Zephyr Teachout
Appearances
The Ezra Klein Show
Abundance and the Left
There, I don't think you can look at what has happened in New York public transit, subway and real estate without telling the story of money and politics. Like one of the big differences between the United States and Europe during the period you're talking about. is that we allowed for unlimited campaign spending. We basically made the job of politicians to be a fundraising job.
The Ezra Klein Show
Abundance and the Left
And then in Citizens United, supercharged that by allowing corporate spending. So in New York, to be particular about housing and the subway, it meant that the real estate board of New York has this outsized power in state politics and gets just a lot of giveaways that most people think didn't make that big a difference and led to really expensive per square footage housing.
The Ezra Klein Show
Abundance and the Left
So that sort of occupied the space on housing. And then it led to New York state government under Andrew Cuomo first starving the subway. So then it had to spend all its money doing fixes that would have been much cheaper to fix earlier. And something that I do think you point out in the book, which is they also starved state capacity.
The Ezra Klein Show
Abundance and the Left
you know, they really said, let's consult everything out and pay big consultants. But that is downstream from the centralized corporate power over politics. And I think one of the things that's underappreciated is how enervating big money politics is, is how it drains politicians of dynamism, is how much big donors actually want government to not act.
The Ezra Klein Show
Abundance and the Left
not just in the lobbying front, which we've talked about earlier, but in talking to whether it's governors or congressmen, is that their tendency is towards no as opposed towards dynamism. And when you actually have a popular politics, people want to exercise that power.
The Ezra Klein Show
Abundance and the Left
Yeah. So I love the question. And I think it is sort of just telling the truth about the nature of how power is organized in society today. And I don't think it's just a few instances. I mean, this may be an area of difference. I think that the major enervating power is actually... centralized corporate power. And I think you'll find it in area after area after area.
The Ezra Klein Show
Abundance and the Left
So let's talk about green energy. You're probably familiar with the New York Sabin School, and they come out with this report fairly regularly on where are there checks on local rules against green energy building. And so I took a look at it the other day and it's majority red districts in New York.
The Ezra Klein Show
Abundance and the Left
And it looks like around the country that there's these new rules that come in that say you can't build solar.
The Ezra Klein Show
Abundance and the Left
Right. Green energy has become a culture war. And so I look at that and I say, I have a very clear story of where that came from. That came from 2010 when the Koch brothers decided to threaten every single Republican who dared use the word climate change in a primary.
The Ezra Klein Show
Abundance and the Left
And took something that in the McCain era had been Republicans and Democrats both thinking about green energy in the future and turned it into a culture war and then are going to local communities and saying, here, I've got a way to block your green energy project.
The Ezra Klein Show
Abundance and the Left
And the difference between you and me, I think, probably, is that if I were to go to, say, Western New York or places where these—and by the way, these are very significant blocks. You know, there's 400 different blocks, 400 different projects that are being slowed in terms of solar development or wind development. There's Kathy Hochul. You know, vetoing offshore wind.
The Ezra Klein Show
Abundance and the Left
Yeah, I mean, I appreciate how you led off because I do actually think there's a deep disagreement. I'll start with the deep disagreement and then there's some areas of genuine agreement and we should talk about those as well. But I gather you're having us on to really fight out the... I want the deep disagreement, yeah.
The Ezra Klein Show
Abundance and the Left
I think to give some meat to the question, you might say, well, we've just got to stop local communities from doing things because we need to push through this green energy development. And the populist story is to actually just tell the truth about where this came from. Big oil has been crushing innovation in electric vehicles for 40 years now. And we know that, right?
The Ezra Klein Show
Abundance and the Left
Ezra, you don't actually—actually, I'm curious about this. You don't think that left-NIMBYism has been a bigger deal in crushing green energy than big oil, do you?
The Ezra Klein Show
Abundance and the Left
There's an area of deep disagreement and there's areas of specific disagreement. So the deepest disagreement is actually what you started with, which is the question of focus.
The Ezra Klein Show
Abundance and the Left
And I think that we should be focusing democratic politics and politics in general on the problem of concentrated power and the way in which concentrated power is making it impossible to do things and also really crushing our democracy. That we really do have an oligarchy problem and that the anti-monopoly toolkit is then a response to that. So, like, with that focus, I would say...
