In “Tiptoeing Towards Abundance,” Samuel Gregg describes the illiberal drift in US politics, left and right, but also a more hopeful counter-trend: a more market-friendly, abundance-oriented strand emerging on the American left. He explores the possibility of a coalition with free-market conservatives, but remains skeptical. This article is more optimistic. It sketches what a “liberal abundance coalition” could look like, and the work it could do.
The Building Chips in America Act (2024) offers a glimpse of a possible modus operandi for a liberal abundance coalition. By exempting semiconductor fabs funded under the CHIPS and Science Act (2022) from some NEPA reviews, Congress cleared a major obstacle that had threatened to derail a factory investment boom. Industrial policy—planning as accelerator—overrode stultifying environmental protectionism—planning as brake. The modest precedent might become a template for using industrial policy as a crowbar for deregulation.
More broadly, a coalition of classical liberals and abundance-oriented progressives might work towards a number of shared goals. They could cooperate to liberate the built environment and work to modernize infrastructure. They might find common ground on expanding school choice or curtailing subsidies to seniors to make room for growth-oriented investment. They might work together to design industrial policy around the skillful use of military procurement to accelerate civilian technology.
Planning and freedom are often in tension, but they are not opposites. Classical liberals should seek a seat at the planning table to ensure that freedom is part of the plan.
Left-Wing, Right-Wing, Up-Wing, Down-Wing
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These libertarian-progressive team-ups always prove to be fantasies, regardless of how obvious they seem.
There is no illiberal drift on the right. There's an illiberal drift on the left because the core of their anti-market ideology is inherently authoritarian, and then the right is forced into the awkward position of finding some way to deal with the left's insanity and violence without violating the classical liberalism which they have traditionally championed.