The Risk of Doing Nothing
Thoughts on the book "Abundance" and confronting the gridlock that threatens democracy.
Abundance is getting a lot of attention lately - and for a good reason. The excellent book by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson offers a sharp critique of the recent democratic politics, and a new pathway forward that they summarize in a single sentence:
To have the future we want, we need to build and invent more of what we need.
It’s simple, but Klein and Thompson unpack this idea through several viewpoints, all of which converge on a simple, indisputable fact - the Democratic party has become process oriented rather than outcome focused. I think it’s helpful to expand on this concept a bit to understand why this has been the case, how it’s served society in the past, and why we need to rethink our priorities lest we cede more power to bad actors.
Recalibrating Our Caution
As technology progressed over the last century, the instinct to slow down and evaluate has often been useful.
Phonograph? No problem. What sort of negative impact could this thing have? Go for it.
The automobile? Revolutionary for mobility and commerce, connecting people and markets like never before. But also bringing unforeseen pollution, sprawl, and traffic dangers that demanded new rules like seatbelts and smog checks down the line.
Taming the atom? A bit more precarious, what with the ability to destroy humanity many times over. That type of power carries a psychological weight, too. It instills a new existential fear that was previously unimaginable. If this exists, and we brought it into the world, then what else is out there?
This is a simplified evolution of the power of technological growth - from the useful but mundane, to the ability to quite literally destroy life on Earth many times over.
Enter the Precautionary Principle - the idea that if an activity raises threats of harm, precautionary measures should be taken even if cause-and-effect aren't fully proven scientifically.
It's no surprise that the environmental movement started to make its mark in the generation after we learned to split the atom. The desire to prevent harm before it occurs, embedded in the Precautionary Principle, became a cornerstone of public policy, particularly in progressive ideology.
Vulnerable Worlds
This caution relates to the idea of the Vulnerable World Hypothesis, as first published in 2019 by Nick Bostrom. It goes like this -
Imagine drawing balls from an urn, where each ball represents a potential invention or new technology. There are three types of balls -
White balls are beneficial technologies.
Grey balls have mixed impacts - both positive and negative potential impacts.
Black balls are technologies that would destroy the civilization that invents them.
So far, most of what humanity has uncovered are grey - they manifest something with clear positive consequences, but also the ability to cause harm, sometimes immense harm. Opioid painkillers have helped millions manage pain, yet have also wrecked millions of lives through addiction and utter psychopathy from the Sackler family.
Most technology is like this, a double-edged sword to be wielded for good or evil based on the intention of its user.
Some balls pulled from the bag are truly white, pure life-enhancing advancements like antibiotics or mass water purification. GLP-1’s may turn out to be white balls as well.
Of course, 'grey' itself contains a vast spectrum. The fossil fuels that built the modern world were grey balls, enabling progress but with consequences like pollution and climate change now looming large. Perhaps the most consequential grey ball, however – the one whose risks fundamentally reshaped our approach to technology – was atomic energy. Taming the atom offered immense power but also uniquely terrifying downsides with nuclear weapons and the specter of meltdown. It was the unprecedented nature of this specific 'dark grey ball' risk that truly embedded the Precautionary Principle deep within our governance, forming the foundation for the widespread proceduralism that followed.
Critically, the intense regulatory caution born from confronting nuclear-level stakes was then applied broadly, layering processes ideal for existential threats onto far less perilous endeavors like building housing or infrastructure. The fear of one specific dark grey ball led to a system that implicitly treats all development with a similar level of suspicion.
Thankfully, no grey balls have turned black and destroyed civilization yet. But this framework, distinguishing between shades of risk and potential catastrophe, is valuable precisely because it helps us analyze how technologies and the systems managing them are wielded in the real world to cause harm or prevent positive social impacts.
