#6 Limited Abundance
Plus: crushing NIMBYs, breaking tax breaks, intelligent AI takes
Welcome to the sixth instalment of the Liberal Digest. The world continues to progress/burn/spin (delete your chosen adjective as appropriate), but liberals are like cockroaches; we just will not go away.
In this week’s edition: the limits to the abundance agenda, questions compound over AI, and US interest in international jobs grows – we wonder why?
Did we miss something? Let us know.
Stop the Press!
Best op eds, interviews, news and analysis of the week in the old-school media
Janan Ganesh writes about what abundance can’t achieve:
“The biggest head-scratcher in the modern world is the lack of correlation between abundance and voter happiness. In the US, which has boomed for much of the century, populists are rampant. In Europe, which mostly hasn’t, populists are rampant.”
The Economist leads its issue this week with ‘the man Britain cannot ignore’:
“Britain could become locked in a doom-loop of low growth, an angry electorate, and governments that run from unpopular reforms or pursue investment-killing ideas. With Brexit, Mr Farage helped embed the poor growth and state dysfunction that are even now providing fuel for his return. Britain has already spent one decade struggling to get by in the world Mr Farage created. It can ill afford a second.”
Bill Esterson MP and Gerry McFall set out their plans in The Telegraph for triggering an industrial renaissance in Britain:
“Britain’s innovators built the modern world. Today we stand at a crossroads. On one side – more of the same that lets down communities and nature. On the other, an end to the housing crisis. Cheap, clean electricity. Better transport links. Less pollution. Lower emissions. Nature protected. Clean rivers. Jobs. Growth.”
Dan Bloom and Esther Webber are across the latest twists and turns concerning Lords reform:
“Peers from multiple parties have discussed the prospect of at least 10 of the 92 lawmakers — eligible to stand for the U.K. parliament’s second chamber due to their aristocratic birth — being nominated for life peerages after the government axes their existing rights to sit and vote later this year”
Sam Dumitriu penned a piece for The Spectator on the Government’s latest plans to streamline planning policy by slashing back the need to for developers to engage in lengthy and expensive consultations:
“There is one area… where Britain is still world-leading: consultation. Between 2014 and 2022, there were no fewer than seven public consultations for the proposed Sizewell C nuclear power station. In fact, there were eight years between Sizewell C’s very first consultation (in 2012) and EDF actually applying for planning permission.”
The Guardian: Norway launches scheme to lure top researchers away from US universities
BBC: Websites forced to beef-up age checks or face big fines
LBC: Labour MPs call for youth visa scheme as part of closer relationship with EU
Stacks of Freedom
Highlights from our fellow Substackers
Pieter Garicano wonders where Europe’s YIMBYs are:
Eamonn Ives urges the Chancellor to call ‘cut!’ on tenuous tax breaks for the film industry:
Brian Albrecht takes us through why economist are correct to be down on price controls:
Neil O’Brien MP outlines how overseas students mean very different things in different parts of our HE system:
Wonk World
Ideas and analysis from the think tanks, academia and other clever sorts
Stuart Hudson gives the progressive case for radical regulatory reform:
“[R]egulation, or re-regulation, can seem a fundamentally progressive policy tool. After all, it involves the active use of the state (with which progressives tend to sympathise) to address failures in the market (about which progressives tend to be concerned).
However, I think this is the wrong way of looking at the issue; and at a time when the government’s overriding mission is driving economic growth, it risks undermining that mission and harming those on low incomes most.”
Paul Johnson explains why we should want growth fullstop, regardless of any adjectives tacked onto the front of it:
“I have nothing against good, equitable and sustainable growth. But what we must prioritise is growth. Without it nothing good, equitable or sustainable is possible.”
The Intelligence Curse lays out what we should be doing about AI:
“The government, the economists, your colleagues, and your neighbors are not giving mass automation and its potential implications their attention. The world's most well-resourced companies are burning hundreds of billions of dollars trying to build AGI. If successful, they might unlock unprecedented abundance—a good thing. However, the current plan for AGI also takes away everyone's main lever of power: their ability to create value in the world.”
Hear Hear
Podcasts for weekend listening
On the Abundance Agenda, hosts James O’Malley and Martin Robbins ask Robert Colvile whether the Conservatives really can embrace abundance:
Steve Davies discusses the political realignment in the US and globally on the IEA Podcast:
Posting to Policy
Best of social media this week
Antoine Levy: Reverse gear for tariff proponents
Simon Jack: Any industrial strategy that doesn’t tackle the cost of business is a waste of time
Anton Howes: This is unintended consequences, manifest
Duncan Stott: Let local government fund itself
Sam Dumitriu: De-minimising consumer welfare
Further Afield
Interesting stuff from around the world
In Nature, new analysis suggests scientists are looking abroad as the Trump administration’s cuts to science take hold:
“Data from the Nature Careers global science jobs platform show that US scientists submitted 32% more applications for jobs abroad between January and March 2025 than during the same period in 2024. At the same time, the number of US-based users browsing jobs abroad increased by 35%.”
Deborah Carter on how open access has helped Spain’s railway network:
“Since market liberalisation in 2020, the country’s rail network has opened up to private operators, and the results have been dramatic: ticket prices are down, availability is up, and rail is now outpacing air travel on some key routes.”
Graph of the Week
Via The Economist