590 | Brink Lindsey: How the 21st Century Mugged a Libertarian

Summary

---

Podcast Summary: The Realignment

Episode 590 | Brink Lindsey: How the 21st Century Mugged a Libertarian

Date: January 22, 2026
Host: Marshall Kosloff
Guest: Brink Lindsey, Senior VP at the Niskanen Center, Author of The Permanent Problem: The Uncertain Transition from Mass Plenty to Mass Flourishing

---

Episode Overview

In this wide-ranging conversation, Marshall Kosloff speaks with Brink Lindsey about the failings of liberal democratic capitalism in the 21st century, the challenges facing Western societies, and the evolving meaning and future of “abundance” politics and policy. Brink explains his journey from doctrinaire libertarianism to what he calls a “brokenist liberal”—a worldview mugged by the realities of our era. The discussion delves into legitimacy crises, structural change, the role of the welfare state, and why both the left and right have yielded to performative politics. The episode navigates contemporary debates about what “abundance” means, the limitations of technocratic fixations, and how deeper cultural and philosophical questions must shape any genuine renewal.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

Brink Lindsey’s Ideological Journey: From Libertarian to “Brokenist Liberal”

• 21st Century Mugged a Libertarian: Brink describes himself as a “libertarian who got mugged by the 21st century,” noting his roots in the Cato Institute and a gradual disillusionment with libertarianism as a sufficient explanatory or prescriptive worldview.
  • “I think of myself as a libertarian who got mugged by the 21st century to, to put an actual label on myself, one pithy way to put it would be I'm a brokenist liberal.” (02:09)
• Partial Truths of Libertarianism: While still valuing the suspicion of centralized power and faith in spontaneous order, Lindsey recognizes the limits of these ideas in an era beset by class division, climate change, and slowed technological progress.
• Social Insurance & Market Economies as Complements: A significant shift for Brink has been seeing a well-designed welfare state not as an enemy of markets but as necessary for their political sustainability and dynamism:
  • “A robust system of social insurance, well designed, well executed and a go go, entrepreneurial, competitive, free market are complements, not antagonists...” (07:57)
  • “…a well functioning social insurance system … makes political acceptance of that creative destruction politically sustainable…” (08:36)

---

Legitimacy Crisis & Political Realignment

• Legitimacy Crisis in Liberal Democratic Capitalism: Lindsey and Kosloff discuss the dangers of complacency among centrists who minimize populist grievances rather than confront structural failings.
  • “Telling people you ought to be happy, you don't know how good you have it … all that does is further exacerbate what I see as the current legitimacy crisis…” (12:28)
  • “There is absolutely no political force more impotent these days than status quo is.” (13:44)
• Performative Politics: Modern politics, in Lindsey’s view, is less about solving real problems and more about “performative theater” that valorizes group identity and relative status.
  • “…the action is in a kind of performative theater where different groups strut on the stage and talk smack about the other side and puff up themselves…” (30:00)

---

Liberalism: Competing Definitions and Global Meaning

• Classical vs. American Liberalism: Kosloff and Lindsey dissect the growing confusion in American left-of-center politics over the label “liberal,” contrasting the global, Enlightenment-rooted meaning with its U.S. 20th-century evolution.
  • “I'm a liberal, not in that distinctively American sense, but in the broad global sense of liberalism as a broad political movement, roots in John Locke and the Enlightenment…” (17:10)
  • “America is a country that was… a deeply liberal country… Declaration of Independence is an Enlightenment document of just 200 proof liberalism.” (20:33)
• Left’s Return to ‘Liberal’: The resurgence of “liberal” among Democrats is viewed by Lindsey as a healthy reaction to the illiberal elements that have influenced both left and right coalitions.

---

From The Captured Economy to The Permanent Problem

• Critique of Elite Capture: Lindsey and Steve Teles’s The Captured Economy exposed how policy has been manipulated by elites to benefit insiders, restrict competition, and drive inequality:
  • “Elites tend to dominate policymaking these days… [eliminating] new entrants into the marketplace and thereby redistributing wealth and income up the socioeconomic scale.” (26:30)
• The Permanent Problem: The new book expands this critique, identifying not just elite capture but a broader crisis of dynamism, inclusion, and a breakdown in the link between growth, well-being, and genuine societal progress.
  • “…capitalism seriously misfiring in that it's disconnect. Its, its performance is disconnecting from the things that matter most in people's lives, their overall quality of life…” (29:13)
• Three Interlocking Crises: Slowed growth (“dynamism”), rising inequality (“inclusion”), and performative, gridlocked politics.

---

The Abundance Debate: Movement, Storytelling, and Contestation

• Genesis and Ambiguity: The “abundance” movement arose as a technocratic supply-side reform agenda but has become a catchall, adopted by both centrist-left and some right-of-center thinkers.
  • “The theory of what's gone wrong, I think among in the abundance movement is pretty shallow. … But I think you can go much deeper and look at more profound social forces that are producing those bad policies.” (33:49)
• Definitional Splits: Kosloff underscores that within the “abundance” conversation, different books and thinkers deploy the term for divergent purposes: as a Democratic policy plank (Ezra Klein), a technocratic reform, or a nonpartisan paradigm.
  • “…there are actually different understandings of this project … If you just treat it as a whole … you're going to sort of be kind of confused.” (37:04)
• Need for Narrative & Broader Appeal: Both agree the movement must grow beyond policy wonks and address bigger philosophical questions about what abundance is for—not just how to deliver it.
  • “An abundance movement has at least the potential to connect with broader themes … not only to get the policies right, but to get a culture aimed towards prioritizing the physical and the real again.” (59:57)

---

The Role—and Ambivalence—of AI

• Promise & Peril: Lindsey reflects on AI’s transformative potential for productivity and innovation but warns about “WALL-E” outcomes—cultural atrophy and passive consumerism.
  • “…if kids use it as a substitute for learning and a substitute for thinking … it's not an iron man suit for the mind. It's a hover chair from Wally, you know.” (51:33)
  • “I see real risk in, in how AI is being used today. It goes along with a broader trend towards sort of post literacy…” (53:02)
• Lessons from the Internet: The story of the Internet’s promise versus social media’s toxic effects serves as a cautionary tale for AI optimism.

