I have a question that is really a comment. How would the Abundance Movement address the federal budget deficit and still rebuild state capacity and public confidence?
Abundance agenda requires competent and non-corrupt technocrats to enact it. Where are they? Covid demonstrated on a majestic scale the incompetence of the elites. It also broke open the story of how ALL our institutions from NIH to university public health departments to scientific journals are influenced by big pharma money and lobbying. Other commenters have pointed to the budget deficit. I could also mention the fraud that has been uncovered in MN and now CA in hospice, daycare, etc etc. Why should people pay more taxes for "abundance."? And how does that fit with affordability ?
We have one of the highest GDP per person in the world. Our economy is much stronger and more dynamic than Europe. I lived in France for 20 years and still go back often. Its in a state of terminal decline as nearly every French person will agree. Germany and UK are not doing much better. I don't see that the USA is sinking.
I also lived in France for many years and thoroughly enjoyed my time. I'm lucky to live a couple of kilometers from the border and go back frequently both for holiday and to visit friends. In all that time of living there (on three occasions over more than 30 years) I have never known the people I talk to, or the general commentariat, to he happy with the way the country was going.
Nevertheless, I'm delighted that, despite your obvious unhappiness with US governments and lobbying, you see the country continuing to flourish, financially as well as spiritually.
Think also of the future. It is as, or perhaps, MORE important than the present. Visit (free), Evaluate (free) and - for only $12 annually - JOIN my EthicalGovtNow.org movement or what we have, our children and grandchildren may inherit. Think of my site as an ark where we can aggregate to build a better future.
Well, I didn't say it was flourishing spiritually. And I don't believe any major country has its economy on the right track - probably no country in the world! Nor do I believe France is flourishing spiritually. I am just pointing out that the irrationality of the narrative of American decline if you accept the mainstream notions of GDP growth and well being. The European leaders would be thrilled to have an economy as dynamic and innovative as the USA- look at the tech industry.
I completely agree about America being the gold standard for tech and innovation. Sadly the Trump administration, through cuts to science budgets, making talented foreigners feel unwelcome, as well as celebrating venality and incompétence, is putting all that at risk. China will soon be the centre of innovation, and I'd like to believe that Europe might get its act together there too, but admit it's unlikely.
On the spiritual side, however, I think Europe is, on the whole (massive exceptions exist of course), much more well-balanced than the US (I also lived there for a number of years).
Silicon valley and tech are doing just fine under the Trump admin. There are many many foreign workers, one of my French family members among them. The best young French engineers dream of coming here- and many do. I spend a lot of time in San Francisco area. What Trump voters like myself are against was the uncontrolled illegal immigration. We are not against legal immigration - of which there is plenty and I meet them every day out in SF. As for cuts to science budgets, they mostly cut wasteful DEI and climate change research, I can assure you that the billions are still flowing ( ask anyone at Stanford).
Is it worth any bother to reduce the enormous Federal debt that has been increasing in leaps and bounds in every fiscal year in the past quarter century?
As if I'd get an honest answer! The truth seems fairly obvious: politicians have believed, for good reason, that offering more freebies to broad segments of the public, public works employment for union members, and subsidies for fatcat fund donors serves their short-term political interest, and that is a higher priority for them than any potential public benefits of fiscal rectitude.
According to the Congressional Budget Office the Social Security Trust Fund will be exhausted in 2032, at which point benefits will have to be cut by 20 to 30% unless ... wait for it ... Congress appropriates money to cover the shortfall. Will it raise the money by jacking up taxes or will it use money newly created by the Federal Reserve? I'd bet on the latter -- that is, on stealthy imposition of the cost on the public at large through devaluation of the dollar.
Please think also of the future. It is as, or perhaps, MORE important than the present. Visit (free), Evaluate (free) and - for only $12 annually - JOIN my EthicalGovtNow.org movement or what we have, our children and grandchildren may inherit. Think of my site as an ark where we can aggregate to build a better future
Looking forward to hearing more about your vision.
I think Abundance should certainly be one of the pillars, although along with expanding it beyond energy,housing, transportation, and state capacity, I'd also think what an abundance agenda for public safety and education/parental support might look like as well.
