Scaling Laws Abundance & AI? Nicholas Bagley Explains
Apr 3, 2026
Nicholas Bagley, Professor of Law at Michigan Law known for work on administrative law and regulation. He links housing policy failures to AI governance and explains the Abundance Agenda. He traces how procedural rules like NEPA and CEQA slow infrastructure, critiques risk-averse AI guidance, and suggests legal and regulatory reforms to enable better public-sector decision making.
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Single Provision Can Tank Housing Reform
- The housing bill's single seven-year resale provision threatens to derail broader bipartisan efforts to ease building by making projects financially infeasible for institutional builders.
- Nicholas Bagley explains builders view the requirement as a poison pill that will throttle institutional investment in rental housing and scuttle the bill's support.
Abundance Agenda Ties Building Shortfalls Together
- The Abundance Agenda links underbuilding across housing, energy, and infrastructure to procedural barriers and excessive caution.
- Bagley argues we need large-scale construction (WWII scale for renewables) to address climate and growth, but legal obstacles prevent it.
NEPA Evolved Into A Massive Bottleneck
- NEPA's short text multiplied into exhaustive judicial-driven environmental reviews, averaging 661 pages and 4.5 years, which now delay solar, wind, and transmission on federal land.
- Bagley traces this to courts demanding ever-more analysis, producing overbroad reviews that examine even unreasonable alternatives.