---

Reclaiming the “Physical and the Real”

• Beyond Bits to Atoms: Lindsey highlights abundance as the project of revitalizing physical infrastructure and shared reality—countering decades of digital overemphasis.
  • “…abundance is about revitalizing progress in the world of atoms as opposed to the world of bits.” (58:36)
• Danger of Escapism: Referencing dystopias like Ready Player One, Lindsey warns that without a renewed focus on the tangible world, societies risk collapse into escapism and social decay.

---

Politics as Values, Not Just Policy

• Technocracy’s Limitations: Kosloff criticizes a center-left culture obsessed with policy expertise and “how” over “what for,” noting the need for politics to recover a sense of values, meaning, and purpose.
  • “…there is a over obsession with wonkery that is a huge, huge problem… It's values, it's asking questions … what does it mean to live a good life…?” (61:09)

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “I'm a liberal, not in that distinctively American sense, but in the broad global sense of liberalism as a, as a broad political movement, roots in John Locke and the Enlightenment…”
  — Brink Lindsey (17:10)

• “A robust system of social insurance … and a go go, entrepreneurial, competitive, free market are complements, not antagonists…”
  — Brink Lindsey (07:57)

• “Telling people you ought to be happy, you don't know how good you have it … all that does is further exacerbate what I see as the current legitimacy crisis…”
  — Brink Lindsey (12:28)

• “There is absolutely no political force more impotent these days than status quo is.”
  — Marshall Kosloff (13:44)

• “If you don't focus on what really matters, then you realize that you fritter away so much time doing that that you've deprioritized other people.”
  — Brink Lindsey (56:40)

• “The promise of material growth is freedom from. Freedom from drudgery and inconvenience and wasted time. But if you don't think about freedom to what are we going to use that freedom for? Then you end up in … some combination of Brave New World and WALL-E.”
  — Brink Lindsey (56:48)

---

Key Timestamps

• 02:09 — Lindsey’s “mugging by the 21st century” and shift from libertarianism
• 07:57 — Markets and social insurance as complementary
• 12:28 — Legitimacy crisis, populism, and the dead status quo
• 17:10 — Competing definitions of “liberal”
• 24:50 — The Captured Economy—elite capture and its consequences
• 29:13 — Diagnosis of interconnected crises in The Permanent Problem
• 33:49 — Abundance movement criticized as shallow; deeper causes needed
• 51:33 — AI as potential “hover chair from WALL-E”
• 58:36 — Renewing progress in the world of atoms, not just bits
• 61:09 — The call for a politics of values, not just technical fixes

---

Conclusion: Where Might Abundance Go Next?

Lindsey sees the abundance movement not as a narrow technocratic agenda but as an opening for a broader social movement—one that consciously rebalances progress in the physical world with the hard questions of meaning, flourishing, and the good life. Doing so requires new voices and a willingness to address deep sociocultural wounds, not just institutional bottlenecks. As the lines between left and right, liberal and illiberal, blur and shift, the need for clarity about what abundance is for—and who it serves—will only intensify.

---

[End of summary]

Transcript

[A]

Marshall here. Welcome back to the Realignment. Thanks for your patience. Waiting for new episodes. I've been on the road the past two weeks. I recorded a bunch of great conversations and I'm pumped to play catch up. Today I am joined by Brink Lindsey, a senior vice president at the Niskanen center and author of a new book, the Permanent the Uncertain Transition from Mass Plenty to Mass Flourishing. We've recorded a wide ranging conversation about what's gone off the rails in liberal democratic capitalism and in the 21st century and what it will take to fix it. Bernie describes himself as a, quote, libertarian mugged by the 21st century. And we unpack just what that means, why the legitimacy crisis in our politics is real and here to stay, why the status quo is dead, and how he came to believe a robust social insurance state can complement a dynamic entrepreneurial economy rather than smother it. We also revisit his 2017 book, the Captured Economy, co authored with friend of the show professor Steve Tallis. And of course, we get into the abundance debate's next frontier in the new year. The internal tension over what abundance even means, whether it's a Democratic partycenter left reform project or something bigger. Plus the off dodge question. An abundance for what? I hope you enjoy the conversation. Brink, Lindsay, welcome to the Realignment.

[B]

Great to be with you, Marshall.

[A]

So I love doing these episodes with my Niskanon colleagues because I think what consistently happens, especially five episodes of Steve, is we could talk about a lot of the broad themes of the Realignment, but via a sort of specific sort of approach to these questions that I think is very uniquely Niskanon. But I think what's also important here because sort of Steve has been the main Niskanin person on the show and we have, as we've discussed in other contexts of a wide variety of folks at Niskanin, from an ideological point of view, I'd love for you to start by describing what you would sort of say is your worldview or perspective or ideology.

[B]

Okay, well, it's changed over time. I spent decades as a professional libertarian at the Cato Institute. So one way I've described myself is, you might recall, Irving Crystal defined a neoconservative as a liberal who had been mugged by reality. So I, I think of myself as a libertarian who got mugged by the 21st century to, to put an actual label on myself, one pithy way to put it would be I'm a brokenist liberal. So there's a, there's a dividing line running through left and right between people who think the system is badly broken and people who think everything's okay, it's just the other side has gone crazy and we need to go back to the way we were. So I am a liberal. I believe in free markets and pluralism and individual rights and the rule of law and checks and balances. But I think actually existing liberalism has wandered fairly badly off course in some important ways in recent decades and that we're going to need some pretty deep seated structural change and cultural change to get things right again. Which, which I think puts me, puts me at odds sometimes with a lot of people who in my here and, you know, here and now politics where we, we like the same people and we are terrified by the same people. And yet a lot of the instinct on the part of the sort of, you know, that broad camp that encompasses the center right and the center left and is freaked out by what's going on in the extremes just sort of imagines that we're in a nightmare, crazy people took over and we just hope that we can wake up and it's 2015 again. I don't think that's going to happen. The only way out is through.

[A]

Yeah. And a couple quick political philosophy adjacent notes here. So when you're referencing the Irving Crystal quote, obviously for a lot of the younger parts of the audience, you'll think of a neoconservative as the Iraq War foreign policy centric neoconservative. But you should understand those neoconservatives as sort of the Generation 2 or Generation 3 neoconservatives. You were referring to the neoconservatives of the 1960s.

[B]

The OG neoconservatives.

