California attracts a lot of criticism, with perhaps the most bipartisan criticism focusing on its punitive cost of living. And this bipartisan criticism even extends to agreement on the reason California is too expensive. In their bestselling 2025 book Abundance, authors Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson argued that liberal governance has become too legalistic, bureaucratic, and ideologically committed to politics of scarcity. Throughout their book, California was used as the worst example.

Klein, an opinion columnist for the New York Times, and Thompson, a veteran of The Atlantic, have indisputable liberal, left-of-center bona fides. But their indictment of liberal policies was unsparing. The influence of their book has been seismic. Since its release, and well before the Iran war moved affordability issues firmly into the spotlight, Democrat politicians have adopted abundance and its twin, “affordability,” as a centerpiece of their campaign platforms.

The DSA contingent, predictably enough, views “abundance” as achievable only through more regulations, more redistribution of wealth, higher taxes, and more government, whereas mainstream Democrats acknowledge that deregulation has to be part of any successful strategy to achieve affordability through abundance. But even with the practical, more moderate Democrats, there is a fundamental flaw in their approach.

What Klein and Thompson advocated in their book was a very selective version of deregulation, focusing on housing, clean energy, and transit. What they didn’t recognize is that even if the straitjacket of regulatory overreach, bureaucratic paralysis, and endless litigation was removed, under the terms they set forth, abundance would only streamline development of high-density urban infill housing, light rail transit, and “clean” energy. This straitjacket would remain, because all other forms of housing, transportation, and energy would remain gridlocked.

This is where the bipartisan consensus on abundance breaks down. And again, California is ground zero for the failed approach. Even as the one-party state fitfully strives to engage in modest deregulation, the model remains broken. Rebuild the Pacific Palisades? Why, unless what replaces single-family homes are the more “sustainable” high-density apartments? End the state’s legislative war on the oil and natural gas industry? Not a chance. It’s “fossil fuel,” and never mind that 82 percent of California’s raw energy supply still depends on these alleged climate destroyers. Invest in water supply infrastructure? Better to save that money for social programs and redefine reductions in water use via rationing as increasing water supplies.

It’s not enough. “Infill” housing will never increase supply enough to deliver affordability. “Renewable” energy sources, while logging impressive growth in recent years, will take multiple decades before they can replace fossil fuel without driving energy prices even higher. And additional water rationing cannot possibly preserve California’s agricultural industry or guarantee even adequate water to its cities.

Abundance, California style, is a fraud. And it’s not just punishing California’s people and industry.

In an appearance on News Nation last week, sparsely populated Wyoming’s lone member of the House of Representatives, Rep. Harriet Hageman, took California to task for what she correctly identified as negligent water policies. As an attorney who worked on interstate water agreements in the Western United States prior to entering politics, Hageman knows what she’s talking about.

“California has failed its people, and it has failed the interior West in terms of its refusal to actually develop water for its citizens,” she said. “California has essentially the same water infrastructure in place today, with 40 million people, that they had in the 1960s with 16 million people.”

Hageman goes on to deliver a zinger that may offend libertarians on the right but, based on all historical precedent, is nonetheless an uncomfortable truth. “One of the few things that the government ought to be doing,” she said, “is making sure that they are providing resources such as water for their citizens for industrial use, for commercial use, and for irrigation. And yet California has failed at one of the most important duties that it has to meet the needs of its citizens.”

So we have bipartisan agreement that we need abundance and affordability, with a left-of-center schism between the socialists who think even more government is the solution and the moderates who acknowledge the need for less government but cling to restrictions on what solutions shall benefit from less government intrusion. There is a schism on the right, as well, however, one that may be even more crippling.

When Hageman asserts that government ought to be making sure it is providing resources for its citizens, she violates a fundamental libertarian principle, which is that the private sector should be relied upon to most efficiently deliver resources of all kinds. But American history doesn’t support this thesis. Nearly 80 million people live in the 13 states from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Coast. And this entire magnificent civilization would not exist if it weren’t for government-funded water infrastructure projects.

Starting over a century ago, a series of mega-projects made cities, industries, and large-scale agriculture possible throughout the American West. The Columbia Basin Project, including the Grand Coulee Dam. The Boulder Canyon Project, including Hoover Dam. California’s federally funded Central Valley Project and California’s own massive State Water Project. These and many others could not have been constructed without federal and state government funding. And as Rep. Hageman admonishes, in California, a water infrastructure built for 16 million people is now supplying water to 40 million people.

