Summer Reading Series: Non-Fiction
Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson
Coming from a Gen Z’er, I can confidently say that the average young person’s thoughts about the future are bleak.
Climate change poses an existential threat to our planet and way of life as we know it, the prospect of owning a home – traditionally the foundation of building personal wealth – now seems like a far-fetched luxury, and the increasingly competitive job market paired with the rising cost of higher education make for a triple threat of uncertainty.
Throw on top of this our most formative years spent on Zoom and unprecedented political turmoil and divisiveness and no wonder you’ve got a discontented, unsettled, and frankly pessimistic generation.
However, all is not lost.
In fact, as Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson point out in Abundance, there is the world to be gained. We are currently at humanity’s zenith of technological innovation.
In the past 50 years green energy has reduced drastically in price, the internet and now artificial intelligence has transformed our access to information and each other, and advances in biotech have pushed some diseases into obsolescence.
Abundance makes it clear that the future we want is in our control.
The book points to the fact that well-intentioned regulations passed in the later-half of the 20th century have actually hindered the government’s ability to implement radical projects.
The private sector’s ultimate goal is to make a profit. Klein and Thompson argue that the government, if wielded correctly, can account for externalities and can afford to pursue projects that don’t have an immediate profit incentive.
Abundance provides a refreshing new identity to political change that has, for me at least, sparked hope for the future.
-Greg