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Comment by thrance | Hacker News Reader

I very much agree. This is how I feel too in regards to this "abundance liberalism": some people think they can fix the whole country by deregulating zoning laws and tweaking a few numbers. It seems foolish to me. Whatever the solution is, I am convinced it requires (re)building actual social nets and welfare.

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The post is from 2018, but it's very topical because of "abundance", as you point out.

You might be interested in this podcast Bad Faith: Episode 478 - The Abundance Conspiracy (w/ Sandeep Vaheesan, Isabella Weber, & Aaron Regunberg)

Episode webpage: https://www.patreon.com/posts/130189560

Thanks, I'll take a look!

And yet milei did basically exactly that in Argentina.

Sometimes the need to overcomplicate is itself irrational.

Why must the solution involve more than that?

Can you seriously claim that Milei improved the material conditions of Argentinians? At best, he sold the country for a quick buck to make a few numbers look good, but ultimately doomed the country. I can't think of a single place where austerity was met with positive long-term outcomes.

According to this outlet [1], Argentina seems to have experienced a recent spike in homelessness.

As I said, it's foolish thinking you can fix everything with this "one simple trick". Housing is expensive because the market is gamed, deregulating it further won't fix shit. Those who make it expensive will always succeed in keeping it this way, if we don't take away their power and try to make the game fairer.

[1] https://www.batimes.com.ar/news/argentina/quarter-of-rough-s...

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