In this seminal work, Malthus explores the dynamics between population growth and subsistence. He posits that population increases at a geometric rate, while food production can only increase arithmetically, leading to natural checks such as famine, disease, and vice. The essay discusses the implications of these ideas on societal improvement and human existence, emphasizing the necessity of understanding population dynamics for meaningful discourse on societal advancement. Malthus also details preventive and positive checks on population, such as birth control and higher mortality rates, and their effects on economic stability and human well-being.
In 'Hitmakers: How Brands Influence Culture', Ana Andjelic explores how modern brands have evolved into 'hitmakers', focusing on creating cultural hits through collaborations, merchandise, entertainment, and other cultural products. These strategies replace traditional advertising methods and can significantly boost brand popularity and sales. The book provides practical examples and tools for brand strategists to produce cultural hits.
“Can Democrats Learn to Dream Big Again?,” wonders Samuel Moyn in the New York Times. “The Democrats Are Finally Landing on a New Buzzword. It’s Actually Compelling,” argues Slate staff writer Henry Grabar. “Do Democrats Need to Learn How to Build?,” asks Benjamin Wallace-Wells in The New Yorker.
For the past few months, news and editorial rooms have been abuzz with talk about a new, grand vision for the Democratic Party: abundance. Abundance, according to its media promoters—chiefly NYT’s Ezra Klein and The Atlantic’s Derek Thompson—is a political agenda that espouses the creation of more of everything we need: housing, education, jobs, and energy, to name a few examples. To accomplish this, we are told, we must aim to eliminate bureaucratic red tape that has for so long bogged down production, innovation, and capital’s innate capacity and desire to provide a better, more abundant life.
It’s an alluring promise—if suspiciously vague and devoid of class politics: obviously, doing more good things is better than doing fewer good things, right? Who can argue with this generic premise? Who wouldn’t want to support an agenda that’s effectively the Do Good Things Agenda?
Scratch the surface, however, and what one finds it isn’t just a folky, common sense treatise against red tape, but something more sinister and dishonest, something more slick and shallow. What one gets is a standard entryist strategy that begins with a so-vague-it’s-incontestable hook—illogical or corrupt regulations are bad—the quickly pivots into a Silicon Valley flattering, and often Silicon Valley funded, political agenda, a narrative designed to blame inequality and our objectively broken political system on too much regulation and “bureaucracy” rather than there being too much power in the hands of an elite few.
What one gets, in other words, is a counter to left populism. What one gets is the latest attempt to reheat neoliberalism as something fresh, innovative and able to excite the voting base.
Last week, in Part I of a two-part series we’re calling “The Empire Strikes First,” we discussed the Democrats’ post-2024 apologia, propped up by scapegoats ranging from trans people to “economic headwinds” to Harris actually being too far left.
On this episode, Part II of the series, we explore what comes next: the 2028 Democratic strategy and the so-called abundance agenda that is increasingly shaping it. We’ll examine how Democratic media influencers and policymakers use lofty, seemingly progressive rhetoric to rehabilitate and re-sell the same old neoliberal deregulation, privatization, and austerity narrative that got us here in the first place, and ensure that no left-wing movement—that could, god forbid, require a meaningful change in the party—get in their way.
Our guests are the Revolving Door Project's Kenny Stancil and Henry Burke.
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