to be permitted)

Pioneers have been on the scene for a decade or more. YIMBYs. Ecomodernists. The civic tech community. Anti-Kludgeocrats. Even further back, the Reinventing Government crew, the urbanists, the public intellectuals decrying special interest capture.

But now, a breakthrough: Regular citizens realize that at the heart of the dysfunction is us, or rather, the absence of us. We assumed that in a democracy, our job is to vote and pay taxes, and the rest will take care of itself. That works for a while, and then institutions corrode. We forgot Teddy Roosevelt’s line: “The government is us; we are the government, you and I.”

Change is tractable. When 50 folks band together and contribute 2% of their income, they can hire a peer to work on their behalf towards Abundance goals. This is a huge deal—there are shockingly few people in your city, region, or state working full-time to fix problems from a broadly interested perspective. So much dysfunction flows from inattention. No one wants the million dollar toilet in Noe Valley. But whose job is it to put real reform energy into the absurdly complex statutes and processes that lead to it? We can notch wins with a little force and attention when we’re dealing with neglected bylaws in forgotten statutes. 
The government is us; we are the government, you and I.”

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The Abundance Part

Abundance is an emerging political ideology and identity. Fundamentally we believe we can increase the availability of housing, transportation, clean energy, quality education, and many other things in society—this should make it easier for regular people to build good lives for themselves and their children.

The exact contours of the political program and how to achieve it are still being defined. 
But at its core are a handful of ideas: 

  • 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.

Abundance will be filled out—and contested—as a political ideology in the coming years. But the nonnegotiable ingredient is an activated citizenry that materially contributes to the renovation of government such that it can broadly deliver progress for people in the 21st century. In this way, we see the Abundance Movement as an echo of the Progressive Movement of the early 20th century, albeit with a more inclusive mandate. 

Want to go deeper on Abundance? Check out our blog, Modern Power.