Consider nuclear power. The immense destructive power of nuclear weapons – that foundational dark grey ball – cast a long shadow, creating deep public and regulatory skepticism that significantly hampered deploying clean nuclear energy, despite its potential. This demonstrates how the fear generated by one technology can bound another, preventing progress even when potential solutions exist.
Proceduralism as a Goal
It is this backdrop - the legitimate fear of downside risk exemplified by nuclear weapons and environmental destruction - that provided fertile ground for proceduralism to become the default government instrument.
The Precautionary Principle, translated into policy, manifested as the writing of laws and regulations designed to meticulously evaluate and prevent negative consequences prior to implementation.
And this makes perfect sense! For any given project, I want our government asking “okay but what are the impacts to the environment? And what are the impacts to people living near by or other stakeholders?” And the funders need to prove they aren’t poisoning people in an effort to make more money.
This approach to governing has had tremendous benefits for society. Los Angeles smog is largely a thing of the past. Seatbelts have saved millions of lives. The Cuyahoga River doesn't catch fire anymore!
Planning, documentation, public input, revisions - when it comes to the federal government, this is what they do.
These review processes were the necessary antibodies developed in response to the "Ugly America" of unchecked mid-century growth: the smokestacks, polluted rivers, asbestos, lead paint, and much more.
However, this very success, institutionalized over decades, has created layers of process that are now counterproductive. Ezra and Jon Stewart dig into this on Jon's podcast when they discuss the debacle of rural broadband. The section of the podcast is about 20 minutes and I highly recommend you listen - it will make you want to pull your hair out!
Focus on the Thing
These processes themselves are manifesting as black balls through their ability to stifle innovation - and just plain building things - in the physical world. Permitting delays stretch for years, environmental reviews originally designed to stop polluting factories now bog down solar farms and affordable housing, and the sheer complexity makes essential projects prohibitively expensive.
The Abundance agenda is a response to this paralysis - recognizing this fact and reorienting our energy to focus on the thing itself - the building of the high-speed rail, the installation of 500,000 EV chargers, the construction of millions of housing units, and many more things that people want and have an objectively positive impact on society.
The trick here, of course, is finding the balance. Understanding that the path between drowning in process and diving headlong into reckless growth is not an easy place to navigate.
But given where we are as a society, in 2025, with astronomical costs for housing and healthcare, and facing the escalating impacts of climate change - the calculus has changed. This isn't the 1970s anymore. The rivers aren't literally on fire. The old equilibrium is wrong for today's problems.
For those that want government to function, the outcome has to remain the North Star.
Emergency All the Time
The impetus to actually care about getting something done in a reasonable timeframe can't always come under the guise of an emergency.
Klein and Thompson discuss how Governor Shapiro led Pennsylvania’s rebuild of I-95 after it collapsed in June 2023. It was rebuilt - and not in years, not in months, but in 12 days. California rebuilt a section of I-10 that was damaged in a fire in 8 days. How did these things get done? Declare an emergency and skip all the normal rules.
When the only way to overcome procedural inertia is an emergency declaration, we risk incentivizing a political system that either manufactures crises or lets problems fester until they become emergencies, rather than proactively building solutions.
When administrative overhead balloons the cost of projects beyond reason, what do conservatives say? “See? Government is dysfunctional and can’t get anything done. We need to remove these useless regulations so the free market can build!”
Some critics say this is what Abundance is selling: just deregulate everything. That’s not it though. The goal, as Klein states, is to deregulate government. Allow them to do the things that voters elected them to do, and implement the bills they passed into law.
When the government produces process and not results, it’s a gift to the enemies of democracy. Strongman rule frames itself as an alternative to a broken system. Look, democracy doesn't get anything done. Give me all the power and I'll fix everything. This is how you get a population that supports and elects authoritarians, where congress simply abdicates its responsibilities to the leader.
