CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

Abundance Jumps the Shark

Vancouver, BC, skyline. Photo: David Zhang. CC BY-SA 2.0

For folks who might have missed it, abundance is the cool trend in politics these days. It got started with the book Abundance, which was co-authored by New York Times columnist Ezra Klein and Atlantic writer Derek Thompson. The gist of the book is that excessive government regulation is slowing growth and keeping us from enjoying the good things in life.

The clearest case is with housing, where NIMBY activists block efforts to increase housing density, which would lower prices. However, they make the case more generally that a wide range of regulations make it difficult to do even simple things, like set up EV charging stations or extend broadband to rural communities.

There is clearly something to the abundance story. It is easy to find cases where seemingly pointless regulations blocked projects that most of us would consider good. The problem is figuring out which regulations are pointless.

The abundance authors also show little interest in widely abused regulations that benefit the rich. At the top of this list would be the government-granted patent monopolies that make prescription drugs and medical equipment expensive. In almost all cases, drugs and medical equipment would be cheap if sold in a free market, but for whatever reason, “abundance” apparently doesn’t mean cheap drugs.

There is a similar story with bankruptcy laws that benefit private equity companies. Under current law, a........

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