site banner
PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   23888 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 3, 2026

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

2
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Culture War yes/no? I'm not going to have a long post here, since I am more genuinely asking questions about how this is supposed to work, but: Mayor Mamdani's grocery stores. Good idea or disaster waiting to happen?

My own, very damn subjective, view on this is that they'll turn out to be a typical boondoggle/pork barrel project for NYC internal politics, and that most of whatever funding available will go on paying baksheesh to vested interests, giving reward positions to party loyalists placed in charge of administering the scheme, and once Mamdani is out of office, these places will shut up shop (literally) and be empty commercial sites that made no real difference in the long run.

This is even before we get into all the interesting and varied possibilities of fraud and gaming the system.

I see that he one of his administration announced the necessity for ID cards so non-NYC residents can't load up on cheap groceries, which would seem to indicate that he's they are not a total fools and do have some awareness of how things can go wrong, but also given the protesting about requiring ID for voting and how this places a disproportionate burden on marginalised communities, how will he square the circle of "this is to serve marginalised communities but also we want ID"? If the anti-ID lot claim that requiring ID will not, for example, prevent voter fraud then how can requiring ID prevent grocery fraud? People who can't manage to get a driver's licence will manage to get a "library card-esque" ID?

During a press conference unveiling the proposal, Mamdani was asked how the city would prevent shoppers from abusing the program or purchasing goods for resale. He referred the question to New York City Economic Development Corporation chief financial officer Jeanny Pak, who said officials wanted to "target New Yorkers" through "a library-card-esque system" while managing purchases.

Also I understand that these stores will be run by private operators and hoo-boy. Worst of both worlds? I think this article (from an Irish person) points out the problems there, and anyone who has worked in retail will have a good idea of the kinds of problems that will be faced: shoplifting, union jobs (with corresponding high wages and good conditions, which will drive up costs and require a ton of the city government pumping in funding) or minimum-wage jobs?, challenging IDs for non-native New Yorkers, people buying the cheap staples then reselling them (as with loose cigarettes), what if the marginalised communities don't want fruit and veg, they want cigarettes, booze, soda and chips? and the likes:

New York City Economic Development Corporation (“NYCEDC”), in collaboration with the City of New York (the “City”), is releasing a Request for Proposals (“RFP”) to retain one or more (up to a maximum of five) grocery store operators or other qualified firms, either independently or in teams (each, a “Respondent”), to operate one or more (up to a maximum of five) of NYCEDC’s upcoming “N.Y.C. Groceries” stores, one to be located in each of the five boroughs of New York City.

Successful Respondents will demonstrate an ability to handle the full range of operations involved in running a grocery store, such as product sourcing across departments (via existing wholesale contracts and primary relationships with wholesalers), merchandising, customer service, and staffing. NYCEDC prefers Respondents who can demonstrate experience opening grocery stores on quick timelines.

NYCEDC plans to select a Respondent(s) on the basis of factors stated in the RFP which include but are not limited to: experience operating grocery stores or other retail food businesses, quality of the proposal, and requests for subsidy.

I disagree with the article about this being stealth socialism, but I do agree that this is a vanity project that will not survive Mamdani's term in office. It probably would be better to encourage Aldi/Lidl to set up stores in these areas for their cheap staples proven model, and if they don't want to/can't get to set up in such places, I think it would be a good idea to consider why not and what that means for the state-run grocery stores:

Even if the stores can keep pace with demand, it won’t translate into a 30pc reduction in the weekly shop for those who use them, since all other goods in the store can be set at market prices. Expect private operators to set them just a notch above market prices to keep their margins up.

People like to talk about how shoplifting from big chain stores isn't really theft because insurance covers all that and they make millions in profit, but such big chains make those profits by ruthless pricing and enforcing economies of scale and using their clout to pressure suppliers for discounts. Unless it is going to be the likes of Walmart operating one city-owned grocery store in each borough (and why would they even bid for such small potatoes outfits?) then the enforced "30% below market prices" will have to be made up elsewhere, and that will most likely be on: minimum-wage staff, fewer staff, mark-ups on the other items that are not the mandated staples, and finding some way around the limitation on "no hot food, lottery tickets, alcohol or cigarettes". Maybe Aldi or Lidl will snap these up as opportunities to grow brand loyalty in these areas? I dunno!

We'll see how it works out. I'm not sanguine, but somebody tell me how this could work if done properly?

My take is basically - dumb idea, but probably done on such a small scale that the city will just eat the loss. In five or six years they'll frame them as an experiment and quietly wind them up.

