What this lovely column and the "Abundance Agenda" have not yet explained is which of the many rules and regulations they're either going to get rid of or have the bureaucrats ignore. See any problems there?
Life is more complicated than it was for the New Deal. We know more. We believe we should protect more and have therefore instituted many, many rules and regulations to do so. Somehow, try as they might, I do NOT see any Dems pissing off their environmental supporters by gutting environmental rules and regulations. So if we're not likely to get rid of very many of them, how about just using "good judgment"?
Per Prof. Fukuyama (from the post), if
"Bureaucrats need more authority to do their jobs properly, not less, and to substitute good judgment for detailed rule-following."
How much money and time do you want to spend going to court because the environment folks (see above) aren't happy that the bureaucrat "substitute(d) good judgment" and should have followed the damn rules! Do you see many bureaucrats at any level wanting to have their work go to court because someone thought their judgment wasn't very good? Not very likely, I'd say.
The devil's in the details, AGAIN. We've hamstrung ourselves. If you wanna' build fast, go to China. Some moderation might be possible but, sorry, I can't see how big shifts are gonna' happen. There is no free lunch. "We have met the enemy and he is us."
*Of course* I ignored my own rules: "The Facts Don't Matter. The story does!" The Dems could/should indeed make a good story about how much they're gonna' build and how they're going to just revitalize *everything*. GREAT story. It's about the emotions, about the story. The facts become problematic when the Dems end up not being able to produce what they said they'd produce. Seen any of those promised charging stations lately? Didn't think so. Ooooooops...
He's incorrect about US history. The Tennessee Valley Authority was a decentralized project whose execution was mostly overseen by local governments and civics groups of the lower case "d" democratic sort. They frequently overrode the TVA's central planners against those planners wills, including on major matters, and changed the plans autonomously and of their own accord. People at the center of the TVA often complained about this and would say things like "it worked out great but imagine if we could have just done our plans the way we wanted; then after WW2 the TVA was used as a supposed model for international projects, such as the parts of the Mekong River Delta Project in Vietnam during the war, of course it wasnt actually the TVA since there it really was a centralized technocratic dictatorial project, and it was a huge disaster that failed at all but the most basic tasks, and the big tasks it failed at, some of them, caused immense human misery
the Democratic Party of the 1930s was still a thoroughly decentralized, publicly accessible and internally contestable mass member party and the country it operated in was still a widely and deeply federated system with legal/regulatory variability, policy variability, and local governments were still the biggest fiscal actors. That makes them incomparable with 2026 Democrats or so called "Progressives".
He always seems to do PR work for universally standardized system scale central planning undertaken by either major centralized private sector OR major centralized public sector OR a combination thereof and devoid of any lower case "d" democracy. And then when it fails, do PR work to do more of it. And he speaks/writes in endless abstractions, like "government", lol, government comes in many forms with varying sorts of decision controls structures, access points to those structures, distributions of authority and fiscal power, etc.
Francis Fukuyama seems to think of himself as mortal enemies with legal/regulatory variability, policy variability, diffused and redundant activities, local fiscal primacy, publicly accessible and internally contestable decision making nodes, etc
Jefferson himself exercised executive authority with the Louisiana Purchase. The difference was that his use of "Hamiltonian" means was focused on achieving Jeffersonian ends (acquiring space for a republic of yeoman freeholders).
Indeed, my one quibble with the "abundance" agenda is its proponents' tendency to advocate for high-density urbanism.
IMO, we should emulate the former California Governor, Pat Brown, who oversaw the rise of the UC system (much as Jefferson founded the University of Virginia!), the aqueducts, and the building of freeways and suburbs (where today, from places like Milpitas to Houston's [suburban] Chinatown, the most diverse array of mom-and-pop eateries can be found in strip malls [So much for "suburban monoculture"!]). It's "sprawl" only to those who look down on it!
As for so-called "agglomeration effects"? It's worth remembering that Silicon Valley (and many a rock band) started in a suburban garage (or, in the case of Xerox PARC, a suburban office park).
As for the (all-too-readily) reviled Robert Moses? For all the hype around "mass transit" and "walkability scores," I'd gladly abandon the congestion of The Bronx (and the precious urban poodle-walk) to live a short drive from Jones Beach!
As for our residual dense urban environments? Consider the pedestrianized "old towns" in mid-sized European cities like Zaragoza or Montpellier: basically, as theme parks with parking nearby or underground!
Each person's home a castle! A(n electric) car in every garage!
(For more on the same theme, see the writings of Joel Kotkin .)
