PERSPECTIVE: “Abundance” and Public Safety
Date Posted: May 15, 2025
Posted In: Ideas,
by Jared Boyd
I recently finished (the book) Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, which makes the case for supply-side liberalism: essentially, how we can cut red tape and reshape government to address large-scale problems like housing and climate change. I agree with the book’s core argument: our government systems have become misaligned with the challenges they were originally built to address.
Some of my own experiences in local government deserve separate posts to fully explain the outdated processes we navigated. The media often focuses on political infighting, but I spent far more time working with—or sometimes against—well-meaning bureaucrats to reform broken systems. I’m looking forward to sharing how some of those experiences connect with the ideas in Abundance in the days ahead.
As promised, my first Abundance post relates to my experience working on public safety in the St. Louis Mayor’s Office.
I like to think I have good ideas. One of them happened in 2021, when I encouraged Mayor Jones to meet with a prominent CEO during her first month in office—an olive branch to someone deeply involved in local philanthropy and highly invested in public safety.
We met in his office. After a few pleasantries, he berated the Mayor about crime in St. Louis. He handed us a list of the world’s most dangerous cities—mostly Central and South American cities gripped by the drug trade—interspersed with St. Louis, Baltimore, and Memphis. According to his list, St. Louis was just a cartel city with better drinking water.
He then demanded to know what kind of homicide reduction the Mayor could guarantee in her first year, as if we were forecasting quarterly earnings for the SEC. For the record, the Mayor reduced homicides by 25% that year — the second-largest decline in the country behind Boston.
This CEO didn’t just talk about public safety — he backed it up with substantial investments, donating millions to infrastructure improvements and helping fund an independent report to assess and enhance police department performance. The Mayor also cared deeply about public safety, but she approached it differently. They had different strategies for how to achieve the same goal.
In many ways, the debate around Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson reminds me of those early discussions in City Hall. There’s often agreement on goals, but the real tension lies in the strategies—and in the narratives we build about heroes, villains, and causes.
In Abundance, one of the villains is overly rigid environmental regulation. Well-meaning policies have been repurposed to block housing and green energy projects—ironically making it easier to build clean infrastructure in red states than in blue ones.
During Mayor Jones’s term, St. Louis saw a 40% drop in homicides, and by April of this year, the city was on pace for a 36% year-over-year decline. Some credit this to scaling non-police responses—like the Office of Violence Prevention, the Bureau of Behavioral Health, and other human-centered investments. Others point to strong police leadership, increased officer compensation, and the deployment of tools like license plate readers, ShotSpotter, and surveillance cameras. The explanation you prefer may depend on your deeply-held beliefs.
In truth, progress stemmed from a combination of strategies—and from the dedication of professionals like Chief Robert Tracy, Dan Isom, Nicolle Barton, Sara Baker, Dr. Mati Hlatshwayo Davis, and Chief Charles Coyle.
What I’m grappling with—and what Abundance challenges us to confront—is this: how do we approach complex problems when the most effective solutions don’t align with our identities, values, or areas of expertise?
A friend in the VC/startup world reminded me of a similar tension in the environmental movement over nuclear energy. Despite its risks and checkered history, nuclear power emits far less pollution than fossil fuels—yet many environmental advocates remain firmly opposed.
Where else do we see long-standing beliefs or practices standing in the way of the outcomes we claim to want? I’d love to hear examples from other sectors.
Thanks for reading. My next post will involve Roy Blunt’s hair and innovation funding. Stay tuned.
Editor’s Note: Jared Boyd has been a policy shaper in the City of St. Louis and the St. Louis Region. Most recently he was chief of staff for St. Louis Mayor Tishaura Jones.