[A]

Yes, the OGs. The OGs who were former socialists who reckoned with the disorder and elite and institutional failure, especially in the urban places they lived. And that was their mugging. And that then led them to joining the, the right part of the coalition. And then, but you later saw this sort of, and this is part of the 21st century story in many ways. The neoconservatives still retained a lot of their, let's say, left liberal values. So that's why a neoconservative is invading Iraq. But a neoconservative would say, but we need to fix Iraq and Iraq needs to be a democracy. A neoconservative would not just easily say, because you could be a traditional foreign policy hawk and say Saddam Hussein is a threat, going to kick down his door and we're going to leave, who cares? And neocon would say, no, but what about the Iraqi people? What's going to happen to them? So important dynamic there. So. But two, and I'd love to hear your sort of, because I also want to Discuss the past 10 years with you, which really is sort of an important scan and dynamic is 10th anniversary of our institution, but also sort of where these tensions emerge from. I would love to hear what you're mugging as a Libertarian in this 21st century specifically consisted of. I hope you weren't mugged.

[B]

Obviously not literally knock on the wood. But I just came to see. So libertarianism, it's not like I've decided that many of its core insights are wrong. So those core insights, that suspicion of centralized power, recognition of the creative power, of spontaneous coordination through markets and through entrepreneurship, acute awareness that government programs, however, well, attention can go badly wrong in all kinds of ways. I think those, those are core truths that, that have real weight and that are often underappreciated. But I used to think of them as pretty much the sum and substance of what of important political truths and now I see them as part of the story. I think when the libertarian movement arose in the 60s and 70s, that was a time when we were still kind of going headlong into the, into the big government, New Deal order kind of growth of the welfare state, in the regulatory state. Things were still running in that direction and had been running that direction for decades. We realized pretty soon that, that there had been real excesses there. Meanwhile, at that time, one third of the world lived under regimes that wanted to completely eliminate capitalist markets. So I think the libertarian partial truths were especially well aligned with the challenges of the day in the 60s and 70s. And so the rise of libertarian ideas was a good thing, was a functional response to things that were going wrong. As we got into the 21st century, those partial truths seemed to me, as the wheel turned, to be less aligned with problems of deepening class division, problems of climate change and the need to, to accelerate technological progress in some important ways. And so I, I still, there were other important areas where I was completely un, you know, comfortable being a libertarian. But I, in, in one sort of basic sense I, I moved quite a bit in that libertarians see the welfare state as anti market, anti freedom. And I certainly think the welfare state can be badly designed and can have all kinds of perverse consequences. But I have come to see that a robust system of social insurance, well designed, well executed and a go go, entrepreneurial, competitive, free market are complements, not antagonists, that, that a well functioning social insurance system by reducing the downsides of the hazards of, of creative destruction, makes political acceptance of that creative destruction politically sustainable in a way that otherwise people are going to react against the commotion that caused by a market economy. And they can, if, if they are being taken care of in a kind of automatic stabilizer way through the welfare state, they're not going to re react by trying to throw sand in the gears. So meanwhile, you need a thriving, entrepreneurially driven, competitive market economy to pay for that welfare state. So I see these as two great tastes that go together. And I that was a big change in my worldview that, that now is pretty central to the Niskanin Center.

[A]

So I think what's important here, and this is where we just sort of articulate both the Niskanen brand and sort of what we sort of do as a institution and as a project, as a think tank. So my politics are to your left. But I think the thing that has really come clear to me over the past year or so is all I really care about, and I think at our best, I think we embody this as an institution, is if your politics, your worldview, your POV is rooted in this recognition of something being off this century and as understanding that you could still have your libertarian principles, but then still having those principles, acknowledging that something's wrong is not in contradiction with those principles. So one of the most frustrating things I've seen, and I love your description of this center left to center right band of folks, what I've seen in a lot of institutions and a lot of thinkers is in their, I think, justifiable frustrations with the populist left and right they are so focused on. Well, this specific critique that populist leftists and populist right wingers make of the status quo is so inaccurate. The story that they're telling about globalization and GDP and economic growth is so just not accurate that to even concede that the status quo doesn't work for people is just making an inherent concession to them. And if you make that concession, that then leads it to. So what we need to do is reassert truth and explain to people why things are just not wrong. That's been what I have just witnessed and what I'm just trying to force more people to do. And since you and I just met for the first time in person this week in dc, We've never talked about this, so I don't need to convince you of this, um, but I want to convince more people of this argument. What has been your perception of like what's happened in the circles you run in, in regards to the, like, am I sacrificing my principles as they standard up to send a right person? But if I say, actually if I take these sort of anti status quo populists seriously, but not literally, they are onto something and I should explore and think about that.

[B]

Yeah, I, I think it's, it's an understandable impulse on the part of people in the, in the political center to react to extremism by saying, you're just hysterical, right? You're wildly overstating what, what the problems are. Your remedies are so awful that if, that, that your diagnosis must be wrong as well. But I think that's a trap because telling people you ought to be happy, you don't know how good you have it.

[A]

Your TV is so big.

[B]

Don't you remember? Don't you know that your great grandparents had rotten teeth and buried half their kids? So, you know, shut your complaining, right? That, that all that does is further exacerbate what I see as the current legitimacy crisis that gripping, you know, liberal democratic capitalism, that, that you don't get the rise of a, of a, the recrudescence of the socialist left and the rise of the populist right without a shaken faith in established institutions and governing elites. The, the, the appeal of snake oil salesmen only starts once people have lost their faith in, you know, an established medicine. Right. So we have to understand this moment as a crisis of legitimacy for the good things about our system because some bad things have happened. So if we don't face that and say we hear you, we understand that there are truly serious problems and we're not, we don't have to, we're not pretending, we shouldn't be pretending and just patronizing people. It's, it's true. But if we don't recognize that, then I think we're just playing completely into the extremist hands because there is absolutely no political force more impotent these days than status quo is.

