595 | Ned Resnikoff: One Year In - Taking Abundance Back to Its Fundamentals
Episode
57 min
Read time
2 min
Topics
Relationships, Investing, Design & UX
AI-Generated Summary
Key Takeaways
- ✓Abundance Factionalism: The abundance umbrella contains mutually exclusive factions — from "red plenty" left to "dark abundance" nationalist right — that cannot form a coherent coalition. Resnikoff argues the policy tools of abundance are ideologically neutral, but the goals they serve are not. Practitioners should identify which faction they belong to before claiming shared movement membership.
- ✓YIMBY-to-Abundance Pipeline: The abundance framework emerged directly from YIMBY organizing, which began in San Francisco circa 2014 with SF BARF, then evolved through litigation via CARLA, then state-level legislation via California YIMBY. This progression — from public meetings to lawsuits to legislation — offers a replicable model for other supply-constrained policy domains beyond housing.
- ✓Bipartisanship as Outcome, Not Starting Point: The US-China policy consensus shift illustrates how durable bipartisan agreement forms: hawks won the Republican Party first, demonstrated results under Trump, then converted Biden-era Democrats. Abundance advocates should consolidate a center-left coalition first, prove results in cities like Austin and New York, then allow the right to adopt the framework on its own terms.
- ✓Cost Disease Socialism Framework: A 2020 Niskanen paper argues that demand-side subsidies alone — Pell grants, Medicare for All — create feedback loops where prices rise to absorb new funding. The actionable alternative combines demand subsidies with supply expansion mandates, such as conditioning federal university funding on increased enrollment capacity, to break the subsidy-price inflation cycle.
- ✓Regulatory Reform Reframe: Rather than debating regulation versus deregulation in Reagan-era terms, Resnikoff frames all market structures as state-designed systems. The practical implication: affordable housing public investment produces significantly more units when paired with permissive multifamily zoning, while zero-income populations still require direct public subsidy that no market design can eliminate.
What It Covers
Marshall Kosloff and Roosevelt Institute fellow Ned Resnikoff examine the one-year arc of the abundance agenda, tracing its roots from San Francisco's 2014 YIMBY movement through its expansion into a broader left-liberal policy framework, while diagnosing why its bipartisan framing has created strategic incoherence.
Key Questions Answered
- •Abundance Factionalism: The abundance umbrella contains mutually exclusive factions — from "red plenty" left to "dark abundance" nationalist right — that cannot form a coherent coalition. Resnikoff argues the policy tools of abundance are ideologically neutral, but the goals they serve are not. Practitioners should identify which faction they belong to before claiming shared movement membership.
- •YIMBY-to-Abundance Pipeline: The abundance framework emerged directly from YIMBY organizing, which began in San Francisco circa 2014 with SF BARF, then evolved through litigation via CARLA, then state-level legislation via California YIMBY. This progression — from public meetings to lawsuits to legislation — offers a replicable model for other supply-constrained policy domains beyond housing.
- •Bipartisanship as Outcome, Not Starting Point: The US-China policy consensus shift illustrates how durable bipartisan agreement forms: hawks won the Republican Party first, demonstrated results under Trump, then converted Biden-era Democrats. Abundance advocates should consolidate a center-left coalition first, prove results in cities like Austin and New York, then allow the right to adopt the framework on its own terms.
- •Cost Disease Socialism Framework: A 2020 Niskanen paper argues that demand-side subsidies alone — Pell grants, Medicare for All — create feedback loops where prices rise to absorb new funding. The actionable alternative combines demand subsidies with supply expansion mandates, such as conditioning federal university funding on increased enrollment capacity, to break the subsidy-price inflation cycle.
- •Regulatory Reform Reframe: Rather than debating regulation versus deregulation in Reagan-era terms, Resnikoff frames all market structures as state-designed systems. The practical implication: affordable housing public investment produces significantly more units when paired with permissive multifamily zoning, while zero-income populations still require direct public subsidy that no market design can eliminate.
Notable Moment
Resnikoff points out that young conservative staffers in Washington DC are among the most pro-YIMBY demographics in the country — not because of ideology, but because they live in a walkable, functional city and directly experience its benefits, suggesting proof-of-concept cities convert skeptics more than arguments do.
Episode Transcript
Marshall here. Welcome back to the Realignment. Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the show. Today's episode has been a long time coming. After a pretty aggressive focus on the abundance agenda since Steve Dallas came on to discuss his rise of the abundance faction piece back in mid twenty twenty four. After this episode, I really think I've run out of things to say on the topic. To be clear, this isn't a Marshall moves on to the next shiny policy thing. I'm still very excited to co produce the abundance twenty twenty six conference towards the end of this year and my Niskanen centric abundance work will continue. So please reach out if you're working on or interested in learning more about the space. Part of why I've been so interested in abundance hasn't just been the policies themselves, but rather abundance broader context in the politics and policy space during the realignment moment. When I first came across abundance, I was clearly in the middle of or just not really frank and honest with myself about, my own ideological movement back towards the center left after almost a decade living in and covering the realignment right. I first got interested formally in the right back in 2014 when I read Sam Tenenhaus' New York Times Magazine article on reform conservatism. Reform conservatism was a wonky policy centric crew that tried to push conservatism past its sort of 2012 v Trump impasse and really upgrade the movement and its framing for the moment. Since the abundance discourse really kicked off just right before Biden withdrew from the twenty twenty four campaign, I saw abundance as filling the same role in left liberal spaces as reform conservatism attempted to in the 2014 right. So with this episode, I really want to end the past year of aggressive coverage where I began last February. Back then, Steve Tallis and I interviewed Felicia Wong, then the head of the left leaning Roswell Institute. Talking with Felicia and hearing from lots of folks privately, I concluded that the idea that the left was implacably opposed to the broad sets of abundance ideas was just incorrect. Yes. There was obviously going to be an agro anti abundance, anti Ezra Klein set of takes from sub stackers, YouTubers and creators, and, of course, posters on social media. But the actual people who held positions of power in left leaning policy orgs and who held offices where abundance ideas were relevant responded cautiously but ultimately positively to the broad sets of principles. So not to claim that New York City mayor Zoran Nandani is officially an abundance person, but his pretty consistent references to abundance, state capacity, these sort of sets of ideas didn't really surprise me with that in mind. If you are on the left and you want government to do a bunch of really big things, I've got good news for you. Abundance has a bunch of really valid ideas in that category, …
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by Niskanen Center
“A 2020 Niskanen paper argues that demand-side subsidies alone — Pell grants, Medicare for All — create feedback loops where prices rise to absorb new funding.”
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