HackerTube.dev

Why Can't We Have Nice Things with Ezra Klein | The Weekly Show

The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart · 783K views · 2025-03-27 · 1:18:21

Open on YouTube ↗

If playback is restricted in your region, try opening the original video. Use Mark watched to add it to your marked videos.

Overview

Jon Stewart interviews Ezra Klein about his book Abundance and why progressive goals get stuck in procedure and regulation. They discuss how to streamline government and what could be built without bureaucratic obstacles.

On Hacker News

Cited as a source of examples such as California high-speed rail and rural broadband subsidies when HN discusses government dysfunction.

Discussed on HN; no positive recommendation is recorded in this export · HN mentions 2025–2025

Topics

US politics & electionsTransit, cities & urban planning
Search by tags
ezra kleinabundancegovernment bureaucracyhigh-speed railbroadband

What people said

caseysoftware · 2025-08 · Criticism

We got an overview of those "efforts" a few months back and it was both comical and enraging to hear how much money and time was wasted. And this was a law+process crafted by Democrats, signed by a Democrat President, and presided over by a Democrat Administration.. they had all the pieces in place to accomplish their goals. Ref: [VIDEO] When you have tons of paperwork and ZERO deployments (not exaggerating), there's nothing to revert.. just a lot to be disappointed by.

Read the original HN comment ↗
simpaticoder · 2025-06 · Reference

The overall impression I get of such projects is that politicians celebrate the funding victory, and then forget about it. Then the project's funds get eaten up by administrative costs over time. Ezra Klien [1] recently highlighted two such examples: high speed rail in CA, and rural broadband subsidies. Personally, I haven't seen much, if anything, actually spent out of Biden's infrastructure bill. The money from these programs just seems to...vanish. Allowing this to happen undermines the idea that the USG is a trustworthy spender of our money. I would personally prefer it if political success wasn't just grabbing more budget, but actually overseeing successful execution of public projects. 1 - [VIDEO]

Read the original HN comment ↗
mapt · 2025-04 · Reference

California contracting in particular is built not of penurious individual corruption, but of systemic corruption. The lowest bid must win, and nobody has the political capital to establish a bidding system that works, so dramatic systematic underbidding + cost overruns is the rule, and is expected by all parties except the naive public. Couple that with the kind of "Build nothing if any single problem can be detacted", 'Cheems mindset' failures of liberalism, and high-pressure demands from a federal government whose legislators are eager to sabotage projects outside of purple states. [LINK] [VIDEO]

Read the original HN comment ↗

Sources

Video by The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart, played through YouTube.

Data and selection notes

HN summaries and labels may contain AI errors. HN dates refer to discussions, not video publication.

HN Library: HackerTube export (2026-10-31) and open-index/hacker-news. Upstream summaries and classifications may contain AI errors.

Views, duration and playback status refresh separately from the published catalog. When an update fails, existing data remains visible.

Selection checks
  • SaaS & AI candidates: Topic keywords do not match
  • Editor-approved picks: Editorial review is required

Rule matches identify candidates. They do not guarantee video quality or financial results.

About the library and its sources