But abundance alone, as Brink Lindsey persuasively argues (https://brinklindsey.substack.com/p/the-progress-movement-needs-a-better) isn't enought. I'd suggest a second pillar needs to be about service and community. Have a number of of ideas for that pillar including national service, a four day work week with the 5th day becoming a "civic day", rethinking jury duty to be about service more broadly, and initiatives to help neighborhoods.
Finally, I think a third pillar needs to be the vision for what American foreign policy needs to be in the post-Trump. I think the challenge is how best to make the rise of China a positive for the world. I would approach that from the perspective of a Jean Monnet by which I mean how do we build structures that help the Chinese and Americans view themselves as partners rather as enemies.
While not the main reason for building bridges with China, I think the approach I'm calling for is more likely to lead to better outcomes for Taiwan than an approach which constantly frames China as the enemy of the U.S.
Ultimately, I think there is no way for the U.S. to effectively protect Taiwan in the case of a war. Without the use of nuclear weapons (which would be insane), the U.S. just doesn't have the military strength. Nor would Americans see the safety of Taiwan as a cause worth spending American lives or huge amounts of resources on.
So the only way to keep Taiwan free is to persuade the Chinese that taking over Taiwan is not necessary to achieve their ambitions of making China a world leading power once again. I think a Monnet type approach is the best way to achieve this goal.
Sez you. If the Taiwanese acquire the means to inflict a huge casualty toll on an invading force that might suffice to deter the leaders of mainland China, who lack any popular mandate, from ordering an invasion that might be deeply resented by their own subjects, particularly military personnel who would be most at risk.
Well I certainly hope you're right that they are deterred for whatever reasons.
But as someone married to the daughter of two Chinese immigrants (one who grew up in the mainland and one who grew up in Taiwan and both with lots of family in China), I'm confident that the Chinese leadership isn't worried about public opinion in China. Even mainland Chinese who hate the Communist goverment all believe that Taiwan is really part of China. Definitely doesn't mean they want to see an invasion, but public opinion isn't going to be a big deterrent.
Kenneth Rosen's new book Polar War also highlights how embarassingly inadequate our ships and icebreakers are compared to those of other countries and how our military are unprepared for conflict with Russia in Alaska. Reducing research dollars given the changing climate is also a hindrance. It's a great read!
Francis Fukuyama (1992) argues that liberal democracy and associated market institutions represent the end of history. In this vision, democratic governance and the resulting economic abundance mark the final evolution of humanity’s political expression within the international system of states, progressively subordinating anarchy to stable cooperation through pluralist debate and post-ideological peace.
Requisite Realism (RR) (Koch 2026) establishes the ontological prior to this liberal vision. Central to RR is essential requisite replenishment velocity: the rate at which a state regenerates critical material inputs, including energy supplies, infrastructure throughput, fiscal capacity, and the social cohesion required to sustain political will. Political will emerges not as an independent variable but as a dependent constraint shaped by material sustainability.
Within the international system of states, each polity confronts a distinct set of replenishment depletion constraints. Resilience, born of lower material needs, extends the time political will can support leadership. Civilizational authoritarian states, whose telos is material and social common prosperity, therefore exhibit greater resilience: their focused pursuit of tangible collective outcomes sustains elite cohesion and public tolerance far longer under pressure. Liberal democracies, by contrast, whose telos is arguments, endless pluralist contestation and ideological refinement, prove less resilient. Urban G7 societies, with high material dependencies, experience a quicker erosion of public tolerance and elite cohesion when replenishment velocity falters.
This ontological shift from anarchy to replenishment velocity as the ontological prior in International Relations makes theoretical sense. Where Kenneth Waltz (1979) treats anarchy as the prime structural fact of the international system, compelling states toward self-help and relative power competition, Fukuyama does not offer a different ontological prior to anarchy. He accepts it but claims liberal democracy and abundance can progressively subordinate its effects. Requisite Realism, by contrast, posits replenishment velocity as more fundamental. Even during the unipolar moment when American Exceptionalism appeared ascendant, that exceptionalism itself was subordinated to replenishment velocity.
