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submitted 4 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

I keep seeing this tossed around and I must have missed something. "Abundance Democrats" what is that? What do they mean by "Abundance"? What bullshit are they rebranding?

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[-] [email protected] 55 points 4 days ago

It’s the belief that capitalism can overcome its contradictions by producing so much that shortages become nonexistent. It ignores the fact that capitalism relies on artificial shortages.

Insert grapes of wrath quote here.

[-] [email protected] 14 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

This is the most succinct definition and dismissal of the concept.

[-] [email protected] 69 points 4 days ago

ezra klein wrote a silly book about rebranding neoliberalism

[-] [email protected] 52 points 4 days ago

We shall neither read it nor reply to it. back-to-me

[-] [email protected] 9 points 4 days ago

LOL that's great.

[-] [email protected] 57 points 4 days ago

Trickle down economics, "the freer the market the freer the people", small government, regulation bad, redistribution doesn't work, a rising ride lifts all boats, etc etc

But using different words to try and trick people.

It's just third way politics again, neoliberalism with a fresh coat of paint. Same as it ever was.

[-] [email protected] 33 points 4 days ago

Like I always say, the freer the market, the harder they fall. Read between the lines no new taxes.

[-] [email protected] 34 points 4 days ago

Some people have confused technology for magic and believe as a religious belief that technology can overcome any limits to capitalism presented mainly by the environment and resource limits. This in turn will lead to abundance of treats for everyone including the peasants so peasants should be very happy. Therefore vote Democrat. It's basically a con job. There is a big gap between its premise and conclusions. If the people selling this bullshit believe it then they are insane. If they don't believe it then they are pieces of shit.

[-] [email protected] 17 points 4 days ago

everyone gets a pony and don't think about the consequences of unfettered captalism DONT 3

[-] [email protected] 13 points 4 days ago

It's especially hilarious that they're tying to sell it at this point and time when capitalism is literally imploding. I mean it's not even a new form of pr for capitalist bullshit. This was the promise of the mid ~20th century. It worked for a while when there was an abundance of easily extracted natural resources but now it's just a paycheck for the people selling this crap. It won't catch on. Peoples lived reality will make accepting it impossible. Unless they're trying to make it a cult like Musk did with his businesses. I would say it's too lame to become a cult but Musk became a cult leader so wtf do I know.

[-] [email protected] 38 points 4 days ago
[-] [email protected] 16 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)
[-] [email protected] 18 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

I just finished listening to part two. All my fears about the next election are in it. Pushing Mayo Pete on the electorate with another neolib economic agenda that will only help private equity but disguised as populism so libs get duped and then of course when he loses they can play the identity politics card as the reason.. yep. Playbook in plain sight folks. Expect more of this garbage from the Koch brothers

[-] [email protected] 33 points 4 days ago

In this moment, I am abundant. Not because of any wasteful government program. But because, I am enlightened by the market.

[-] [email protected] 37 points 4 days ago

i think its partially related to the yimby idea that allowing new housing to be built by deregulating the industry around building housing means that developers will build new housing in abundance and cause housing to become affordable to the average person.

as a side note the yimby movement is fucking tiring because strong towns succeeded at turning the entire discussion around housing into market economics instead of "everyone needs housing" and assuming developers will build baby build isn't really working

[-] [email protected] 20 points 4 days ago

"JUST BUILD GOOD PUBLIC HOUSING" I scream into the void as the abundance police beat me lifeless.

[-] [email protected] 33 points 4 days ago

I read the Ezra Klein article where he sniffs his own farts. It's just public-private partnership policy which has defined the Democrats since Clinton, but with a little more social welfare and climate regulation. His grand theory is "corporations are the vehicle for power in the US" + "not all corporations are aligned on all goals" = "we need to work with corporations to build a better future".

So why are Democrats jumping on it as if it's something grandiose? Because it's a new way to tut tut the nascent left by saying "it's reductionist to say capitalism is the root of all bad things."

[-] [email protected] 32 points 4 days ago
[-] [email protected] 29 points 4 days ago

treatlerite sophistry

[-] [email protected] 29 points 4 days ago

Abundance as in infinite = as in infinite 9/11s on the first world

[-] [email protected] 26 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Early hedging against degrowth.

