In the opening pages of Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson’s influential book Abundance, the two describe a future in 2050. They outline a world where everything is better, cleaner and more bountiful, if economic progress can be revitalized.
A “cocoon of energy” will barely leave a trace of carbon and generated at costs that will hardly show up on a monthly bill. Water will be so plentiful that desert cities will erupt with foliage. Cellular meat labs and vertical farming will produce cheap and healthy food with less cruelty and fewer physical resources. Orbital drug labs will create miracle medicines that cure disease and unlock longevity.
Those are appealing ideas. But then the vision falls flat.
When it comes to how the Abundance agenda makes people’s lives better, the authors’ answer is: a weekend getaway to London. In other words, more leisure time and the disposable income to do something with it.
That is also appealing, especially for a harried working class and younger generations facing the climate crisis, AI disruption as well as political and economic instability. But it’s empty and based on an unrealistic premise.
Suspending disbelief
It’s unrealistic, because the keys to unlocking this future rest on the same power structures that underpin the problems we’re facing now.
The Abundance project calls for removing hurdles so capital can be invested more efficiently and the economy can produce more of what we want and do it more efficiently. That means the people in control of orchestrating the future are largely the same people who control the present.
But why should that happen? In order to maximize profits (the purpose of the capital class), it means minimizing costs such as labor. But in the idealized Abundance future, people will work fewer days for the same amount of pay. That outcome, Klein and Thompson say, is because the bounty provided by artificial intelligence will be shared, since it was “built on the collective knowledge of humanity.”
While others have argued in favor of this, seeing that happen without a strong political shift toward devolution of economic and political power (as I argue in my last post) is a stretch.
And before there’s any redistribution of AI prosperity, a lot of people will want to get paid.
Some $7 trillion will be spent globally on data centers by the end of this decade. OpenAI and Anthropic are pursuing public listings with valuations likely in the $1 trillion range to help fund those capital expenditures and vie with Elon Musk’s SpaceX (the parent of Grok).
AI companies are all about growth and potential, but at some point they will need to show they can make a profit that justifies all that investment, so get ready for fees to creep up. Already, AI costs are rising for businesses and that means raising prices or savings elsewhere (like using it as an excuse to cut jobs).
Ultimately, the costs for the AI buildout will be shared by the public in some form, but not necessarily the benefits. As things are going, those gains will more than likely lead to a further concentration of power with the economic and technological elite rather than trickle down.
Even if the technology enables massive productivity gains, it’s hard to believe under the logic of capitalism that an AI dividend is going to be passed along to the public anytime soon. Even if there are well-meaning ideas in the Abundance project, it ultimately relies on the pursuers of profit to realize that vision.
And if the U.S. does somehow distribute AI prosperity, what about the rest of the world? Or does it just become a new form of extraction, with value drawn from the collective work of humanity and sold back as a subscription?
Consumo, ergo sum
Setting aside whether the capital class will actually share the gains, there’s a second problem with what’s on offer: it’s socially empty.
If the Abundance agenda pans out, my reward is I get dinner and a show in London’s West End, according to Klein and Thompson’s vision statement. That might provide a short-lived dopamine hit, but the individual is still just an atomized and isolated “end-user.” That’s not an improvement in substance to the stunted liberalism we have now.
It’s not a unique view. Some version of consumo, ergo sum (‘I consume, therefore I am,’ to riff off René Descartes’ famous axiom) is inherent in all establishment answers to our current crisis.
Noah Smith, a fellow Abundance advocate, argues that what you consume defines personal identity more than a job. “Everyone wants your money; you are the one who gets to choose who gets it. That choice is yours and yours alone,” he wrote in April. (The word “alone” might be the operative word here.)
So according to the Abundance class, free will is to choose between a Sprite, a Fuze iced tea, an Innocent smoothie, and a Topo Chico hard seltzer. All those brands are owned by The Coca-Cola Co., by the way, and illustrates the limits of consumer-led individualism: namely, we can only choose what’s on the shelves.
It also means individual agency is a function of disposable income. That’s exactly the problem we have now. People with money (and consequently power) operate under a different set of standards than the rest of us. They are in practice more free, which isn’t what liberalism’s universal ideals are supposed to be about.
We are also more than simply workers and consumers. We are also siblings, friends, neighbors and compatriots and want to take part in society, rather than just be on the receiving end of it. Those other facets, which pay off in meaning and belonging, don’t play a clear role in the Abundance vision.
That’s a serious failing, because there are alternatives that target that weakness in liberalism. Belonging and identity is the main appeal of nationalist populists like MAGA in the U.S., the AfD in Germany and France’s National Rally.
Similarly, proponents of the “network state” propose the creation of new sovereign entities with a unifying national consciousness. In that vein, Palantir’s Alexander Karp and Nicholas Zamiska warn that “regressive” cultures and “hollow pluralism” are undermining the West.
While these movements vary enormously, they share the diagnosis that Western individualism is alienating and that belong is more durable than a new phone or a weekend retreat. If liberalism doesn’t provide a better answer, people will drift away and the social fabric will continue to fray.
A broader vision
A vision based on material improvements can only go so far. The West is saturated. We can only own so many phones and can’t create more time for all the content available to us. We need more quality over quantity. That requires a different spirit and means reconnecting the individual and society.
Since criticism is easy, here’s an effort to broaden the vision of what that could look like:
In the year 2050, you leave home to attend the meeting of a citizens assembly to discuss what to do with a pharmacy that closed as most common ailments have been wiped out by preventative healthcare and advances in medications.
The proposals, drawn from best practices around the world, range from installing a community workshop with tools and 3D printers to tearing it down for a local cooperative to build new homes for its staff. At the end, a compromise is found that keeps the structure intact and builds around it, while also adding more green space to the community.
Trees line the street to provide a comforting canopy for residents, but you notice that one is sickly and so you register that on a community app. After an inspection in the coming days, neighbors and city workers will cooperate to cut it down safely, preserving the wood for productive reuse and planting a new one.
The definition of work has become more fluid. Your job and your community overlap. What you do productively and how you engage in your community are valued as both contribute to the common good.
Employees are stakeholders. There are enterprises that require scale like developing drugs, securing raw materials and assembling robots. But many others are smaller collectives. Public watchdogs composed of experts and citizens ensure that corporate and personal power is held in check.
A national election campaign is under way. There are six parties on the ticket and two or three have good chances of securing enough votes to make it into parliament. Due to term limits, only one incumbent is eligible in your region, and all candidates have similar access to resources. Politics has become a marketplace of ideas that’s open for everyone, all the time.
People around the world have followed a similar path, weakening embedded power structures and making the world safer and more equitable, so that people can take a pleasure trip to London or anywhere else if they feel like it.
We’re obviously not anywhere close to that in the West, or elsewhere, but it’s a point on the horizon to strive for…from the ground up.