Abundance: How we build a better future
Book review by Dr Anne Sarzin
According to the authors of Abundance: How we build a better future, their book is dedicated to a simple idea: ‘to have the future we want, we need to build and invent more of what we need’. They state that the story of America in the 21st century is the story of chosen scarcities. They scrutinise rigorously America’s housing crisis, the challenges of climate change and the clean energy revolution, health care and cures for diseases, and what they term ‘consequential’ institutional renewal. They highlight societal pathologies rooted in ‘ideological collusion’ that characterise the diminishing capacity of government.
Written by opinion columnist Ezra Klein, who hosts a podcast at the New York Times; and Derek Thompson, a staff writer at the Atlantic, the duo maintain that an abundance of consumer goods distracts Americans from a scarcity of homes and energy, inadequate infrastructure and diminishing scientific inventions; and relate their analysis, conclusions and predictions to the socio-political contexts that influence the agendas of Democrats and Republicans. Compared to the current entrenched reliance on the ‘narrow narrative of scarcity’ and a free market predicated on supply and demand, the authors strongly advocate for a politics of abundance and a liberalism that builds and delivers real marvels in a real world. They write, ‘This is a story that must be built out of bricks and steel and solar panels and transmission lines, not just words. It is the promise of not just more, but more of what matters. It is a commitment to the endless work of institutional renewal. It is a recognition that technology is at the heart of progress and always has been.’
In their search for a new political order to address the failures of old institutions and traditional elites, the authors explore what they allege are real and dangerous divisions in American society, such as right-wing populism that seeks power by ‘closing doors, halting change, and venerating the businesses and dominance hierarchies of the past’. They don’t spare the Democrats either, pointing out that they also practise their own version of scarcity politics, with zoning restrictions that restrict housing supply and their tendency ‘to turn against outsiders in the face of critical shortages’.
Turning to external threats, the dominance of China and American fears that China has ‘learned what we’ve forgotten’; they assert that Republicans and Democrats have been too complacent about what China’s rise has meant for American workers. ‘But the blindness was not just about what China was capable of,’ they state, ‘It was also about what America was losing the capacity to do’. As America’s political and economic class forgot how to build, it took a builder with an obsession for manufacturing goods and a deep suspicion of trade, Donald Trump, to challenge this ‘miasma of complacency and fear’. They point out that Trump saw China’s manufacturing supremacy as an indictment of the American spirit. Surprisingly, Joe Biden accepted many of Trump’s premises, imposing additional tariffs on China and barring the export of key technologies to China. In 2021, Biden said, ‘Somewhere along the way, we stopped investing in ourselves. And we’ve risked losing our edge as a nation….And China and the rest of the world are moving to catch up and, in some cases, in certain areas, move ahead’. While they offer a critique of how liberals have governed and thought over the past 50 years, they affirm that there is now an opportunity for liberals to embrace the politics of abundance that Republicans have abandoned. The authors ask pertinent questions—What is scarce that should be abundant? What is difficult to build that should be easy? What inventions do we need that we do not yet have?
Interestingly, they quote President Johnson, who in 1964 warned that progress had two faces, abundance or annihilation, development or desolation. From this, the authors deduce that America faces an existential binary for our own time—abundance or scarcity. They contend that to pursue abundance, there has to be institutional renewal.
Aside from the authors’ deep dive into growth, building and government, there is a fascinating chapter on inventions in which they relate the scientific travails of Katalin Kariko, who attempted unsuccessfully to obtain funding for her groundbreaking research into mRNA, a quest made difficult by the dominance of DNA research at the time. Rejected and unfunded, her work seemed destined to wither into oblivion, until 2020 when a novel coronavirus pandemic rampaged around the world. It was then that the world turned to Kariko’s basic research into mRNA technology for two Covid therapies developed by Moderna and Pfizer respectively, leading to vaccines that reduced mortality in every cohort and every country.
While Klein and Thompson focus entirely on the challenges facing contemporary America, one can extrapolate much of value for Australia and for other developed economies, potentially leading to re-thinking of entrenched problems. Working in media at two Australian universities, I often assisted brilliant researchers with their grant applications for funding. I quickly learned how important it was to emphasise the pragmatic outcomes of their research. Sadly, this meant that curiosity-fuelled basic research, no matter how promising, often failed to capture the funding researchers sought. It is inspiring to note that Katalin Kariko was undeterred by the lack of serious funding. Even after she collaborated successfully with immunologist Drew Weissman, the NIH rejected almost all of their grant applications. The private sector, however, came to their rescue, seeing huge potential in their work. In 2023, after struggling for years with little or no funding, the two scientists won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for a technology that saved millions of lives.
Abundance: How we build a better future
Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson
Profile Books Ltd, London, 2025, and Avid Reader Press, United States, an imprint of Simon & Schuster
Available March 2026