[A]

So before we get into the book, there's one more definition thing which I think is actually key to where I want to take this conversation. So when I came to D.C. in 2015, I spent a lot of time in sort of like center right to conservative libertarian sort of academic programming and young professional programs. And one thing you are taught from the start in these spaces in a way that is not covered at all in college or high school or whatever, is that a lot of these spaces use the word liberal differently than you would sort of Conventionally expect to hear. So once again, when you're describing yourself as liberal, that is completely consistent with your understanding of libertarianism. And in certain circles this is presented aggressively as Liberals in the 20th century who are big government, new deal, welfare state types stole this title. And now that they no longer are using that title because they now call themselves progressive, because Ronald Reagan made their specific version of liberalism, AKA limousine liberalism, unpopular, we now have this opportunity to reassert this thing and it speaks to this broad center, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But one fascinating new development that is sort of explaining why people should care about these ideas. I'd say that you're the expert on this call. I'm the person who just surveys spaces. But I would say the thing that I'm getting more and more expert at is sort of seeing where the puck's going, the sort of Wayne Gretzky quote and getting a certain degree of skill at understanding that dynamic. I started noticing that, that especially on the Ezra Klein show, right? So like the most popular big show that defines a lot of center left discourse. Ezra started referring to himself as a Liberal after the 2024 election. And in the Abundance book, which originally was going to come out before the election, there's a lot of focus on quote liberalism. But that is not the liberalism that I think you are describing. That is actually a American liberalism that sees itself as descendant from the New Deal and the Great Society and the story of abundance that Ezra and I think, I don't know, you know, Abundance should be understood as two books that are merged into one. So I'm not going to sort of put that part on Derek. And once you have the sort of two books in one thing, you could tell which chapter is Derek, which chapter is Ezra. But Ezra's is a liberalism that fails everything. Bagel liberalism, once again, that's the thing. So I started noticing people were talking more about American liberalism in a left sense when they would have said progressive. A decade ago there was just a poll that came out which said we are near a high in terms of the past 50 years. I'll link this in the show notes of people in the Democratic Party who describe their ideology as liberal. And they are not meaning. And this is where Ezra sort of is good at seeing where it's going too. Like that's, you know, he's doing it at a bigger scale. That's the skill set. They are not describing themselves in the liberal way that you put that, you mean? And a tension that is going to come out over the next year or two in abundance. This is you making your prediction is the well, which type of liberal are you? So I'd love for you just to sort of unpack your reactions to what I just said.

[B]

So that's interesting how liberalism is as a self description is cropping up and gaining market share on the left again. It's like toggling back and forth between liberal and conservative as each label gets tarnished and turned into a term of abuse. Then they turn go back to the toggle, back to the other one. But I'm a liberal, not in that distinctively American sense, but in the broad global sense of liberalism as a, as a broad political movement roots in John Locke and the Enlightenment and going back even beyond that to the, to the settlement of the religious wars in the 1600s with toleration as that achievement where people who disagreed about the highest stakes possible, right in their view eternity decided that enough is enough, enough bloodletting. We need to learn to live together across our differences. And that I think is the core insight of liberalism is, is designing a system that allows us to make each other better off across our differences. And in a modern society that's inherently pluralistic, we're going to be different from each other. We're going to disagree about what the good life is and what's important. And so liberalism I see as, as the kind of middle way of modernity. It's the, it's the way that's trying to keep this, this pluralistic, dynamic new kind of social order out of the ditches by figuring out in changing ways over time how we can design rules to allow us to live together across our differences and eschewing at all times the extremism of left utopianism or right reaction. So that's the very broad sense in which I see myself as a how.

[A]

Should given the way I told you a story of how I was introduced to the dynamic between sort of the libertarian, sorry, the liberalism you describe and sort of left leaning American liberalism. How does this rebirth of American liberalism and center less? Because basically, and here's my actual take, like I think what's happening here sociologically is the term progressive just became very associated with certain sociocultural views. Everything from, you know, borders and crime. And the reason why people in Democratic party calling themselves liberals is they basically mean they're center left. So that's what they're really, that's what they're, it's a better word than center left. That's what they are saying there. So if my sort of right wing World instructors were telling me that, you know, they've abandoned this term and we're reasserting ourselves. Does hearing analytically that they are sort of recombining into an ideology influence your sort of willingness to describe yourself as a liberal? Because I think terms and definitions matter. So let me go to way and in an environment where this is becoming much more popular on the left, the confusion of you calling yourself a liberal is going to actually increase.

[B]

You put me on the spot and told me to label myself. And so that's the best one I can come up with. Yeah, but no, that's, and that's just answer.

[A]

See, you're saying, I'm not waking up saying what's the brink, Lindsay? Label. That's, that's a real answer.

[B]

Yeah, but you know, America is a country that was, you know, that is, you know, a deeply liberal country. We have, of course, we have lots of illiberal, you know, parts of our past, but we were founded. The Declaration of Independence is an Enlightenment document of just 200 proof liberalism. And those principles, we wander away from them a lot, but those, the gravitational pull of those principles keeps pulling us forward in a, in a liberal direction over time. And so as we have divided in the 20th century into a left and right, I see the liberal tradition having, you know, occupying space on both sides of that old 20th century divide, which means that both the left and the right have been coalitions of liberal elements and illiberal elements. And so on the left, I think the illustration illiberal elements, you know, got the upper hand in a lot of ways in the decade between, you know, or the 2000 and tens, early 2000s. And so part of the instinct of center left people to call themselves liberal right now, I think is a healthy one to distinguish from the illiberalism of their Democratic Party coalition partners. But I agree, you know, everywhere outside of America, liberal is a, has a pretty clear meaning. But in America it's deeply confusing. So I, I, I don't tend to lead with that label.

[A]

And what I'm hearing from you, and I think it's very healthy in a, you know, because one of the values of liberalism, understood in the sense that you are describing it, is like this comfort with pluralism, like discomfort with the idea that they're going to just be different people and you are just not going to be psychologically harmed by the idea that someone else would use a term that you would use in your own context. So I, I applaud you for the, for the health of that. So okay, so getting. I'm going to do something that authors typically hate, but it's actually very key to the way that I'm going to pitch the actual book that we're pitching, the Permanent Problem. So you might not know this, but so obviously your 2017 book, Captured Economy with Steve Tallis is there's a lot of factional warfare within sort of like the left liberal part of the discourse around abundance. And I don't know if Steve told you this, but there are a bunch of very prominent lefties who think of Elizabeth Warren giving her a speech. She isn't one of these people, but she gave a big speech about abundance this week that was related to some work she'd done on housing where she basically said, there are some good ideas here, but there are a lot of really sketchy things in the Abundance project and movement. These things need to be rejected. So there are a lot of skeptics of this crew. And initially, because I had Steve Towies on so much, people were skeptical of Niskanen and they were skeptical of Steve. But I asked Steve about the Captured economy. So this book, and he talked about it and I got a bunch of messages from very prominent interesting people who said, you know what? Steve's okay because the Captured Economy shows that he is actually willing to confront power and incumbency. And I think my real criticism of what abundance did not do well this year because we're going to get into later, like what's gone right and wrong this year was there was not enough leading with the, like this thing is anti status quo, things are bad, things are wrong. So just to sort of up your street cred of sort of the left wing part of my audience, I'd love you just to like talk about Captured Economy and then that will take us into permanent problem because they get so key do understanding these things like from a anthology perspective.

