Abundance 2024

For the first time, we will convene this community at Abundance 2024 — a two-day, invite-only conference this October in the nation’s capital. During the inaugural gathering, we will be joined by some of the brightest figures crafting solutions for housing, infrastructure, energy, innovation, agriculture, and government capacity.

Over the last decade, a new American political coalition has begun to take shape. That coalition has emerged in response to persistent underemployment in the wake of the Great Recession, supply chain bottlenecks following the COVID-19 pandemic, the stubborn technological obstacles facing decarbonization, rising housing costs, and other material scarcity challenges. We call this coalition the Abundance Movement.

Abundance stems from the idea that society’s challenges cannot all be resolved merely by regulation or redistribution, but also require the active expansion of material resources, opportunity, and productivity. Abundance will require realigning incentives and redesigning processes to create a bigger, more inclusive economy. It will also require shifting away from the scarcity mindset that dominates our political discourse, too often upheld by those invested in maintaining the status quo. The Abundance Movement promises more opportunities for vastly more people, eager to prove that we can all rise together.

An abundance agenda recognizes the value of dynamic markets and a robust public sector. It also recognizes that markets alone don’t provide sufficient public goods, that concentrated special interests often win out over diffuse beneficiaries, and that overly burdensome processes inhibit the implementation of well-meaning policies.

These phenomena are especially acute in America’s built environment and vital infrastructure. Our nation’s capacity for innovation, sustainability, and widely shared opportunity rely upon the functioning of these systems. Yet from solar panels and wind farms to new transit and housing, desperately needed development is blocked or slowed to a crawl by outmoded and parochial barriers.The Abundance Movement is young, dynamic, ideologically diverse, pragmatically opportunistic, and ambitious. This Abundance event will showcase the vitality and intellectual diversity of this new coalition.

Abundance 2024 is co-hosted by the Inclusive Abundance Initiative and the Breakthrough Institute with the Institute for Progress, the Niskanen Center, the Federation of American Scientists, and the Foundation for American Innovation.