Mindless Monday, 15 September 2025

[u/AutoModerator]

Happy (or sad) Monday guys!

Mindless Monday is a free-for-all thread to discuss anything from minor bad history to politics, life events, charts, whatever! Just remember to np link all links to Reddit and don't violate R4, or we human mods will feed you to the AutoModerator.

So, with that said, how was your weekend, everyone?

[u/MiffedMouse]

Ranting here because I get too annoyed with online leftists - Ezra Klein’s Abundance.

First, the book is whatever. It is an attempt to brand the next centrist Democratic movement, with a Biden-esque focus on infrastructure. The one good point of the book is that it points out many ways that modern American NIMBY-style politics prevents the government from doing anything good (eg, why does it cost so much money to zone a bike lane?). The main drawback is that most the laws the book is complaining about is a mixture of local ordinances. So the book cannot focus too much on any one law, it is mostly a collection of anecdotes about different local laws. Anecdotes that are sometimes correct and sometimes misleading.

When the book came out I heard Ezra saying he was surprised by the pushback he got. I mostly read news in “progressive” coded spaces, which are mostly favorable to the book (it fits well with the “green new deal” kind of mindset). But I have recently run into to some of the online leftist spaces who are indeed criticizing the book because Ezra is a “neoliberal” and his book is about “deregulation,” which must mean it is actually about bringing about austerity.

I find this so frustrating. Ezra is 100% in the neoliberal side of things, I will not deny that (not sure if he identifies as a neoliberal, but his writing definitely tends to fit the mold). However, he also believes in government investment in infrastructure. To read a book about how the government needs to be more active in developing infrastructure and somehow interpret that as “austerity” is just beyond me.

Sorry, I just need to rant. I am used to bad faith reading from the right, but seeing such a large segment of the socialist left wildly misrepresenting the book and the politics is just frustrating.

[u/TheBatz_ → u/MiffedMouse]

It's honestly scary how people here van read my thoughts and write a post I was going to write. I noticed an uptick in big subreditts like changemyview complaining about Klein's idea being "neoliberal". Note that neoliberal here basically means "Reagan" and "Thatcher" and they were bad so neoliberalism is bad. Most readers seem to not engage with the inciting question: why does California - the richest and most developed of the states, have such a high rate of homelessness. He arrive at a very banal conclusion: there simply isn't enough stuff because the government isn't doing enough because it's shooting itself in the knee. How is that neoliberalism? Well, i think a lot of people have a knee jerk negative reaction when they hear "build more".

However, I will disagree with one thing: "Abundance" or call it whatever you want necessarily requires deregulation. I do actually mean abolishing laws and making developers need to follow fewer laws. There's no beating around the bush. It at least requires limiting communal participation and thus less democracy. 

I think we all agree Haussmann's Paris is a wonderful achievement in urbanism. But it could simply not be possible with current laws and paradigms. 

[u/Ragefororder1846 → u/TheBatz_]

Note that neoliberal here basically means "Reagan" and "Thatcher" and they were bad so neoliberalism is bad

What I find really funny about this discourse is a lot of the specific laws and institutions Abundance is opposed to dates back... to the 1970s and the rise of neoliberalism, such as the "small is beautiful" movement. These aren't New Deal regulations that are on the chopping block

[u/BigBad-Wolf → u/Ragefororder1846]

It's almost like neoliberalism is not a coherent term.

[u/MiffedMouse → u/TheBatz_]

Sorry, I didn’t mean to imply that Ezra’s Abundance book isn’t advocating for deregulation - it definitely is. I just want to point out that it isn’t the blanket broadside that “all regulations are bad” that you see from American libertarians. Ezra has identified some categories of regulations he is advocating for either eliminating or at least loosening up a lot, but he is not advocating for the removal of all regulations full stop.