The Problem of “We” – Dominic Pino

In Abundance, authors Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson clearly state their thesis in the introduction: “To have the future we want, we need to build and invent more of what we need. That’s it.” And that’s the problem. Their thesis doesn’t make sense because they fail to consistently define the word that appears three times in that statement: “we.”

Klein and Thompson see their book as a missive to the American left and an antidote to the “degrowth” ideology that has taken hold in parts of it. Their vision for “abundance liberalism” is more about a shift in focus and emphasis than an entire ideological overhaul for the left. It has spurred debate within the left about whether it presents an opportunity to correct some of the mistakes that cost Kamala Harris the 2024 election or is merely a “neoliberal” wolf in sheep’s clothing.

It is neither. People who are more favorable to free markets may be tempted to applaud left-wing authors, conceding that government isn’t always the answer, but Klein and Thompson still don’t understand the role of individualism and markets in creating the abundance they desire.

“We” is the main character of Abundance. Klein and Thompson must use the word hundreds of times in the book, as it often appears multiple times per page. By the end of a book, the reader should be able to confidently say who the main character is, but I have no such confidence. The end result is that the book isn’t about anyone, so it isn’t telling anyone to do anything.

The most obvious antecedent of “we” would be the book’s two authors. But try to put that into their thesis statement: “To have the future that Klein and Thompson want, Klein and Thompson need to build and invent more of what Klein and Thompson need.” That’s sort of true as a mantra of self-help, but the book isn’t about Klein and Thompson trying to improve their own lives.

Sometimes when writers use “we,” they intend to include the reader as well. Let’s give that a try: “To have the future that Klein, Thompson, and I want, Klein, Thompson, and I need to build and invent more of what Klein, Thompson, and I need.” That doesn’t make sense, either. I don’t necessarily want the same future that they want, and even if I did, we don’t need the same things, and I don’t know them and can’t work together with them to build or invent anything.

Maybe I’m being too literalistic. Maybe they mean Americans in general. Okay, let’s substitute that in: “To have the future Americans want, Americans need to build and invent more of what Americans need.” At one level, this is a truism. At another level, it runs into the same problem as before: 340 million people don’t want the same things, need the same things, or all work together to build or invent anything.

One of the more damaging habits in policy writing is to use “we” to mean “the government.” E.g., “We invaded Iraq,” “We need to stop taxing imports,” “We should restrict immigration.” This usage has a sort of nobility in its democratic aspirations and is excusable in casual speech. But it leads to all sorts of analytical errors in serious writing by treating the government as something that naturally works in the public interest.

The habit is nonetheless common, so maybe Klein and Thompson are exhibiting it. Let’s see: “To have the future the government wants, the government needs to build and invent more of what the government needs.” Definitely not. The government is not the primary builder or inventor of the stuff people use every day and never has been. This would also be a straightforward totalitarian vision for society, and that’s not what Klein and Thompson want.

Klein and Thompson do write that their intended audience is American liberals, of which they are two. So maybe that’s the “we” they have in mind. “To build the future American liberals want, American liberals need to build and invent more of what American liberals need.” That doesn’t work, either. They write about energy production, healthcare, transportation, housing, and other things that affect all people regardless of ideology. They aren’t arguing for some kind of American liberal secessionist movement.

The unavoidable conclusion is that “we” in Klein and Thompson’s thesis statement must refer to different people in each of its three instances. As far as I can tell, the most accurate rendering of it based on the rest of the book is: “To have the future Klein and Thompson want, other people need to build and invent more of what Americans need,” with the added stipulation that “what Americans need” is defined as “what Klein and Thompson want.”

They are clear about what they want. Their vision of the future involves a lot of green energy, mass transit, housing construction, and research and development investment. They want vertical farming, lab-grown meat, automated technology, and supersonic airplanes.

Some of this vision sounds attractive to me. Some of it does not. That’s fine, and it’s true of all visions of the future. But they assert that this vision is the future that “we” want. I should be included in “we,” but I am not.

The second “we” is about building and inventing. Klein and Thompson are writers. They don’t build or invent things. I’m a writer, too, so this isn’t about me either. Lots of people have jobs where they don’t build or invent anything. And millions of Americans don’t have jobs at all (children and retired people being the two largest segments of that category).

