Overrated, repetitive, inconsistent, and terribly out of date just 18 months after publication. Don’t get me wrong. I think Ezra Klein is one of the great liberal thinkers of our time. His book with Thompson begins with a reasonable principle: government assistance–to anyone, except maybe the military–from food stamp recipients to scientists and contractors must conform to so many rules and such a mountain of paperwork that progress has become stiflingly slow. Try to build a windfarm, high-speed rail, or affordable housing, so the argument goes, and requirements to assure that minorities have been given a fair chance in the allocation process, environmental regulations have been carefully scrutinized, and that regular reports are filed and it might be 7-10 years before a developer has hired enough people to prepare the documents, get them read, and weathered all of the court cases. Point taken. In all of that time, no turbines are constructed, no rails are laid, and homelessness increases. However…
For readers willing to wade through arguments that could be made in two pages, and like the government bureaucracies Thompson and Klein criticize, take scores of pages to whip to death, many of their arguments disintegrate under their own weight. Take a chapter lamenting the failure of government to invest in risky scientific research. The pair complain that too much money is going to incremental advances in scientific research. Huge breakthroughs are being missed, they insist. Then, in the next chapter they point out that there are no “Eureka” moments in science, tech, or engineering. Rather, new solutions require years and years of tinkering, trial, and error. Which is it guys? Send money to people who think that autism can be cured with nutrition or stick to the painstakingly slow approach that science has always depended upon.
Their solution to America’s most pressing problems–theclimate crisis, housing shortage, clean energy solutions–are a government that is lean and nimble and willing to cut through the litigious standards established by well-meaning liberals. Way too much time and money, they say, is being spent in courts and on lawyers trying to STOP projects in the name of protecting the environment and ensuring fair play for underserved communities. It is time to make things happen like freeing up solar panel installations and interstate gridlines to transport energy in less than the dozens of years it now takes to even consider breaking ground. Yet, in one small statistic they let slide without scrutiny, they suggest the acreage of solar panels needed would cover an area equal to about 10 states. That was before AI data centers drastically increased energy demand in the U.S. Really want to turn over that much agricultural land and forest without environmental impact assessments?
In any case, just as they published, they got what exactly what they wished for: DOGE and a dictator who as fast as he can is abolishing Departments of Education, Health, Environment, and Justice, cutting grants for science, health, clean energy, and underrepresented minorities in any discipline. He is fast-tracking money for fossil fuels and wars that increase military spending without oversight. If it weren’t for litigation and slowing the government down, the environment, housing, health and so forth would be even worse off.