Isn't the Abundance version of this bias the fact that Abundance is extremely focused on the problems plaguing wealthy, coastal, blue-state cities? Abundance doesn't have much to say about the problems of red state governance.
FWIW that’s explicitly acknowledged in the first few pages of the book. The book is written to liberal readers in blue states, since they face a different set of problems than red states.
I agree as this pertains to the Abundance movement, which is increasingly separate from the book and tends to overlook this bias.
There are lots of places that are not coastal blue-state cities suffering from the problems Abundance describes. Many desirable small cities/towns (ranging from college towns to vacation areas) have the kind of housing crunch it describes. Lots of places have insufficient electricity or transportation for the same reasons.
100%. I wrote about this: "Contrast [coastal elite preferences] with the clear preferences of most young American families, who say their ideal home is a detached single-family house. They consistently rank bedroom count and interior space above commute time or neighborhood amenities. When they say they want walkability, they mean things like safe, shaded sidewalks, with low traffic and lower crime."
What are some cases when the messenger class managed to elevate an issue that wasn't part of their personal experience? How did it happen and how can it happen again?
So many of the “the economy is bad, the boomers had it so easy” takes are just obviously about the job market for journalists specifically. Not every industry has been secular decline for 20 years, just the one with all the writers!
It's amazing how much time was spent on gentrification discourse that would have been better off on literally anything else.
I think this piece raises good points, but part of what I find frustrating about the wider issue is that people outside of DC/NYC/SF have agency and could have supported local media, but didn't. Texas could be a media powerhouse, but chose not to move in that direction.
It’s more so, “poor people should have more opportunities, but nothing about their neighborhood makeup should change.” Other people shouldn’t have access to that opportunity I guess. And the people who bring opportunity aren’t welcome.
In your last post, I was struck by the mentions of "meeting other journalists at bars" and "texting with sources" as key social interactions for journalists, and along with this piece, it hits at something I've chewed on for a while: journalists and media workers no longer focus on developing more personal relationships that aren't related directly to their work. When I was teaching in J school in the late aughts, we encouraged student journalists to look beyond their classmates for stories, to observe the world. But the economies of social media and digital journalism have compressed media workers into agenda-setting that's entirely determined by scrolling through feeds and not by observation and relationships with actual humans.
I've met many journalists in coastal cities who only seem to talk with other journalists. They're not close friends with teachers, nurses, government employees, lawyers, doctors, scientists, and other workers. Many corporate workers feel uncomfortable even talking to a reporter as a friend because of the transactional nature and potential for messing up their employment. It's a problem for the entire information ecosystem when the messenger class doesn't understand how non-journalists use and interact with information.
So instead journalists just write what's in front of them: a response to what's already on their screen.
Media workers don't always realize how odd and draconian established rules of journalism are compared with other professions. Relationships with sources are entirely transactional where the reporter defines the endgame, slots a quote into a story while writing for a deadline, and misses the richer, broader context that friendship and conversation can bring over time. Additionally, in the United States, sources aren't paid for contributions, and, as it's my job to measure influence as a business driver, I can confidently state: there are dwindling material benefits to share knowledge filtered through a reporter when you can go directly to an audience on the internet. There are, however, many benefits to having long conversations with friends -- especially those who don't live online-- who can lead you in new directions and help you tell deeper stories.
I'd argue the change needs to come from the business side of media and trickle down to reporters: revisit norms of journalism to focus observation of people than easy finds of internet chatter. Stop over-valuing velocity and trend pile-ons derived from too many feeds. Lean into diverse human interaction from people who will never truly be "sources." The messenger class, and the broader business model, needs to understand that the recent digital shift from "traffic" to "community" means cultivating relationships outside one's own profession.
One thing I’ve been noticing is journalists who already have an agenda and a deadline coming into groups asking specifically for quotes to bolster a particular argument. For example, journalist moms asking other moms in a Facebook group if “anyone has ever…?” It’s an incredibly biased way to get quotes and anyone who offers to provide quotes to support the opposing side is often ignored - because the journalist is under pressure to deliver by x date, with the framing already decided. Overall it biases the discourse hugely.
Yep! Pretty much every PR platform to connect journalists with sources (i.e., Qwoted) also follows this pattern. It's certainly a way to make content rapidly, but neither the reporter nor the source are thinking outside their own talking points and objectives. Because sources are selected so rapidly, there's no vetting of which would be best for the audience or to illustrate the story. Outlets that use a more traditional approach of cultivating quality sources and organically surfacing story ideas through conversation have more opportunity to find a better story and gain audience trust.