Yeah, the scope of the project is a store each in four of the five boroughs, if I remember correctly.

One way they could work is by plugging into the SNAP system. And then, for extra credit, going back to the pre-supermarket model: there's a counter and a shop assistant behind it. You tell them what you need, they ring everything up, you pay with your SNAP card and get a ticket. When your number comes up, you go to the other counter and pick up your order.

No shoplifting, no complaints about selling the wrong kind of food to people in need.

I think it’s a good idea. NYC is filled with people who make money unscrupulously and then waste that money on consumerist nonsense. There are financiers invested in gambling apps and predatory youth sports leagues and I want to see them punished. IMO all of their money should be taken away and given to the productive classes, so taxing them and then translating that into less expensive staple foods is a cool idea. Also, it does seem that “healthy essential foods” typically have a high profit margin, some exceeding 30%.

Grocery store profit margins are much closer to 1%. They need to mark up products that much to pay their workers, run a nationwide logistics system, make up for theft, etc. Then have the tiniest bit left over for profit.

That article does not support the claim you're using it to make.

His basic point is still correct though. And just as a general matter, social harmony isn’t best achieved through unregulated self-interest. Private vice will never be able to truly equal public virtue, and the mere existence of criminals alone is enough to prove that. These are probably the most active in pursuing their own self-interest, and that doesn’t contribute to promoting the welfare of the common good. The ethical implications are nuanced but still quite clear: the pursuit of individual gain can be beneficial, but it’s not automatically or ‘inherently’ beneficial.

I think it's important to note when someone's pulling a fast one like that.

I honestly struggle to discern which of these possible points he's making:

  • We should confiscate the wealth of antisocial financiers and redistribute it
  • The top end of the capitalist economy is parasitic, the wealthy should be taxed heavily and the money given to the workers via subsidized groceries (n.b. the top band of NYC income tax currently starts at $50/60/90k/yr depending on marital status)

Grocery stores are famously low profit. Like 1 to 3 percent after ruthlessly optimizing logistics and having minimal staffing. There's no 30 percent laying around for someone to take. Market prices are the price for a reason.

These are going to run at a 30%+ loss given even slightly higher than typical staffing costs. Which is feasible by subsidizing with tax dollars. The cynic in me suspects this will be yet another exercise in setting tax dollars on fire. Optimistically some poor people will get some below cost food that they eat rather than resell.

The main reasoning I see here is food deserts but the large majority of food deserts are functionally a myth due to outdated standards around transportation. They do exist in some places still (there's a mountain I hike at where the closest food besides dollar general is like 45 minutes away) but the majority of them are just because people drive now. I live in an area very close to being a suburban "food desert" and no one would ever know it because everyone has cars.

NYC might be an exception since car ownership is rarer there, but it makes up for it with better public transit so presumably there's still not much trouble with actually accessing food if you take a short bus ride or the subway or whatever.

But ok there might be a few people who truly are in need and if we want to subsidize them, fine. We do that with the mail, we deliver even to super rural locations that are obviously not worth the price. Charity doesn't have to be profitable. But charity should get results and these grocery stores are going to be a mess, they're not targeted to those rare people actually in need. Delivering mail to rurals at a loss actually gets mail to rurals, will these grocery stores actually provide food to those who would have to travel long distances otherwise or will they just be at a loss for nothing? And if they're not guaranteed to be at a loss that that's an issue because that means the market could have solved the problem to begin with and was just handicapped by government.

the majority of them are just because people drive now

I mean, isn't that the point? That we want to end food deserts so that fewer people need cars. Not especially relevant to the NYC case, of course.

No I think cause and effect is reversed with that.

People have cars first, therefore they are willing to drive to bigger supermarkets, therefore smaller markets which have less choice and are more expensive (no economy of scale) are less appealing, and therefore more likely to be unprofitable.

Now if we want to open up unprofitable charity markets for the few people who can't do that, sure. The government takes a loss doing other forms of charity after all, like I said with mail. I'm against it, but that's a political decision we can at least reasonably make. But also at least, the charity should be able to do what it's for, like rural Alaska gets the mail even if it costs the rest of us money.

I guess it used to be self-evident that groceries as we know them operate either in the densely populated walkable urban core or in really small towns.

People like to talk about how shoplifting from big chain stores isn't really theft because insurance covers all that and they make millions in profit, but such big chains make those profits by ruthless pricing and enforcing economies of scale and using their clout to pressure suppliers for discounts.

Isn't the profit margin of grocery chain stores quite low in reality? At least a common complaint over here in Finland is that the local pseudo-duopoly makes them ridiculously more profitable than is the norm in other countries because they typically don't face any real price competition.

