Damn. There it is. The station I fully get off the train. Look, if there was the prospect of hitting 19th century level growth I can squint and see the case. But we won’t! These are important! (But marginal) improvements to aggregate growth. Ignoring distribution is self-serving nonsense. - ThreadSky

urbanlandrent.foundation • 89 days ago

Damn. There it is. The station I fully get off the train.

Look, if there was the prospect of hitting 19th century level growth I can squint and see the case. But we won’t! These are important! (But marginal) improvements to aggregate growth. Ignoring distribution is self-serving nonsense.

Comments

pfish.zone•89 days ago

this guy is from the Institute for Progress, which seems like a major player in the “abundance” discourse, and they’re a bunch of weirdos

pfish.zone•89 days ago

lol pretty sure he’s GMU econ prof Alex Tabarrok’s son

urbanlandrent.foundation•89 days ago

Abundance pundits not beating the “Has no theory of political economy” allegations.

raders.bsky.social•89 days ago

This feels like a bit of a strawman attack on the book, TBH. This isn't their quote, it's an interpretation from a critic arguing their repeated "we support redistribution but we also need to think about production" isn't emphatic enough: https://www.maximum-progress.com/p/the-straussian-message-of-abundance

urbanlandrent.foundation•89 days ago

I understand that. I’m planning on picking this thing up when I get back. Though every essay I’ve read from both authors do generally underrate distribution as a mechanism for growth.

I’ve read both of these guys since I was like 18!

charlescmann.bsky.social•89 days ago

I've only read 15 pages of the book but on page 6 they list the major US social welfare programs and say in emphatic terms that they support them.

thisisbenphelps.bsky.social•89 days ago

Yeah I don’t really think this message is in between the lines. It’s more like it’s made up to fit the reviewers’ politics.

raders.bsky.social•89 days ago

In a different context this is super you-coded, haha. Redistribution in scarcity (healthcare and housing) is just subsidizing demand!

To me the insight is to shift from *pure* redistribution (ACA, CTC, Section 8) to production-focus redistribution (single payer, universal childcare, social housing)

depence.bsky.social•89 days ago

Thanks for the link!

shablopligh.bsky.social•89 days ago

Klein Thompson 2050: “… when we discovered that key molecules were best synthesized in the zero-gravity conditions of space. But these days, automated factories thrum in low orbit. Cheap rocketry conveys the medicine down to earth where it’s saved millions of lives and billions of healthy years.”

boomies-n-zoomies.bsky.social•89 days ago

Aside from the political ramifications, this is basically how you go back to a 19th century boom and bust cycle.

erichluepke.bsky.social•88 days ago

These guys pretend that history never happened. It's like slavery and Jim Crow and the Gilded Age and Reaganomics did not exist. Sorry guys, it's an inconvenient truth.

depence.bsky.social•89 days ago

Absolutely wild! Note that "doing redistribution in 1750" would have involved:
-The elimination of chattel slavery
-The conversion of company/proprietary rule in the Dutch East Indies, American colonies, etc. to more distributed, republican, and local rule
-Eliminating serfdom in Europe

meff.bsky.social•89 days ago

I feel like this post and its quotes have created some pretty good conversation on what abundance is and some of the economics surrounding it. It's always a pleasant surprise when the internet works to elucidate.

christosilvia.bsky.social•89 days ago

Where is this original quote?

jorgecsantos.bsky.social•89 days ago

To be clear, they don’t say this and the author is saying it’s a subtle hidden message. Maybe someone should ask them instead of reading into whatever the author wants to see

urbanlandrent.foundation•89 days ago

I understand that. I have more beef with Klein’s acolytes than Klein himself.

samd.bsky.social•89 days ago

To be fair this is like the IFP bros trying to right-wash abundance so they can sell it to fellow republicans

kevinwglass.bsky.social•88 days ago

first shot fired in the internecine right-abundist and left-abundist warfare

sciortino.bsky.social•89 days ago

Maxwell Tabarrok is lying/mistaken about what the book is arguing. Don't trust a conservative to interpret liberals.

mdasilva.bsky.social•89 days ago

At bare minimum you need to see redistribution as a necessary form of risk management. Emergence of a underclass - even one with living standards acceptable by today’s standards - threatens social stability and cohesion.

torrleonard.bsky.social•89 days ago

Incorrect!

https://bsky.app/profile/robinsonmeyer.bsky.social/post/3lloqrj6gnc2p

thecoratee.bsky.social•89 days ago

The general argument that growth and resource distribution are independent or, worse, a tradeoff is just total nonsense anyway.

10hourmixforsleep.bsky.social•89 days ago

these purple avatar center for progress guys are all right wing hacks

shishiqiushi.bsky.social•89 days ago

Validates my strategy of refusing to learn any details and just stay abundance good

notthatproud.bsky.social•89 days ago

Seems like maybe you wouldn’t want to have that sort of growth if it wasn’t distributed appropriately? Maybe I’m crazy.

shablopligh.bsky.social•89 days ago

All that econ power in the hands of corrupt and unaccountable people and the corps they hide behind — not that most born privileged US execs even merit the compensation they get for their crimes against humanity https://www.lisc.org/our-resources/resource/opportunity-atlas-shows-effect-childhood-zip-codes-adult-success/

davidshere.net•89 days ago

Whoever wrote that is reading between the lines into something that isn’t there. A person who believed that wouldn’t identify with Abundance, they’d identify with Effective Altruism, and if they try to copy abundance absolutely they should be shunned.

sesquipedalian.bsky.social•89 days ago

I agree that the “redistribution doesn’t matter” thing is a strawman, but I don’t see what effective altruism has to do with it. I’m an EA, and I support Abundance, and I support redistribution (which is why I donate to GiveDirectly). And I don’t think other EAs are particularly anti-redistribution.

davidshere.net•89 days ago

I will admit I’m drawing on a very thin reed here, there is a strain of that thought that says what happens today doesn’t matter, because the distant future will be so much better that doing anything to disrupt that future is akin a mass murder/deprivation. Am I making that up?

sesquipedalian.bsky.social•88 days ago

There are definitely people who think optimizing the distant future is really important due to the number of potential people in it, but I’ve never heard someone use that as a justification for opposing the progressive income tax or Medicaid or whatever. And most EA work is on present-day problems.

davidshere.net•88 days ago

I suppose it’s implied? The people I’ve heard that from tend to be your Elon Musk, Sam Bankman Fried types, you know?

sesquipedalian.bsky.social•88 days ago

Musk isn’t an EA. Bankman-Fried was but I don’t think he was against redistributive economic policy, his political donations were mostly to Democrats. He was bad for other reasons. In general EAs are left-leaning in American politics and support redistributing money to poor people in Africa.

alonlevy.bsky.social•88 days ago

1. As pointed by others in @-replies, this isn't from the book but from a review by others.

2. Separately, 19th century economic growth was *lower* than 20th century economic growth - US GDP per capita grew by a factor of 4 1800-1900, 7.3 1900-2000. https://www.measuringworth.com/datasets/usgdp/

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