Quick thought on Zohran Mamdani and policies he’s proclaiming that I know nothing about, especially considering the fact that I live in a small town of 8,000 people rather than New York City.
As of now (I haven’t checked) Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist, is contenting to be the mayor of New York City.
Much has been, and is being, said about his policies. Mostly, people are just calling him a socialist and saying this is bad. A bad experiment.
He’s calling for things like free bus fares, a $30/hr minimum wage, and most notably, city-run grocery stores.
Instead of doing the cheap and convenient thing (which is a great bad habit of our time) and just taking people at their word (‘take’) or making a quick judgement on these things, I decided to think through it.
Since the city-run grocery stores are the main issue surrounding him, I want to reflect on just this one. From a classical liberalism perspective, one that is useful to me and that, I dare say, I believe in, here’s what I’m coming up with.
- City-run grocery stores
- First of all, a tax increase on the richest 1% (residents of the city?) will be applied to pay for some (all?) of this.
- From what I can tell, Mamdani has said these stores will protect the consumer (‘worker’ or ‘working class’) from price gouging and general unfairness. Fair enough.
- Since the government owns the building and the enterprise, it’s not held by the typical constraints a private business owner would be: price of a lease, demand, ‘the market’, competition, personal risk on the business owner and the healthy tension that causes. I.e., there’s really not much skin in the game for the government.
- This is a service for the people.
- Would they work?
- First of all, I’m not sure that it’s fair that one can just say that socialism is coming to New York City if Zohran were elected.
- Socialism, and Communism, require top-down, and complicity at each adjacent level, control in order to the pull the strings of culture and commerce.
- New York State, and certainly not the United States, are socialist. So while Zohran might be able to implement some socialist policies, like city-run grocery stores, I don’t think it’s fair to say this is necessarily big S Socialism.
- E.g., The United States is a democracy. When laws or constitutional rights are violated in a way resembling Fascism or Authoritarianism, we aren’t right away switched into those systems.
- There is lots of outlier policy tried out and enacted all throughout the country, on both ‘sides’, even when it subverts the systemic reality of, say, democracy.
- E.g., The United States is a democracy. When laws or constitutional rights are violated in a way resembling Fascism or Authoritarianism, we aren’t right away switched into those systems.
- Secondly, I think they fall flat in my preferred system of judgement: classical liberalism.
- The market provides incentives to those with entrepreneurial ambition to make a go of it within the free and open landscape as it exists. There are plenty of negative constraints (zoning, manipulation, and corruption), but America is essentially always open for business.
- If the government suppresses the prices of groceries to make them more affordable, that’s an artificial constraint the reality of the market.
- With the demand side manipulated, these costs are going to get passed on to some other part of the system. They won’t be eaten at the point of sale as a noble gesture towards the people the policy is benefiting from.
- You can squirrel away market realities. They need to play out.
- Price gouging feels like a straw man.
- In a free market, if you’re price gouging New Yorkers on a systematic plane, another store or bodega right down the street should, if the free market is oiled well, take that business.
- On the production side:
- If the energy, materials, and labor costs associated with producing the food for the grocery are all driven down in cost (historically they are) then the consumer should see an even cheaper (more affordable) end product.
- If the NYC city government owns the supply side too, there’s no constraint on their behavior should it actually betray the best interest of the consumer.
- E.g., the goal here might be equity, not cheap/affordable pesto.
- What if one particular group’s cause is being taken up by the NYC city government and they decide to prioritize that within the grocery stores? Surely there would be downside to all of the other consumers the government professes to care about.
- Manipulating the supply side seems bad and ripe for a little bit of corruption. A la the Soviet Union.
- First of all, I’m not sure that it’s fair that one can just say that socialism is coming to New York City if Zohran were elected.
- Finally: I don’t think they will work. I also don’t think they’ll be fully tried (full blow Socialism).
- And I think they’re emblematic of the wrong focus that democrats have right now. It’s a ‘restricted and manipulated’ path forward rather than finding other policies that may end up accomplishing what the market is able to do on its own. Which is to flame growth and well-being through freedom.