Full video of Derek Kaufman's Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR) keynote speech here. See event details here.
Remarks:
Thanks for that warm introduction, John—and thanks to Neale and everyone at SIEPR for hosting this important conversation and inviting me to speak. I’m here today to talk about operationalizing abundance—Abundance as a word, as an analytical framework, and as a political movement.
First off, if you’ve heard that someone named Derek is speaking at an abundance conference, you probably expected a different guy. I am not Derek Thompson—although I’m a huge fan of his. His article, “A Simple Plan to Solve America’s Problems,” was actually the spark that led me to found an organization called Inclusive Abundance.
My name is Derek Kaufman. After a long career on Wall Street, I left the industry ten years ago to try and make the world better through what I call policy philanthropy— Supporting work at think tanks, connecting great ideas to public officials and their staff, and organizing my peers in the business community to join in these efforts. When I first met the other Derek in 2023, he said he worried that abundance was a “capacious word.” (That’s why he has a New York Times best-selling book, and I don’t.)
Abundance is clearly a word that can take on a variety of meanings. Conferences like this—and the inaugural Abundance Conference we hosted last October in D.C.—help define it.
Getting that definition right is so important, because I believe abundance can help us navigate a path away from our current political polarization and dysfunction. And sometimes, conferences can have unexpected outcomes. I’ll come back to that at the end of my remarks.
Defining Abundance
As a word, abundance is the antithesis of scarcity. Now of course, some scarcity is real:
● There are only so many seats in this auditorium.
● There are engineering constraints that limit the height of a skyscraper—if you’re curious, it’s about a mile, though we’ve achieved only half that, mostly because of economics.
But much of the scarcity we experience in America today is self-imposed— Driven by bad policy choices, misaligned incentives, powerful special interests, faulty narratives, and political gridlock. Take Pac Heights, where there’s a 40-foot building height restriction (kind of ironic given the name). The sky isn’t actually lower over that part of San Francisco—but the buildings are short, because of policy, not physics. And yet, abundance is more than a catchy slogan— It’s an analytical framework for identifying and dismantling the self-imposed scarcity that holds our country back. And this artificial scarcity comes from factions on both the left and the right.
Scarcity on the Left
Let’s start with scarcity on the left. Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson’s book Abundance is very much a conversation with progressives. We see an extreme aversion to causing any specific person—or desert tortoise, or piece of landscape—harm. But that ends up causing diffuse harm to everyone. We see what Nick Bagley calls a “procedure fetish” and what Jen Pahlka has described as a calcification of layers upon layers of rules, regulations, and red tape.
In another recent book, Why Nothing Works, Marc Dunkelman shows us how a justifiable reaction to people like Robert Moses—who literally bulldozed marginalized communities—created a deep fear of giving decision-makers real authority. But when nobody is in charge, every decision gets bogged down in the complexity of competing viewpoints.
And the incorporation of “community voice” into our decision-making process has often been hijacked into something deeply anti-democratic. Who shows up at the town meeting evaluating a new apartment complex? Often, they are who Ezra calls Marin County liberals with a Not In My Backyard, or NIMBY mindset. Older, wealthier people with an abundance of time. Who doesn’t show up? The single mom juggling kids and multiple jobs, who can’t yet afford to live in that community, wasn’t invited to the meeting, and doesn’t have the childcare or time to attend.
Add to this mix the degrowth mentality animating parts of the environmental and anticapitalist left.
The Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council are top litigants using NEPA (the National Environmental Policy Act) to block clean energy projects. Back in the ’60s and ’70s, they—like your former governor Arnold Schwarzenegger—built up giant muscles.
The kind of political muscle that stopped coal plants and toxic polluters in their tracks. But the tech stack has changed:
● The cost of wind and solar has plummeted.
● We’ve got new tools: battery storage, next-generation nuclear, and deep
geothermal.
We don’t need beefy linebackers slowing us down. We need marathoners who can help us build green infrastructure fast—with determination, endurance, and focus. We need the body type of elite runners like Eliud Kipchoge, not the Governator.
The irony is that both of these supposedly progressive forces—from Marin County liberals to environmental groups like the Sierra Club—are, at heart, deeply conservative in their aims:
● Conserve habitat - no matter how tiny the parcel at stake or how high the cost to other environmental values.
