Introduction
The modern liberal left faces a paradox: it can design and fund grand changes, but it cannot implement them. This article analyzes why noble ideas get bogged down in procedural paralysis and how "abundance liberalism" can restore state capacity. You will learn how excessive regulation blocks the construction of housing and power grids, and why supply-side progressivism is the key to saving the credibility of the liberal project.
"Everything-Bagel Liberalism" and Regulatory Sludge
The pathology known as "everything-bagel liberalism" involves weighing down every project with an excess of goals—from inclusion to environmental protection. As a result, the process itself becomes more important than the outcome. This mechanism is fueled by regulatory sludge: layers of rules from past crises that are never removed. This leads to process-centrism, where officials derive legitimacy from checking boxes rather than solving housing or energy problems.
Thomas Piketty points to the role of the Brahmin Left—educated professionals who are adept at creating norms but lose touch with the material needs of citizens. In this system, implementation loses out to innovation; we can design something, but we cannot build it, which requires a restoration of practical reason and a focus on real action.
NIMBYism and Energy Challenges in the Age of AI
The California housing crisis is a textbook example of NIMBYism, where local groups block investments to protect the status quo. Environmental law (CEQA) has become a procedural weapon there, making housing construction impossible. Instead of being an accumulator of progress, the city becomes a battlefield over supply. Similar tensions are visible in energy: the development of artificial intelligence demands a radical increase in energy supply. Without new grids and nuclear power plants, AI will become an accelerator of scarcity.
Three models of approaching abundance are emerging globally. The American model is a struggle against veto coalitions. The European model is bogged down in a thicket of precaution and planning procedures. Meanwhile, the Arab model (e.g., NEOM) represents state-led modernism building from scratch, though burdened by a deficit of civic participation. Each is searching for a way to break the infrastructural impasse.
Supply-Side Progressivism: A Plan to Rebuild State Capacity
The modern liberal state falls into a logical aporia: it wants to provide goods, but it makes the procedures for blocking them absolute. To regain its capacity to act, the left must take control of the supply side of the economy. This requires separating the protection of rights from technical procedures and limiting the veto power of interest groups. AI can become a tool for socialized abundance, optimizing grids and medicine, provided we do not stifle it with a lack of infrastructure.
Critics from the degrowth movement warn that the abundance agenda is merely a new form of consumerism. However, the answer lies in proportionality: building within planetary boundaries, but with a radical simplification of processes. Concrete steps include: urban planning reform, global coordination of energy investments, and including the Global South as a co-creator of technology. A liberalism that fails to build housing and hospitals will inevitably give way to authoritarianism.
Summary
In the pursuit of abundance, will we lose sight of what truly matters—care for the planet and the fair distribution of resources? Can we build a world where technological progress does not lead to deepening inequality and environmental degradation? Perhaps true abundance does not lie in unlimited growth, but in the ability to live in harmony with the limits imposed on us by the planet. Yet the key remains the capacity to act: the state must regain the power to build the things that society urgently needs.
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