Episode 478 - The Abundance Conspiracy (w/ Sandeep Vaheesan, Isabella Weber, & Aaron Regunberg)

Bad Faith

Chapo, Bernie, Left, Leftism, Socialism, Socialist, Berniesanders, Comedy, Democrat, News, Politics

4.5 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 29 May 2025

⏱️ 93 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

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This abundance panel -- which been weeks in the making -- is well-timed: A new poll shows that voters prefer populist messaging to "abundance" messaging by a significant margin, throwing advocates of Abundance, a new book by Ezra Klein & Derek Thompson, into a tizzy. So what is "Abundance" anyway, & why has Left Twitter been so antagonistic to the ideology? Are pro-Abundance advocates like Klein, Thompson, and Matt Yglesias right when they say the left's critiques are only vibe-based, or is the left raising legitimate concerns about a corporate-backed, astro-turfed campaign intended to syphon off genuine populist anger? We've assembled the authors of three of the best abundance-critical op-eds to discuss: economist Isabella Weber, legal director at Open Markets Institute Sandeep Vaheesan, and former Rhode Island State Rep. Aaron Regunberg. It's the most comprehensive and specific explanation of why the left should reject the "abundance" framing you're likely to hear.

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Produced by Armand Aviram.

Theme by Nick Thorburn (@nickfromislands).

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm
0:02.0	I'm
0:04.0	I'm
0:05.0	I'm
0:06.0	I'm
0:07.0	I'm
0:09.0	I'm
0:10.0	I'm
0:11.0	I'm I have a lot of the I have been wanting to do a big, beautiful abundance panel for a very long time, but it was worth
0:46.7	a wait because we have an all-star panel aligned for you today.
0:50.4	We have Isabella Weber, a professor and economist at University of Massachusetts Amherst,
0:57.2	an author of How China Escape Shock Therapy with us today.
1:01.9	We have Aaron Regenberg, Climate Accountability Director and Lawyer at Public Citizens
1:07.6	and a former Rhode Island State rep.
1:10.8	And last but not least, Sandeep Fahisan,
1:13.8	who is the legal director at Open Markets Institute and author of Democracy and Power,
1:18.9	history of electrification in the United States. Welcome to you all.
1:25.0	Thanks for having us. Thanks for having us. Okay, so you all came across Marriott, because at various
1:29.8	points, you all wrote reviews of the Ezra Klein and Daniel Thompson book, Abundance, that
1:38.8	caused some degree of backlash response on the internet. I think I said Daniel Thompson. I'm
1:44.5	Derek Thompson. And I want to start by setting this up for folks who might not somehow have
1:50.2	learned that much about abundance, which is probably the rare listener at this point. And the
	...

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