● Stop development - even for projects that offer great benefits to the general public.
● Freeze a community’s character in time, at the expense of dynamism and economic mobility.
In other words: the exact opposite goals of the progress that should be the root of progressivism.
Scarcity on the Right
Now let’s look at scarcity on the right. We see skepticism of high-return public investments—Science funding, advance market commitments like Operation Warp Speed, or the Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office, which helps finance large projects like nuclear power plants.
We see a zero-sum mentality on trade—placing tariffs on our allies. We see false narratives opposing high-skilled immigration, and the slashing of safety net programs that alleviate child poverty.
We also see a preference for government efficiency over effectiveness— Which leads to some of DOGE’s significant missteps. (We can get into that more in conversation with John.)
From both sides, we’re stuck with antiquated systems, well-organized special interests, and a politics that lets polarization get in the way of solving problems and getting shit done. We are beholden to “scarcity factions” in both parties. It doesn’t have to be this way.
Abundance as a Movement
How do we overcome these scarcity factions? By building abundance as a political movement. Abundance scrambles traditional left-right distinctions and is ideologically and sectorally inclusive. I founded Inclusive Abundance to help organize a growing community of:
● Scholars
● Think tank experts
● Thought leaders
● Advocacy organizations
● Businesspeople
● Philanthropic funders
● Public officials and their staff
Kindred spirits, finding common cause under the banner of abundance. People from across the ideological spectrum who are collaborating to build more housing, invest in clean energy, advance scientific innovation and technological progress, and make government work better for everyone. We’ve built a team to:
● Identify, support, and amplify smart ideas
● Organize events big and small
● Coordinate lobbying and advocacy efforts in D.C. and beyond
We operate both a 501(c)(3) and a 501(c)(4) to enable a wide variety of activities. We build community—through conferences, happy hours (we just had a great one on Monday night in SF), and salon-style dinners. We published a landscape directory and analysis of the abundance policy and advocacy ecosystem—featuring over 100 organizations doing great work in this space. Check it out on our website’s Abundance in Action section at inclusiveabundance.org We encourage donors to support both our partners in the ecosystem and the public officials ready to lead.
Because it’s not enough to ask someone to take a brave stand against a well-organized special interest group opposing a piece of legislation or development project—It’s better to create positive incentives for them to do so. The momentum is building for philanthropic support of the broader ecosystem.
This year, a major funder, Open Philanthropy, announced a $120 million Abundance and Growth Fund, to be distributed over the next three years. When announcing this new area of focus, they cited the Abundance Conference we hosted as one of the inspirations for the fund. We’re excited to see how they allocate it!
We’re busy turning ideas into action:
● Hosting conversations with public officials to socialize and explain the abundance framework.
● Engaging in targeted lobbying on bills like the Energy Permitting Reform Act of 2024—the proposal from Senators Manchin and Barrasso that nearly became law last year.
We’re eager to make a bill like that a reality in this Congress. And last week, we helped launch the bipartisan Congressional Build America Caucus—led by Congressman Josh Harder, with nearly 30 members across both parties coming together to cut red tape and allow us to build better, faster, and cheaper. Energy permitting and transmission reform will be at the top of their agenda.
Closing Story & Call to Action
Before we transition to the conversation with John and each of you, let me end with one tangible story of impact. Last October, one of our conference speakers was J.D. Grom, who at the time was working with Gina Raimondo on CHIPS implementation at the Commerce Department— J.D. is now a senior advisor to Inclusive Abundance, and the guy who recently helped us get the Build America Caucus off the ground. He brought his intern, Victoria Ren, to our DC event. She was so inspired that she came back to campus and founded Stanford Abundance. And that’s why I’m here with you today.
To encourage more of you to join this movement— Through academic research, campus community building, idea generation, organizing grassroots activism, political engagement, philanthropic funding, and more. To tell your friends and colleagues about abundance and encourage their involvement. You can go to our website to sign up for our quarterly newsletter for more abundance ideas and events delivered straight to your inbox.
Please reach out to Victoria—or to me—and let us know how we can help you help us operationalize abundance and turn these important ideas into impactful action. Because we need abundance to be more than a word, More than a book, More than an academic approach to solving America’s problems. We need it to be a vibrant political movement— One that makes artificial scarcity... scarce. Thank you.