The Mamdani Experiment In Socialism

[Jimmy Higgins]

Congrats on falling for more click bait.

Google AI is certainly not click bait.

The article it cited was. Do you know how to research and what "sources" are?

You might accuse google AI of hallucinating but click bait isn't relevant when the original inquiry posted above came from myself. Prior to this I have read many other sources agreeing that it is common knowledge at this point that people are relocating from NYC to Florida. What google AI reports agrees with this making it unclear whether google AI hallucinated or your article is in error.

But I would side with google on this since there are many more sources than just one article refuting your article. And a bad article seems more probable than an AI that hallucinated.

I need to stop discussing things with the irrational. Did you even read my reply?

I did not cite an article! I cited google AI! Google AI does the rest.

@bilby, anvil in aisle 3 please!

It looks up everything everywhere about the subject. And the response it gives is that people are indeed moving from NYC to Florida right now. Despite what the one article you cited says about it.

Okay, I presented two articles (one of which is cited by your Google AI quote). The Google AI cited the attitude of the article... which said that 16% of people leaving NYC are going to Florida. That same percentage, thereabouts, are also moving up to around 100 to 150 miles away from NYC. Additionally, the article (CITED BY YOUR GOOGLE AI quote) said that the wealthy in NYC are actually moving a small tad bit less than before Mamdani hit the scene.

A reasonable person would conclude your article is wrong compared to all others that google AI can see.

Oh my god, we are fucked as a civilization.

 

[steve_bank]

Tinkering even with the best of intentions in complex economics can and does lead to negative consequences. It has happened here in Seattle.

If expanded who knows where NYC run stores will lead. Worse case commercial stores leave NYC.

New York City's rent regulation laws cause negative consequences including reduced housing supply, lower building quality, and higher market-rate rents. These rules distort the local housing market and create unintended burdens for both property owners and new tenants.

Clueless Trump and his arbitrary tariffs is an example. He threw a wrench into global supply chains. Claiming it would make us all rich.

 

[Derec]

Over here a trillionaire like Musk is absurd and dangerous. No one person should have that kind of civilian power.

To be fair, he was only a trillionaire for a hot minute after the SPCX IPO. But very soon that stock has gone down, along with TSLA, so he is a mere hectobillionaire again.

All that shows what a stupid idea it is to try to tax such ephemeral wealth (or unrealized changes thereof).

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

If those things were there in those neighborhoods Mamdani's stores wouldn't be necessary.

What evidence is there that these Mamdani Marts are in any way necessary? See my post below for more details as to why I think not.

You can read this.

 

[Derec]

Clueless Trump and his arbitrary tariffs is an example. He threw a wrench into global supply chains. Claiming it would make us all rich.

I see a lot of Trump in Mamdani. Both rolled 20 on charisma, but are otherwise clueless.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Clueless Trump and his arbitrary tariffs is an example. He threw a wrench into global supply chains. Claiming it would make us all rich.

I see a lot of Trump in Mamdani. Both rolled 20 on charisma, but are otherwise clueless.

Trump doesn't have charisma. Which really makes it hard to understand his cult of personality.

 

[TSwizzle]

"food deserts"? That area seems to be well serviced for grocery stores so I am not convinced this experiment is about "food deserts". Has Mamdani stated that this is what his experiment is about?

Yes.

Weird, I haven't heard him reference that even although I listened to his presentation.

Because they are walking. You think people down in Greenwich Village are hoping the A or C to get to Harlem to buy discounted steak?

For 30% off? It's very possible people will make the effort to go to Mamdani's store specifically to load up on cheap meat and produce. People do shop around. It's a pain in the ass but I shop at two stores just to save a few bucks.

Are the stores requiring you to ride the subway for 40 minutes and then walk 15 to 20 minutes... (each way) to save a few bucks?

Don't be silly James.

BTW, I rarely buy steak these days. The price is crazy but if there's a store offering 30% off, I would go.

Says the person who isn't live in NYC / doesn't own a car.

Sure, Jan.

 

[Derec]

You can read this.

They claim that 750k New Yorkers live in food deserts. That claim goes back to a 2009 NYC opinion piece which reads

In New York City, where perhaps 750,000 people inhabit food deserts, officials are just beginning to find ways to help.

It does not explain further, nor offer a definition the author used for "food deserts". I have shown calculations that the average distance between grocery stores and bodegas in NYC is quite short. Even if in some neighborhood the distance is twice or even three times as far, it would not be what I would call a "food desert", especially with excellent public transit present.
And for those who have mobility issues, a handful of new grocery stores will not help one iota. A city-funded service where groceries are delivered for free or at a discounted fee would actually help those people, and be much cheaper to implement. Hell, you could even make low-level, non-violent offenders do that for community service - for shoplifters it would be quite fitting.

