Varieties of Abundance: https://www.niskanencenter.org/abundance-varieties/

PDF Version: https://www.niskanencenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Varieties-of-Abundance.pdf

Realignment Newsletter: https://therealignment.substack.com/

Realignment Bookshop: https://bookshop.org/shop/therealignment

Email the Show: [email protected]

Steve Teles, Senior Fellow at the Niskanen Center, returns to The Realignment. Ahead of next week's 2025 Abundance in DC, Marshall and Steve discuss his new Niskanen Center paper on "The Varieties of Abundance." In Steve's telling, despite broad agreement within the Abundance movement on the need to increase supply, challenge existing incumbents who benefit from scarcity, and the critical role of enhanced state capacity in addressing America's challenges, there are existing and potential varieties of Abundance across the ideological and geographic spectrums. Just as the late 19th- and early 20th-century Progressive Movement held a shared critique of the industrial-era American state, different actors took the project in different directions. Theodore Roosevelt, Herbert Hoover, and Woodrow Wilson were all progressives, but operated in separate camps. In Steve's telling, abundance is already operating accordingly. In the paper, he identifies six varieties of Abundance: Red Plenty, Cascadian Abundance, Liberal Abundance, Moderate-Abundance Synthesis, Abundance Dynamism, and Dark Abundance. The aim of the paper is not to be overly inside-baseball, but to offer readers and listeners a framework for understanding the diversity of actors, institutions, and ideologies that have positively engaged with the Abundance framework. 

Realignment Newsletter: https://therealignment.substack.com/

Realignment Bookshop: https://bookshop.org/shop/therealignment

Email the Show: [email protected]

Dan Wang, Research Fellow at Stanford University's Hoover History Lab and author of Breakneck: China's Quest to Engineer the Future, joins The Realignment. Marshall and Dan discuss China's quest to become a techno-industrial superpower, how China's "engineering state" contrasts with America's "lawyerly society," why China has successfully built megaprojects vs. America's stalled efforts at industrial policy, high speed rail, and electrification, whether both countries have entered into a cold war, and the downsides of the engineering states top-down control. 

REALIGNMENT NEWSLETTER: https://therealignment.substack.com/

PURCHASE BOOKS AT OUR BOOKSHOP: https://bookshop.org/shop/therealignment

Email Us: [email protected]

Scott Anderson, author of King of Kings: The Iranian Revolution: A Story of Hubris, Delusion, and Catastrophic Miscalculation, joins The Realignment. Marshall and Scott discuss the historical legacy of the rise and fall of the Shah of Iran, how the rise of religious fundamentalism reshaped America's relationship with Iran and the broader Middle East, President Carter's misread of the Iranian Revolution in the context of the Cold War, and survey the aftermath of the joint U.S.-Israel strikes on Iran's nuclear program this past June.

REALIGNMENT NEWSLETTER: https://therealignment.substack.com/

PURCHASE BOOKS AT OUR BOOKSHOP: https://bookshop.org/shop/therealignment

Email Us: [email protected]

Jon Lee Anderson, New Yorker Staff Writer and author of To Lose a War: The Fall and the Rise of the Taliban, joins The Realignment. Marshall and Jon discuss the legacy of America's 20-year war in Afghanistan, how policymakers and the military struggle to define "victory" during wartime, why post-WWII conflicts and the end of the norm of "total war" has made it harder to "win," and why, despite achieving the goal of ending the country's status as a safe haven for terror, eliminating Osama bin Laden, and initially removing the Taliban from power, the U.S. still lost the war.

Noah Smith's Substack: www.noahpinion.blog 

Impulse Labs: www.impulselabs.com

Fast Company on Impulse Labs: Innovation by Design 2024: Impulse Labs' new induction cooktop is a step up from your gas stove - Fast Company

REALIGNMENT NEWSLETTER: https://therealignment.substack.com/

PURCHASE BOOKS AT OUR BOOKSHOP: https://bookshop.org/shop/therealignment

Email Us: [email protected]

Sam D'Amico, Founder & CEO of Impulse Labs, and Noah Smith, author of the Noahpinion Substack, join The Realignment. Marshall, Noah, and Sam discuss how the "Electric Tech Stack," a combination of advances in batteries, motors, power electronics, and computing, will reshape everything from kitchen appliances to warfare. They argue that electricity will increasingly "eat" the world, that China has seized the lead in the race to electrification, and make the case for a serious industrial policy.