[B]

Okay. And I think it's very easy to segue from one to the other, but we'll get there. So the Captured Economy, Steve Telles, who's a political scientist at Johns Hopkins and also a senior fellow and, and my colleague at the Muscanin center, he and I wrote, co wrote this book together, came out in 2017 when we started the project. I was still at the Cato Institute and he was a Johns Hopkins, you know, liberal professor. So we. The project was really, excuse me, originally conceived of as a liberal project, you.

[A]

Know, a libertarian that was very 2009.

[B]

As a. As a, you know, a libertarian Cato guy and a liberal Johns Hopkins professor. Get Together and talk about slow growth, which is a libertarian coded coded concern, and high inequality, which is a progressive coded concern. And, and then find the interesting and surprising reality that there's a whole lot of government programs that are simultaneously bad for growth and bad for inequality. And so while we typically have thought of a trade off between economic dynamism and economic equality, we've now got policies so dysfunctional that those reforms can satisfy both right coded and left coded concerns at the same time. So that was, that was the original conception of our book. By the time it actually came out I had moved into scanning and over time it's become clear that Steve and I are sort of Tweedledum and Tweedledee on ideologically. So that pitch kind of faded in relevance over time. But the chapter one of the book is rigged. That we say, you know, there's a widespread sense in the public the system isn't working well anymore. And we rec, we, we heed that cry of protest and we think there's real merit to it. We think that, that it is absolutely the case that, that our governing elites have a talent for self dealing and, and they have indulged in doing so. And so important elements of our policy structures were captured by elite insiders who dominate policy, the policy making process. When important stakeholders in policy issues are not at the table, they tend to get rolled. And the fact is that elites tend to dominate policymaking these days and in particular ways that, that first protects their privileged position, usually by eliminating competition, eliminating new entrants into the marketplace and thereby redistributing wealth and income up the socioeconomic scale. So sort of reverse redistribution. So that was the, the basic picture of the book and it became, you know, a kind of model for the Niscanin approach to policy generally, which is that there are a lot of problems where, where you, there are solutions. We have wandered so far away from policy optima that there are solutions that can simultaneously appeal to conservatives for right wing reasons and liberals for left of center reasons. And, and there are real possibilities for win win solutions.

[A]

So take us then to Permanent Problem then the book of the actual hour, the one you know, I'm sure you want people to read, you know, Captured Economy, this is the book people need to actually purchase. We got to juice the numbers here, right?

[B]

That's right. So the, the Captured Economy was a story about slowing growth, high inequality and a dysfunctional politics that made both of those problems worse. The new book, the Permanent Problems is, is a, is an expansion and deepening of the analysis we did in the captured economy, that, that the problem of slow growth translates into permanent problem analysis, into a crisis of dynamism. It's broader than simply looking at the numbers of growth. The cultural issue as well as an economic performance issue. The crisis of inclusion takes as it's at its core the problem of high inequality, but looks more broadly at the diminished ability of economic growth to translate into widely shared improvements in overall well being. And then we looked at particular elements of dysfunctional politics in the captured economy that, that produced these kinds of bad policies. But here we have, I think capitalism seriously misfiring in that it's disconnect. Its, its performance is disconnecting from the things that matter most in people's lives, their overall quality of life, their, their ability to and have satisfying and rewarding lives. But at the same time, the actual capacity of the system to grow is sputtering as well. So growth, the connection between growth and wellbeing is weakening and the capacity to keep pushing growth forward is sputtering as well. Meanwhile, both of those problems are ones that could be aided with well thought out political responses. And yet our political system is in a total mess right now. And in particular, instrumental problem solving for the good of us all is just not where the action is in 21st century politics. The action is in a kind of performative theater where different groups strut on the stage and talk smack about the other side and puff up themselves. And we have various symbolic fights that, that over the relative status of my gang versus your gang. I mean it's not just kind of identity politics that's divided where politic, where the dividing lines are along identity lines. Because then you could still have those different identity groups have real beefs with what the government's doing. And there could be real practical policy reforms to address this beef or that beef. But instead of that, we just have this theatrical performative politics of, of self, you know, empty self expression and, and, and where the goal is not doing good in the world, but feeling good about yourself by put it running down the other gap. And so that, that's the, that's the kind of malaise that we find ourselves in today. The United States and the other advanced democracies in the 21st century. On the one hand, you know, we're the richest, healthiest, best educated, most humanely governed societies that have ever existed. And yet things are going seriously wrong. Economic growth is slowed to a crawl, especially outside of the United States and other advanced economies. Class divisions have deepened to the point of sparking this global populist Uprising against established institutions and governing elites class. You know, social connections are breaking down, loneliness, epidemic, mental health problems, especially among the young on the rise, birth rates plummeting and you know, just a general mood of pessimism that. That goes across the political spectrum. So. So we've got serious problems that are gen. That. That don't mean we're not the richest, most blessed societies that have ever lived. But they're. They're the problems peculiar to rich countries and they're deep and serious. And if we don't solve them, not only is are our riches hollow because they're not translating into things we really want in life, but our riches may not be sustainable because we may end up trashing the system that's still laying golden eggs.

[A]

So would you identify this book as part of the sort of emerging abundance canon?

[B]

Sure. So I. In fact.

[A]

Loosely. Loosely. Loosely how? There's a bunch of authors here.

