For this week's podcast we talk about the bestselling book Abundance by Ezra Klein & Derek Thompson, described by the publisher as a "paradigm-shifting call to renew a politics of plenty, face up to the failures of liberal governance, and abandon the chosen scarcities that have deformed American life."

We're joined by Eric and Max to discuss the context of the book's release, in the aftermath of both Project 2025 and Trump's Department of Government Efficiency, as well as the mayoral campaign of Zohran Mamdani. We talk about the book's ambivalent relationship to both power and conflict, and its idealism in resolving the contradictions between the market and the state. We think through the horizons of a potential left utopianism, and the political programs presently on offer to us, from Bernie Sanders' democratic socialism, Xi Jinping's CCP, and Andreas Malm's climate Leninism.

READINGS:

--"A Simple Plan to Solve All of America’s Problems" - Derek Thompson, 2022: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/01/scarcity-crisis-college-housing-health-care/621221/

--"Addressing NYC’s Housing Crisis" - Brad Lander, 2025: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5b2052b12487fd3fa17f00a6/t/67c9104eaeb4d1348ee66894/1741230159290/State+of+Emergency+-+Addressing+NYC%E2%80%99s+Housing+Crisis.pdf

--"What’s the Matter with Abundance?" - Malcolm Harris, 2025: https://thebaffler.com/latest/whats-the-matter-with-abundance-harris

--"How to Blow Up a Planet" - Trevor Jackson, 2025: https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2025/09/25/how-to-blow-up-a-planet-abundance-klein-thompson/

Eric is an infrastructure consultant specializing in regulatory compliance and financial management for transportation and broadband projects, and is currently supporting one of the nation’s largest passenger rail projects. He advocates for taxation reform to enable greater autonomy in the financing of public capital projects.

Max is a libcom tankie who studies neoliberalism and monetary regimes.