The unionization thing is interesting, because it became understood in progressive circles that unionizing would solve everything (only slightly exaggerating)....and so many of the union victories of the 2010s and early 2020s have ended up being pyrrhic. Many of the bloggers that unionized got laid off; several of the stores that have unionized locally have closed; and the unions at the independent coffee shops locally seem like they are more focused on airing grievances and don't understand the challenges of running a small business with razor thin margins. Not to mention that the most successful unions locally, the teachers and police unions, have protected union members at the expense of the public.
As I think about the AI debate within the context of the abundance movement, I often wonder why I don’t see much talk about the Gen Z kids who opt for trade school over college. AI may be coming for administrative assistants, but it’s not going to plumb your house anytime soon, and one of those jobs is a lot more connected to increasing housing supply than the other. But since the messenger class Jerusalem identifies here is likely not exposed to that world I think the prospect of abundance through a blue-collar labor resurgence flies under the radar.
We could probably use more tradespeople, but about half of Americans work in some sort of office job and I doubt there's enough demand for blue collar labor to absorb all of them, especially in the "good" blue collar jobs that pay well.
I think a job like being a plumber can provide a good living but people are basically comparing mid-career/business owner salaries to 23 year old college grads. Getting to a good wage in the trades requires several years at low salaries in trainee type junior roles.
Sure but college grads themselves are getting paid nothing (or paying, in some cases) to receive an education from 18-22, and if you're doing additional schooling then even longer to 24 or in the case of PhDs to 27. A tradesperson may start at 18 apprenticing and make terrible wages for 5-6 years, but they've already been earning some money for 6 years and can probably begin specializing and demanding higher salaries at that point.
An interesting case of this is pilots, who work brutal hours for low pay and a pretty awful lifestyle for the first few years of their careers, but once they make it to the regionals or a national airliner they're often pulling as much as high earning professions like doctors or software engineers.
Most trades people are trained through state community college systems now btw. You still go to some school after high school. It’s just for a shorter period of time.
We may soon see a wave of ex-white collar workers becoming plumbers and electrical engineers. And maybe seeing their wages go up (assuming there's not such a flood that they become depressed)!
I can think of a few blind spots for abundance liberals. It's a space disproportionately occupied by people working in media and academia. It's heavily focused on the problems of a handful of California cities and two East Coast population centers, and especially focused on the models New York and DC are built around.
Meanwhile, I grew up in Florida, which basically told that model to shove it. The sixth largest metropolitan area in the US, by population, is based around a city (Miami) that didn't crack the top 40.
This is (one of) the issues with twitter- it has completely captured "the messenger class." Everyone that turns reality into language is completely enthralled and has confused tweets for reality. I know hundreds of people in real life (not to brag /s) and maybe 2 have a twitter account. But now our entire administration is run by people that think trolling is good policy
I think this piece is good however I think misconstrues the danger of AI for employment. There is a big difference between something that can replace software engineers because it can write code well enough to replace them, and something that is generally intelligent and can interact with the world through code. The second is a threat to white collar work more generally not just tech, and seems like more of the world we are in, even though it might be a more gradual rollout and require various customized harnesses to spread more broadly. Also many of those other jobs not directly at tlrisk to automation seem likely to have issues as well, if large portions of the white collar workers become unemployed rapidly and no longer spend money as freely especially in cities. Another concern is you might also lose large portions of the tax base due to automation without the ability to directly tax ai companies or data centers located in other states or countries who might be capturing that value now.
There's a famous McKinsey report showing that diverse companies outperform homogenous ones. People like to shit all over because it doesn't definitely prove causation. It's good enough for Bill Epstein-buddy Clinton to cite frequently as a motivator to diversify your hiring, but this centrist Substack circle finds it suspect.
Isn't the Abundance version of this bias the fact that Abundance is extremely focused on the problems plaguing wealthy, coastal, blue-state cities? Abundance doesn't have much to say about the problems of red state governance.
FWIW that’s explicitly acknowledged in the first few pages of the book. The book is written to liberal readers in blue states, since they face a different set of problems than red states.
I agree as this pertains to the Abundance movement, which is increasingly separate from the book and tends to overlook this bias.
Also explicitly noted in the piece (footnote 2).
There are lots of places that are not coastal blue-state cities suffering from the problems Abundance describes. Many desirable small cities/towns (ranging from college towns to vacation areas) have the kind of housing crunch it describes. Lots of places have insufficient electricity or transportation for the same reasons.
