Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani has a lot of dumb ideas. Of course, these days that’s pretty much assumed when you hear the words “Democratic mayoral nominee.”
But — though the competition is stiff — the dumbest of his ideas may be his plan for government-run grocery stores. In fact, it’s so obviously a terrible idea that even Democrats seem to know it.
So there must be another agenda, and I think I know what it is.
Business owners across New York City and the nation have denounced Mamdani’s plan as a Soviet-style disaster.
“You can’t force us to pay taxes and then be our adversary,” said Bronx bodega owner Rafael Garcia.
He’s on to something.
In the old Soviet Union the government did in fact run the grocery stores.
Shelves were often empty. Lines were absurdly long. Product quality and service were, to put it mildly, horrible.
In fact, things were so bad in the government-run grocery stores (and department stores, and clothing stores) that there were separate stores for the big shots, the nomenklatura as Soviet citizens resentfully called them.
(The term arose because the leaders of the Workers’ Paradise were those with the right names — in essence, the Communist aristocracy.)
Imagine a supermarket with the sluggish, low-grade service of the Department of Motor Vehicles.
And unlike the DMV’s standardized product line (there aren’t quality distinctions to be made with driver’s licenses and tags), you can bet the products offered in government-run grocery stores will be subpar.
Not, of course, in any city-run markets located in neighborhoods occupied by the influential and well-off. Who don’t need help buying groceries.
It’s such a bad idea that the wildly unpopular Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson considered it, too — and gave it a pass.
Johnson conducted a feasibility study that he never made public, but was apparently such a disaster that he never even tried to claim subsidies the state of Illinois had made available for the purpose.
The feasibility study likely concluded, as any bodega owner could attest, that the grocery business is notoriously low-margin — and, even in so-called “food deserts,” fiercely competitive.
As Seth Barron observed in City Journal, “Mamdani’s quaint suggestion that the lack of a profit motive will make it easier to run a successful business sounds a lot like what public-housing enthusiasts said about New York’s experiment with being a landlord a century ago.”
We know how that worked out.
Several American towns and smaller cities have tried to launch publicly owned grocery stores, usually when the last local market closed in the face of big-box competition. All have met with uniformly dreadful results.
Some point to the 17 states that successfully run state liquor stores to contend that a state-run grocer can work, too.
But that’s a terrible argument: State-run liquor stores derive from a post-Prohibition decision to limit alcohol consumption by making it inconvenient and expensive.
Nobody would argue that state liquor stores fail at doing that — but do we want to make food “inconvenient and expensive” too?
Who actually thinks this is a good idea?
And if it’s a bad idea, why are Democratic politicians in favor of it?
For the same reason they favor a lot of bad ideas, from rent control to defunding the police: They’re ideas that may be awful for a city but are good for them, or for their constituencies.
Once I wondered why so many politicians support commuter rail — until it dawned on me that politicians covet graft from developers, and commuter stations boost new developments.
Bus stops? Not worth it, because politicians can always renege on the deal and move a bus stop. It’s much harder to move a train station, not to mention tracks.
I suspect government-run grocery stores would work the same way: A well-located city grocery is worth big bucks from a developer. A grocery store in a neighborhood full of your supporters helps keep them sweet.
A neighborhood or developer that doesn’t support you can be punished by closing a store, or limiting its stock, or letting it run down.
A city-run grocer wouldn’t have Stalin’s power to starve out Ukraine — but it sure is interesting how hard-core leftists always want to control people’s access to food.
Of course, there are risks to the politicians, too.
If the service and quality in city-run groceries is awful — and it likely will be, at least after an initial honeymoon period — voters will blame them.
And while voters may tolerate corruption and inefficiency, the in-your-face misery created by lousy grocery stores may be enough to spark a New York City voter revolt.
Which, come to think of it, is exactly what the city needs.
Glenn Harlan Reynolds is a professor of law at the University of Tennessee and founder of the InstaPundit.com blog.