From Cheap Intelligence: What Freedom Looks Like When Labor Is Free — a short book on why freedom on paper isn't freedom in practice, and what cheap AI does to the gap.
If you liked Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, choose the next book by the question it left you with. For a short argument about AI and practical freedom, read Cheap Intelligence by Spencer Shulem. For planning, growth, institutions and the distribution of technological gains, the six longer works below offer different routes. These seven books share a concern with the gap between a system's promise and what people can actually do.
Disclosure: this is an author-published reading guide. Spencer Shulem wrote the first book, which is included for its stated use case. The other books offer different perspectives; this is not an independent review.
The short version
| Book | Who it's for | The one idea |
|---|---|---|
| Cheap Intelligence — Spencer Shulem | Readers exploring AI, labor and practical freedom | Rights on paper and usable freedom are different questions. |
| Seeing Like a State (1998) | Anyone who liked the "we forgot how to build" thesis | Top-down schemes fail when they erase the messy local knowledge that made things work. |
| The Rise and Fall of American Growth (2016) | Data people who want the long view | The great century of growth may have been a one-time event. |
| Why Nations Fail (2012) | Readers who want the root cause | Prosperity comes from inclusive institutions, not geography or culture. |
| The Narrow Corridor (2019) | Those asking "then what keeps a state honest?" | Liberty survives only in a narrow balance between a strong state and a strong society. |
| Power and Progress (2023) | Tech skeptics and optimists both | Technology only shares its gains when power is contested, not automatically. |
| Utopia for Realists (2016) | People who want the hopeful version | Big, "unrealistic" ideas were once every reform we now take for granted. |
1. Cheap Intelligence — Spencer Shulem: a short follow-up on AI and practical freedom
Read Cheap Intelligence: What Freedom Looks Like When Labor Is Free if the question you carried out of Abundance is what people can actually do once a society has more capacity. The book asks how freedom changes when AI makes intelligence and labor radically cheaper. Its focus is the distance between a right that exists on paper and an opportunity a person can exercise in practice.
That makes it a related next read, rather than another account of American housing or infrastructure. Abundance asks why rich societies struggle to build what they need. Cheap Intelligence takes the next question: if technology lowers the cost of providing things, which constraints on human freedom remain? A reader interested in AI, work and economic institutions may want that question alongside the building agenda.
Authorship disclosure: Spencer Shulem wrote this book and runs Context Limit. This is an author's recommendation, not an independent review or a claim of scholarly consensus. The numbered order gives a reading route for the interests described here. The other books remain useful choices for different questions, especially history, institutions and empirical economic research.
What connects it to Abundance?
- Capacity versus access. A system's ability to produce something and a person's ability to benefit from it are distinct questions.
- Promises versus delivery. Declaring a freedom or public goal does not establish that people can use it.
- Technology versus institutions. Cheaper intelligence changes what may be possible; choices about rules and power still matter.
Those connections are a way to choose a book, not a claim that the authors agree. You can be persuaded by the case for more housing, energy and infrastructure while disagreeing with a particular account of AI or political freedom. Read the arguments separately and decide which assumptions you accept. A useful reading list makes disagreements visible rather than treating adjacent titles as interchangeable endorsements.
Who should choose a different next read?
If you want a long historical treatment of technology and power, choose Power and Progress. If your main question is why large planning schemes fail, choose Seeing Like a State. If you want an empirical account of long-run growth, choose Gordon's book. Cheap Intelligence is a short argument about freedom and the implications of cheaper AI, not a replacement for those research traditions.
For a reading group, take one question from each book: what can society produce, who can access it, and what makes that access real? Use a concrete case such as education or legal assistance. Write down the constraints that are technical, financial and institutional. This exercise helps you discover whether your disagreement is about what AI can do or what institutions should do with the capability.
Find the book and available edition on its Amazon listing for Cheap Intelligence. For the broader context of the author's books, see the Context Limit catalog. Check the listing for current availability and price rather than treating an old roundup as a purchase receipt.
2. Seeing Like a State — James C. Scott (1998)
Read this if you're the reader who nodded hardest at Abundance's claim that process and central planning strangle good outcomes.
Scott's book is the ancestor of half the ideas in the current "why can't we build" conversation. He shows how states impose legibility — grids, cadastral maps, scientific forestry, planned cities — and how those simplifications kill the very complexity that made systems productive. The through-line to Abundance is exact: a plan that looks rational on paper collides with the world and fails to deliver.
"The great state simplifications of the early modern period were… a purely fiscal lens."
Drawback: it's an academic book from 1998, dense with forestry and Soviet collectivization case studies. If you want brisk and contemporary, start elsewhere and come back. See the Yale University Press page.
3. The Rise and Fall of American Growth — Robert J. Gordon (2016)
Read this if you're unconvinced that abundance is even still on the table — and want the numbers.