Edit: There is a Breitbart article (fictional editorial?) about this: (Warning: Right Wing Media)

Today, in the year 2064, as we look back over the last 50 years, it might seem as if the Abundance Revolution was inevitable, since so much wealth was involved. After all, it was wealth just waiting to be unleashed.

James P Pinkerton writes an editorial from the future about the Abundance Revolution, which takes place in 2014 and is caused by Cliven Bundy's take over of federal land under Obummer. That event was cattle farmers (years before Yellowstone) who didn't want to pay grazing fees, took over a national park and made a Chud version of CHAZ with militias and everything. They wanted to kick off a civil war, if you read their writing and listened to their hopes and motivations.

Here is how James describes the animus for the Abundance Revolution:

Yet paradoxically, on the eve of the Abundance Revolution, many of America’s leaders, on the right as well as the left, were preaching a strict doctrine of overall austerity.

Indeed, as we look back and study the events of 2014, we can see the results of the Green elite’s ideologically-driven effort to squelch even the relatively small amount of prosperity that Americans were then enjoying. That is, it was the Green elites who unwittingly opened the door to the Abundance Revolution and the fantastic increase in wealth that Americans have since realized over the last half-century.

It is, essentially, a reaction to climate change. Specifically the idea that to curb and survive the effects of climate change, we have to stop eating beef/meat, stop using ICE cars, turn over ranch lands to make solar farms, etc.

It also hits home for real estate developers and people (read: industries) who don't want to dump chemicals into natural waterways:

Yet beginning in the 1970s, the federal government’s approach to land management changed dramatically. Whereas once Uncle Sam had supported development where possible, through dams and other kinds of infrastructure, the new federal policy was the opposite: The Greens, gaining control of federal policymaking during the 1970s, saw federal ownership of the land as an opportunity to stop any sort of development or economic growth. And a key tool for the Greens was the Endangered Species Act (ESA) of 1973. ESA represented a radical expansion of federal power: In the past, the national parks had been set aside to protect endangered species; yet after ESA was passed, the entire country became, in effect, a national park. As a result, in any location where activists could identify an “endangered species,” they could squelch development. And so enforcement of ESA became a kind of racket, in which clever biologists and litigators could team up to block any sort of development and take effective control of any land.

Yet as a reminder of the wisdom that power begets hubris and then nemesis, it was overreaching on the ESA’s power that led to the Battle of Bunkerville; Bundy and other ranchers in Nevada were pushed off their land to protect the desert tortoise, a species that could easily have been protected–if that were really the issue–in zoos or nature preserves. But instead, the Greens got greedy, and that led to the moment when Bundy drew his famous Line in the Desert.

So in addition to acute climate change reaction, you have an underlying chronic crankery against the EPA and environmentalists. Because by protecting endangered species, that land can't be acquired by beef farmers or industry or real estate.

The third triggering incident came on April 18, 2014, when the Barack Obama administration announced that it was delaying, yet again, any decision on the Keystone Pipeline. This move was widely regarded as cynical pandering to a sect of Green billionaires, led by the infamous Tom Steyer of San Francisco. The Obama administration and many Democrats seemed happy enough to bow to Steyer’s wishes in return for campaign cash, but in this instance, the pandering was so flagrant that the decision blew up in the administration’s face. While the liberal media were happy with the Keystone decision, the legacy press was no longer powerful enough to sway public opinion. Instead, the struggle for public opinion was swayed by activists who took to alternative and social media to make the case in favor of Keystone–and against the Reign of Steyer.

It wouldn't be the Obama era without a dash of Koch-backed oil anxiety.

I don't know where it's at now, but it started in libertarian opposition to degrowth. That's why it's called abundance. They want to project the idea that everything (especially oil) is plentiful and accessible. There is no limit to land or water or any resources, just government regulators and environmentalists holding everything back. So when forms of degrowth become necessarily, these people will violently oppose it. They will be the ones guarding Peter Thiel's AI companies' coal power plants.

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[-] [email protected] 21 points 4 days ago

It's the dance that can only be performed by a small, soft piece of bread.

[-] [email protected] 24 points 4 days ago

"What if we did all the shit we just tried again but it works cause we call it something else"

[-] [email protected] 26 points 4 days ago

unlimited-power a rising tide lifts all boats. It keeps rising, and rising, and rising until the entire world is inundated.