The Ezra Klein Show
Abundance and the Left
What I believe is that we should not have centralized corporate power governing our system, that there is a real... But in any given instance, I don't want to just be on the abstract. No, I'm not. And what that means is that I don't think it's good to have oligarchs fighting each other.
The Ezra Klein Show
Abundance and the Left
And that a system of like two oligarchs being on a different side of a thing is still a deeply broken system and that we should recognize that brokenness. And the example I would use is, you know, from the left, think of the oligarchs we were embracing just eight years ago. You know, Jeff Bezos, Zuckerberg, that we're aligned with them on this.
The Ezra Klein Show
Abundance and the Left
So we should stay aligned with them and make sure we actually know the Democratic Party building up their power there. in order to, in that case, take on Donald Trump. But the truth is that if you engage in enhancing the political power of oligarchs because you have a short-term alignment on an issue, it will end up actually degrading the political process over time.
The Ezra Klein Show
Abundance and the Left
OK, something good the Biden administration did, getting over-the-counter hearing aids, like a life changer for millions of Americans. Who blocked that? Well, it's an oligarchy in the hearing aid market. There's basically five companies that control the hearing aids, and they did everything they could to slow down the procedure that
The Ezra Klein Show
Abundance and the Left
So there is a deep, deep difference. And then I want to use a specific example, right? The deep difference is what I care about so much is I believe in the future. I believe in dynamism. I believe in a country in which people's full selves are brought to bear. I believe in far more equal country where we actually stand up for working people.
The Ezra Klein Show
Abundance and the Left
And I believe that in order to stand up for working people, we need a dynamic country. And I absolutely believe that. that the biggest block to that is centralized power. And that in individual fights, you can say, oh, I think this moment of centralized power might force things through, but will fundamentally lead to highly concentrated, top-down, calcified power in the long term.
The Ezra Klein Show
Abundance and the Left
And the example I want to use, you and I first met over 20 years ago when I was working for Howard Dean.
The Ezra Klein Show
Abundance and the Left
Yes. And I don't blame Howard for this because I don't think he even knew about it. We wanted to put out a new, you know, here we are, a new dynamic campaign. We wanted to put out a new open source policy. And somebody's like, just run it by the general counsel of Microsoft first. And I was new to politics. I was totally shocked, right? That is a veto. That is a slowing down.
The Ezra Klein Show
Abundance and the Left
That's a slowing down in that particular campaign. Those little veto points are happening in every congressional campaign, in every state house, and it's that kind of veto. So one of our problems on the left is we said, let's align with the big money, like the Reid Hoffmans, And then Reid Hoffman basically says, we can't have Lena Khan's dynamic use of government.
The Ezra Klein Show
Abundance and the Left
You know, she's somebody you would love. She's willing to break eggs to get things done, to cut through the bureaucracy to actually achieve things. And you have Reid Hoffman and other big, wealthy tech billionaires saying, saying, we are a veto point because of big money. You can't talk about those dynamic things, you know, in the campaign. Maybe you should get rid of Lena Khan.
The Ezra Klein Show
Abundance and the Left
So I think you're undervaluing what happens when you actually embrace big power for individual projects. They become significant veto power elsewhere.
The Ezra Klein Show
Abundance and the Left
The best friend of the Chamber of Commerce is a long notice and comment period that slows down government from doing something really good and meaningful. So I use that as a micro example, but the macro critique and disagreement is around focus.
The Ezra Klein Show
Abundance and the Left
I think it's huge. And I think the examples you use of like, we're just outsourcing this thinned state, this sort of thinned and enervated state is a very significant problem. And I just want to use some counter examples about a direction we can go, which may help you understand sort of why I think there's such possibility in the anti-monopoly movement.
The Ezra Klein Show
Abundance and the Left
Because a lot of what happened in the anti-monopoly movement is we started actually learning about How business actually works like, oh, we're learning how the John Deere actually limits repairs, you know, returning to the center of democratic politics, an understanding of like what happens with inhalers, what happens with fire trucks. What happens with the franchise system?