REALIGNMENT NEWSLETTER: https://therealignment.substack.com/

PURCHASE BOOKS AT OUR BOOKSHOP: https://bookshop.org/shop/therealignment

Email Us: [email protected]

Osita Nwanevu, author of The Right of the People: Democracy and the Case for a New American Founding, joins The Realignment. Marshall and Osita discuss a "re-founding" of America at the level of the post-Civil War Reconstruction Amendments, why the current political system has left many Americans disillusioned with pro-democracy promises and rhetoric, the failure to leverage the 2008 Financial Crisis and 2020 COVID epidemic to force systemic change, and his case for radical reforms to the legislative branch, elections, the workplace, and Supreme Court.

NYT: New Democratic Group Says Answer to the Party’s Woes Lies With the States

States Forum Journal: Adam Pritzker & Daniel Squadron - First Principles in the 11th Hour

REALIGNMENT NEWSLETTER: https://therealignment.substack.com/

PURCHASE BOOKS AT OUR BOOKSHOP: https://bookshop.org/shop/therealignment

Email Us: [email protected]

Daniel Squadron, former New York legislator and Co-Founder of the States Forum, joins The Realignment. Marshall and Daniel discuss why the center-left and the Democratic Party lack the kind of coherent worldview of the MAGA right, why real political power and the opportunity to build and test new ideas lies in the states, not just D.C., the importance of ideas vs. "messaging," and the case for centering the themes of representative democracy, fair markets, effective government, and personal freedom at the center of the left-liberal project. 

REALIGNMENT NEWSLETTER: https://therealignment.substack.com/

PURCHASE BOOKS AT OUR BOOKSHOP: https://bookshop.org/shop/therealignment

Email Us: [email protected]

The Niskanen Center's Steve Teles returns to The Realignment for a wide-ranging discussion about the Democratic Party's evolution during the Trump-era and what lessons it can and can't take from the GOP's experience under Trump. Marshall and Steve unpack how Democratic Party factions - from abundance-focused reformers to the new "Common Sense Democrats" - mirror and diverge from the GOP's 2010s-era "Reform Conservative" movement. They explore the challenge of offering new ideas after rejection at the ballot box, the role of candidates like NYC's Zohran Mamdani, and why signaling change requires taking on your own side.  

Can the GOP Be a Party of Ideas? https://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/06/magazine/can-the-gop-be-a-party-of-ideas.html

REALIGNMENT NEWSLETTER: https://therealignment.substack.com/

PURCHASE BOOKS AT OUR BOOKSHOP: https://bookshop.org/shop/therealignment

Email Us: [email protected]

Sam Tanenhaus, author of Buckley: The Life and the Revolution That Changed America, joins The Realignment. Marshall and Sam unpack Buckley's influence on today's political landscape, how his ideas, debates, and style shaped postwar conservatism, the rise of MAGA conservatism after the 2012 election, the ideas vacuum on the left, and why developing a coherent worldview, beyond following the polls and vibes, matters more than ever post-2024.

REALIGNMENT NEWSLETTER: https://therealignment.substack.com/

PURCHASE BOOKS AT OUR BOOKSHOP: https://bookshop.org/shop/therealignment

Email Us: [email protected]

Oren Cass, Founder and Chief Economist of American Compass and editor of The New Conservatives: Restoring America's Commitment to Family, Community, and Industry, returns to The Realignment. Marshall and Oren discuss the evolution of the conservative movement since the 2016 election, the fifth anniversary of American Compass, and the organization's new volume covering the new right's perspective on trade, immigration, labor, family, industry policy, technology, and more...