Great post and I also enjoyed your conversation with Tyler Cowen. Where I get stuck is “what can I, a frustrated voter with a strong interest in policy who wants the government to *actually work,* do? Now? The sorry state of the Democratic party is alarming.
Depends where you live but at least here in California many local elections are between a more “abundance” aligned Democratic candidate, and a more, whatever you call the side that is opposed to abundance.
1) I joined public service myself—in my case, municipal electricity.
2) Reading the primary sources on some specific policy area and writing about it: lithium refining in Texas, the PJM capacity market, the fire codes in your county. You’d be shocked at how few people are talking about nitty-gritty governance work. I know I was when I started writing…
Very well said. A three-layer recipe site isn’t nearly as good as a three-layer chocolate cake.
One concern I have at the moment is that the two Dems who seem to be putting up the kind of fight that many of us want to see the whole party embrace, Bernie and AOC, are indeed championing a different vision for America. (Ok Bernie isn’t technically a Dem.) But it’s not a new vision and I don’t think it’s one that most Americans actually support. They define themselves in opposition to the private sector in a way that is understandable but also driven by the same kind of anti-Trump animus that leads to reactionary defense of the administrative status quo. Which Dem leaders can pick up the abundance agenda and package it up into a digestible and compelling vision for the American people? Pete? Gavin? ???
I’d love to see your profile the Dems that you think “get it” and that we should all be supporting and paying attention to. For instance, I was really impressed by Jake Auchincloss when he went on Ezra’s show.
Thank you as always for the great work and thoughtful dialogue.
I appreciate your focus on outcomes for the American people and not simply on winning elections. The goal should be to come up with ideas that allow for government to create opportunity for the American people. I am looking forward to reading your full report. Just glancing at its contents it illuminates many of my observations from my 18 year career in Defense Policy. DoD is often turned to as a solution to state problems because it has state capacity. When DoD has a need to accomplish a new mission it has been able to get resources to create the capacity it needs. Capacity is critical to effectiveness.
Thanks for saying how the Dems dropped the ball. Denial, denial got us here. All the bitching and stomping will not correct things. What evidence is there that they’re coming up with a plan instead of being so reactive (getting us no where)?
If I was outside and advising democrats, I'd be inclined to focus on reforming the hiring process to make it easier, as it obviously counters current trends, but also needs to be done.
Great article. And you're spot-on regarding "good" government data sharing and the proper construction and use of APIs (as well as everything else). One real way to make the government more efficient, and more importantly citizen interactions with the government, is to improve appropriate data exchange and re-use, so that both we and government employees don't have to do the same thing over and over!
The arrival of the Internet in 1990 pretty much put everybody's privacy at some level of risk. We need to recognize that everything is everywhere and even Thomas Pynchon's 'Proverbs for Paranoids' cannot save us. Crypto was initially advertised as being safe and private. Both have been proven wrong.
I agree with everything in the post but continue to worry that as long as the two parties stay polarized, nothing of substance will be done. Careening from one scary problem to the next is no way to run a government. In the absence of certainty, everyone sits on the sidelines.
I think the Democrats have blown a very big chance on the upcoming extension of the tax breaks. They should have been right out the gate arguing for tax simplification. Get rid of all the tax preferences, streamline the tax code and you really do not need a lot of personnel at the IRS. You can easily get to a point where the median earner in the US pays ZERO Federal taxes. Close down of the corporate loopholes including the abuse of LLCs and you can even get lower corporate taxes while raising the same revenue. Put in self-executing VAT would help greatly as well.
Of course the tax proposal above will disadvantage a lot of wealthy individuals and people in the finance industry. But let's stop rewarding debt. Tax simplification can be sold to the American public but a complicated wealth tax cannot.
I wish you’d correct the false claim that Biden’s administration did not connect people to the internet. Thats really misleading. The Bead program is the second Biden administration connectivity program. The other made faster progress but Bead itself is slower for good reasons
This whole topic is just a big loser for the Democrats because you can get Starlink pretty much anywhere now, and more competition is on the way from Amazon etc. The federal government doesn't need to provide rural broadband any more than they need to manufacture their own peanut butter.
It's not a loser at all because starlink is expensive and under control of a crackpot. Many people in rural America are getting excellent broadband thanks to Biden programs. The problem is that " Democrats suck" is a very popular line in the media and among public intellectuals. Note that the first Trump administration wasted or stole billions of dollars appropriated for providing broadband to underserved areas and nobody made a peep. They paid a firm millions of dollars to provide broadband access around the Apple HQ! And yet we don't see discussions of this gross theft on TV or in the blogs - just more nonsense about Democrats failing. But there is nothing more cringe for many people than saying good things about the very effective Biden administration.
John Stewart won't put you on TV and Matt Yglessias won't get any notice if he dared to to that.
When I was younger, both parties agreed on most issues, the opposition was to the process proposed to achieve it. But after the past four years there was disagreement on the issues, either love America or destroy it!
I have two great cookbooks that were assembled by the National Heart Lung & Blood Institute, I still use them a lot even though they date from the 2000s. I mention this as another (federal) source for recipes.
Democrats and Biden had an effective rural connectivity program in the Industry bill. And Bead program bureaucracy was a reaction to gross theft in a previous program so your argument rests on misinformation
Great post and I also enjoyed your conversation with Tyler Cowen. Where I get stuck is “what can I, a frustrated voter with a strong interest in policy who wants the government to *actually work,* do? Now? The sorry state of the Democratic party is alarming.
Depends where you live but at least here in California many local elections are between a more “abundance” aligned Democratic candidate, and a more, whatever you call the side that is opposed to abundance.
