# ⤴️ Beyond Abundance: My chat with Brink Lindsey about his new book, 'The Permanent Problem'

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Podcast: [Faster, Please! — The Podcast](https://stenobird.com/podcast/faster-please-the-podcast-5630783)
Published: 2026-01-30T15:30:47+00:00
Episode link: https://fasterplease.substack.com/p/beyond-abundance-my-chat-with-political
Audio file: https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/186136221/3bdc30054474499f9aae54c1f17ae706.mp3
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Duration seconds: 1892

## Resource

My fellow pro-growth/progress/abundance Up Wingers in America and around the world: The human pursuit of progress stems from our desire for security and a higher quality of life. Yet, even as today’s advanced economies are the richest and most comfortable they’ve ever been, something is amiss. What explains the decline in R&D growth, mental health, and birth rates, just to name a few challenges? In his new book, The Permanent Problem: The Uncertain Transition from Mass Plenty to Mass Flourishing , author Brink Lindsey identifies the critical gap between material abundance and abundant human flourishing. Today on Faster, Please! — The Podcast , Brink and I chat about what constitutes a truly healthy society, beyond surface-level affluence. We identify the conditions for continual progress after our basic needs have been met and far exceeded. Linsey is a senior vice president at the Niskanen Center . He previously served as vice president for research at the Cato Institute and as a senior scholar at the Kauffman Foundation . He has authored and co-authored six books on economics and culture, and is the author of his own Substack, also titled The Permanent Problem . In This Episode * More of everything . . . !? (1:54) * Falling fertility (7:31) * What we’ve lost (10:20) * Evaluating flourishing (13:13) * A culture of growth (20:24) * Future-world problems (28:04) (A lightly edited transcript of our conversation will be appear in my Week in Review issue on Saturday. Another option is using the Substack auto transcript function.) On sale everywhere The Conservative Futurist: How To Create the Sci-Fi World We Were Promised This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit fasterplease.substack.com/subscr…

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