Faster, Cheaper, Better Government: Derek Thompson on “Abundance”
The Political Orphanage
Andrew Heaton
5 • 951 Ratings
🗓️ 16 April 2025
⏱️ 55 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson are the authors of “Abundance” a book about removing artificial scarcity and embracing a worldview that focuses on end goals, building, growth, and increasing the supply of everything we need and want. He joins to discuss the book, zoning, why America can’t have nice trains, and how we can better lean into federal research funding.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to the political orphanage, a home for plucky problem solvers and misfits of all stripes. |
| 0:15.8 | I am your intrepid host, Andrew Heaton. Welcome. |
| 0:19.9 | In 2023, a tanker truck flipped over while going through an underpass, spilling 8,500 |
| 0:26.6 | gallons of gasoline, which ignited, instantly killing the driver, and resulting in such a hellish |
| 0:34.6 | conflagration that it melted the steel beams of the bridge above it. That bridge |
| 0:40.2 | collapsed, severing I-95, a major artery in the U.S. highway system. Normally, 160,000 vehicles |
| 0:49.0 | crossed that bridge every day. Incapacitated, this meant an insane level of traffic congestion and car pile-ups for miles. |
| 0:57.1 | If you've ever lived in a place with a crucial highway system, it's I-35 where I grew up, |
| 1:02.4 | you know how incredibly irritating it is when highway maintenance causes traffic congestion for |
| 1:07.9 | months or years. But that's maintenance. Planned maintenance. This was a disaster. |
| 1:15.6 | An unplanned disaster in Pennsylvania on a pivotal East Coast highway system. |
| 1:21.6 | The Secretary of Transportation for that state warned that fixing the bridge would take between 12 months and 24 months, which |
| 1:30.3 | by my calculation is one to two years. So picture that irritating planned highway expansion |
| 1:38.0 | near you. Now imagine that it's random, unplanned, and it's going to take up to two years, two years of horrible |
| 1:45.4 | traffic delays, two years of getting stuck in one random town every time you drive north |
| 1:51.8 | the south. Shout out to Waco, Texas, which for some reason was a blood clot of the highway |
| 1:58.3 | system for three years every time I wanted to drive from Austin to Oklahoma City because of highway stuff. |
| 2:03.6 | But again, that was planned. That was maintenance. We're talking about a disaster here that's not planned. It's going to take one to two years. |
| 2:11.6 | And most of that time, the one to two years, most of that time would not actually be the construction, the building of the bridge. |
| 2:22.3 | Most of it would be satisfying regulations. |
| 2:26.3 | Hiring a consultant, accepting bids from contractors, environmental impact statements, |
| 2:31.3 | design approval from the Federal Highway Commission, procurement rules. |
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