Agree with that!
For me, that response has been twofold:
1) I joined public service myself—in my case, municipal electricity.
2) Reading the primary sources on some specific policy area and writing about it: lithium refining in Texas, the PJM capacity market, the fire codes in your county. You’d be shocked at how few people are talking about nitty-gritty governance work. I know I was when I started writing…
Doing public service is a great answer.
I'm kind of baffled there's not more open source stuff/volunteer opportunities.
Or maybe there is but I don't know where
Very well said. A three-layer recipe site isn’t nearly as good as a three-layer chocolate cake.
One concern I have at the moment is that the two Dems who seem to be putting up the kind of fight that many of us want to see the whole party embrace, Bernie and AOC, are indeed championing a different vision for America. (Ok Bernie isn’t technically a Dem.) But it’s not a new vision and I don’t think it’s one that most Americans actually support. They define themselves in opposition to the private sector in a way that is understandable but also driven by the same kind of anti-Trump animus that leads to reactionary defense of the administrative status quo. Which Dem leaders can pick up the abundance agenda and package it up into a digestible and compelling vision for the American people? Pete? Gavin? ???
I’d love to see your profile the Dems that you think “get it” and that we should all be supporting and paying attention to. For instance, I was really impressed by Jake Auchincloss when he went on Ezra’s show.
Thank you as always for the great work and thoughtful dialogue.
I appreciate your focus on outcomes for the American people and not simply on winning elections. The goal should be to come up with ideas that allow for government to create opportunity for the American people. I am looking forward to reading your full report. Just glancing at its contents it illuminates many of my observations from my 18 year career in Defense Policy. DoD is often turned to as a solution to state problems because it has state capacity. When DoD has a need to accomplish a new mission it has been able to get resources to create the capacity it needs. Capacity is critical to effectiveness.
Thanks for saying how the Dems dropped the ball. Denial, denial got us here. All the bitching and stomping will not correct things. What evidence is there that they’re coming up with a plan instead of being so reactive (getting us no where)?
Such an important perspective, Jen. Thank you thank you.
100% Jennifer. Thank you for the voice of reason & sanity.
Just being “opposite” is not a strategy.
If I was outside and advising democrats, I'd be inclined to focus on reforming the hiring process to make it easier, as it obviously counters current trends, but also needs to be done.
Great article. And you're spot-on regarding "good" government data sharing and the proper construction and use of APIs (as well as everything else). One real way to make the government more efficient, and more importantly citizen interactions with the government, is to improve appropriate data exchange and re-use, so that both we and government employees don't have to do the same thing over and over!
The arrival of the Internet in 1990 pretty much put everybody's privacy at some level of risk. We need to recognize that everything is everywhere and even Thomas Pynchon's 'Proverbs for Paranoids' cannot save us. Crypto was initially advertised as being safe and private. Both have been proven wrong.
I agree with everything in the post but continue to worry that as long as the two parties stay polarized, nothing of substance will be done. Careening from one scary problem to the next is no way to run a government. In the absence of certainty, everyone sits on the sidelines.
I think the Democrats have blown a very big chance on the upcoming extension of the tax breaks. They should have been right out the gate arguing for tax simplification. Get rid of all the tax preferences, streamline the tax code and you really do not need a lot of personnel at the IRS. You can easily get to a point where the median earner in the US pays ZERO Federal taxes. Close down of the corporate loopholes including the abuse of LLCs and you can even get lower corporate taxes while raising the same revenue. Put in self-executing VAT would help greatly as well.
Of course the tax proposal above will disadvantage a lot of wealthy individuals and people in the finance industry. But let's stop rewarding debt. Tax simplification can be sold to the American public but a complicated wealth tax cannot.
I wish you’d correct the false claim that Biden’s administration did not connect people to the internet. Thats really misleading. The Bead program is the second Biden administration connectivity program. The other made faster progress but Bead itself is slower for good reasons
https://www.techdirt.com/2025/03/12/42-5-billion-broadband-grant-program-being-rewritten-to-benefit-elon-musk/
This whole topic is just a big loser for the Democrats because you can get Starlink pretty much anywhere now, and more competition is on the way from Amazon etc. The federal government doesn't need to provide rural broadband any more than they need to manufacture their own peanut butter.
It's not a loser at all because starlink is expensive and under control of a crackpot. Many people in rural America are getting excellent broadband thanks to Biden programs. The problem is that " Democrats suck" is a very popular line in the media and among public intellectuals. Note that the first Trump administration wasted or stole billions of dollars appropriated for providing broadband to underserved areas and nobody made a peep. They paid a firm millions of dollars to provide broadband access around the Apple HQ! And yet we don't see discussions of this gross theft on TV or in the blogs - just more nonsense about Democrats failing. But there is nothing more cringe for many people than saying good things about the very effective Biden administration.
John Stewart won't put you on TV and Matt Yglessias won't get any notice if he dared to to that.
When I was younger, both parties agreed on most issues, the opposition was to the process proposed to achieve it. But after the past four years there was disagreement on the issues, either love America or destroy it!
I have two great cookbooks that were assembled by the National Heart Lung & Blood Institute, I still use them a lot even though they date from the 2000s. I mention this as another (federal) source for recipes.
100%. Thanks.
I think we should just add the data, in paper form, to mine in Pennsylvania. That is a good example of opposite.
To “the” mine
Democrats and Biden had an effective rural connectivity program in the Industry bill. And Bead program bureaucracy was a reaction to gross theft in a previous program so your argument rests on misinformation
Another fantastic article