I enjoyed this, but didn’t get all that much out of it.
The book opens with a utopian vision for the future and was fairly optimistic about our ability to build a better future for ourselves, and backed up this optimism with solid examples of recent technology successes that have noticeably improved our lives (mainly penicillin and the mRNA COVID vaccines). But it felt like an introduction, and I was surprised that it was over when it was—I actually believed that I was finishing the introduction when I was really finishing the whole book (it’s possible that this is a side effect of reading this right after The Power Broker).
The authors do explicitly call out that the book is not intended to provide solutions, but I think the book would have felt much more complete with at least some examples of small-scale policy successes that have helped work increase abundance. As is, I finished the book feeling like I really wanted Abundance to be real, but having no idea how we could possibly achieve it in today’s political environment.
But I do think that Abundance does a good job of describing many of the problems that I think are most important currently. I’ve recommended it to friends as an introduction and will likely continue to do so. I just wish it had… more.