True but the sheer size of some countries makes it impractical to be super competitive. Australia had a similar attempt at raking the Grocery Duopoly over the coals, and one of the common retorts was that they needed to bake in some margin else about 95% of the country is completely impractical to service due to sheer size, remoteness and lack of density.

I think it is mainly doomed because it starts with a bad analysis of "the problem".

There are things called food deserts, sure, but why? New York is one of the wealthiest cities in the world, even the poor are extremely wealthy by global standards. Go to just about any Asian city and you don't have to look hard for fresh anything, cooked anything, etc. There are markets all over.

New York doesn't allow open air markets, so that doesn't help. But there are still plenty of shops everywhere. Why aren't the shops selling a bunch of fresh ingredients?

Put yourself in the mind of a poor New Yorker. You've just acquired a bunch of fresh ingredients for cooking. Now take them back to your apartment. Your tiny, shitty apartment, with multi decade old cooking appliances, lack of cookware, and then when you finish out how to microwave the meal to completion you can serve them on your non-existent dishes and wash those non-existent dishes by hand in your sink because you don't have a working dish washer. Do we all see the problem? You have to be rich to afford a nice enough place to cook for yourself in New York. Even giving away food for free will not solve this problem.

The food deserts exist because of a lack of demand. And even giving away free food won't be enough to get poor New Yorkers cooking their own healthy food.

They buy snacks, easy microwave meals, and takeout food. If you can make all of those things more healthy without increasing their price you might be able to get more New Yorkers actually eating healthy.

But why do you even want them eating healthy? Is it because you want them to be less obese and more healthy? Well good news, we have a solution for that, they are called GLP-1s. Just subsidize them and hand em out like candy to New Yorkers. Or have bodegas sell them.

In conclusion Mamdani's end goals are attainable. He has just chosen to go about it in a roundabout and silly way that will accomplish nothing.

I'm sorry, but you're really overselling how hard it is to cook while poor. A real porcelain plate with a aesthetic pattern on it is like $3 or less at a dollar general, you can get plates and bowls for 4 people for $20, which can be hand-washed in a few minutes. Pots and pans can be found secondhand, cast-iron can be found used, scoured, and re-glazed.
The cost and inconvenience of getting quality ingredients like meat and fresh vegetables is the problem, and the hapless fecklessness of the underclass who literally can't cook and who are tempted by uber-eats wackarnolds.

I live in a shite neighborhood in west-side Chicago, I'm lucky enough to have an Aldi nearby, but there's plenty of people slightly further away who really only have shitty inconvenience stores available, which carry "groceries" at absurd markup because it's meant to be bought with SNAP by people who don't want to walk further than a block.

Its a hassle and inconvenient. And you are usually talking about an extra 30 minutes of cooking/cleaning/shopping per meal, so 1.5 hours a day. For the "privilege" of less tasty meals. The cost savings feel minimal on a per meal basis, so it has to be a decision you constantly make to "save" money. I put save in quotations because your time costs money. If you enjoy cooking and dont mind cleaning up its no big deal, but for anyone that doesn't you are basically suggesting minimum wage rates. I can get a salad and a sandwich at a Wendys for less than $20. If I could make that exact same meal for 10$ in just 30 minutes (plus cooking and shopping for ingredients time) I'm basically working at a $20/hour wage.

Certainly poor people can save lots of money over time if they are basically willing to work an extra hour and a half a day, and cut out one of the main enjoyments in life. It also feels insane to me to blame them for not taking that "money-saving" option. They could also just pick up a second wage labor job to make sure they are working 70-80 hours a week. They can make sure to forego an extra hour of sleep a night for any jobs that don't require full wakefulness. They can use a crappy handme down phone and pick the cheapest data plan. They dont need a TV. Instead of a mattress they can just buy a sleeping bag. They can live in an apartment with a few dozen other people instead of paying rent on their own. Actually, they don't really need to pay rent, there are homeless shelters, and I've heard the weather in California is nice this time of year (and any time of year). Or they can always sleep in their car if they really need to even have a car. Or, even better, they can skip all the work. Just commit a crime that is serious enough for some prison time. Doesn't need to be a lot of prison time. Just enough to get in, once you are in you can do additional things to extend your time inside! In prison they provide rooms, food, toilets, showers, doctors, socialization, sunlight. Everything that someone needs to live.

