Welcome to the Cato podcast. I'm Ryan Bourne, Cato's R. Evan Scharf Chair for the public

understanding of economics. Over recent years, a new intellectual movement on the centre-left has

gathered momentum under the banner of abundance liberalism. Distinct from strands of the progressive

left obsessed with redistribution or breaking up corporate power, abundance liberals seem to get the importance of economic growth

and think that we need a radical vision of plenitude,

towards a world of more house building, more infrastructure, more energy production and more innovation.

And in their desire to achieve those ends,

they often seem willing to countenance clearing away regulatory bottlenecks and institutional veto points, that in some areas at least, would allow freer markets to deliver that abundance they seek.

Now, that aspect of their program has led some libertarians to see abundance liberals as allies, particularly on issues such as housing, immigration, trade,

and permitting reform. But is the abundance liberal movement a meaningful political force? Are the

areas of overlap with libertarians enough to make us ideological cousins? And where are the major

fault lines with libertarian thinking? To discuss this, I'm joined by

Ilya Sommon, George Mason Law Professor, Cato Scholar, Volok Conspiracy Contributor and Proponent of

Such an Alliance, and Jeremiah Johnson, the co-founder of the Centre for New Liberalism,

and he writes at the Infinite Scroll on Substack. So let's start with some table setting, Jeremiah, for those listeners

uninitiated, what is abundance liberalism? You know, who are its proponents and what do they

really believe? Abundance liberalism is an interesting movement because it is rooted in the very

simplest form of politics, which is that having more better stuff

is good. And you would think this would be a fairly uncontroversial claim, but, you know,

modern politics being what it is. Abundance liberalism roots itself in the idea that, look,

economic growth is good. The primary reason why

current living standards are better than they were 25 years ago or 50 years ago or 100 years ago

...