Commitment to the rule of law and to markets requires comfort with outcomes that one might disagree with.

This is the most nonsensical “we” because it can’t include the people who wrote the word or many of the people who will read it. It refers to other people, in whom Klein and Thompson are disappointed.

For example, they notice the paradox between the advances in technology and the decline in construction productivity over the past several decades. They write, “You’d think we could build so much more, so much faster, for so much less money, than in the past. But we can’t. Or, at least, we don’t.”

Personally, I don’t think Klein or Thompson or I or most people could build more efficiently, because most people don’t work in construction. Notice what they did, though. By using “we,” it now becomes your problem that construction productivity has declined. Then, the switch from “can’t” to “don’t” implies that this is some choice that everyone made that everyone should just get together and reverse, and then construction productivity would rise again.

That’s not how politics works, and it’s not how life works. If I become less productive in my job, there are any number of different reasons that could happen. Maybe I just get lazy. Maybe there are other things happening in my life that distract me. Maybe my boss is a jerk, and I lose motivation. Maybe a new government policy inhibits me from working as efficiently as I could. Maybe it’s all of those things at the same time.

But it’s not everyone’s fault if I become less productive, even if the reasons are related to other people. If I go about trying to solve my slacking by looking for a root cause in the way that other people are thinking about my job, I’m not going to be very successful.

That’s basically the approach Klein and Thompson recommend. “A lens is what we have sought to offer here,” they write. “There are rhymes that we have found across these challenges, echoes across these problems, but they are not unified enough to yield a single set of answers.” (Here, “we” actually does refer to the authors.)

They’re right that there is not a single set of answers, and they have won praise for their rejection of the leftist “degrowth” movement that sees economic advance as a problem. But I expect a little bit more from policy writers than merely being against poverty. And it’s clear that Klein and Thompson don’t understand how abundance happens.

Individuals are the ultimate decision-makers in a society. They are naturally part of groups (families) and often choose to organize themselves into other groups (corporations, governments, religious institutions, etc.) in ways that are healthy and beneficial. But individuals in the end have to choose to show up to work, use their brains to come up with new ideas, and persuade others that those ideas are worth developing.

One reliable way to get other people to do things for you is to allow them to make money from doing it. And there is already a mechanism by which that happens: markets. People get paid for coming up with good ideas and providing goods and services that make other people’s lives better. The development and expansion of markets around the world have delivered more abundance than thousands of years’ worth of human thought possible.

One reason markets work is that they do not need there to be “a single set of answers.” They work with decentralized information spread throughout society that is possessed and used by different individuals. That information condenses into a price, which is a signal to others that informs their decisions. They allow for the appearance of top-down coordination where none exists, and they perform better than attempts at top-down coordination because they incorporate information that top-down planners cannot access.

The answer Klein and Thompson are yearning for is markets. But they are respected American liberals, and respected American liberals can’t run around referencing Adam Smith or F. A. Hayek or Milton Friedman. So they’re just lost, aimlessly writing about stuff they want other people to do for them.

Because they lack the acknowledgement of the power of markets, though, there is a dangerous element behind what they’re saying that they don’t seem to recognize. The other reliable way to get other people to do things for you is to force them to with the threat of punishment. That’s what governments do.

In some cases, this method is justified. In most of the cases Klein and Thompson are considering, it is not. The government should not force people to build solar panels or farm a certain way, or eat certain foods. But Klein and Thompson have a very specific idea of the future that involves certain choices being made in those areas. So how are they going to get other people to do it?

The reader gets a taste toward the middle of the book. They bemoan that “liberalism has become obsessed with procedure rather than outcomes, that it seeks legitimacy through rule following rather than through the enactment of the public’s will.” All those pesky rules are getting in the way of what “we” want.

It is not a coincidence that one of the twentieth century’s great theorists of markets, Hayek, was also one of its great theorists on the rule of law. The concepts are connected and mutually reinforce each other. Commitment to the rule of law and markets requires comfort with outcomes that one might disagree with.

Klein and Thompson don’t seem comfortable with that. What is supposed to be a fresh take on policy issues winds up simply being an answer to one of the oldest questions in politics: How do we (the good guys) get them (the bad guys) out of the way so that we (the good guys) can do good things? Their answer to those who disagree: Lie back and think of abundance.