What Abundance Built · Episode 8 of 8 · 48 min
AI, Limitless Energy, and the New Age of Abundance — Who Actually Wins?
Tech and energy leaders now promise an age of abundance built on artificial intelligence and near-limitless power. With the earlier societies as evidence, the episode asks what people build when survival is solved, who gets the free time, and what the surplus is for. It weighs post-scarcity visions and the 2025 Abundance debate against energy limits, the Jevons paradox and distribution.
Who's who
- Ezra Klein+1 more episodeCo-author of the 2025 bestseller Abundance
- Derek Thompson+1 more episodeCo-author of Abundance
- Aaron BastaniAuthor of Fully Automated Luxury Communism
- Samuel MoynCritic who argued the abundance agenda underweights power and distribution
- William Stanley JevonsNineteenth-century economist behind the Jevons paradox
Where it happens
- California+30 more episodesEnacted major environmental-review and housing overhauls in 2025
Timeline
- 2019Bastani publishes Fully Automated Luxury Communism
- November 2022ChatGPT released, bringing generative AI to a mass audience
- March 2025Klein and Thompson publish Abundance
- April 2025IEA projects data-center electricity above 1,000 TWh by 2030
- June 30, 2025California enacts AB 130 and SB 131
- 2026Analysts project hyperscaler capital spending toward $600-725 billion
Still debated
It is unresolved whether clean supply can outrun AI demand, whether the Jevons rebound can be contained, and whether the Klein-Thompson thesis is liberating or naive. Even optimists disagree on how to distribute gains, and the figures keep changing.