The Ezra Klein Show
Abundance and the Left
Asking a set of questions that, frankly, we didn't ask for 30 years. Like, what is happening in the vast bulk of the American economy? What is life like for working people on a day-to-day level? What is life like for a farmer? Some of the areas where you saw the most active government in the Biden administration, and Biden administration was not coherent on this, right?
The Ezra Klein Show
Abundance and the Left
Like, there's different departments. You saw Pete Buttigieg, who came in, was willing to, you know, break some eggs, get things done, stopped the first airline merger in 30 years, really got into the weeds of how transportation supply chains work. And we had the most successful air transit summer, you know, in years in 2024, like an effective dynamic.
The Ezra Klein Show
Abundance and the Left
I think he did a great job with the DOT. And so what I want to say is it's capacity, it's desire, it's drive. I think the drive comes from a vision that you are standing up for working people against the big airlines. Like that is actually a motivating drive and it's a politically motivating drive. But the kind of expertise we want matters. It's not just expertise generally.
The Ezra Klein Show
Abundance and the Left
I think where the Democratic Party really should go is understanding how did we allow the greatest geographic inequality in American history in the last 20 years? where places like Utica, New York are totally left behind. Like, that's weird and strange, and we should treat it like weird and strange.
The Ezra Klein Show
Abundance and the Left
How did we allow diapers to get so expensive when we should have, you know, like, real innovations in eco-diapers instead of just this kind of incredibly expensive... price gouging, frankly, during the pandemic, real expertise and expertise in the nature of business.
The Ezra Klein Show
Abundance and the Left
And I think sometimes people think of anti-monopoly as anti-business and we're like, no, we're the first pro-business real movement in a long time. It's just, it's not the choke point businesses that like you note in other contexts, the problem of choke points is they innervate. Like why even bother make a new eco diaper if you're just going to get crushed?
The Ezra Klein Show
Abundance and the Left
Yeah, I don't think that there is a single silver bullet answer. You know, like these are the precise criteria. I think just to sort of repeat what you said, I think there is good reason to be skeptical if you see a pattern. But the Democratic Party, and this is maybe a meta version of your micro question, I think the Democratic Party needs a North Star that is not rejecting Trump.
The Ezra Klein Show
Abundance and the Left
I think we all probably agree with that. Yes. And I think the North Star should be standing up to monopolistic middlemen that are crushing people's wages, raising their prices, and stopping innovation in a dynamic society. And those who want to come in to join that North Star, we should welcome with open arms.
The Ezra Klein Show
Abundance and the Left
And so when it comes to particular appointments, I mean, Jonathan Cantor came from big law and did an incredible job. Jonathan Cantor was the AAG of antitrust.
The Ezra Klein Show
Abundance and the Left
Oh, the assistant attorney general. He was in charge of Department of Justice antitrust under Biden. And even if you don't know his name, you are living in Jonathan Cantor's world these few weeks because we have the biggest antitrust trials in 30 years happening, with Google being found a monopolist now three times, looking towards a breakup, a really powerful, dynamic...
The Ezra Klein Show
Abundance and the Left
very, very effective head of antitrust under Biden. And he came from industry. So I don't think there's a single answer here.
The Ezra Klein Show
Abundance and the Left
I don't think that anti-monopoly can solve significant problems of racism in this country. I don't think anti-monopoly can solve toxins in our water, although I think there's an anti-monopoly. I'm immediately like, yeah, but there's an anti-monopoly component right there. And then having said that, right, there's a reason that Frederick Douglass and Du Bois were so concerned about monopoly power.
The Ezra Klein Show
Abundance and the Left
Like there is a... Stay on what I can't solve for a minute.
The Ezra Klein Show
Abundance and the Left
Right. So maybe what I would ask then, so what I ask as an anti-monopolist, and anti-monopoly isn't antitrust. I hope you know that. I do know that.
The Ezra Klein Show
Abundance and the Left
I think for 40 years, we stopped, to use your phrase, you know, bottleneck detective. We basically stopped asking the power question. And there's a little bit of history here. There was this big movement, which both Republicans and Democrats got on board with. I mean, I think some of the questions, if there are good ideas that come from Republican areas, I think we should take them.