Being exceptional requires the continual replenishment of the material, infrastructural, fiscal, and social requisites that maintain exceptionalism over time. Without replenishment, even the most exceptional polity becomes subject to relative decline. RR thereby resolves persistent empirical anomalies, explains why some regimes endure protracted external pressure while others fragment rapidly, and forces a fundamental reorganisation of Fukuyama’s framework, subordinating liberal teleology to requisite replenishment realities.
References
Fukuyama, F. (1992) The End of History and the Last Man. London: Penguin.
Koch, A. (2026) ‘Requisite Realism: A Material Ontology of Power in the Technological Age’, The Gadfly Doctrine, 12 March. Available at: https://alkoch55.substack.com/p/requisite-realism (Accessed: 22 April 2026).
Waltz, K.N. (1979) Theory of International Politics. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
But where would you start to unwind the "vetocracy" at all levels of government? How do we generate support to move from a Jeffersonian to a Hamiltonian government?
This is thoughtful and appealing—but in the current political climate, it reads more like wishful thinking. It’s hard to imagine “abundance” when the electric poles in my neighborhood are leaning at dangerous angles.
If state regulated monopolies - the utility companies, can't be managed and regulated into doing a good job, why would the rest of the providers of the "abundance agenda" do any better? Competence, honesty, transparency is not in evidence in the many many things the government is already neck deep into.
Politics post-Trump are most likely to include all progressive 'goodies' to be obtained by packing of the Supreme Court and elimination of the Senate filibuster.
Donald Trump is well on his way to being the worst president in American history.”
I’d say he reached that goal months ago. His only possible competitor would be Andrew Johnson, but I think Trump has left him in the dust.
For the rest, I completely agree with the thrust of this article.Hamilton was a bit of a monarchist, but his vision of government support for business and infrastructure was spot on, as was the infrastructure part of Henry Clay’s American Plan.
I have a question that is really a comment. How would the Abundance Movement address the federal budget deficit and still rebuild state capacity and public confidence?
Abundance agenda requires competent and non-corrupt technocrats to enact it. Where are they? Covid demonstrated on a majestic scale the incompetence of the elites. It also broke open the story of how ALL our institutions from NIH to university public health departments to scientific journals are influenced by big pharma money and lobbying. Other commenters have pointed to the budget deficit. I could also mention the fraud that has been uncovered in MN and now CA in hospice, daycare, etc etc. Why should people pay more taxes for "abundance."? And how does that fit with affordability ?
You're right. Let's not even bother trying and just let the US sink further.
We have one of the highest GDP per person in the world. Our economy is much stronger and more dynamic than Europe. I lived in France for 20 years and still go back often. Its in a state of terminal decline as nearly every French person will agree. Germany and UK are not doing much better. I don't see that the USA is sinking.
I also lived in France for many years and thoroughly enjoyed my time. I'm lucky to live a couple of kilometers from the border and go back frequently both for holiday and to visit friends. In all that time of living there (on three occasions over more than 30 years) I have never known the people I talk to, or the general commentariat, to he happy with the way the country was going.
Nevertheless, I'm delighted that, despite your obvious unhappiness with US governments and lobbying, you see the country continuing to flourish, financially as well as spiritually.
Think also of the future. It is as, or perhaps, MORE important than the present. Visit (free), Evaluate (free) and - for only $12 annually - JOIN my EthicalGovtNow.org movement or what we have, our children and grandchildren may inherit. Think of my site as an ark where we can aggregate to build a better future.
Well, I didn't say it was flourishing spiritually. And I don't believe any major country has its economy on the right track - probably no country in the world! Nor do I believe France is flourishing spiritually. I am just pointing out that the irrationality of the narrative of American decline if you accept the mainstream notions of GDP growth and well being. The European leaders would be thrilled to have an economy as dynamic and innovative as the USA- look at the tech industry.
I completely agree about America being the gold standard for tech and innovation. Sadly the Trump administration, through cuts to science budgets, making talented foreigners feel unwelcome, as well as celebrating venality and incompétence, is putting all that at risk. China will soon be the centre of innovation, and I'd like to believe that Europe might get its act together there too, but admit it's unlikely.