[B]

Yeah, I've got. So, you know, a lot of. I've contributed a number of the ideas that have gotten and certainly my scanning colleagues have helped me contribute a lot of the ideas that have gone under the abundance frame. So that's before I writing this book. This is. That's certainly a movement whose prehistory I was very deeply involved in. And beyond that, I see this book as taking the abundance movement, which is really a response to this crisis of dynamism. I'm talking about the slow growth, slow productivity growth, a culture that's hostile towards innovation and pushing the frontier forward. The theory of what's gone wrong, I think among in the abundance movement is pretty shallow. The abundance movement surfaced as a kind of technocratic policy agenda. And you identify policy problems and you identify defects in the policy process that are causing problems. But I think you can go much deeper and look at more profound social forces that are producing those bad policies. So I think I can deepen the analysis of what's gone wrong and why we needed abundance movement. And then the abundance movement raises a question that hasn't been faced squarely enough. And that is abundance for what? Right? What. What is the. What is the point of more stuff? Already right now we're the richest societies that have ever lived and a lot of people are miserable anyway. So how does more stuff help that? And I think I have important and worthwhile things to say on that score. There's so two of the chapters in my book have abundance in the title. A chapter on the promise of abundance. And these are the what is to be done chapters. The promise of Abundance and abundance at human Scale. So I definitely see this book as, as part of the abundance conversation, but one that, that deepens the analysis of, deepens the diagnoses and extends and sort of expands the ambition of the prescriptions.

[A]

So at a core level, I would say part of my job is to at Niskanon is to be the person who's actually just read every single one of like the abundance canon books. So insert statement about how I'm privileged and blessed to have something cool like that. But so the books we're talking about are obviously like Abundance, Ezra Klein, Derek Thompson, but also why Nothing Works, who Killed Progress and How to Bring It Back by our colleague Mark J. Dunkelman. There's Dan Wong's Breakneck, which is about China and the US and actually that was my favorite one because Dan is not at all. We're friends now, he's not at all part of our world. So in many ways he's sort of.

[B]

Just zooming in from a different angle entirely, which is great.

[A]

And, and then, and yeah, that's, that's actually. And that's actually kind of a funny example of how that's where my bullishness around the abundance framework and questions comes in. Because like obviously there's a circle of sort of like center left to center right, like liberal former liberaltarians in D.C. who all know each other, who are then are writing books on to very different books but similar topics. That is not shocking. That's not particularly. That happens all the time. But this other person is looking at foreign policy and China and these topics and then come into similar themes that shows there's something deeper going on and that's very, very important.

[B]

There, there.

[A]

Yep, there's a there there. But what's interesting is if you actually read all these books, you could also throw in Appelbaum of the Atlantic stuck to this sort of crew. What's interesting is there's a real. And this seems like I'm being nitpicky, but there are actually different conceptions of what abundance is within all these books that matters. Being aware of this thing matters because it actually should shape the political and institutional decision making decisions that you're making in terms of what you see this space moving forward. Like you said, you describe abundance as a movement and movements have different people. It has the writers, it has the actors, the activists, the politicians. And what I just noticed is a lack of understanding within the crew of these people. This is what, this is what I think has gotten poorly this past year of how there are actually different understandings of this project and different parts of this project have done better than others. And if you just treat it as a whole and do not sort of pick and choose what you individually as a leader or a movement builder or an institutionalist are sort of leaning into, you're going to sort of be kind of confused. So for example, it should be understood that Ezra's version of the abundance book, and you talked about this as Ross Douthit, is a book that talks about abundance within the context of an American liberalism. So the sort of center left to left coded version that I described that has lost its way and I would understand abundance as a plank of that liberalism. So Ezra has an easy answer. When you get left critics who say what does abundance have to say to someone in rural America? What does abundance have to say about single payer healthcare, Medicare for all? And he just says this is a plank of a broader set of American liberal ideas that have answers to the questions. I'm going to push back on you saying abundance has to have an answer on single payer health care or the public option or Obamacare or health care subsidies, because I'm very specifically focused how on American liberalism does not have a good answer for supply constrained areas where subsidizing demand just doesn't work. Because the demand subsidy thing is the answer that we get from our senators, our presidential candidates, and we need a new framework so that we can do things. You then have though. And another person is sort of going to the line here, Mark J. Dunkelman, who he also tells the story through this lens of American liberalism. He does it through this lens of American liberalism has these two different tensions. It has the Jeffersonian one and it has the Hamiltonian one and we sort of went overly Jeffersonian and now we have to re embrace the Hamiltonian sort of tradition of the 1930s. And the reason why I bring this up, and I'm not just being pedantic, is one of the real struggles that everyone in the abundance movement has publicly and privately conceded is we're still working on the storytelling thing. We are, if you are a public official, let's say a representative Jake Auchincloss, who I did an interview with earlier this week in D.C. he's a person who wakes up and thinks about public policy challenges. That's actually an authentic reality of his being. You see this when you spend time with him. So we don't need to come up with like a nice story to make abundance school because he's sort of like, why can't we do the thing? Okay, I Agree with you. I'm interested. But for people who are either not interested in, like, ideological movements or for people who sort of. And this is a politician problem, who sort of see public policy and think tankery and big ideas as not being what politics is about, you need to have something a little more there. And I think what Ezra and then Mark and then fun enough. Dan Wong, in his own way. Because the thing to say about Dan Wong's book, and then I'll stop my ramp, but we're trying to give the context here. Dan Wong's book is about, like, how America is a nation of lawyers, China's a nation of engineers. And a really smart friend of mine who worked in Democratic Party politics during the Biden administration, he says the thing that Dan kind of got wrong here is that he made breakneck about America when really breakneck is a book about the Democratic Party. Because he said the Republican Party is not the party of lawyers. He's like, the Republican Party is the party of cowboys, and cowboys have their own pluses and minuses. But that's the critique of cowboy. The critique of, like, America in this sense is like, the problems of the cowboy. He's like, when you're descript. When I'm reading him saying that the lawyers, I'm like, oh, yeah, that's my Biden time. That's my Biden time time. So, like, their version is very saying, you should be interested in these ideas because you want the Democratic Party in liberalism to work. So I would just love to hear your reaction this, because that just comes into the like, that's different than the bipartisan one. That's different than the AI conversation. And I want more acknowledgment of this.

