You can't let the Koch Bros. fabricate a conference called "YIMBY America 2024" or whatever and then point to it and say "see, I warned you about those YIMBYs!" You have to engage with the substance of the debate.
Obviously, rallying around “diversity” or “girlboss” or “degrowth” is not a durable winner. “MAGA” unfortunately might be a durable winner. “Abundance” has a fighting chance, and it’s even morally defensible.
The answer is staring us right in the face.
It’s a catchy slogan and pulling tens of thousands even in deep red MAGA country.
https://www.sltrib.com/news/politics/2025/04/13/fighting-oli...
https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2025-04-12/bernie-san...
Neoliberalism => Corporatism => Autocracy
People are not thinking about improving the world, they are looking to "own" the enemy, Sado Populism.
One of the “California Forever” billionaires, Patrick Collison, CEO of Stripe, looms large in Abundance world. Along with Open Philanthropy, he donated to fund a $120 million “Abundance” grant tied to Klein’s book release. Collison is a key backer and inspiration for the Institute for Progress (IFP), a think tank which works closely with others in the Abundance network, including at the Abundance 2024 conference. Collison co-founded “Progress Studies” with economist Tyler Cowen, born from their Atlantic article, “We Need a New Science of Progress.” While IFP isn’t officially a “Progress Studies” think tank, its mission aligns closely, and it has received funding from both Collison and Emergent Ventures, Cowen’s Mercatus Center grant program established with funding from Thiel. Klein and Thompson were interviewed by Collison on their book tour.
Cowen has his own interest in Network State style projects. Balaji Srinivasan, a cryptocurrency billionaire and Próspera funder, defines a Network State as “a highly aligned online community with a capacity for collective action that crowdfunds territory around the world.” In this alternative governance structure, tech elites would create private, blockchain based enclaves—Srinivasan calls this “tech zionism.” Network States are founded on empty land, or by taking over an existing city—as Network State evangelists have attempted in San Francisco. Srinivasan even called for “ethnically cleansing” San Francisco of non-tech people.
Cowen is an early backer of Praxis, alongside Srinivasan and Thiel. Praxis describes itself as “a grassroots movement of modern pioneers,” aiming to build an autonomous, cryptocurrency city. Initial plans proposed a Mediterranean location, but last fall, the Praxis CEO tweeted “I went to Greenland to try to buy it.” Greenland, however, reiterated that the country is not for sale.
Cowen has been a protégé and friend of Thiel’s, citing him as a major influence. He advocates a form of government called “State Capacity Libertarianism” which, unlike anarcho-capitalism, includes a strong state apparatus. In Cowen’s words: “a good strong state should see the maintenance and extension of capitalism as one of its primary duties, in many cases its #1 duty.” He explicitly credits Thiel for inspiring this idea: “You will note the influence of Peter Thiel on State Capacity Libertarianism,” Cowen writes, “though I have never heard him frame the issues in this way.”
[1] https://www.housingisahumanright.org/why-is-california-yimby...
The denialism of market forces is one of the worst aspects of progressives. Like it or not, the only way housing is going to become cheap is if there so much housing available that landlords actually have to compete for tenants.
You can build public housing, and have a 20 year waiting list for it. You can have rent control, but that only benefits long-time residents at the expense of newcomers. But the only thing that will make cheap housing widely available is to make it easy to build, so developers can saturate the market with housing.
* First understand every point on the curve between a healthy democratic society and autocracy is slippery, not stable.
* Next, understand how autocracy rises. If you want to look at the drivers toward autocracy, you will find them invariably in the same places.
* The US problems
- Braunhemde, already before WOII, then imported more of them afterwards. No press coverage, they are real. Even the "Sieg Heil"s on CPAC did not draw media coverage.
- Cultism. Serious, deep cultism.
- As a specialization: Christian nationalism + conservatism, replay of the '30s
- https://xcancel.com/YourAnonCentral/status/1910179753430299043
- https://xcancel.com/sola_chad/status/1802398272293581272#m1
- Incredible concentrations of (inherited) wealth, deformed perspectives of the other 99% cultivated over generational spans
- No real journalism, instead, career in media house depend on commercial ownership. Narratives tailored to segment, but no deep and critical impact of analysis.
- "Let us talk about the tariffs today, they make zero economic sense"
- "I think what he meant is..."
- "Of course this is not entirely correct, but..."
- "President Trump has said.."
- "Rubio did a press conference today"
- Only drama, never the Big Picture.
- Elections? According to the press, those are just
- The latest polls!
- Repeat marketing from spin doctors at affiliated media houses
- "Debate" = Reality TV, scores are given on wit and emotional play
- Fake news is allowed as a business model.
- Rigidity => distorted beliefs. See rigidity about "free speech" via decades of pushed narratives. Now look at all the book banning, canceling of research based on keyword match.
- Rigidity about free markets. Now you pay 5 million for a dinner with The Suppreme Sovite to get your business free. Tariffs, because, you know?
- No concept of "Paradox of Tolerance". Parties that don't want to participate in a democratic society with rule of law and separation of powers CANNOT be part of the system. Period.
- Overall corruption by oligarchy. The GOP has been killed, but the Dems have the problems too, making it difficult to make any postmortem
- Exceptionalism
- Vast information deserts (there are states where information cannot reach people at all ), where nothing is served but right-wing reality distortion as commercial fast-food
- Normalization of personal retaliation against political enemies (that is why everybody is obeying in advance, people are used to be abused by power). Americans are frightened.
- No concept of common good, everyone hustling. Also: competition means *killing* the competitor. That playbook is deeply normalized, see Big Tech. Microsoft, Intel->AMD, Google etc
- Regulatory capture, rules for thee, exceptions for me
- "If you are so smart, why aren't you rich?" Deep cultural programming
- State capture, this is reaching the critical stage now.
- Normalisation of sado-populism. "I don't care, I want the other suffer".
- Class-based society