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On Sept. 15, a new club, “Abundance at IU,” published their founding column in the IDS titled “Can I trust you?” The column pitches “Abundance” a term that seems to mean more houses, more doctors and more green energy — as the solution to much of what ails modern America. Abundance makes the argument that we can have more; it just requires we increase “trust” and reduce the “vetocracy” — a term akin to checks and balances. With these changes, Abundance argues, housing will be more affordable, healthcare will be cheaper and green energy will be, well, abundant. It’s a hopeful vision, but without a theory of who holds power once the obstacles are gone, it makes for bad politics.
By bad politics I don't mean Republican versus Democrat, I mean a failure to grapple with decisions that require a winner and a loser, no matter how the deal is engineered. Abundance at IU’s column insists the economy isn’t zero-sum, “my gain doesn’t have to be your loss,” and treats that claim as if it ends the need for politics altogether.
But some fights are always zero-sum; take the column’s own example: “citizens and companies who disliked the outcome of a democratic vote sued” to stop California’s high-speed rail. That sentence treats the lawsuits as pure obstruction, but that fight determines whose land, whose water, whose neighborhood would bear the cost of a route someone else voted for. Abundance aims to expand the pie, but the pie will still be divided, and a framework solely dedicated to clearing obstacles in front of it is unequipped to decide who gets the slice.
Abundance’s policies are inadequate to answer this question because “a more effective government” risks benefiting incumbents instead of unseating them. Take the rise of the interstate highway system. Starting in the 1930s, General Motors built what would become the “most powerful pressure group in Washington”: the National Highway Users Conference. GM waged war on fast, efficient public transportation, using the institutional power it captured.
GM also had a say in what would replace streetcars, and that decision lingers with us to this day. Eisenhower’s own Secretary of Defense was the sitting president of GM. The first administrator of the new federal highway funds came from the DuPont family — GM’s largest shareholder. The interstate system that followed was built with condemnation power, not local consultation. Entire communities, disproportionately poor and of color, were displaced to build roads which connected suburbia, this is the “efficient government” Abundance is nostalgic for: a special interest operating from inside the state, unchecked by democratic oversight. The environmental review and public-comment requirements Abundance now calls “vetocracy” exist because of exactly this history. They were built as a guardrail against the last time government moved fast and broke things. The dysfunction Abundance blames on ineffectual government is really caused by effectual government, working for private interests.
These factors also halted the California high-speed rail project. In 2013, Elon Musk unveiled Hyperloop, a vacuum-tube transit concept pitched as high-speed rail’s futuristic successor. Except, Musk had no intention of building it. He told his biographer, Ashlee Vance, that he hoped the plan would get California’s high-speed rail project canceled. It worked well enough: Hyperloop gave California legislators and pundits a reason to deem the state’s rail project obsolete. Like GM before him, Musk’s bottom line was threatened by public transit, so he made public services worse and attempted to sell privatization as the solution.
Abundance at IU’s column attempts to connect the failure of California high-speed rail to Indiana’s deteriorating infrastructure, but California’s challenges are not our own. When Google proposed a $1 billion data center in Franklin Township — a suburb of Indianapolis — an organized bipartisan council beat it back. The company withdrew rather than face a vote it was likely to lose.
However, when a developer proposed one in Martindale-Brightwood, a historically Black Indianapolis neighborhood, the council approved it after months of resident protest. Two Indianapolis communities, with the same approval process, had opposite outcomes. The difference was inequality in social capital, not inequality in “vetocracy.”
Abundance at IU should not give up on building civic trust or stop pushing for a government that helps people. I point out Abundance’s shortcomings because I believe optimism should not be blind: a movement solely focused on removing obstacles says nothing about who benefits from their absence. Abundance assumes building more would even the playing field, but that’s not always the case.
The better version of Abundance isn’t “build more, trust more,” it’s to allow the government to work for the people against entrenched interests. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani instituted a rent freeze for a million units and began construction of 200,000 new housing units on underutilized city property. Simultaneously, he’s enforced preexisting laws to punish negligent landlords and launched public insurance for rent controlled units. These changes help everyday New Yorkers and use tools the government already has.
Abundance supporters have claimed Mamdani is an example of Abundance, but Mamdani’s anti-corporate and pro-worker stances are at odds with the elimination of “zero-sum” conflict. Mamdani has made grassroots funding and taxing the rich centerpieces of his tenure in office. He has gotten into high-profile fights with the NYC business community, which spent big to keep him from office. Despite being weighed down by lawsuits from businesses and billionaires, Mamdani’s government has delivered by shutting out institutional power and governing for the people.
If Abundance wishes to achieve success it requires recognizing the necessity of politics. Deciding who bears the costs of “building more” means picking a fight — a fight Abundance seems unwilling to take sides in. Without recognizing the inevitability of conflict, the Abundance movement seems doomed to electoral impotency.
Spencer Robinson (he/him) is a junior studying public policy analysis and law and public policy. His commentary can also be found on his Substack.