Sorry for the sarcasm, but at some point people need to live. They need to be human. Food is one thing I'm not willing to hold over them and say "no you have to be a profit maximizing robot". I certainly don't follow that standard. My wife and I had our anniversary dinner last year at a really nice restaurant, the bill was around $700. We had a great time, the food was really amazing, the drinks were amazing, the service was great, we spent two and a half hours there.

I don't hold the poor free of all responsibility. I expect them to at least make half decent decisions on drugs, jobs, and location. Avoid drugs, find jobs that pay well for your abilities, and live in an area where you can survive and your children have the possibility to thrive.

I think one big issue is that cooking hot meals only makes economic sense when it’s normally done for 3 or more people.

Nice thing is, those 3 or more people could be the same one person, just time-shifted. Modern food storage technology is basically ubiquitous and relatively cheap, after all.

But that doesn't compare to the experience of a fresh meal.

If homemade sandwich and salad costs you $10, you’re doing it wrong. When I was young and early in my career I aimed at $3.00 per meal and usually got there. Today it’s more like $6.00.

I handed the question over to Gemini AI.

It came up with $45 minimum for 4 sandwiches and 2 salads from Wendy's. And $30 minimum for buying all the stuff to make it yourself. Let's say that is three meals, and it comes out to $10 for making it yourself or $15 for getting it at Wendy's.

Yes, you can make cheaper meals by cutting corners and having fewer ingredients, but Wendy's could do the same thing! So you've stopped comparing like to like. And that is also part of my whole point that the food served by restaurants is often better.

This also assumes that your time/labor is free. Which is an ok assumption if you like grocery shopping, cooking, and cleaning. But most people don't like all three of those. If you value your time above minimum wage it quickly stops being worth it to cook for yourself.

If you buy ingredients to make sandwiches and salad at a store, you’re getting way more than 3 salads and sandwiches. More like 6-10, depending on the ingredients.

A meal costing less than $10 isn't "cutting corners," I think we're running into some serious clashes of socioeconomic status and culture here.

No I think you are missing the whole point of the comparison I'm making.

To compare any meal you can make to a restaurant or fast food meal is not a good comparison. Sure you can make rice, chicken, and pop a vitamin on the side for pretty damn cheap. But its not the fact that you cooked it that is saving you money, its mainly the austerity of the meal itself that is saving you money. This would be like saying "I saved hundreds of dollars each meal, instead of getting a steak at a really good steakhouse, I instead made chicken and rice at home"

To make a fair comparison we need to do either one of two things:

  1. Find places that serve austerity meals and compare their cost to home cooking.
  2. Upgrade the home cooked meal to match a restaurant.

I didn't do the 1st option because it would be completely unfair, and not to me. There are places that serve austerity meals in America: soup kitchens. And they give away the food for free. So obviously home cooking loses on that metric.

I did the second option where you upgrade the home cooked meal to match an option from a place that is just above the bottom tier of food. I like Wendys, so that is what I picked. On this metric home cooking wins if you enjoy shopping, cooking, and cleaning or you work a minimum wage job.

Chicken thigh: $8/bag, let's call it $1.50 for the thigh, there's at least six of them in there. Marinaded with .25¢ worth of Italian dressing and grilled.

Box of smoked gouda mac&cheese (this is real cheese goo, not powder) $2. Add .50¢ for milk, butter, and black pepper to dress it up further.

A bag of frozen brussels sprouts: $1.75

That's $6 for a meal I'd consider excessive and fancy home fare; that mac&cheese could feed two people, it could easily just be noodles with butter and parm for even cheaper. This is hardly rice-and-beans or oliver twist orphan slop.

For another dollar, you could add grilled sweet mini peppers.

Cooking all this is hardly rocket science, if a human can't bother to take the 30 minutes to prepare food for themselves and would rather waddle to the wackarnolds, I don't have much sympathy for their plight.

More comments

The cost savings feel minimal on a per meal basis

What? A pizza for "one" (10 inches) from a chain pizza joint in town is $20 before any delivery fees.

I just checked Dominos and it offered me a 14 inch supreme pizza (named something else) for $20.99, which is twice the size of a 10 inch, and that's without any of the discount offers they usually have.

My local Walgreens regularly sells 10 inch frozen pepperoni pizzas at 2 for $12, so that's still more than 67% more expensive, before taking tips into account. And Walgreens is actually more expensive than Whole Foods which I don't go to as often because it's farther away, where they regularly do 2 for $10.

And that's considering a near-equivalent pre-packaged, ready-to-heat product. The cost savings tend to be far greater if you're willing to start from lower-level ingredients and if you're willing to accept food at merely high-quality, not restaurant-quality (which isn't necessarily high-quality, but certainly has certain qualities that home-cooked meals tend to lack).

