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Move fast, break things: A review of Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson

The trouble with 'everything-bagel' Abundance is the gaping hole right in the center of it.

In recounting Pennsylvania’s near-miraculous speedy repair of the I-95 bridge after a truck fire led to its collapse in 2023, Klein and Thompson approvingly draw attention to Governor Josh Shapiro’s declaration of emergency, which allowed him to bypass a broad swathe of safeguards: With the exception of the opening exploration of how laws meant to prevent environmental catastrophe were coopted by the likes of Marc Andreessen to block developers from housing his less fortunate neighbors, Abundance nearly entirely neglects to grapple with the possibility that the at-times painstaking slowness of government is itself a product of democratic responsiveness, of accountability. This was Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s exact point in Shelby County v. Holder, a case that centered around Southern states’ desire to eliminate the attorney general’s “preclearance” oversight that had safeguarded their elections from racial discrimination ever since the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

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