When Systems Fail Us

A word on how we can begin recentering what matters and build a culture of abundance

We all know we vote with our dollar, but what we have access to spend that dollar on has become narrower and narrower. Immense corporate consolidation, an increasingly impoverished middle class, and reduced staffing and resources for healthcare and other crucial services in rural areas all point to fewer and fewer real options.

I believe that in this particular moment, we—as individuals as well as small, midsize, and even large businesses—are being presented with a radical choice: to walk away from the system that continues to harm us and build a new one.

I’ve promised to write a book review on Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, and today’s piece will be just that—sort of. It will also explore what happens when the government can no longer effectively partner in building the kinds of systems outlined in this book, and how we, as people and businesses, can do so ourselves.

Abundance is right to call out the brand of liberalism that has over-regulated every building code, agency, and task force to the point where building, creating, and advancing have become nearly impossible. The examples are striking: California’s inability to build a high-speed rail despite billions of dollars and decades of work, while China builds at a lightning-fast pace. These layers of liberal policy, added over decades, have crippled development projects like the high-speed rail and affordable housing—making building hopelessly expensive and slow.

Illustration by Emma Willard, The Temple of Time, 1846

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These policies may have started out well-meaning—ensuring that building codes were eco-friendly, disaster-proof, and non-displacing. But at some point, instead of protecting people, these regulations began halting progress and extinguishing ingenuity. Whether you are a Democrat, Republican, libertarian, or de-growth proponent, ingenuity is the right hand to an abundant future.

Republican policies, on the other hand, have become so pro-industry that our population is left without access to basic services—our air, water, and food polluted with carcinogens—all so corporations can make billions more. This isn’t rhetoric; it’s fact, and it’s now the de facto policy of the U.S. government.

American politics has somehow found a way to regulate sectors as crucial as affordable housing so intensely that it’s now wildly expensive to produce—often three times the cost of similar projects in many European cities. And yet, when it comes to industries such as consumer products, we’ve failed to implement basic regulations that keep the public safe—like banning known carcinogens. I won’t pretend that Europe has it all figured out—there are issues aplenty—but they do seem to have a better handle on regulating consumer products to ensure corporations can’t poison the population, while also avoiding overregulation of industries like construction.

So where does regulation support the healthy advancement of society, and where does it hinder progress altogether?

The path to abundance will require ingenuity, yes—but also restraint. I continue to watch well-intentioned businesses—a pasture-raised egg company, a grassfed butter producer, a pretty much all commercially available cheese—scale to a point where they can no longer source regeneratively and turn instead to industrial monocultures, all while claiming otherwise.

I’ve seen it happen so often that I’m convinced: businesses that scale to billions of dollars, serving national or international markets, cannot maintain nutrient-dense, regenerative supply chains with real integrity.

Illustration by Rama Duwaji

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This calls for a new model—one built on healthy restraints and regional design. Organizations like the World Food Bank are focused on developing bioregional solutions with nodal rather than consolidated power structures: blueprints that can be created in one region and adapted to another. These solutions can certainly be profitable. Can they support an IPO or generate billions in profits for shareholders? Probably not. But they can create abundance for communities.

That is the real choice before us. It’s a uniquely American ideology—now exported globally—that we must be greedy at all costs. I remember watching an interview with the owner of an Italian clothing company. Her business was modest but profitable, and when asked by an American interviewer how much more money she might make if she cut wages, extended hours, and reduced vacation time, she looked horrified. Why, she wondered, would that be an improvement? She spoke instead of the joy she felt watching her employees live rich, balanced lives alongside her.

It seems that we no longer have a government that works on behalf of its people—and truthfully, we’ve been heading this way for some time. The policies of mid-century Democrats and Republicans bear little resemblance to the pro-industry, pro-corporate system we have today—a system with no room left for the public will.

The most powerful tool we have left is, quite literally, how we vote with our dollar. These corporations thrive because we feed them—through our money, our clicks, our attention, our data. We can choose to divest. We can choose to buy from local farmers, artisans, and craftspeople. That simple act—redirecting our dollars toward those who create rather than extract—may well be the most vital form of nonviolent protest left to us.

Beyond that, the path forward lies in rebuilding local capacity: investing in community systems, lobbying for regional infrastructure, and when necessary, organizing our own funding mechanisms to achieve self-sovereignty. In my own community, I’d like to explore how to raise funds for local resilience efforts. We’ve already discussed building a small-scale meat processing facility to return control, quality, and animal welfare to producers. We’ve talked about advocating for local policies—like stopping the spraying of herbicides near our farms—that directly affect our shared future.

Klein and Thompson’s Abundance imagines a governance model that propels us into a futuristic dream world—clean energy, seamless public transportation, longevity medicine for all. They paint a beautiful picture; I almost believed it possible.

But here’s the thing: with all of that building comes Big Tech, Big Pharma, and Big Real Estate. Are we meant to believe that in this “new” paradigm, these same entities—long profiting from extraction and illness—will suddenly decide that abundance is the more profitable path? Or the more just?

I’m not advocating for de-growth. I’m advocating for regrowth—of community-led systems, of bioregional resilience, of cooperative, people-centered governance.

As promised, The Conservative Futurist by James Pethokoukis is already underway and I will report back.

Stay safe.

Paige