How to do Abundance Politics (Event)
March 23, 2025 // NYC // Come make a game plan, and "meet the others"
Feel free to come to Office Hours the day before this event if you want to workshop anything.
The Abundance political movement is growing fast, but many people feel like they’re on the outside looking in. They don’t know how to plug in, how to contribute, or generally how to do politics in the first place. If this is you—or you just want to meet more abundance-minded people in New York City—come learn how on Sunday, March 23:
Know before you arrive: This event will be guided by the four rules of etiquette that guide all Maximum New York classes, and is for people who generally agree with The Sensible Seventy.
What is the Abundance movement?
It’s a political movement—the general idea is that we can have abundance by changing the law to allow both private individuals and the government to build and innovate quickly.
This also contains an assumed premise: most of our material scarcity today is artificial. It is not the result of lack of resources or technical know-how, but bad law and regulation that prevent the deployment of both. For example: we have a housing shortage in many parts of the country—not because we don’t know how to build houses or have tons of money, but because bad law either illegalizes them or makes them prohibitively expensive to deliver.
Some general policy ideas from the movement: build more housing; build nuclear power; enable robust defense production; build infrastructure like subways, sewers, and transmission lines in a cost-effective way; change city, state, and federal law to allow all of these things to happen; and more.
What will happen at the event?
Talks (some of them lightning ⚡️)
Workshops
Socializing, with snacks
You should walk away with a set of concrete goals, collaborators, some new technical knowledge, a bibliography (!), a slate of groups and events to check out, and a game plan.
What kinds of things will we talk about?
Modeling politics better. Many people have a bad model of doing politics, and it’s bad in three ways:
They envision themselves having a bad, self-sacrificial time. They imagine terrible fights. They imagine boredom and sclerosis. They can’t imagine what “good politics” looks like.
They poorly model the incentives and realities of political actors, especially elected officials, and can’t interact productively with them.
They simply do not know how anything works on a basic level (can’t draw a basic map of the government and books of law), but are unaware of how much they don’t know. This is an absolute recipe for frustration.
All of these things come together into a toxic brew of having a bad time, not getting anything done, and becoming disenchanted with the democratic system. And while some frustration and spiky points are inevitable in any worthwhile endeavor, politics can feel more like the pleasant effort of going to the gym, learning an instrument, or participating in a team sport. Socially, it should resemble going to church or a running group. So how do you get to that point?
The tactics of abundance politics
Get a group of friends together who want in on the action. Literally make t-shirts. Whatever you did for teams in high school, do for this. Face paint and posting to your favorite social media is good.
Pick a goal (concrete, achievable, with a roadmap).
Define your arena (city/state/federal?, statutory/administrative/case?, services/culture/electoral/lobbying?)
Pick a media (writing, video, audio, in-person, etc).
Host and attend: regularly host and go to events where people are interested in working on abundance ideas. This doesn’t necessarily mean “political” events!
Set expectations—if you are starting at zero, don’t expect to do big things overnight. Figure out what’s reasonable. But also don’t forget that there are no rules except physics; who knows what can be done with a new way of looking at things!
Create tight feedback loops with reality. Reality knows more than any of us. If results in the real world regularly validate or falsify your theory of political change, your model will get better.
Do! Don’t get trapped: talking about doing a thing is not doing the thing. Test your ideas against reality, not endless group chat conversations.
Write down a game plan, iterate. Get that B-minus!
The Maximum New York alumni group is large, and the abundance movement in New York City is larger. People are doing tons of things. You’re not alone.
Politics is a party that has been going on long before you arrived, and it will keep going long after you leave. Just get on the dance floor, baby. If you want some good starting points before the event, check out:
- ’s 2025 NYC June Primary Bootcamp! This is a great list of activities that will “build your political muscles.” So much of effective politics is just knowing people, being known, and showing up regularly. This bootcamp will help you speed run the effective basics.
Read
’s overview of how he and his wife threw an $8,100 fundraiser for a Manhattan borough president candidate, and why this is a worthwhile activity. You can do this too, and have many opportunities!Read “The Duties of American Citizenship” by Theodore Roosevelt (1893). It is my favorite American political speech, not least because it is full of practical advice that balances idealism with the need to deliver. It’s also great to read something written so long ago, and see similar problems and solutions as today.
Politics in America is firecrackers on the Fourth of July, it’s apple pie, it’s you and your pals 🇺🇸🗽
For many people, myself included, politics is a regular, enjoyable part of life. You make friends, you find people to date and marry, you earn status and reputation, and you feel a sense of belonging to a place. It has its rough and tumble bits, but the essence of the enterprise should not live there.
New York City, New York State, and America need more good citizens to take the helm. Sometimes the “self” in “self-government” is yourself. Excelsior.
—> This picture is from ’s Viaduct lecture series in February 2025.
Sad to miss but so excited that it’s happening!!