The Ezra Klein Show
Abundance and the Left
I don't think it's a left-right issue. But they got on board with this idea that we should just focus on power. outputs and not on power. And so that's part of the reason you hear some resistance from the anti-monopolist to your vision. And I guess I would challenge to say what the anti-monopoly movement has started to do is started to investigate.
The Ezra Klein Show
Abundance and the Left
in areas where you wouldn't necessarily guess that in the Kroger-Albertsons merger that pharmacists would be on fire about it and be the biggest opponents, that they would see the joining of two big grocery stores as a fundamental threat. But once you start asking the power question, then pharmacists come out of the woodwork and say, yeah, this is killing us. We're getting starved by this.
The Ezra Klein Show
Abundance and the Left
And so it's not to say that it answers every question, but that it is in far more areas than what you think. That the loss of our looking at questions of power was probably one of the biggest losses. And so I think, one, sure, there are areas that can't be solved by that. But there's far more areas that surprise even me today that actually have a power component and a power bottleneck.
The Ezra Klein Show
Abundance and the Left
I completely agree with you. And I want to say it's one point that I don't think I've seen anybody talk about in the book, but I thought was great, is that you highlight a problem with the Golden Fleece Awards, you know, and the way in which we started.
The Ezra Klein Show
Abundance and the Left
You'll remember exactly, but it's the award for the stupidest government program. Who was it who...
The Ezra Klein Show
Abundance and the Left
Absolutely. And when you look at little things like, not little things, big local things, I should say, really important local things like the Second Avenue subway and procurement and the way in which, I mean, it's a way in which I think we've got corruption all wrong.
The Ezra Klein Show
Abundance and the Left
We're like really focused on this massive compliance regime instead of focused on the big corruption issues as opposed to little corruption issues. But I think you're right. And I think that does take a cultural change to be willing to accept failure. A program that I think really worked was the Paycheck Protection Program. Yep.
The Ezra Klein Show
Abundance and the Left
And the Paycheck Protection Program has gotten beaten up by so many different people by finding the examples of fraud. And there was a lot of fraud. And there was fraud. And it was worth it. It was absolutely worth it to support businesses around the country, to keep them open during COVID. It was worth it for the workers, for those businesses.
The Ezra Klein Show
Abundance and the Left
In order to do great things, you do actually have to do things wrong sometimes. And I really loved that point in the book.
The Ezra Klein Show
Abundance and the Left
Yeah, and I'll just repeat, I guess, what I said before, which is I think we focused on the wrong kind of corruption, right? So that what you want is systems... where there are lots of contractors and there is competitive bidding. So it actually really matters that there's lots of contractors. That's an anti-monopoly issue, by the way.
The Ezra Klein Show
Abundance and the Left
And then when you have those lots of contractors, and then you want systems that don't reward inside deals, like campaign finance deals, But I think that we've thought we can root out corruption by doing micro-checklists as opposed to looking at structures and systems.
The Ezra Klein Show
Abundance and the Left
And that we should look at structures and systems of power as the big defenses against corrupt systems as opposed to the checklists. We need some checklists, by the way. Yeah, you can't have no rules. Right. You can't have no rules. And I do think that there's some innovative things happening with procurement. But as I understand, there is a real issue with only a few suppliers.
The Ezra Klein Show
Abundance and the Left
That's one of the big corruption risks that we don't deal with through checklist compliance. You deal with through making sure there's more suppliers.
The Ezra Klein Show
Abundance and the Left
I just want to make sure that we keep something I think that is really important, really central, which is democracy. And so when I'm thinking about examples, and you've done a lot more research in other countries, but in the United States, obviously we're going to look at FDR, and we aren't going to spend all our time on the New Deal.
The Ezra Klein Show
Abundance and the Left
But to me, there's just something staring us in the face about why politicians aren't mission-driven. And it is money in politics. So you probably are familiar with the oligarchy study. It's now, I think, 10 years old, and it's only gotten worse, that wealthy people, there is real responsiveness here.
The Ezra Klein Show
Abundance and the Left
to their interests, and there's almost no responsiveness to what the public wants in terms of the outcomes. And what happens in those emergency situations, I believe, is that the leaders forget all their responsiveness to their donors. And they do for a combination of reasons. One is they really care about people who are dealing with the flood. And they really care.