100%. I wrote about this: "Contrast [coastal elite preferences] with the clear preferences of most young American families, who say their ideal home is a detached single-family house. They consistently rank bedroom count and interior space above commute time or neighborhood amenities. When they say they want walkability, they mean things like safe, shaded sidewalks, with low traffic and lower crime."
https://favorablethrivingconditions.substack.com/p/the-luxury-of-useful-friction
There are definitely Abundance-aligned thinkers who are looking more broadly at "state capacity" across multiple states and countries. For instance: https://www.eatingpolicy.com/p/state-capacity-roundup-march-13
Federal red tape like NEPA effects us all.
Let others give thoughtful replies. I say, sick burn. 🔥
Perhaps the solution is to replicate successes.
What are some cases when the messenger class managed to elevate an issue that wasn't part of their personal experience? How did it happen and how can it happen again?
So many of the “the economy is bad, the boomers had it so easy” takes are just obviously about the job market for journalists specifically. Not every industry has been secular decline for 20 years, just the one with all the writers!
It's amazing how much time was spent on gentrification discourse that would have been better off on literally anything else.
I think this piece raises good points, but part of what I find frustrating about the wider issue is that people outside of DC/NYC/SF have agency and could have supported local media, but didn't. Texas could be a media powerhouse, but chose not to move in that direction.
"Improving a neglected neighborhood is bad actually" never made sense to me.
It’s more so, “poor people should have more opportunities, but nothing about their neighborhood makeup should change.” Other people shouldn’t have access to that opportunity I guess. And the people who bring opportunity aren’t welcome.
In your last post, I was struck by the mentions of "meeting other journalists at bars" and "texting with sources" as key social interactions for journalists, and along with this piece, it hits at something I've chewed on for a while: journalists and media workers no longer focus on developing more personal relationships that aren't related directly to their work. When I was teaching in J school in the late aughts, we encouraged student journalists to look beyond their classmates for stories, to observe the world. But the economies of social media and digital journalism have compressed media workers into agenda-setting that's entirely determined by scrolling through feeds and not by observation and relationships with actual humans.
I've met many journalists in coastal cities who only seem to talk with other journalists. They're not close friends with teachers, nurses, government employees, lawyers, doctors, scientists, and other workers. Many corporate workers feel uncomfortable even talking to a reporter as a friend because of the transactional nature and potential for messing up their employment. It's a problem for the entire information ecosystem when the messenger class doesn't understand how non-journalists use and interact with information.
So instead journalists just write what's in front of them: a response to what's already on their screen.
Media workers don't always realize how odd and draconian established rules of journalism are compared with other professions. Relationships with sources are entirely transactional where the reporter defines the endgame, slots a quote into a story while writing for a deadline, and misses the richer, broader context that friendship and conversation can bring over time. Additionally, in the United States, sources aren't paid for contributions, and, as it's my job to measure influence as a business driver, I can confidently state: there are dwindling material benefits to share knowledge filtered through a reporter when you can go directly to an audience on the internet. There are, however, many benefits to having long conversations with friends -- especially those who don't live online-- who can lead you in new directions and help you tell deeper stories.
I'd argue the change needs to come from the business side of media and trickle down to reporters: revisit norms of journalism to focus observation of people than easy finds of internet chatter. Stop over-valuing velocity and trend pile-ons derived from too many feeds. Lean into diverse human interaction from people who will never truly be "sources." The messenger class, and the broader business model, needs to understand that the recent digital shift from "traffic" to "community" means cultivating relationships outside one's own profession.
One thing I’ve been noticing is journalists who already have an agenda and a deadline coming into groups asking specifically for quotes to bolster a particular argument. For example, journalist moms asking other moms in a Facebook group if “anyone has ever…?” It’s an incredibly biased way to get quotes and anyone who offers to provide quotes to support the opposing side is often ignored - because the journalist is under pressure to deliver by x date, with the framing already decided. Overall it biases the discourse hugely.
Yep! Pretty much every PR platform to connect journalists with sources (i.e., Qwoted) also follows this pattern. It's certainly a way to make content rapidly, but neither the reporter nor the source are thinking outside their own talking points and objectives. Because sources are selected so rapidly, there's no vetting of which would be best for the audience or to illustrate the story. Outlets that use a more traditional approach of cultivating quality sources and organically surfacing story ideas through conversation have more opportunity to find a better story and gain audience trust.
