So I think this ideology- common-sense distinction Sanders is making is a rich text. If the argument is that we have a horrendous bureaucracy, absolutely correct. It is terrible. I\u2019ve worked for years to bring two health clinics into the state of Vermont that we needed. I wanted two more, to renovate one and build another one. And you cannot believe \u2014 you cannot believe the level of bureaucracy to build a bloody health center. It\u2019s still not built. All right. So I don\u2019t need to be lectured on the nature of bureaucracy. It is horrendous. And that is real. But that is not an ideology. I covered Sanders getting that money for community health clinics. That was in the Affordable Care Act, which passed in 2010. It is 2026. He is saying one of the two is still not built. And I think one of the things that I am saying around all this is that nobody should be angrier than the left if we have what Sanders calls a horrendous bureaucracy, that kind of saying, we all know bureaucracy sucks, we all know the government can\u2019t do anything. We all know the meeting structure is crazy. And saying, but that\u2019s not the point of politics. But I think it is the point of politics. And I think that, particularly if you are the political party that in your ideology believes very fundamentally that government can do big, good things, that actually confronting the ways in which bureaucracy is horrendous just needs to be a very, very high-order issue. And I actually understand that distinction he\u2019s making. I think that there is a version of abundance which is just good government. And I think there\u2019s a version of abundance which is a vision of a world that is quite unlike our own, a world where you could be a firefighter in San Francisco or a firefighter in Brooklyn, and be able to afford a home in the city you\u2019re keeping from burning down. A world in which your health care \u2014 you don\u2019t have to be afraid of your health care. You don\u2019t have to be \u2014 and how much it will cost. You don\u2019t have to be afraid of how much your rent is going to go up. You don\u2019t have to be afraid of this economic insecurity and precarity so many people live under. What we\u2019re talking about with clean energy abundance, a vision of a radically increased energetic standard of living is actually a quite different world than we live in. If we can actually figure out a way to make A.I. serve the public\u2019s ends and not just be a way to replace white-collar workers, I think that could create a radically different world. So yeah, I think there is a real distinction between abundance as efficiency and abundance as vision. If all abundance does is push forward zoning reforms for housing, like, that would be good. But it\u2019s not \u2014\u00a0I agree, it\u2019s not a vision. It\u2019s supposed to be creating some different world than the one we live in.<\/p>\n<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n
![](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/EKS_TD_CLIP_01_260429_CLEAN-jumbo.jpg\")
How can the left deliver on its promises if it can\u2019t even navigate its own \u201chorrendous\u201d bureaucracy? On \u201cThe Ezra Klein Show,\u201d the Opinion columnist Ezra Klein reflects on Senator Bernie Sanders\u2019s frustrations with government, and argues that government efficiency is the essential \u201ccommon sense\u201d foundation for a radical vision of American abundance.<\/p>\n
By \u2018The Ezra Klein Show\u2019<\/p>\n
April 29, 2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"new video loaded: Building a World \u2018Quite Unlike Our Own\u2019 transcript Back transcript Building a World \u2018Quite Unlike…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":762222,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5122],"tags":[25382,5229,183186,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":["post-762221","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-abundance","tag-america","tag-derek-thompson","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-newyork","tag-newyorkcity","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116490143070425051","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/762221","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=762221"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/762221\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/762222"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=762221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=762221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=762221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}