Tag: Abundance

Abundance

Leave a comment

Abundance is just trickle-down economics in Patagonia fleece and Allbirds—cozy, sustainable vibes while selling Reaganomics with a Substack subscription, still catering to the top but with a personal essay explaining why the same old supply-side stuff is actually good for everyone.

This late I’m the game pitching a deck of faux YIMBY-ism for tax cuts—full of flashy slides and disruption jargon—served up like an oat milk latte: smooth, trendy, and ethical-looking, but still delivering the same old caffeine hit of deregulation. The problem for the Dems is that there isn’t a single figure in the party who can learn the new moves fast enough to put a face to this. Maybe Pete Buttigieg—but my sense is that the resister crowd has been burned badly and isn’t in the mood for more gig economy with venture capital talking points, spinning inequality into an exciting new “opportunity.” Or Silicon Valley techno-optimism with a BeReal filter, trying to look authentic while keeping the real benefits at the top. Or yet another round of AI-generated prosperity gospel in a Discord server, promising abundance for all but only delivering it to the early adopters.

Klein’s vision is a Peloton of policy—streaming live classes on collective effort while the metrics show only the privileged logging miles. The Democrats’ playbook, meanwhile, reads like a LinkedIn influencer’s manifesto: hustle culture repackaged as civic duty, where “leaning in” means letting Silicon Valley monetize your data footprint as a form of patriotism. But the algorithm of inequality isn’t fooled by rebranded austerity; it still sorts us into hashtag movements and shadow-bans dissent into echo chambers of performative wokeness. Imagine a TED Talk on universal healthcare that ends with a QR code for a wellness app subscription—that’s the dissonance here. *“Ezra Klein’s latest work is a masterclass in elite problem-solving: identify a crisis, nod sagely at the complexity, and then propose a solution that conveniently aligns with old-school deregulation—just with better branding. Housing crisis? Easy. Deregulate the building code. Who needs walls anyway? Sure, your new apartment might crumple like a paper bag in a stiff breeze, but think about the trade-offs! Lower costs! Faster construction! More growth! And if you’re worried, well, just be rich enough to live somewhere with actual safety regulations.

The tragedy isn’t that Klein’s ideas are new wine in old bottles—it’s that the bottles are Yeti tumblers, vacuum-sealed to keep the fizz of revolution from going flat. His techno-optimism is a viral TikTok dance: everyone mimics the steps, but no one questions who’s cashing the ad revenue from the views. It’s a DAO for democracy—decentralized in name, but somehow the VCs still hold the keys to the treasury. Meanwhile, the left is stuck debating whether to meme-strike or post another infographic, as the Overton Window gets dragged right by a Tesla on autopilot.  

And what’s the endgame? A Metaverse town hall where avatars clap emojis for UBI proposals drafted by ChatGPT, while real-world evictions get livestreamed as dystopian entertainment. Klein’s “abundance” is a loot box economy—keep swiping your card for a chance at healthcare, education, or a livable planet. The Democrats keep hiring McKinsey to design their platforms, wondering why the grassroots feel like AstroTurf. Maybe the real disruption isn’t an app; it’s a strike. But that’s not a pitch you can slap on a Super Bowl ad for blockchain voting.  

So here we are: scrolling through Substacks about the future, liking essays on solidarity, while the wealth gap widens into a render distance no GPU can bridge. Klein’s book isn’t a roadmap—it’s a Snapchat filter, smoothing out the cracks of late capitalism with a puppy-ear illusion of progress. The only abundance here? Copium for the professional class, bottled as a limited-edition drop.

ZIRP Personality

What If Your Whole Personality Depended on Low Interest Rates?

Worse—what if your entire social circle, your ideological shtick, your sense of meaning, was just a byproduct of a SoftBank write-down?

That’s the uncomfortable reality a lot of people are facing right now. We’ve spent the last decade living inside a simulation powered by cheap money, where everything went up and to the right because there was nowhere else for capital to go. Now the tide is going out, and a lot of people are realizing that their entire worldview was just a derivative of low interest rates.

The Boom/Bust Theology

Every cycle has its preachers. In times of easy money, Evangelists dominate. They preach the Abundance Gospel—the future is limitless, capital is infinite, and even if they’re wrong, they get to shill another day.

Then the crash comes, and the Apologetics take over. Their role? Surrender agency. “We didn’t fail—you weren’t sufficiently loyal.” These people don’t make for fun company during boom times, but they flourish in busts, usually burying themselves with their own apologias.

It’s a predictable cycle:

• Boom = Malinvestment.

• Bust = Capital reallocation, narrative shifts.

• Evangelists become Apologetics in downturns, but the reverse makes people suspicious. Nobody trusts a bear-turned-bull.

The smart money flips between these roles strategically. The dumb money just rides the wave and hopes for the best.

Tech, TradFi, and Saying the Quiet Part Loud

Tech and traditional finance (TradFi) have always mirrored each other, but with a key difference—TradFi understood subtlety. Where Wall Street used to whisper, Silicon Valley now shouts.

Tech used to promise a clean break from the old world, but now it just feels like an accelerated version of TradFi’s worst instincts, with the same old insider games but fewer safeguards. The venture-backed model of eternal growth never accounted for what happens when the money printer stops.

And the ruling class? They see this. That’s why we’re witnessing wildly successful/unsuccessful institutional hijack attempts—libertarian shamans and techno-utopians trying to steer the ship before it sinks. But the reality is that when the music stops, capital doesn’t seek utopia—it seeks shelter.

The Dark Road Ahead

Tech firms don’t do well in reverse. They can scale, but they can’t shrink gracefully. That’s why every downturn in tech feels like an identity crisis. The companies built for perpetual expansion suddenly face an existential question: what are we when we’re no longer growing?

And right now, crypto looks less like a revolution and more like a fee-sucking machine preying on retail. The “future of finance” pitch doesn’t sound as compelling when the biggest innovations are just new ways to front-run retail investors.

What Collapses First?

Boom times let everything work. Bust times remind people why the state exists—to enforce contracts, adjudicate fraud, and dictate terms.

So the real question is:

What fails first—crypto or the Westphalian nation-state model?

People love the idea of decentralization until they get rugged. Then they want a judge. They want enforcement. They want the boring but functional mechanics of a state that can make fraud actually carry consequences.

And that’s the tension at the heart of all of this: people want freedom in boom times and protection in busts. When capital is abundant, the state is a nuisance. When capital dries up, the state is a backstop.

The Play

Anti-fragility means getting stronger in downturns. Which sector can truly claim that in 2023? The ones that don’t depend on the perpetual motion machine of low rates.

Everything else? Best to wait for the fire sale.