[B]

So the, you know, the secret to any good political movement is that you get a label that means different things to different people, but there's overlap in those different meanings. And that's enough to push to keep the whole thing together. So it's fine to me that. That there's different, you know, permutations on this common theme. So when it first started the. So before the Klein and Thompson abundance book, there was the Thompson Atlantic article, the Abundant, where he coined the term the abundance agenda. So it first started as. As a kind of technocratic policy agenda that we've got all these problems where we have artificially constrained supply, and that's causing bad economic performance and. And also blowing up in political dysfunction because people are. Are, you know, tearing their hair out about it. So when he first presented it, it wasn't this is the solution to save the Democratic Party from, from, you know, endless self sabotage. But he teamed up with Ezra and they put a book out and that book sells the policy agenda, but then presents this as a kind of governing vision for the center left. But we were using Nan after, you know, after Derek had started writing those articles and then Ezra was writing, you know, supply side liberalism, the liberalism that builds and all of that. So he was already on that track from the get go. But the abundance agenda, we were a policy shop in Nisanin, so we liked that and it, you know, vibed with a lot of stuff we were doing already. But we never saw it as a project for reforming the Democratic Party. We saw it as something that was ultimately answering problems in the world that needed policy and institutional responses. And that realistically the only way that that movement was going to be successful in terms of actually really enacting meaningful and durable policy and institutional change was if there was going to be buy in from both the left and the right. So ultimately there would need to be a left leaning abundance and a right leaning abundance. So that's always been my take on how to frame this abundance idea. Steve Telles has pushed that forward with his paper on the varieties of abundance. So taking this idea of interest in the possibilities of supply side reform and seeing it as a fault line that runs through both the left and the right so that you get left varieties of abundance and right varieties of abundance from, from the far left to the far right. And that to me if, if we can preserve that and it doesn't have to, I don't care if it keeps the abundance name. So the progress movement is a more right coded version of the abundance movement. There's 90% overlap in, in, in the policy agenda. So to me a cross cutting movement.

[A]

For.

[B]

For important deep seated political and institutional change is, is the promise of abundance. We can talk a little bit further perhaps about how we might how I see the potential of abundance which, which still is really just a technocratic policy wonkery which can be used as a way to, to fix things that are wrong in the Democratic Party. So it can be a political tool as, as well as a policy tool but, but it's still anchored in, you know, in, in policy wonkry. I think that that an abundance movement has at least the potential to connect with broader themes and, and turn from something that, that only people whose eyes don't glaze over when you dive into the policy weeds only they resonate with it. I, I think it could be something that that has much broader appeal. And I can talk about that now if you want.

[A]

So one more. So I want you to actually close out on that. But one more thing that's very important. So I sort of COVID the left end of the spectrum here, but on the right end of the spectrum, and I've linked to a hypertext piece where you really put a lot of the themes of the book together that folks could check out after they listen to this and what you did that was so important. And I'm working on the Abundance conference for this next, for this next fall. And I really want to integrate, like, your thinking into this. A real tension point in the Abundance crew is AI. AI is the central tension point because there's a very serious. Because like you said, there are a lot of people who are drawn to Abundance who are really interested in these questions of innovation. Right. The first chapter of the book is queerly a Derek chapter, and it's talking about innovation and progress and those different things which does not actually have to inherently be tied together to a question of housing's too expensive and we can't build infrastructure. You actually do not have to tie the AI project into this. And there's just a real debate. And I've been very skeptical of tying this into the project. Someone at this, Jake Auchinkos and was trying to convince me that like, abundance needs to lean into AI as this really positive force. And I basically said, look at the polls, Abundance has enough problems. AI is its own thing. But you did something that really solved this for me by describing the way that AI can be positive and good. And this, I think will go into where this could lead when you close up with that answer. But you also talk about the downsides and the tensions, and you don't appear as if you're sort of trying to suck up to an AI company, basically saying we're the crew of people who are going to make people believe in your thing. You talk about the downsides and that is what you have to do when there's distrust. So talk about your concerns on this.

[B]

So it's kind of a parallel to the temptation of mainstream center left to center right liberals, you know, wanting to push back against any complaining about the, about deep problems in the system, that conceding that is conceding too much to the bad guys. So of course, a lot of opposition to AI is just straight up, you know, lud height, anti technology, anti growth kind of sentiment that, that doesn't like creative destruction whenever it crops up. And so I, I see the Promise of. So first, this is just a gobsmackingly amazing technology that, that often, you know, when I use it just seems like magic. It's a moving target. I think if, if everything plateaued right now and there were no further progress, it would take at least a couple of decades to work out the implications of what the advances that are already made in terms of restructuring business processes and, and other things to, to really be an engine for, for productivity growth. So there's a, there's a whole lot of promise there. And then, you know, I, I'm skeptical about the whole, you know, coming of the singularity, but, but you don't have to have that. You. If we're still having continued gains in, in the ability of AI to move forward, then then it really can be a kind of deus ex machina for the abundance movement because it can, you know, unlock if, if we really do have, you know, a million geniuses in a data data center, then we can, you know, unlock nuclear fusion and, and drive space launch costs down to nothing and desalinate water at you know, at even, even for, for, you know, agriculture and as well as, as for consumption. So we could do all kinds of, of, you know, not only tackle policy induced artificial supply constraints, but just ignorance induced constraints on supply. So it's got great promise. But you know, I lived through, this is a benefit of being an old person. I lived through the, the hype about the Internet and when it came out in the 90s and I was pretty bought into first, it was an amazing technology and it put all the world's knowledge at your fingertips and it connected everybody. And it just seemed back then like it was all upside. And there was a lot whole lot of millenarian kind of speculation then, you know, the. The Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace by John Perry Barlow. And so, and yet, you know, here we are, we've got all the world's information at our fingertips and yet that seems to have made a whole lot of us stupider and certainly a lot more contentious. And connecting all of us has, has not, you know, produced kumbaya moments. It's producing a cold civil war. So you see how the theoretical promise of the technology can go wrong given the details of how it's implemented. So already right now, in the early days of AI, the emergence of consumer facing AI with, you know, with the large language models is producing a lot of stuff that's just really alarming and worrying. AI ought to be a, you know, a kind of iron man suit for the mind, right? It's it's that, that it amplifies your powers. But if kids use it as a substitute for learning and a substitute for thinking, as is happening, this isn't a speculation, this is happening everywhere. Then, then what it's doing is it's, it's, it's not an iron man suit for the mind. It's a hover chair from Wally, you know. Yeah. And so it's causing the atrophy of capacities and producing a, an ultimate culture that's utterly hopeless for, for producing an abundant future with a bunch of, you know, with even the best and brightest having their brains rotted by dependence on this magic, you know, AI capacity to outsource learning and thinking. You can't outsource learning and thinking. You have to do it on your own to make, you know, to change your brain. So I see real risk in, in how AI is being used today. I, it goes along with a broader trend towards sort of post literacy. Right. So you've got a world right now where 54% of Americans read at below the sixth grade level, which means they just can't understand complex written arguments at all. And you've got a world where most people spend a big chunk of their waking hours living in one dreamland or another of virtual mediated experience. Those are not recipes for a healthy democratic society or a dynamic problem solving society. So I think we must see the sky is blue out there and not deny it. That there are real problems with, with using AI, you know, as just yet another tool to, to capture and monetize attention. Whatever damage it's doing to those paying attention in the process, while still recognizing that used properly it could be a miraculous game.