The Tennessee Valley Authority was a decentralized project whose execution was mostly overseen by local governments and civics groups of the lower case "d" democratic sort. They frequently overrode the TVA's central planners against those planners wills, including on major matters, and changed the plans autonomously and of their own accord. People at the center of the TVA often complained about this and would say things like "it worked out great but imagine if we could have just done our plans the way we wanted; then after WW2 the TVA was used as a supposed model for international projects, such as the parts of the Mekong River Delta Project in Vietnam during the war, of course it wasnt actually the TVA since there it really was a centralized technocratic dictatorial project, and it was a huge disaster that failed at all but the most basic tasks, and the big tasks it failed at, some of them, caused immense human misery
the Democratic Party of the 1930s was still a thoroughly decentralized, publicly accessible and internally contestable mass member party and the country it operated in was still a widely and deeply federated system with legal/regulatory variability, policy variability, and local governments were still the biggest fiscal actors. That makes them incomparable with 2026 Democrats or so called "Progressives".
From the 1930s until well after WW2, the USA operated as pretty much the opposite of Hamiltonianism, the so called Neoliberal Era is essentially Hamilton's path
The United States once had genuinely democratic governance structures, however imperfect and limited, fundamentally based around decentralized and publicly accessible mass-member parties. The Democratic Party, as a small "d" democratic institution, and the Republican Party, as a small "r" republican institution, were honest in their naming and functioned within a politically, economically, governmentally, financially, and scientifically decentralized and pluralized system that had legal and regulatory variability, policy variability, an intentionally diffused and pluralized private sector, and local fiscal dominance. These parties, while far from flawless, allowed for real representation, genuinely participatory governance structures even for very serious policy matters with real participation, and a level of public accountability in political, economic, governmental, financial, and scientific decision making.
However, after WW2 a long multi decadal transformation began due to the dirty deeds of a convergence of several interests and an assortment of powerful special interest groups, and then our parties were transformed into centralized, exclusionary membership organizations. The so called Democratic Party has become a technocracy party, and the so called Republican Party became a conservative party. Neither really represents their original principles of democracy or republicanism, and they don't offer meaningful access or representation to the public. This transformation of the parties has been accompanied by a broader centralization of political, economic, and scientific decision making, which has caused the effective loss of most democratic governance structures.
What this lovely column and the "Abundance Agenda" have not yet explained is which of the many rules and regulations they're either going to get rid of or have the bureaucrats ignore. See any problems there?
Life is more complicated than it was for the New Deal. We know more. We believe we should protect more and have therefore instituted many, many rules and regulations to do so. Somehow, try as they might, I do NOT see any Dems pissing off their environmental supporters by gutting environmental rules and regulations. So if we're not likely to get rid of very many of them, how about just using "good judgment"?
Per Prof. Fukuyama (from the post), if
"Bureaucrats need more authority to do their jobs properly, not less, and to substitute good judgment for detailed rule-following."
How much money and time do you want to spend going to court because the environment folks (see above) aren't happy that the bureaucrat "substitute(d) good judgment" and should have followed the damn rules! Do you see many bureaucrats at any level wanting to have their work go to court because someone thought their judgment wasn't very good? Not very likely, I'd say.
The devil's in the details, AGAIN. We've hamstrung ourselves. If you wanna' build fast, go to China. Some moderation might be possible but, sorry, I can't see how big shifts are gonna' happen. There is no free lunch. "We have met the enemy and he is us."
*Of course* I ignored my own rules: "The Facts Don't Matter. The story does!" The Dems could/should indeed make a good story about how much they're gonna' build and how they're going to just revitalize *everything*. GREAT story. It's about the emotions, about the story. The facts become problematic when the Dems end up not being able to produce what they said they'd produce. Seen any of those promised charging stations lately? Didn't think so. Ooooooops...
He's incorrect about US history. The Tennessee Valley Authority was a decentralized project whose execution was mostly overseen by local governments and civics groups of the lower case "d" democratic sort. They frequently overrode the TVA's central planners against those planners wills, including on major matters, and changed the plans autonomously and of their own accord. People at the center of the TVA often complained about this and would say things like "it worked out great but imagine if we could have just done our plans the way we wanted; then after WW2 the TVA was used as a supposed model for international projects, such as the parts of the Mekong River Delta Project in Vietnam during the war, of course it wasnt actually the TVA since there it really was a centralized technocratic dictatorial project, and it was a huge disaster that failed at all but the most basic tasks, and the big tasks it failed at, some of them, caused immense human misery
the Democratic Party of the 1930s was still a thoroughly decentralized, publicly accessible and internally contestable mass member party and the country it operated in was still a widely and deeply federated system with legal/regulatory variability, policy variability, and local governments were still the biggest fiscal actors. That makes them incomparable with 2026 Democrats or so called "Progressives".