 

[Patooka]

Clueless Trump and his arbitrary tariffs is an example. He threw a wrench into global supply chains. Claiming it would make us all rich.

I see a lot of Trump in Mamdani. Both rolled 20 on charisma, but are otherwise clueless.

Trump doesn't have charisma. Which really makes it hard to understand his cult of personality.

That will always be a mystery to me that people think he's charismatic. I suspect it's nothing more than quite a few people are cunts and when they see someone like Trump get away with it, they view it as justification for their own cruel bigoted behaviour.

 

[TSwizzle]

You can read this.

*Food Empowerment Project (F.E.P.) recognizes the problem with the term food desert, defined by the USDA as mostly being about proximity to food providers, rather than considering other factors such as racism, cost of living, people being time poor and cash poor, cultural appropriateness of available foods, the ability of people to grow their owns foods, etc. F.E.P. considers terms like food apartheid and food oppression to be more accurate

"food apartheid" lol, who takes this codswallop seriously?!!

 

[Derec]

*Food Empowerment Project (F.E.P.) recognizes the problem with the term food desert, defined by the USDA as mostly being about proximity to food providers, rather than considering other factors such as racism, cost of living, people being time poor and cash poor, cultural appropriateness of available foods, the ability of people to grow their owns foods, etc. F.E.P. considers terms like food apartheid and food oppression to be more accurate

"food apartheid" lol, who takes this codswallop seriously?!!

Yeah, this is quite ridiculous. Reminds of when AOC complained that there is too much cauliflower grown in NYC community gardens (where such plants would thrive) instead of tropical plants like cassava which would not. And then called growing these cruciferous vegetables "colonialism" even though cassava is not native to the region either.

 

[Derec]

Because they are walking. You think people down in Greenwich Village are hoping the A or C to get to Harlem to buy discounted steak?

If you don't want to pay a few bucks for transit, you could also ride the bike the few miles there and work up the appetite.

You could even ride there all the way from the Gracie Mansion ...

 

[steve_bank]

Over here a trillionaire like Musk is absurd and dangerous. No one person should have that kind of civilian power.

To be fair, he was only a trillionaire for a hot minute after the SPCX IPO. But very soon that stock has gone down, along with TSLA, so he is a mere hectobillionaire again.

All that shows what a stupid idea it is to try to tax such ephemeral wealth (or unrealized changes thereof).

As the wealth disparity grows and more working people who keep things going can not afford housing and food the system will fail.

It is a practical issue, economic and social stability.

Somebody is buying the Seattle Seahawks for around $8 billion. The stadium is in the CID Chinese International District which is economically depressed. The money in sports to me is disgusting, considering all the needs we have nationally.

Food security is growing. Mamdan's approach is relatively pointless.
i
Inn a sense every working person in the country helps Musk to make his money. Musk goes back to the 19th century mostly fictional image of a self made man. Someone who rises based solely on his own efforts beholden to nobody. I did it all by myself.

 

[thebeave]

You can read this.

*Food Empowerment Project (F.E.P.) recognizes the problem with the term food desert, defined by the USDA as mostly being about proximity to food providers, rather than considering other factors such as racism, cost of living, people being time poor and cash poor, cultural appropriateness of available foods, the ability of people to grow their owns foods, etc. F.E.P. considers terms like food apartheid and food oppression to be more accurate

"food apartheid" lol, who takes this codswallop seriously?!!

What the hell is "food apartheid" and "food oppression"? Did you cut and paste this from The Onion"?

 

[laughing dog]

According to my Google search there are an estimated 5,600 grocery stores and 13,000 bodegas in NYC.

Exactly. It is hard to imagine there being any significant problem with food deserts in NYC. Your numbers translate to 18.6 full grocery stores per square mile and whopping 43 bodegas. That means that grocery stores are, on average, about 600 ft from each other, while bodegas are about 400 ft apart.
Thus, the only people who would have problems with access would be those with mobility issues, and Mamdani Marts do not help with that.

It seems rather far fetched to imagine 5 stores (one in each borough) providing competition on the scale to have much effect on the market unless these are gigantic big big groceries.

Five stores will also not make any measurable positive impact neither regarding access (which I have shown with your own numbers is not even an issue) nor the food budget of the average New Yorker.

So either these are pilot projects for a much more extensive rollout (at enormous cost to the taxpayers given the discounts he is promising) or else it's just a publicity stunt by Comrade Cardamom.

So why are you snd your ilk having conniptions, if this won’t have an effect?

