Marshall here. Welcome back to the realignment. We're kicking off this season with an

extended episode focusing on two themes. This podcast has increasingly focused on the abundance

agenda and populism. As everyone sorts through the wreckage after the 2024 election, the big debate

that's opened up is the question of what's next? I've obviously embraced the abundance agenda,

basically the idea that a lot of our problems are defined by scarcity. We have too little housing,

energy, updated infrastructure, and inflation continues to wreck people's bank accounts.

If we think about so many things that we want in our lives today, if we think about a lot of

the promises of the middle-class American dream that no longer seem accessible, it's because things

cost too much or there's just not enough to go around. Abundance agenda folks think policy should be

about increasing the supply of those things we want more of, often through deregulation. The other part

of the abundance agenda is just making government work better. Think of California's inability to build

high-speed rail after decades of effort. Aser Klein has a new book on abundance coming out

next week that he's written along with Derek Thompson. They'll both be joining the podcast in the

coming weeks to discuss the topic. At the same time, there's been a lot of tension between the

abundance camp and many people identify as populists. The populists argue with the focus on supply, deregulation,

and good governance basically sidesteps the big challenges of the 2020s, like inequality and the

limits of growth. Many also see abundance as a plot by the centrist wing to take back power

and blunt populist to energy. My take is that the abundance agenda and populism

are completely compatible. Take higher education, for instance. Abundance would focus on the fact that

increasing costs every single year makes college increasingly unaffordable. You can't address the

inaccessibility of college the way populists want to if we don't limit the increasing costs of college

every single year. If you're a left populist to give another example who thinks that zoning reform

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