Deregulate What Matters
Do we rip out the rules entirely? No - we streamline them where it counts. For projects that deliver broad social benefits, like affordable housing, clean energy infrastructure, or public transit, we should reduce undue bureaucratic delays. In many local government meetings, we’ve seen that a single person—or a small group—can derail a proposed housing development through narrow, NIMBY objections. While it is their right to express concerns, it is unreasonable that a few voices be allowed to bend or block a public process simply for being the loudest ones that show up to the meetings.
At the same time, there are several areas of deregulation that we take for granted. For example, the lifecycle of durable goods and clothing. There are virtually no regulations compelling companies to manage products at the end of their useful lives. This is not the natural order of things - it’s a decision we have made that shifts the burden of waste and environmental harm onto society.
In short - the abundance agenda is about strategic deregulation. Streamline processes where the public good is at stake and excessive red tape stifles progress, while imposing stricter rules in areas where market failure and externalities are rampant - like environmental degradation.
Energy Unlocks Everything
Strip away the partisan fights, and one truth remains: modern society runs on energy. It's the fundamental currency of progress and well-being that everyone uses, regardless of politics. And while no current energy source might be a perfect 'white ball,' today's renewables offer a vastly preferable 'lighter grey' path compared to the climate and pollution risks of 'darker grey' fossil fuels. Making that distinction is crucial.
If Trump and the Republicans have their way, coal, gas, and all fossil fuel sources will be highly deregulated, which will directly lead to more pollution, illness, and death. This happened this week when the keystone pipeline ruptured.
And this is where Abundance stands in stark contrast to free market fundamentalism - the goal is not deregulation itself. The goal is to point the resource pool of the government towards socially beneficial ends. And considering the continued collapse in costs of solar, wind, and battery technology, there is a clear target for the government to focus on: Energy. Or rather - energy abundance.
If you think climate change is an existential risk, there's your emergency, right? In some alternate world, President Biden declared climate change a national emergency and directed all the resources of the federal government to deploy clean energy. And Sean Hannity’s head exploded.
But that's not the right way to aim your gaze, nor the most productive framing.
Energy unlocks everything. The arrival of abundant, cheap energy that does not warm the planet or generate particulate matter that kills millions per year is the key that opens the door. It opens the door to desalination plants, the creation of fertilizer without fossil fuel inputs, greening the desert, lab-grown meat that negates massive land use and environmental destruction, high-speed rail, closed-loop manufacturing, beneficial robotics, and dozens of things we cannot yet comprehend.
And technically, we're pretty much there. When it comes to solar, wind, advanced geothermal, advanced nuclear, and batteries, their technical arrival is unfolding right now.
Their practical arrival, the instantiation in the world at the scale we need, is not. It's caught in the quagmire of proceduralism - siting disputes, decade-long environmental reviews for clean energy projects, endless permitting - the very mechanisms designed to prevent harm in the past now inadvertently block our best tools for combating the present harms of climate change and scarcity. Now, we have to decide to make different choices.
Demanding a Government That Works
One of my favorite political quotes is from the late PJ O’Rourke:
Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work and then they get elected and prove it.
They don't believe in government. It's a part of their philosophy. At the federal level, they generally support national defense and border control and that’s it. And that's fine as an ideology (“at least its an ethos...”). But I think it's a terrible way to run modern society.
Democrats, meanwhile, profess faith in government but entangle it in complex processes that prevents it from delivering results.
Finding the right alternative – a 'white ball' procedure – won't be simple or perfect overnight. But the goal is clear: effective, outcome-focused processes that differentiate risk intelligently, empower competent decision-makers, and value substantive input without inviting paralysis.
For those of us that think government has a role to play, we should demand a functioning government that builds the things that will make our lives better, not one that expends its energy on paperwork.
Ultimately, the choice is between the current Democratic Party mantra: paralysis by process, the Republican Party goal: turn over power to a wannabe strongman, or a new way: build and invent what we need.
Chris Prato, creator of WattMind, enjoys writing about technology, culture, and the crazy world we live in. Follow Chris on LinkedIn, Threads, and BlueSky for more cultural hot takes.