Context for the unfamiliar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgiC8YfytDw

(The guy is joking in the video)

If we want to be fair, it depends on the characterization and its intended implications. The right has called every Democrat since FDR a "socialist" specifically to put the fear of tanks in the streets and death camps into people regardless of their actual policies. They called Obama a socialist. They called Hillary Clinton a socialist.

So even if Mamdani calls himself a socialist it's important to ask what he means by that versus what people calling him a socialist what you to think.

Yeah, I was surprised to see a downvote for that. Isn’t that like his position? I don’t believe in socialism. He seems like a nice guy. These aren’t incompatible.

He identifies as a socialist, sure, but his implemented policies (what GGP was calling socialist) are mostly standard-issue municipal management.

Is it socialism to hire temporary labor for snow removal? To fix potholes? My boring municipality in the middle of a red state does that and nobody calls it socialist.

> filled with exceptionally bad ideas.

Name one, just for discussion's sake.

Yeah but under the norm none of us owe you anything including food or healthcare; that is... we don't have to care you exist

Why volunteer such?

Under capitalism there is no honorific obligationism. Pay me to give a shit you exist or go hungry and die

What's that? You want a social and communal society?

Sounds like naive populism.

If cheaper grocery prices would pull people away from more expensive stores then Wholefoods wouldn't exist. People don't simply go to the cheapest grocery store.

"Of course, with prices much cheaper than in other parts, you will likely get crowding at these stores. Leading to the infamous bread lines of the Soviet Union or Venezuela or what have you."

There are over 100+ no-questions-asked community-run pantries in NYC where you can get groceries for free, not to mention others that ask for some sort of ID. You'd think that the crowding and bread lines would form here first no?

Grocery stores aren't evenly distributed throughout the city, though, and there are neighborhoods were either there is no store at all nearby, or the store that exists has poor quality and high prices. In those locations, the dynamic of a city-owned store undercutting a "normal" store isn't really going to apply since there isn't really a "normal" store in the area.

So much, of course, depends on the execution -- a crappy city store won't be a help to anyone -- but the concept isn't inherently bad on its face.

I agree with everything you said, but is worth mentioning that while, “There is put simply no way this experiment ends in a way that is positive for New Yorkers,” is true, the most likely outcome is that (a) the stores will open and consistently lose a small amount of money, relative to the NYC budget, (b) some small grocers or bodegas will be either priced out or receive city subsidies which incur another small cost on the city’s budget, and (c) customers will experience some kind of annoying quota or identity check system which prevents aggressive arbitrage, but which ultimately doesn’t make the stores unbearable.

This will indeed be far from Pareto optimal, and a slow drain on the city’s budget and local economy, but could be successful enough that the stores can remain in operation in perpetuity, which boosters will frame as a “win”

Which takes us back to the root of this thread.

His perception when he was running was "popular, well intentioned, and naive" for the reasons you're outlining. Yet what people have been experiencing isn't a mayor trying to try a bunch of bad-sounding ideas; it's a mayor who is visibly trying to make the city more livable.

In an overpriced and dysfunctional city with a history of self-aggrandizing, useless governance; livability is appealing.

The moderate take is "I don't care if he calls himself a socialist as long as he's making the city run better."

> Only now, regular stores know the city will undercut them in price using taxpayer money.

IDK why he calls that a city-owned store, he should just say that the city has started a VC program aimed to fund startups in the retail sector.

I agree with everything you said, but I think it's also a fairly low stakes experiment that might even be worth trying, and the real test of his competence as mayor is how quickly he realizes it that it won't work and shuts it down, rather than doubling or tripling down on it. Sometimes it's worth it to just take your best shot at implementing a probably bad but popular idea, as long as the consequences for failure are not too harsh.

There's a version of this, I think, that _doesn't_ fail, where they give up selling below cost and focus on setting up ABC-like grocery stores in "food deserts" that sell staple goods that bodegas don't carry.

> The city does not actually produce food. Stores get their produce from wholesalers.

> Leading to the infamous bread lines of the Soviet Union or Venezuela or what have you.

These two statements don't follow one another. If the city stores are getting their goods from the same distributor any other grocery store is, why would the availability of that food dry up leading to breadlines?

> Ironically, the city sets prices based on a relative level to "normal stores". So it's not as if this is some "good capitalist competition". It's not as if it's a "temporary measure until catastrophe A is over".

This happens in "normal" stores as well. There's a concept called a "loss leader" where a store deliberately sells some goods at lower than market rates specifically to attract shoppers.

> There is put simply no way this experiment ends in a way that is positive for New Yorkers.

My state, Idaho, has had state ran liquor stores for my entire life. Our socialist alcohol hasn't resulted in booze lines or bedlam. I see no reason why a grocery store in a very wealthy city couldn't work.

Don't get me wrong I think it is fine to question who pays for those things. And if you are one of those "I lean libertarian" types you probably are OK with private funding for NASA & USPS, but they need to be intellectually honest with why they are OK with masked federal agents roaming the streets.

I’m sorry this makes no sense. He’s creating city owned grocery stores. I’m not just making up some slanderous label. That’s a socialist idea if ever there was one, good as it may be!

That’s totalitarian communism. Parent is talking about social democracy with a larger safety net. I’m not aware of gulags in the Netherlands or Sweden but maybe I haven’t looked hard enough.

I was just in here a while ago calling leftist class war stuff conspiracism BTW, so I’m equal opportunity.

Just so much bullshit everywhere. We’d have a much better discourse if words meant things and if we could toss the hyperbole and the conspiracy theories from all sides.

What else could it mean? There are anarcho- and democratic socialists, sure, but their end goal is still workers owning the means of production.

Is it possible that you are lying about your intentions and goals right now?

This is such a wild thread.

Here I have seen firsthand and lived in these areas. Seen firsthand what is allowed and actually deceitfully done under taqiyya.

How many times have you even stepped foot in a mosque?

You have the information in front of you and it’s almost compulsion that you need to ignore it, and attack me instead.

Yes, you are the “normal people”.