The unionization thing is interesting, because it became understood in progressive circles that unionizing would solve everything (only slightly exaggerating)....and so many of the union victories of the 2010s and early 2020s have ended up being pyrrhic. Many of the bloggers that unionized got laid off; several of the stores that have unionized locally have closed; and the unions at the independent coffee shops locally seem like they are more focused on airing grievances and don't understand the challenges of running a small business with razor thin margins. Not to mention that the most successful unions locally, the teachers and police unions, have protected union members at the expense of the public.
Great point re:unions. I wrote this up in 2022: https://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/labor/597754-last-years-strike-numbers-were-bad-actually/
As I think about the AI debate within the context of the abundance movement, I often wonder why I don’t see much talk about the Gen Z kids who opt for trade school over college. AI may be coming for administrative assistants, but it’s not going to plumb your house anytime soon, and one of those jobs is a lot more connected to increasing housing supply than the other. But since the messenger class Jerusalem identifies here is likely not exposed to that world I think the prospect of abundance through a blue-collar labor resurgence flies under the radar.
(still need regulatory reform though)
We could probably use more tradespeople, but about half of Americans work in some sort of office job and I doubt there's enough demand for blue collar labor to absorb all of them, especially in the "good" blue collar jobs that pay well.
I think a job like being a plumber can provide a good living but people are basically comparing mid-career/business owner salaries to 23 year old college grads. Getting to a good wage in the trades requires several years at low salaries in trainee type junior roles.
Sure but college grads themselves are getting paid nothing (or paying, in some cases) to receive an education from 18-22, and if you're doing additional schooling then even longer to 24 or in the case of PhDs to 27. A tradesperson may start at 18 apprenticing and make terrible wages for 5-6 years, but they've already been earning some money for 6 years and can probably begin specializing and demanding higher salaries at that point.
An interesting case of this is pilots, who work brutal hours for low pay and a pretty awful lifestyle for the first few years of their careers, but once they make it to the regionals or a national airliner they're often pulling as much as high earning professions like doctors or software engineers.
Most trades people are trained through state community college systems now btw. You still go to some school after high school. It’s just for a shorter period of time.
We may soon see a wave of ex-white collar workers becoming plumbers and electrical engineers. And maybe seeing their wages go up (assuming there's not such a flood that they become depressed)!
The 'it's happening to me' news bias is super obvious to people on the west coast. Any storm that hits New York City is NATIONAL NEWS!!!
I can think of a few blind spots for abundance liberals. It's a space disproportionately occupied by people working in media and academia. It's heavily focused on the problems of a handful of California cities and two East Coast population centers, and especially focused on the models New York and DC are built around.
Meanwhile, I grew up in Florida, which basically told that model to shove it. The sixth largest metropolitan area in the US, by population, is based around a city (Miami) that didn't crack the top 40.
Second paragraph, second sentence has a typo - two “the’s” in a row.
This is (one of) the issues with twitter- it has completely captured "the messenger class." Everyone that turns reality into language is completely enthralled and has confused tweets for reality. I know hundreds of people in real life (not to brag /s) and maybe 2 have a twitter account. But now our entire administration is run by people that think trolling is good policy
I think this piece is good however I think misconstrues the danger of AI for employment. There is a big difference between something that can replace software engineers because it can write code well enough to replace them, and something that is generally intelligent and can interact with the world through code. The second is a threat to white collar work more generally not just tech, and seems like more of the world we are in, even though it might be a more gradual rollout and require various customized harnesses to spread more broadly. Also many of those other jobs not directly at tlrisk to automation seem likely to have issues as well, if large portions of the white collar workers become unemployed rapidly and no longer spend money as freely especially in cities. Another concern is you might also lose large portions of the tax base due to automation without the ability to directly tax ai companies or data centers located in other states or countries who might be capturing that value now.
Your description of "the messenger class" reminds me of Musa al-Gharbi's "symbolic capitalists".
https://musaalgharbi.substack.com/p/meet-the-symbolic-capitalists
https://musaalgharbi.substack.com/about
There's a famous McKinsey report showing that diverse companies outperform homogenous ones. People like to shit all over because it doesn't definitely prove causation. It's good enough for Bill Epstein-buddy Clinton to cite frequently as a motivator to diversify your hiring, but this centrist Substack circle finds it suspect.
https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/diversity-and-inclusion/diversity-matters-even-more-the-case-for-holistic-impact
This is an excellent argument for the benefits of DEI (including geographic)!