On the spiritual side, however, I think Europe is, on the whole (massive exceptions exist of course), much more well-balanced than the US (I also lived there for a number of years).
Silicon valley and tech are doing just fine under the Trump admin. There are many many foreign workers, one of my French family members among them. The best young French engineers dream of coming here- and many do. I spend a lot of time in San Francisco area. What Trump voters like myself are against was the uncontrolled illegal immigration. We are not against legal immigration - of which there is plenty and I meet them every day out in SF. As for cuts to science budgets, they mostly cut wasteful DEI and climate change research, I can assure you that the billions are still flowing ( ask anyone at Stanford).
Is it worth any bother to reduce the enormous Federal debt that has been increasing in leaps and bounds in every fiscal year in the past quarter century?
You'll need to talk to successive US administrations about why they keep wanting to do that.
As if I'd get an honest answer! The truth seems fairly obvious: politicians have believed, for good reason, that offering more freebies to broad segments of the public, public works employment for union members, and subsidies for fatcat fund donors serves their short-term political interest, and that is a higher priority for them than any potential public benefits of fiscal rectitude.
Sadly, I can't disagree with any of that. Surely at some point the debt load must get to great and a reckoning will be due?
According to the Congressional Budget Office the Social Security Trust Fund will be exhausted in 2032, at which point benefits will have to be cut by 20 to 30% unless ... wait for it ... Congress appropriates money to cover the shortfall. Will it raise the money by jacking up taxes or will it use money newly created by the Federal Reserve? I'd bet on the latter -- that is, on stealthy imposition of the cost on the public at large through devaluation of the dollar.
Please think also of the future. It is as, or perhaps, MORE important than the present. Visit (free), Evaluate (free) and - for only $12 annually - JOIN my EthicalGovtNow.org movement or what we have, our children and grandchildren may inherit. Think of my site as an ark where we can aggregate to build a better future
Looking forward to hearing more about your vision.
I think Abundance should certainly be one of the pillars, although along with expanding it beyond energy,housing, transportation, and state capacity, I'd also think what an abundance agenda for public safety and education/parental support might look like as well.
But abundance alone, as Brink Lindsey persuasively argues (https://brinklindsey.substack.com/p/the-progress-movement-needs-a-better) isn't enought. I'd suggest a second pillar needs to be about service and community. Have a number of of ideas for that pillar including national service, a four day work week with the 5th day becoming a "civic day", rethinking jury duty to be about service more broadly, and initiatives to help neighborhoods.
Finally, I think a third pillar needs to be the vision for what American foreign policy needs to be in the post-Trump. I think the challenge is how best to make the rise of China a positive for the world. I would approach that from the perspective of a Jean Monnet by which I mean how do we build structures that help the Chinese and Americans view themselves as partners rather as enemies.
How about the challenge of deterring the government of mainland China from invading Taiwan?
While not the main reason for building bridges with China, I think the approach I'm calling for is more likely to lead to better outcomes for Taiwan than an approach which constantly frames China as the enemy of the U.S.
Ultimately, I think there is no way for the U.S. to effectively protect Taiwan in the case of a war. Without the use of nuclear weapons (which would be insane), the U.S. just doesn't have the military strength. Nor would Americans see the safety of Taiwan as a cause worth spending American lives or huge amounts of resources on.
So the only way to keep Taiwan free is to persuade the Chinese that taking over Taiwan is not necessary to achieve their ambitions of making China a world leading power once again. I think a Monnet type approach is the best way to achieve this goal.
Sez you. If the Taiwanese acquire the means to inflict a huge casualty toll on an invading force that might suffice to deter the leaders of mainland China, who lack any popular mandate, from ordering an invasion that might be deeply resented by their own subjects, particularly military personnel who would be most at risk.
Well I certainly hope you're right that they are deterred for whatever reasons.
But as someone married to the daughter of two Chinese immigrants (one who grew up in the mainland and one who grew up in Taiwan and both with lots of family in China), I'm confident that the Chinese leadership isn't worried about public opinion in China. Even mainland Chinese who hate the Communist goverment all believe that Taiwan is really part of China. Definitely doesn't mean they want to see an invasion, but public opinion isn't going to be a big deterrent.
