Real political change is usually incremental. The economic ideas of John Locke, David Hume, Frederic Bastiat and other political-economic writers were taking hold before and as the United States was becoming its own country. Our countries' founders borrowed liberally from those thinkers in writing the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. The idea of private property being available to all men and eventually all women, not just the nobility, was an incremental innovation at the time of the American Revolution. Economic freedom and intellectual freedom as articulated in the Bill of Rights laid the groundwork for two centuries of spectacular growth in prosperity.
But old ideas rooted in envy and the superiority of elites slowly made their way back to public debate during the progressive era. They came to fruition during the New Deal years and with LBJ's Great Society. The idea of promoting equality through income redistribution and prioritizing specific social goals through regulation also gained ascendency. Think, the environmental movement and now climate change.
Problem is, all of this robbing Peter to pay Paul and nitpicking regulation slowly slowed down the high growth rates of the more laissez faire preceding era. Particularly in the states that did it the most. Think California. It's now to the point where the normally clueless California Governor, Gavin Newsom has noticed that people are leaving California for other states. He has correctly identified relatively expensive California housing as one of the causes of that outmigration. And he has correctly recognized that over zealous zoning and environmental regulation are contributing factors. He wants to stop that outmigration of taxpayers, er, I mean, citizens.
Enter the liberal phenomenon of YIMBY (Yes in my backyard) abundance agenda liberals. Their reasons to deregulate are not libertarian. They want to retain more taxpayers to fund their ambitious big-government programs. But their method, deregulation in zoning and in the environmental space, are decidedly libertarian.
Deregulation and sensible environmental rules will definitely produce more abundance. Whether that abundance is retained by its creators or syphoned off to government coffers is something that liberals and libertarians will always disagree on. But deregulation is an incremental change for the better. And libertarians should, warily, cooperate.
That's Report From the Fields. I'm Richard Fields. See you next week.