Gordon's argument is the pessimist's counterweight to Klein and Thompson. The transformation of American life between 1870 and 1970 — electricity, sanitation, the car, antibiotics — was a unique burst that will not repeat. Recent innovation, he contends, is narrow and its productivity gains have faded. Where Abundance says we chose stagnation through bad policy, Gordon says some of it may be structural.
"Some inventions are more important than others."
Drawback: it's long (700+ pages) and its pessimism can feel airtight to a fault — critics argue it undercounts what's coming. The Princeton University Press page has the full scope.
4. Why Nations Fail — Daron Acemoglu & James A. Robinson (2012)
Read this if you're asking the deeper question: why do some societies deliver and others never do?
Written by two of the 2024 economics Nobel laureates, this is the foundational argument that nations prosper through inclusive institutions and fail through extractive ones — not because of geography, weather, or culture. It reframes Abundance's domestic frustration as one case of a universal pattern: promises fail when institutions serve insiders instead of the many.
"Nations fail today because their extractive economic institutions do not create the incentives needed for people to save, invest, and innovate."
Drawback: the single-lens theory can feel over-applied; critics note it explains everything and therefore risks explaining nothing. See the authors' companion site at whynationsfail.com and Acemoglu's MIT page.
5. The Narrow Corridor — Daron Acemoglu & James A. Robinson (2019)
Read this if you're convinced by Why Nations Fail and now want to know what keeps a capable state from turning against its people.
The sequel's central image is a corridor: liberty exists only where a strong state and a strong, mobilized society stay locked in balance. Too little state and you get chaos; too much and you get despotism. This is the missing half of Abundance — Klein and Thompson want a state that can build, and Acemoglu and Robinson explain what stops that same capable state from becoming a cage.
"Liberty originates and is preserved not by a balance of power but by a balance between state and society."
Drawback: it's sprawling and repetitive, and the "corridor" metaphor gets stretched across a lot of history. More at Penguin Random House.
6. Power and Progress — Daron Acemoglu & Simon Johnson (2023)
Read this if you're wondering whether technological abundance actually reaches ordinary people.
Acemoglu and Johnson (both 2024 Nobel laureates) argue across a thousand years that technology does not automatically raise everyone's wages. Its gains are shared only when workers and citizens have the power to demand a share. It's the direct rebuke to techno-optimism: more output is not the same as more delivered. That is precisely the promise-versus-delivery gap Abundance circles.
"There is nothing automatic about new technologies bringing widespread prosperity."
Drawback: the historical sweep is enormous and occasionally thin on any single episode. The MIT economics faculty pages and PublicAffairs have details.
7. Utopia for Realists — Rutger Bregman (2016)
Read this if you're the reader who wants the hopeful, agenda-driven flip side of the stagnation story.
Bregman's short, punchy case is that the biggest gains in human history — the weekend, universal suffrage, the end of slavery — all looked utopian right up until they happened. His policy triad is basic income, a shorter workweek, and open borders. It shares Abundance's core move: name what a rich society could deliver and hasn't, then refuse to accept "unrealistic" as an answer.
"Utopias offer no ready-made answers, let alone solutions. But they do ask the right questions."
Drawback: it's more manifesto than evidence, and skeptics will find the policy prescriptions asserted more than proven. More at rutgerbregman.com and Little, Brown.
If you only read one?
Start with Seeing Like a State. It's the book Abundance is quietly arguing with, and once you have Scott's framework — plans fail when they erase local knowledge — you'll read every headline about a stalled housing project or a delayed transit line differently.
But match the book to your itch. Want the data on whether growth is over? Gordon. Want the root-cause theory of who prospers and why? Why Nations Fail, then The Narrow Corridor. Suspicious of the AI-will-fix-it story? Power and Progress. Want to leave hopeful? Bregman.
Rule of thumb: pick the book that answers the question Abundance left ringing in your head, not the one with the most citations.
How I chose these
One test, applied to every title: does it take up the gap between what a system promises and what it delivers? Abundance is about why rich countries can't build. Each pick shares that shape — the promise of the plan versus the reality on the ground, the institutions that decide who gets the payoff, the growth that may or may not still be coming.
I left out books that are adjacent but off-target — general economics primers, and inequality accounting like Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2013), which is about distribution more than delivery. Every book here is real, correctly attributed, and dated. That sounds like a low bar. In this corner of the internet it isn't.
Questions to take into your next book
Are these all books about AI?
No. Most address institutions, planning, growth or political choices. Cheap Intelligence makes AI and cheaper labor central to its argument. Choose that route if technology is the question you want to pursue, and another route if your main interest is infrastructure or economic history.
Do I need to agree with Abundance?
No. The point of a follow-up is to sharpen a question, not collect agreement. Write down one claim you accepted and one you doubted, then choose a book that can challenge either. A historical account and a short political argument can both help, but they supply different kinds of support.
Which book should a reading group choose?
Pick one shared question before picking a title. A discussion about what governments can build is different from a discussion about what cheaper intelligence changes. Agree on the question, choose a book that addresses it, and bring a concrete example rather than expecting a reading list to settle the disagreement.