Because it follows directly from stuff Ezra says — in a hedged way, maybe this tradeoff is good, but he points out this precise tradeoff, it is his anecdote. And individually all the tradeoffs look good. His claim is they compose to catastrophe. 1/

The problem is the emphasis on DE- regulation rather than RE- regulation. Do we need to revisit some tradeoffs and revise how we do things? Sure. Do we need to just get rid, without replacement of workplace safety rules or regulations that require air filtration for homes near freeways? 2/

In a Motte / Bailey kind of way, a lot of the abundance prescription says the answer is yes. The motte is "well, maybe not, maybe this one actually is worthwhile", but the bailey is "regulation is the problem, we have to get rid of a lot of it". 3/

Again, I think it's a bad idea to conflate the YIMBY movement (itself a broad and fractious tent) with the Ezra Klein / Derek Thompson Abundance intervention. 4/

When I've described eliminating zoning rules as the *sine qua non* of YIMBYism, people like @resnikoff.bsky.social tell me I'm out of date, YIMBY is a much more broad-based pro-housing church that includes eg support of social housing and doesn't place deregulation above other approaches. 5/

I think that's a fair cop! But conflating the Ezra Klein / Derek Thompson Abundance intervention with YIMBYism is largely reverting to and conceding my prior, overly narrow view. I don't want to be reductive of Ezra and Derek either! They both support developing state capacity in other ways. 6/

But the heart of their critique really is the everything bagel, that liberals fail by demanding "too much", not by demanding what they ought to demand, but perhaps in ways that need to be improved. 7/

That's a really important distinction! 8/

Are you are asking people to surrender goals like air quality and workplace safety because getting housing done is lots more important, or are you asking people to prioritize and organize in ways that reconcile the production of key goods like housing with achieving other goals? 9/

The pushback Ezra and Derek are getting isn't because anyone (well, anyone besides a few degrowthers) opposes, say, housing abundance. We all want housing abundance! But we don't want it as a monomaniacal priority that bulldozes other priorities. 10/

Where there are tradeoffs, we actually have to think about how to make them, or whether there are ways of reorganizing what and how we are acting to render the tradeoffs less severe. 11/

If something is presented as a silver bullet, a simple unifying idea a fractious Democratic coalition should unite behind, it's probably trading off for that "unity" and "coherence" that work of acting with bespoke attention and care. And there are things a lot of us mean to keep caring about! /fin