The Ezra Klein Show
Abundance and the Left
I mean, I don't think everybody's awful. They really care about serving those people. But also they are out of the campaign mode and in the campaign mode when half of the money is coming from people who are making $100,000 donations in the post-Citizens United World.
The Ezra Klein Show
Abundance and the Left
The imagination of leaders, of who they are delivering for, the voices in their head, are not the people who are really not sure where their next paycheck is going to come from, have to pay too much for an inhaler, have had a stagnant wage. Their own sense of mission has truly been clouded by money and politics. And so breaking that, that's not an easy thing to break.
The Ezra Klein Show
Abundance and the Left
But, I mean, if Bernie Sanders had been president, right, if Bernie had won, I don't think any of us doubt that he would have felt like it was an emergency.
The Ezra Klein Show
Abundance and the Left
That it's an emergency for working people in this country in the sense that he would have figured out how to do what Pete Buttigieg did or Lena Kahn did or Jonathan Cantor did or Shapiro did in those moments is to take the tools of government to serve the working people of the country. So it's a hopeful story because it suggests we're not that far away.
The Ezra Klein Show
Abundance and the Left
But we see that for FDR in the first term, it was more of a top-down vision, right? Let's just get things done. And he found it didn't work. And the buy-in for that, he needed to bring an anti-monopoly agenda.
The Ezra Klein Show
Abundance and the Left
But it does suggest that we have to see the barriers as the way in which if you're in your mind, you're in a cocktail party with billionaires, it's going to be really hard to be mission-driven about the bridge on a day-to-day basis.
The Ezra Klein Show
Abundance and the Left
two books that kind of got me down this path. They're not necessarily anti-monopoly books or democracy books, but I think they are. One is The Promise of Politics by Hannah Arendt. And the other is The Populist Moment by Lawrence Goodwin. And then Listen Liberal.
The Ezra Klein Show
Abundance and the Left
Listen Liberal by Thomas Frank, who wrote What's the Matter with Kansas, who had a call to arms about the future of the Democratic Party about 10 years ago.
The Ezra Klein Show
Abundance and the Left
And when you and I worked together, I think, eight years ago on visions of the Green New Deal, I think an underappreciated aspect of the Green New Deal is it's not just a technocratic top-down vision. It is very much about a vision of power.
The Ezra Klein Show
Abundance and the Left
I mean, housing is a global crisis right now. It's not just an American crisis, especially the cost of housing.
The Ezra Klein Show
Abundance and the Left
So as I wrote in the review, I have some initial thoughts on housing, but I actually think there's a lot of areas of overlap on housing, that we both agree that there are actually significant problems with zoning. My suspicion is that there is a... Decent amount of problem in the concentration in the home building market and some of the supplies for construction market.
The Ezra Klein Show
Abundance and the Left
I don't know if that's different in those different areas.
The Ezra Klein Show
Abundance and the Left
Yeah, but I actually suspect, like, I don't need to fight you on particular housing policies that you're deep in the weeds of, on zoning policies. Your theory, as I understand it, is that the main reason for the cost difference is... left wing resistance like Rick Caruso? You know, I think Rick Caruso is this billionaire in L.A.
The Ezra Klein Show
Abundance and the Left
who was leading a big NIMBY movement to make sure that you shouldn't have any reform on single family housing. Does he fit into your story? Yes.
The Ezra Klein Show
Abundance and the Left
I'd have to know about the particular process vetoes that you're talking about. And I do think they matter. And as you know, one of my concerns about the book is that if you describe process vetoes generally, but don't say which ones are a problem, then it really matters.
The Ezra Klein Show
Abundance and the Left
Like there's, you know, I actually think it's good that I was comparing the other day, I was looking at, okay, what about upstate New York versus Texas? You know, cause I don't know California housing markets, but what about upstate New York versus Texas? Not New York City, but places where there's more capacity. And roughly, it's not two point times.
The Ezra Klein Show
Abundance and the Left
It's about 20 percent more expensive, 10 to 20 percent more expensive in upstate New York to build than in Texas. And some part of that is labor. And I think that's good. Like, I think it's good. We have a more unionized labor force now. in New York than we do in Texas. So can I come back to you with another example, which is, I think, an area where... Well, I want to stay on housing.