Andrew Cooley

Read this immediately after Abundance which was a cool, if not highly redundant, experience.

This book is a more aimless and repetitive “Abundance” that never really gets into the nitty gritty. I honestly couldn't tell you what Conservative Futurism even is.

In a sentence, I could explain Abundance philosophy. I could not do this same for Conservative Futurism as it feels like a redundant yet unspecified copy of Abundance with more affection for nuclear energy.

So much of the book is surface level I was shocked when I was 2/3 of the way through and realized that I still had no idea what the author was getting at.

Chapter 11 was better though as he finally started to get a little more in the weeds, but even there, it just felt like a worse copy of Klein and Thompson's book.

Now I'm not saying it's a bad book, it's fine. It just feels like one long chapter 1 that never gets to something more. Again, I don't even know what his claim or thesis was in this.

But to end on a positive, the biggest positive I have is how fun it was to read this as a companion piece to “Abundance”. The history in both books lines up almost exactly which makes it fun to see the dueling ideas for the future. The fun ends though when only Klein and Thompson provide a robust breakdown of their view while this book simply doesn't.

I've never felt more hopeful about the future than I do now after reading this. And I don't necessarily mean hopeful that the future will be better, there is a lot that has to go right and the current outlook is not stellar.

But I mean hopeful that a better future is even possible. I honestly never imagined a world other than one of maintaining what we have.

But a future full of abundance has changed the way I see everything and, as simple as it may seem, made me happier and excited just knowing the future could potentially be brighter than it is right now.