[A]

So one last question that then you could then pivot into your closing where this could go things. So I want to read a quick passage from your, your piece at the end that I really appreciated. So you're describing. This is you. This is you. Yeah, this is your. I'm not going. Here's this random person you've never ever heard of and I need to do a quick response and then pivot to the thing that you actually believe. No, we're going to keep this consistent. So you're describing where, you know, abundance based policies could take us. But then you say, you know, societies in which mass full time employment is no longer the norm, not because people are dropping out of the workforce under competitive pressure from machines, but because people are quote, graduating from work to pay for graduating from work for pay because they now have better ways to spend their time. And this is where the AI Slop answer becomes. This is what was so concerning to me, which is that's why it's so important that you brought up the Wally situation. Because I think in the sort of like 1990s in fact, that this is amazing. Remember back in the 2000s, 2010s, you'd hear sort of like, you know, automation isn't going to be a threat because think of all the artists we don't have who can't paint because they need to work and, and think of all of the writers and the musicians and the sort of like obvious conclusion of like the AI Slop. When you combine it also with the sports gambling disaster, it's easier for me to imagine no one's going to be spending, no one's going to have better ways of their time. It's going to be slop and wally and Wally things and then like market driven gambling. So I just love to. You could then take this into your broader answer. I was one of the things that you don't even have to answer that. But that's just my concern. That's more of a response to what you just said. I love that last paragraph, but I just can't unsee that. There is no better version of time.

[B]

Yeah. So the promise of consumerism is outsource stuff to us, buy our products to save your time to concentrate on what really matters. Right. So but if you never figure out what really matters and you just keep listening to the siren song of, of comfort and convenience and diverting entertainment and making your life easier, then, then you go through your life and you've never really concentrated on doing those stuff that really matters. And those things that really matter, you know, require self discipline. So it's the consumerism and, and, and consumer goods and the high material standard of living, you know, puts you in a position to, to develop your capacities and enjoy their realization and exercise. That's what flourishing means. But doing that stuff is effortful. It requires self discipline to concentrate on and prioritize what really matters. So you know, a healthy body, a sound mind, vital and sustaining relationships. But you know, right now we're, we have access to more, better access to healthy and delicious food than any humans have ever had. And yet we gorge on junk food to the point that 40% of us are obese. We've got all the world's knowledge at our fingertips and yet we gorge on intellectual junk food of AI Slop and social media slop to the point where raw IQ scores are now falling after a century of, of, of Steady increases. So, and, and you know, prioritizing the clear and you know, undeniable pleasures of sitting all by yourself in a room staring at a screen, which is just getting more and more fun over time. The, if, if you don't focus on what really matters, then you realize that you fritter away so much time doing that that you've deprioritized other people. So, so yeah, we, the, the promise of material growth is freedom from. Freedom from drudgery and inconvenience and wasted time. But if you don't think about freedom to what are we going to use that freedom for? Then you end up in, you know, in some combination of Brave New world and Wally. So my thought, just to close out on the kind of deeper significance of the abundance movement is that it is cropping up at a time when there is increasing recognition of the dysfunctions and real problems caused by our overexposure to virtual online life. That back in the 90s when all this kicked up through about 2015, 2016, it just seemed like the online world had nothing but upside. And yet we're seeing now that there's a real downside and our obliviousness to it. But we wandered right into it and we're pretty deep in it right now. So that is occasioning a renewed, you know, our recognition of, of the insufficiency and, and risks associated with living constantly in the online world. And therefore a kind of renewed appreciation for the importance of the physical and the personal and the real. And so that's coming at the same time as the abundance movement from a more technocratic policy wonky perspective is trying to move. We've been doing fine on progress in the world of bits, but we let the world of atoms languish for about a half century. And so abundance is about revitalizing progress in the world of atoms as opposed to the world of bits. So that policy agenda can hook up with this broader sense of a cultural recognition of Bitcoin that we, we over prioritize online virtual life and under prioritize the real world. And if we keep doing that, then to use yet another sci fi analogy, we can end up in a kind of ready player one scenario where, where we've let the real world just go completely to seed and it's just a bombed out ruin because everybody's spending all their time in virtual escape escapism. That to me is, you know, is a dystopia that looks fairly plausible and it's one that I think people can see now as a threat and we need to turn away from that. And an abundance movement, broadly conceived can be a broad based social movement not only to get the policies right, but to get a culture aimed towards prioritizing the physical and the real again.

[A]

And this is what gets at the sort of forward facing part of this conversation which is that that requires new folks to join the tent and to join the camp. Because the thing is, and this is where I think there needs to be pressure put. And by pressure put I mean I'm going to do this about podcasts. I'm going to do this podcast and say this and hope some of the people listen, which some of who are which is that one of the dangers of abundance and this is actually more of a danger within the sort of center left faction is as I enter more center left spaces I think there is a over obsession with wonkery that is a huge, huge problem. By that I mean at a cultural level like the height of discourse and policy and seriousness is your willingness to make clear that you read Matt Yquasius, Noah Smith and Ezra Klein. And there is a. And I've actually witnessed this, there is a dismissal of these questions of what and not how in terms of once again the technocratic version, but what you are talking about with those sort of values driven things and something that liberals in your understanding and even conservatives of the more even right wing sense have an advantage on this campus within their conception of their public policy, within the conception of liberalism. And then the right is this idea that politics is not just sort of what policy am I supporting, it's actually a bunch of other different things. It's values, it's asking questions. I've never been in a center left space or someone asked the question of like what does it mean to live a good life versus that is. And actually and I used to hate that question coming from like a liberal background, but now I'm like oh wait, that's actually having that framework has been a real unlock to understand what you're getting at here. So that's just sort of my suggestion how we should think about other types of people who should be here. So Brink, this has been incredibly great. Very proud to, to work with you and to have this great conversation.

[B]

So thank you for great fun conversation. Enjoy it.

[A]

Thank you.