 

[ZiprHead]

According to my Google search there are an estimated 5,600 grocery stores and 13,000 bodegas in NYC.

Exactly. It is hard to imagine there being any significant problem with food deserts in NYC. Your numbers translate to 18.6 full grocery stores per square mile and whopping 43 bodegas. That means that grocery stores are, on average, about 600 ft from each other, while bodegas are about 400 ft apart.
Thus, the only people who would have problems with access would be those with mobility issues, and Mamdani Marts do not help with that.

It seems rather far fetched to imagine 5 stores (one in each borough) providing competition on the scale to have much effect on the market unless these are gigantic big big groceries.

Five stores will also not make any measurable positive impact neither regarding access (which I have shown with your own numbers is not even an issue) nor the food budget of the average New Yorker.

So either these are pilot projects for a much more extensive rollout (at enormous cost to the taxpayers given the discounts he is promising) or else it's just a publicity stunt by Comrade Cardamom.

From a 2025 report, yes, food deserts exist in New York City, particularly affecting low-income communities of color in the outer boroughs and upper Manhattan. An estimated 750,000 residents live in areas with limited supermarket access, while roughly 3 million live where fresh produce is scarce. [1, 2]

https://files.blogs.baruch.cuny.edu/wp-content/blogs.dir/11176/files/2025/05/Policy-Memo-6.pdf

 

[RVonse]

Over here a trillionaire like Musk is absurd and dangerous. No one person should have that kind of civilian power.

To be fair, he was only a trillionaire for a hot minute after the SPCX IPO. But very soon that stock has gone down, along with TSLA, so he is a mere hectobillionaire again.

All that shows what a stupid idea it is to try to tax such ephemeral wealth (or unrealized changes thereof).

As the wealth disparity grows and more working people who keep things going can not afford housing and food the system will fail.

It is a practical issue, economic and social stability.

Somebody is buying the Seattle Seahawks for around $8 billion. The stadium is in the CID Chinese International District which is economically depressed. The money in sports to me is disgusting, considering all the needs we have nationally.

Food security is growing. Mamdan's approach is relatively pointless.
i
Inn a sense every working person in the country helps Musk to make his money. Musk goes back to the 19th century mostly fictional image of a self made man. Someone who rises based solely on his own efforts beholden to nobody. I did it all by myself.

For years I always thought the perfect economy would look like pure capitalism perfectly balanced with social needs of the people. And the US actually almost produced this under the leadership of FDR but never really figured it out other than between 1945 and 1965.. US capitalism has since run its course with extreme wealth disparity, monopoly, and regulatory capture of the government we now see today. The perfect feeding grounds for populism both conservatives and liberals. The feeding grounds for electing Mamdani to NYC.

The only sustainable example of capitalism with social needs met I can think of is what China has become. The CCP maintains pure capitalism at lower levels, while still featuring a strong enough central government able to keep their billionaires on the rails. What the CCP did actually worked and still works today for a middle class.

I do still think the CCP sucks overall with general lack of freedoms. So I don't admire the CCP, but they appear to have managed an economy that actually works for a middle class... at least in their cities.

 

[steve_bank]

I think Keynes said puer capitalism would led to a balance includng population, but getting there would be a lot of msery.

If you want a perfect system of any kind you first need perfecpeople.

In ideal capitalism there is no government influence, equal access to resources, and free market competition which in reality never really happens.

Here in the USA government has sways stimulated new business. Air mail contracts helped aviation get going.

Military contracts funded the development of the first commercially producible transistors.


A long list. So when conservatives argue against social programs that help people get started they conveniently ignore federal support for business.

Depending on how you look at it, we are a welfare state for business. More socialist than the right will acknowledge.

 

[Elixir]

Depending on how you look at it, we are a welfare state for business. More socialist than the right will acknowledge.

Why should they? The billionaires controlling Right Wing money consider themselves the scaffold, the bones of society’s structure. They’re socialists all the way, but the society referred to consists of the other billionaires and themselves.

 

[Patooka]

For years I always thought the perfect economy would look like pure capitalism

19th century company towns? The 21st century equivalent would be Detroit in Robocop my dude.

perfectly balanced with social needs of the people

Jesus fucking Christ surely you must realise this completely disqualifies your "pure capitalism" fantasy, right?

Right?

I do still think the CCP sucks overall with general lack of freedoms. So I don't admire the CCP, but they appear to have managed an economy that actually works for a middle class... at least in their cities.

Pretty clear you don't interact with a lot of people from China. And like I've mentioned before - you clearly don't give a fuck about the middle class (in fact I think you actively support its elimination) so why do you keep using it as a basis for your argument?