Progress isn’t always without costs. It is great when it is, but sometimes it won’t be. You can’t be paralyzed by the presence of a downside when you see a much bigger upside. One of the major public policy books of 2025 has been Ezra Klein‘s and Derek Thompson‘s Abundance. This argues that liberals need to embrace delivery over process in their planning. Essentially, this means that rather than focusing on ensuring that all stakeholders get a chance to say everything that they could possibly want to say about a plan, and delay ad infinitum, public projects instead need to ensure that they focus on delivering positive results for the public. A central feature of this argument is that recognizing trade-offs is critical to progress. Sometimes, to make good things happen, you have to be willing to tolerate some imperfect things along the way.
Beyond Scarcity
Klein and Thompson believe in progress. They want the world to be better. How might this happen? A lot of it will involve making innovations a reality. If we want poorer people to have more good things we have to work on creating more good things to share around. We can’t just say that everything is already good for some of us with nice houses, so let’s stop building any more houses now.
…the only way for humanity to limit climate change while fighting poverty is to invent our way to clean energy that is plentiful and cheap and then spend enough to deploy it.
Klein and Thompson, 20205, page 14
This implies we need to invest in innovation and diffusion of the innovations. Government will be needed as part of that. The problem is that government — they discuss the US, but the points hold at least to some extent in other places that I know — is too focused on doing things the right way rather than getting the right things done.
Recognizing Trade-offs Is Critical To Progress
The central recurring narrative of the book is that processes designed to prevent error or misuse stop things from happening. Lots of people honestly say they are worried about the housing shortage, but nothing happens to build more houses. Well-meaning rules to stop government doing bad things can be leveraged to stop almost anything from happening. Permission to build housing takes years, which means the population grows and the housing stock doesn’t change much. This has benefits if you own your home — scarcity means prices go up — but is bad for those who want to help young people find an affordable place to live.
A housing shortage is also politically bad for those who favor immigration. ‘There isn’t enough space to allow people in’ resonates more when you genuinely aren’t building enough homes. Theoretically, the extra labor (immigrants of working age) you bring in means more people are available to solve problems, e.g., to help build homes and address the housing problem. Yet, this doesn’t happen if housing permits are too hard to get and the new houses that could be built simply aren’t. People just blame the immigrants for taking the houses rather than wondering why the talented hard-working people coming into the country are prevented from helping solve the country’s problems.
Slow Building Of High Speed Rail
A depressing example of failure is high speed rail in California. The USA is not overly blessed with rail. An obvious way to change this would be to put a high-speed line from LA to San Francisco. This would be a more convenient option — who really likes flying — and this would really help the fight against global warming. Despite years of rule in California by Democrats who favor rail and want to do it, the line still hasn’t happened to any significant degree. Endless environmental reviews, concerns to ensure all voices get input, and associated cost increases has reduced its speed to more snail than high speed. There remains hope for a small bit of line in the center of California, but it may not get anywhere near LA or San Francisco in my lifetime. (I saw Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, pretending it wasn’t a fiasco. I personally can’t see why anyone would believe him on that).
The problem seems to be that people don’t see that recognizing trade-offs is critical to progress. Instead, people shy away from trade-offs. Yes, unfortunately we might lose some nature to build the rail but if you see climate change as a massive threat you might have to do that. If climate change is an existential problem, you can’t use the same relaxed processes you would use to discuss something where time isn’t of the essence. If you aren’t willing to make a trade-off — to give up anything to gain something more important — you won’t achieve anything.
For more on progress see Denial, Doom, Or Informed Optimism, How To Make The World Better, What Type Of Green Are You?, Progress Exists And Is A Good Thing, and Are We Making Any Progress On Sustainability?
For the benefits of immigration see A Positive Case For Immigration and Bias And Public Policy Discussions
Read: Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson (2025) Abundance, Simon & Schuster
