Rough Diamonds

Share this post

Unblocking Abundance 2: Organizations

sarahconstantin.substack.com

Unblocking Abundance 2: Organizations

A roundup of policy groups

Sarah Constantin
Oct 12, 2022
11
7
Share this post

Unblocking Abundance 2: Organizations

sarahconstantin.substack.com
(Source)

Who is working on US regulatory reform from an “abundance agenda” perspective?

Here’s a preliminary masterpost of political groups I’ve found so far — please feel free to suggest more and I’ll update the post!

I’m categorizing organizational approaches broadly into “research/advocacy”, “legislative”, “executive”, and “judicial.”

Note that I am not endorsing these organizations overall. The purpose of this post is to aggregate organizations that have regulatory reform as a major focus, especially regarding key sectors like energy, housing, healthcare, and manufacturing, and those which have participated in recent discourse around the “abundance” or “progress” movements. I’m not familiar enough with any of them to positively vouch for the effectiveness or trustworthiness of these institutions.

One thing I notice is that, compared to the $14B spent on the 2020 US Senate campaigns, or the $420M of philanthropic donations by Effective Altruists each year, these policy organizations mostly don’t have a lot of funding. Think tanks in general don’t have huge budgets: the largest US think tank, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, only had a 2013 operating revenue of $32M.

For donors newly interested in affecting policy, or potential founders of policy organizations, the relatively small market size may indicate an opportunity.

Arnold Ventures

  • https://www.arnoldventures.org/

  • Category: research/advocacy, legislative

  • Purpose: “philanthropy dedicated to tackling some of the most pressing problems in the United States.”

  • Approach: grants, research (including empirical research on policy experiments), advocacy

  • Political Affiliation: None given

  • Date founded: 2010

  • Funding: $716M in 2020 (source)

  • Sample policy proposals: streamlined FDA approval for biosimilars

  • News: now hiring a VP to head up a new “infrastructure” policy area

American Legislative Exchange Council

  • https://alec.org/

  • Category: research/advocacy, legislative, judicial

  • Purpose: association of state legislators for advancing “limited government, free markets, and federalism”

  • Approach: amicus briefs, reports

  • Political Affiliation: Officially nonpartisan, Republican-aligned

  • Date founded: 1977

  • Funding: $8.0M in 2020 (source)

  • Sample policy proposals: expanded permitting for home-based businesses; occupational licensing reform; expanded permitting for rare-earth mining; opposing favoritism in tax breaks for businesses

Competitive Enterprise Institute

  • https://cei.org/

  • Category: research/advocacy, legislative, executive, judicial

  • Purpose: regulatory reform to promote prosperity and property rights

  • Approach: reports, coalition letters on legislation, comments to federal agencies, litigation

  • Political Affiliation: Officially nonpartisan, Republican-aligned

  • Date founded: 1984

  • Funding: $6.7M in 2020 (source)

  • Sample policy proposals: enforce rules requiring federal agencies to investigate the cost of regulations; oppose price controls on freight rail; repeal bans on telehealth; allow adaptive clinical trials; streamline federal permitting for infrastructure; repeal the Jones Act

Center for Growth and Opportunity

  • https://www.thecgo.org/

  • Category: research/advocacy

  • Purpose: promote economic growth

  • Approach: student fellowships, papers

  • Political Affiliation: None given

  • Date founded: 2013

  • Funding: $5.5M in 2019 (source)

  • Sample policy proposals: reform NEPA to provide faster approvals; sunset provisions on state occupational licensing laws; expanding permitting for home-based businesses

Niskanen Center

  • https://www.niskanencenter.org/

  • Category: research/advocacy, legislative, executive, judicial

  • Purpose: promoting an “open society”

  • Approach: persuading Washington insiders such as “legislators and their staff, presidential appointees, career civil servants, mobilized special interests, and…policy specialists” through research, “direct engagement in the policymaking process”, lobbying, and amicus briefs and pro bono representation.

  • Political affiliation: Nonpartisan; team includes people with experience working under both Democratic and Republican politicians

  • Date founded: 2014

  • Funding: $4.6M in 2020 (source)

  • Notable achievements: designed the SITE Act (currently in the Senate) which gives the federal government authority to permit new interstate transmission construction

  • Sample policy proposals: permitting reform for clean energy; easing restrictions on medical licensing; repealing Certificate of Need requirements for hospitals; eliminating the mortgage tax reduction; relaxing land-use restrictions; limiting federal student loans for college

Committee for Economic Development

  • https://www.ced.org/

  • Category: research/advocacy

  • Purpose: research and advocacy from a pro-business, pro-economic growth perspective.

  • Approach: publishing reports, briefs, white papers, media articles, etc.

  • Political affiliation: Nonpartisan; team includes people with experience working under both Republican and Democratic politicians

  • Date founded: 1942

  • Funding: $4.1M in 2011 (source)

  • Notable achievements: crafting the Marshall Plan

  • Sample policy proposals: faster permitting process for federal infrastructure

Progressive Policy Institute

  • https://www.progressivepolicy.org/

  • Category: research/advocacy, legislative, executive

  • Purpose: generating policy that promotes economic growth and modernizing the public sector

  • Approach: publishing reports; commissioning polls; working with New Democrats in Congress and some governors and mayors

  • Political affiliation: Democrat

  • Date founded: 1989

  • Funding: $1.9M in 2013 (source)

  • Notable achievements: policy source for Bill Clinton’s presidential administration

  • Sample policy proposals: permitting reform for clean energy; a Manufacturing Regulatory Improvement Commission to review and update manufacturing regulations; not banning siloxanes

Institute For Progress

  • https://progress.institute/

  • Category: research/advocacy, legislative

  • Purpose: accelerating scientific, technological, and industrial progress

  • Approach: publishing reports, drafting legislation, fellowships for early-career policymakers

  • Political affiliation: not stated

  • Date founded: 2022

  • Funding: not yet public

  • Sample policy proposals: permitting reform for clean energy, streamlining Emergency Use Authorizations for medical devices & diagnostic tests in pandemics

7
Share this post

Unblocking Abundance 2: Organizations

sarahconstantin.substack.com
7 Comments
Nicholas Weininger
Writes Future More Perfect
Oct 12, 2022Liked by Sarah Constantin

I feel like ALEC and CEI should be more explicitly coded Republican. They may be nominally non partisan but in practice they are very much Red Team in terms of who they work with and who works against them. The Future Now Fund was for instance founded as an explicit counterweight to ALEC; the current iteration of that part of their mission, if I understand correctly, is Lawmaker Network, https://thelawmakernetwork.org/.

This matters if you are trying to broaden an abundance agenda coalition, because much (most?) of the intellectual left sees ALEC and CEI as working corruptly as an arm of the GOP to shield bad corporate actors from liability (e.g. for pollution or mistreating workers), and it is at least possible that they do some of that alongside real abundance-unlocking advocacy work.

Expand full comment
Reply
1 reply by Sarah Constantin
Jason Crawford
Writes The Roots of Progress
Oct 12, 2022Liked by Sarah Constantin

Also: Arnold Ventures. Not sure what they've done on “abundance” in the past, but they are hiring now for a VP-level role to focus on this: https://www.arnoldventures.org/careers/vice-president-of-infrastructure

Expand full comment
Reply
5 more comments…
TopNewCommunity

No posts

Ready for more?

© 2023 Sarah Constantin
Privacy ∙ Terms ∙ Collection notice
Start WritingGet the app
Substack is the home for great writing