He always seems to do PR work for universally standardized system scale central planning undertaken by either major centralized private sector OR major centralized public sector OR a combination thereof and devoid of any lower case "d" democracy. And then when it fails, do PR work to do more of it. And he speaks/writes in endless abstractions, like "government", lol, government comes in many forms with varying sorts of decision controls structures, access points to those structures, distributions of authority and fiscal power, etc.
Francis Fukuyama seems to think of himself as mortal enemies with legal/regulatory variability, policy variability, diffused and redundant activities, local fiscal primacy, publicly accessible and internally contestable decision making nodes, etc
Jefferson himself exercised executive authority with the Louisiana Purchase. The difference was that his use of "Hamiltonian" means was focused on achieving Jeffersonian ends (acquiring space for a republic of yeoman freeholders).
Indeed, my one quibble with the "abundance" agenda is its proponents' tendency to advocate for high-density urbanism.
IMO, we should emulate the former California Governor, Pat Brown, who oversaw the rise of the UC system (much as Jefferson founded the University of Virginia!), the aqueducts, and the building of freeways and suburbs (where today, from places like Milpitas to Houston's [suburban] Chinatown, the most diverse array of mom-and-pop eateries can be found in strip malls [So much for "suburban monoculture"!]). It's "sprawl" only to those who look down on it!
As for so-called "agglomeration effects"? It's worth remembering that Silicon Valley (and many a rock band) started in a suburban garage (or, in the case of Xerox PARC, a suburban office park).
As for the (all-too-readily) reviled Robert Moses? For all the hype around "mass transit" and "walkability scores," I'd gladly abandon the congestion of The Bronx (and the precious urban poodle-walk) to live a short drive from Jones Beach!
As for our residual dense urban environments? Consider the pedestrianized "old towns" in mid-sized European cities like Zaragoza or Montpellier: basically, as theme parks with parking nearby or underground!
Each person's home a castle! A(n electric) car in every garage!
(For more on the same theme, see the writings of Joel Kotkin .)
The Tennessee Valley Authority was a decentralized project whose execution was mostly overseen by local governments and civics groups of the lower case "d" democratic sort. They frequently overrode the TVA's central planners against those planners wills, including on major matters, and changed the plans autonomously and of their own accord. People at the center of the TVA often complained about this and would say things like "it worked out great but imagine if we could have just done our plans the way we wanted; then after WW2 the TVA was used as a supposed model for international projects, such as the parts of the Mekong River Delta Project in Vietnam during the war, of course it wasnt actually the TVA since there it really was a centralized technocratic dictatorial project, and it was a huge disaster that failed at all but the most basic tasks, and the big tasks it failed at, some of them, caused immense human misery
the Democratic Party of the 1930s was still a thoroughly decentralized, publicly accessible and internally contestable mass member party and the country it operated in was still a widely and deeply federated system with legal/regulatory variability, policy variability, and local governments were still the biggest fiscal actors. That makes them incomparable with 2026 Democrats or so called "Progressives".
From the 1930s until well after WW2, the USA operated as pretty much the opposite of Hamiltonianism, the so called Neoliberal Era is essentially Hamilton's path
The United States once had genuinely democratic governance structures, however imperfect and limited, fundamentally based around decentralized and publicly accessible mass-member parties. The Democratic Party, as a small "d" democratic institution, and the Republican Party, as a small "r" republican institution, were honest in their naming and functioned within a politically, economically, governmentally, financially, and scientifically decentralized and pluralized system that had legal and regulatory variability, policy variability, an intentionally diffused and pluralized private sector, and local fiscal dominance. These parties, while far from flawless, allowed for real representation, genuinely participatory governance structures even for very serious policy matters with real participation, and a level of public accountability in political, economic, governmental, financial, and scientific decision making.
However, after WW2 a long multi decadal transformation began due to the dirty deeds of a convergence of several interests and an assortment of powerful special interest groups, and then our parties were transformed into centralized, exclusionary membership organizations. The so called Democratic Party has become a technocracy party, and the so called Republican Party became a conservative party. Neither really represents their original principles of democracy or republicanism, and they don't offer meaningful access or representation to the public. This transformation of the parties has been accompanied by a broader centralization of political, economic, and scientific decision making, which has caused the effective loss of most democratic governance structures.
Trump does not desire to be a king but just a gangsta . Why is he obsessed with gangsters? Cuz they be muslin in on his turf baby 😎