Where Hageman calls for investment in new water supply projects, with a role for government, the libertarians on the right call for greater fungibility. Trade water rights. Use market forces to move water from low-value applications, typically farming, to cities where water agencies are willing to pay more per acre-foot. This is a good idea. But it’s not nearly enough.

Unlike financial wealth that can be transferred anywhere in the world merely by moving it through electronic accounts, water exchanges ultimately require infrastructure. Even if there were no investment in new water supply projects, there would need to be investment in new water conveyances. And even with more ways to move water, there isn’t enough water anymore. The situation is grim.

The big reservoirs on the Colorado River, Lake Mead and Lake Powell, are nearly empty. Filled almost to capacity back in 2000, these reservoirs are almost completely drawn down after running up to three million acre-feet per year deficits for twenty years.

Meanwhile, the capacious aquifers in California’s breadbasket, the San Joaquin Valley, also for around 20 years now, have been drained faster than they’ve recharged. On the verge of collapse, groundwater pumping from these aquifers is going to be less, not more.

And California’s other great source of water, the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, has been systematically neglected for nearly 50 years. The state’s failure to invest in delta maintenance and in new ways to safely move more water out of the delta and into aqueducts during winter storms is the reason farmers overdrafted their aquifers. And every year, environmentalists come up with more restrictions on delta exports, overruling even half-hearted attempts by state officials to invest in delta restoration.

California’s negligence harms every state that borders the Colorado River—Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, Nevada, and Arizona. Instead of spending the billions it would take to restore the delta so additional millions of acre-feet can be withdrawn during big winter storms, and instead of investing in desalination plants, urban wastewater recycling, and runoff capture for aquifer recharge both in rural and urban areas, California continues to assert senior water rights to pull four million acre-feet per year out of the Colorado River. It can’t go on.

As it is, only California has a geography and a climate that makes more water supply investments possible. In wet years, millions of acre-feet flow through the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and out to the ocean. These deluges offer water well in excess of what is required to maintain ecosystem health in the delta and San Francisco Bay. There are ways to capture this water without harming the environment. California needs to implement them.

Similarly, only California has over 800 miles of coastline, with hundreds of miles of coast in immediate proximity to its biggest cities. California could easily build seawater desalination plants at a scale rivaling those already producing millions of acre-feet around the world, from the Middle East to Singapore.

There is an economic equation at work here that offers something for everyone. Scrap the regulations that go too far, and the total project costs drop not by increments, but by multiples. Desalination plants, for example, cost one-fifth as much to build in the rest of the world compared to California. At the same time, accept a role for government to fund the remaining costs so that industry, agriculture, and commercial ratepayers won’t bear a punitive burden in supporting the construction financing costs. Then get out of the way. Allow market forces to trade water supplies, but against a backdrop of genuine abundance.

When California adopted the original State Water Project in 1957, the state legislature approved $11.8 billion in funding. That would be $140 billion in 2026 dollars, a sum of money that would pay for everything California needs to restore water abundance while also gaining independence from Colorado River diversions.

Another way to view the commitment Californians once were capable of making to “providing resources such as water to their citizens” is that $11.8 billion was 12 times as much as the state’s entire General Fund budget in 1957. Today, $140 billion represents barely more than half of California’s approved General Fund spending of $251 billion for 2027.

California’s policymakers have an obligation not only to residents in their own state but also to the entire population of the Intermountain West to invest in more water supply. The ideology that may inform this commitment is muddled. That may make ideologues uncomfortable, whether they’re progressives or libertarians, but it is the reality we must live with if we want abundance to succeed.

Here is an ideologically muddled yet eminently practical approach.

Harness market forces to trade water where possible. Deregulate to make investments in new water supply less costly. Recognize the obligation of governments to help pay for construction of major infrastructure. Give the private sector a role in construction and operations. And for all primary infrastructure—water, energy, transportation—reject the narrowly defined avenues to abundance proffered by the moderate Democrat “abundance” lobby. This means “choosing winners.” Choose well, or the scarcity lobby will choose for you. That, too, is an unavoidable reality.

When it comes to infrastructure, California used to think big and do big things. For the sake of its own residents, the residents of neighboring states, and the entire nation, it needs to do so again.