Episode 028

Dark abundance and the caning question

22 Sept 20251h 22m
0:00
Show notes

Tom and Calum explore "dark abundance": a more muscular approach to progress that combines deregulation with decisive state action against disorder and dysfunction.

  • Why Trump's state visit was peak "museum Britain" - bringing out the fine china for foreign guests while using enamelware the rest of the time,
  • The taxonomy of abundance politics: from Ezra Klein's soft progressivism to "dark abundance", which posits that some people need locking up until their frontal lobes develop,
  • How special interests capture reform - from civil servants empire-building through risk assessments to public sector workers voting Labour to preserve their comfortable sinecures,
  • The eternal tension between Manchester Liberal free trade and the need for order: why you can't have abundance without deterring bus fare dodgers and ensuring violent criminals actually face consequences,
  • Victorian-style pacification of the country through decisive punishment, inspired by Britain executing 16 times more people per capita than Prussia in the 19th century,
  • Their architectural philosophy for the coming new towns boom: why Poundbury succeeds despite its mongrel-like mixing of styles, and the case for illiberal design codes that ban modernist innovation in city centres until we figure out what the hell is going on in architectural schools.
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