Posted on 03/09/2026 6:28:03 AM PDT by fwdude
If there is one lesson the 20th century should have taught us, it is that governments make poor grocers. The image of Boris Yeltsin standing in a Texas supermarket in 1989, stunned into silence by the abundance of a randomly selected American grocery store, remains one of the most powerful indictments of central planning ever recorded.
Yet, in New York City, history is being ignored. After just a month, the mayor is already involved in a controversy surrounding his refusal to clear homeless encampments, with tragic results. Despite these early failures, the enthusiasm among young people and Democrats is still high. Although he has yet to implement his major policies, as we near the midterms and the Democrats choose their platforms, it’s worthwhile to revisit some cautionary tales of the socialist guru’s ‘great ideas’. Obviously, what Mayor Mamdani has in enthusiasm, he lacks in public policy. Previously, I covered the failure of rent controls. Now, I’ll look into the economic fallacies behind state-run grocery stores.
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“State-Run Grocery Stores Sound Good…”
No they don’t.
I would like to see NYC outlaw any form of capitalism and go with complete command economy. It’s what the people want.
Especially the young people. They are absolutely in love with Communism. I hope they get it, good and hard.
Most socialist schemes will work… but only for a very short period of time. Then comes a disaster of one sort or another. It’s unavoidable.
Why can’t socialists grasp this? It’s because one of their core beliefs is:
“This time it will be different.”
But of course it never is.
So taking business away from a legitimate store owner is a good thing?? See the problem??
In the Soviet Union, the problem was shortages. And that wasn't the fault of how they ran the stores in particular, but the whole Communist economy.
In the USA the problem is high crime forcing privately run stores to close. But the supply chains remain intact at the wholesale level.
The government funded store in Kansas City had empty shelves before it closed and also had a sanitation problem. But what finally forced it to close was crime. Not shoplifting. Employees quitting because they were afraid to work at that location.
Just destroying the Real grocery stores that pay taxes ,LOL
(was that a quote from the iron Lady Margeret Thatcher....?)
(was that a quote from the iron Lady Margeret Thatcher....?)
It's a combination. Most shoplifting in these stores in blighted areas goes undetected, only through inventory shortages do they discover that it is happening.
Retail theft is a very big expense line item in the income statement of a grocer. If they can't control that, their business model collapses. Overt crime just puts the final stake through the heart.
The only problem I have with that is that I live in Upstate NY. If NYC goes full commie, and tanks hard as would be inevitable, it will drag the rest of my state down along with it. We have enough leftist/democrat crap to contend with already -- we don't need a Giant Economy Size NYC Albatross hung around our necks any more than it already is.
(No, I'm not in a position to relocate to a sane state. Sigh.)
money, timing, alternatives is also part of the situation.
1) their only source of money is diminishing. ONly source is taxes and fed govt. I think Trump is in control of the fed money the next few years.
2) If they had tried this while NY was in good shape, maybe for a time. They are in the bottom of the cycle.
3) Alternatives are there also. Trump is showing a better way.
“(No, I’m not in a position to relocate to a sane state. Sigh.)”
Then there is no good answer for you. It is not the same, but similar to what happened in 1930s Germany. The Germans who saw what was coming were muted by the enthusiasm for the Nazis.
In a small town in Florida, the town runs it’s own supermarket, but it is a clean place. Mostly the store is more of a co-op. The town is in a rural area, where the nearest Publix is 10 miles away.
Nothing “state-run” sounds good, and rarely, if ever, is anything “state-run” actually good.
What is the name of the town?
If I could go back in time one thing on the list of things to do would be to slap the s**t out of the lazy arrogant immoral POS Marx. That anyone is stupid enough to think he was anything more than a pseudo intellectual grifter with daddy issues raises serious questions about our survivability as a species.
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