How To Build A Truly Abundant Future

Derek Thompson argues America’s 1960s-70s regulatory medicine has become a 2020s disease, blocking the housing, energy, and science it once protected.

• A $42B rural broadband program created a 14-step application process; 4 years later, only 3 of 56 applicants finished it and nearly zero broadband was built.
• California’s $33 billion high-speed rail authorization has produced no working rail; Thompson considers the project dead.
• NIH scientists now spend 40% of their time filing paperwork and grant applications rather than doing research.
• Penicillin was discovered in 1928 but only ~5 people had ever received it by 1941; federal coordination scaled it to save millions of soldiers.
• Operation Warp Speed used advanced market commitments to compress vaccine development from 9-10 years to 10 months.
• GLP-1 drugs, originally derived from Gila monster venom for diabetes, now show population-level reductions in dementia, inflammation, and schizophrenia.
• NEPA and 1970s environmental laws that stopped industrial despoliation now block solar farms, dense housing, and nuclear plants.
• YC batches are 80-90% AI companies but hard tech is rising to 10-15% per batch.

2025-04-04 · Watch on YouTube