Kenneth Rosen's new book Polar War also highlights how embarassingly inadequate our ships and icebreakers are compared to those of other countries and how our military are unprepared for conflict with Russia in Alaska. Reducing research dollars given the changing climate is also a hindrance. It's a great read!
Francis Fukuyama (1992) argues that liberal democracy and associated market institutions represent the end of history. In this vision, democratic governance and the resulting economic abundance mark the final evolution of humanity’s political expression within the international system of states, progressively subordinating anarchy to stable cooperation through pluralist debate and post-ideological peace.
Requisite Realism (RR) (Koch 2026) establishes the ontological prior to this liberal vision. Central to RR is essential requisite replenishment velocity: the rate at which a state regenerates critical material inputs, including energy supplies, infrastructure throughput, fiscal capacity, and the social cohesion required to sustain political will. Political will emerges not as an independent variable but as a dependent constraint shaped by material sustainability.
Within the international system of states, each polity confronts a distinct set of replenishment depletion constraints. Resilience, born of lower material needs, extends the time political will can support leadership. Civilizational authoritarian states, whose telos is material and social common prosperity, therefore exhibit greater resilience: their focused pursuit of tangible collective outcomes sustains elite cohesion and public tolerance far longer under pressure. Liberal democracies, by contrast, whose telos is arguments, endless pluralist contestation and ideological refinement, prove less resilient. Urban G7 societies, with high material dependencies, experience a quicker erosion of public tolerance and elite cohesion when replenishment velocity falters.
This ontological shift from anarchy to replenishment velocity as the ontological prior in International Relations makes theoretical sense. Where Kenneth Waltz (1979) treats anarchy as the prime structural fact of the international system, compelling states toward self-help and relative power competition, Fukuyama does not offer a different ontological prior to anarchy. He accepts it but claims liberal democracy and abundance can progressively subordinate its effects. Requisite Realism, by contrast, posits replenishment velocity as more fundamental. Even during the unipolar moment when American Exceptionalism appeared ascendant, that exceptionalism itself was subordinated to replenishment velocity.
Being exceptional requires the continual replenishment of the material, infrastructural, fiscal, and social requisites that maintain exceptionalism over time. Without replenishment, even the most exceptional polity becomes subject to relative decline. RR thereby resolves persistent empirical anomalies, explains why some regimes endure protracted external pressure while others fragment rapidly, and forces a fundamental reorganisation of Fukuyama’s framework, subordinating liberal teleology to requisite replenishment realities.
References
Fukuyama, F. (1992) The End of History and the Last Man. London: Penguin.
Koch, A. (2026) ‘Requisite Realism: A Material Ontology of Power in the Technological Age’, The Gadfly Doctrine, 12 March. Available at: https://alkoch55.substack.com/p/requisite-realism (Accessed: 22 April 2026).
Waltz, K.N. (1979) Theory of International Politics. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
But where would you start to unwind the "vetocracy" at all levels of government? How do we generate support to move from a Jeffersonian to a Hamiltonian government?
Having just returned from a 30 day trip to Asia I can affirm that the US is woefully underdeveloped. Our infrastructure is aging and inadequate.
This is thoughtful and appealing—but in the current political climate, it reads more like wishful thinking. It’s hard to imagine “abundance” when the electric poles in my neighborhood are leaning at dangerous angles.
If state regulated monopolies - the utility companies, can't be managed and regulated into doing a good job, why would the rest of the providers of the "abundance agenda" do any better? Competence, honesty, transparency is not in evidence in the many many things the government is already neck deep into.
Politics post-Trump are most likely to include all progressive 'goodies' to be obtained by packing of the Supreme Court and elimination of the Senate filibuster.
Donald Trump is well on his way to being the worst president in American history.”
I’d say he reached that goal months ago. His only possible competitor would be Andrew Johnson, but I think Trump has left him in the dust.
For the rest, I completely agree with the thrust of this article.Hamilton was a bit of a monarchist, but his vision of government support for business and infrastructure was spot on, as was the infrastructure part of Henry Clay’s American Plan.