On economics as well as politics, therefore, the left must work out what has gone wrong. Two new books—“Why Nothing Works” by Marc Dunkelman of Brown University and “Abundance” by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, a pair of journalists—suggest an answer: that excessive regulation has hurt America by blocking housebuilding, infrastructure and innovation.

For his part, Mr Dunkelman argues that progressives must move away from so-called Jeffersonian instincts, which favour localism, diffuse power and plentiful vetoes, and towards Hamiltonian ones, which point to centralising power in order to get things done.

Sounds like they want the US to become more like China.

Edit: to be clear, what they’re talking about when they say “excessive regulation,” is excessive state and local regulation, not necessarily excessive federal regulation. They might want to reduce federal regulations as well, to open things up for businesses as much as possible, but when it comes to house building specifically, the regulations that are preventing more homes from being built are local zoning restrictions. The implication seems to be that the federal government should have the power to override local zoning regulations.

The “abundance liberals” want state and local governments to have less autonomy, and they want the federal government to have more power, specifically the power to make sure the path is clear for corporations to do, more or less, whatever the hell they want.

Edit 2: I also want to point out that this idea is not new. Francis Fukuyama said the following in 1992, in ‘The End of History and the Last Man’:

…if a country’s goal is economic growth above all other considerations, the truly winning combination would appear to be neither liberal democracy nor socialism of either a Leninist or democratic variety, but the combination of liberal economics and authoritarian politics…or what we might term a "market-oriented authoritarianism.

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