[-] [email protected] 20 points 4 days ago

Liberalism has shed its historic progressive character and now the adherents of liberalism constantly have to rebrand their conservatism as something new.

[-] [email protected] 19 points 4 days ago
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[-] [email protected] 16 points 4 days ago

The worst of libertarianism but you’re a New York “intellectual” who chuckles to Bill Maher

[-] [email protected] 21 points 4 days ago

It's trickle-down economics again

[-] [email protected] 20 points 4 days ago

It's pronounced aboondance

[-] [email protected] 20 points 4 days ago

the-podcast

reheated reagan rhetoric (rrr)

[-] [email protected] 18 points 4 days ago

It's basically what you get if you turn c1995 Thomas Friedman loving tech liberals into an ideology and pretend it's not been made utterly ridiculous by the ensuing decades.

[-] [email protected] 8 points 4 days ago

“What if I were to rebrand neoliberalism and act like it’s a new philosophy again? Delightfully devilish, Yglesias!”

[-] [email protected] 11 points 4 days ago

It's about how if we just gut even more regulations, we'll have magical space factories producing blue chew that will be delivered to you via drone

[-] [email protected] 13 points 4 days ago

Trickle down economy but yimbyism

[-] [email protected] 13 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

SAME. Literally half of the chapo pod is about this shit and istg they talk about it more than any democrat

[-] [email protected] 15 points 4 days ago

All the lefty pods are doing their dunk tour on it. Hard for me to gauge how big it is in actual liberal circles because I don't go in actual liberal circles.

[-] [email protected] 17 points 4 days ago

It is FUCKING HUGE in circles of people who are comfortable calling themselves a "liberal", if that makes sense. It's going to be a major influence on whatever the next generation of the Dem establishment looks like, kinda like the west wing.

The good news is that it doesn't stand up to scrutiny. From what I hear about it, itjust kinda ignores class politics, which is enough to be useless ofc. The dozens of other issues on top of that are all a bonus.

[-] [email protected] 11 points 4 days ago

Did the west wing really affect Dems if so tell me how since I am outsider

[-] [email protected] 7 points 4 days ago

Yes, it's kind of a crazy phenomenon. It was basically where US and even other western liberals put their fantasies of what a 'real president' looks like during the W Bush administration. Since so much of their engagement with politics is just entertainment the west wing was a satisfying replacement for them- so while the US was committing war crimes across the globe they got to watch a show which told them comforting lies like the 'conflict in the middle east' is because of Issac and Ishmael (but it could still be solved at Camp David), or that if you just sit down with a conservative and have a beer with them you will reach a reasonable compromise.

While it had the veneer of being progressive it was incredibly regressive: anti-feminist, anti-protest, pro-NATO, and extremely Islamophobic just to name things off the top of my head. Its fantasies were also cartoonish: the final season of the show featured an election and the Republican nominee is a pro-abortion advocate from California while the Democrat winner is an anti-abortion Catholic, young, charismatic Latino- who makes the republican his secretary of state. The young charismatic guy winning the election in the show was deemed prophetic of Obama's win 2/3 years later by many fans

When the creator of Veep got a tour of the white house from Obama's press people they described their jobs and various rooms in the white house based off of the west wing's characters and which rooms had important scenes happen in them. For example, they described the Roosevelt Room as the room where the fictional president watched a fictional bombing of a fictional version of Iraq instead of describing it as the room where national security council meetings have happened for the previous 50 years.

[-] [email protected] 5 points 4 days ago

I actually know parts of this ,about the whole Goerge Bush W is fake American stuff ,in fact the boondocks comic strip Makes fun of it ,but considering how he is now redeemed in many dem/lib circles

It does seem like they forgot

[-] [email protected] 12 points 4 days ago
[-] [email protected] 10 points 4 days ago

It means hope. It means change.

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[-] [email protected] 11 points 4 days ago

It has some of the energy of the rationalist movement. Some techo futuristic. It is fully automated luxury gay space neoliberalism

[-] [email protected] 10 points 4 days ago

It's when someone abunds.

[-] [email protected] 8 points 4 days ago
[-] [email protected] 9 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

It's about how the Democrats are going to reboot The Bund, which will still be set in 1920's Shanghai but starring Americans while filmed entirely in Georgia

It sounds like a terrible idea but I digress

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[-] [email protected] 5 points 4 days ago

Fully automated luxury space capitalism

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this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2025
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