14" Domino's "ultimate pepperoni" is $26 plus $6 delivery to my house.

It's like you live in the third world. Tonight, I had a 16" pepperoni from a local place that was featured by Guy Fieri for $23. 33% bigger, approximately a hundred times tastier, and $3 less.

Ironically, the pizza in the third world is much cheaper.

Put yourself in the mind of a poor New Yorker. You've just acquired a bunch of fresh ingredients for cooking. Now take them back to your apartment. Your tiny, shitty apartment, with multi decade old cooking appliances, lack of cookware, and then when you finish out how to microwave the meal to completion you can serve them on your non-existent dishes and wash those non-existent dishes by hand in your sink because you don't have a working dish washer. Do we all see the problem? You have to be rich to afford a nice enough place to cook for yourself in New York. Even giving away food for free will not solve this problem.

I've lived in a large city pretty much my entire adult life so far (mercifully I'm moving out in a couple of months), one that is not unlike NYC in a lot of ways. I don't think this is that much of a real problem. Most apartments in those cities have at least a stove/oven. In most of those cities, old unkillable appliances that are decades old but still very functional are in circulation and if you know a few people you can generally get one for free (if you supply the labor of moving it) or very cheap. If not, you can get a cheap single burner resistive cooktop, I see one for 15$CAD on walmart from a brand (not a good brand, but a brand). You can probably get one cheaper in a pawn shop, or if you take a trip to chinatown and look around the stores there. The small, cramped, cluttered stores especially. Pots, pans, utensils, plates, again go to Chinatown and check the stores there. I'd bet for 10$ you can leave with a pot and a pan and at least one plate and one set of utensils. Or a dollar store will have some. If you want better quality, head to a thrift store and get a second hand one. As for doing dishes, I've lived 20 years without a dishwasher, it's fine really. My guess is that the entire set of what you need to cook a basic meal can be had for under 50$. I wouldn't be surprised if you could get all of it under 40$. A cooktop (portable if need be), one pot, one pan, a stirring spoon, a spatula, a cooking knife (doesn't need to be chef's knife), a plate, a bowl, a fork, knife and spoon.

The problem, and I agree there is a problem and it's not the availability of fresh food, is motivation management. Ultimately cooking is, most days for most people, not motivating. There's other things they would rather be doing, and if there isn't they likely have little energy left after their day to put into it. I don't want to say the poor are uniquely lazy, it's not that simple. I'm pretty lazy quite often too. But poor people live in an environment that doesn't help them be very motivated either. Some people are uniquely self-motivated; great for those people, even if they start at the very bottom of the economic ladder, they tend to be able to climb up a few rungs over their lifetime and that's great. Most people aren't like that. They need to have grown up in a good nurturing environment that kept them focused on doing annoying things even if they are annoying to do to keep doing it as an adult. If when you were young your parents (if you're lucky enough to have grown up with both of them) worked double-shifts at the depression and alcoholism factory, your chances aren't great.

So the problem is not that people don't have enough spoons, but that they don't have enough spoons?

Ultimately cooking is, most days for most people, not motivating.

This is so foreign to me. I love to cook, if I’m busy and stressed cooking is a nice relaxer

I wish I was like that. For me, most cooking apart from stuff like barbecuing or really going all out while entertaining is just another unpleasant chore I need to complete in order to eat, indistinguishable from doing the dishes.

I love cooking when I'm inspired. I'm inspired between once and three times a week. The rest of the time, it's a chore I would do without if I could, and too often I do.

It was like that for me before. My wife and I would regularly do our "date nights" by cooking a blue apron together. With three hangry kids running around it changes things. My one year old is nearly inconsolable if there is not food waiting on the table as soon as she gets home. My two older kids will just fight and then raid the pantry for junky snacks that ruin their appetite for anything vaguely healthier later.

With three hangry kids running around it changes things.

I wouldn't know. I have 5 kids running around.

Maybe I'm doing life wrong.

I guess mileage may vary. I have not lived in a large city like that. The friends that I had who lived there had all those complaints. And maybe yes it doesn't take much to do a setup to allow for cooking. But it is a one time hurdle that still has to be jumped over, so I'd at least add it to the behavior stack.

I had been about to write a whole thing about the hassle of cooking. I ran out of time and wrapped up the comment. So I heavily agree with you. I have a family of 5 and I am the primary cook in the house. We still end up eating out 2 to 7 times a week (I know that is a big variance, but lots of variance in my life right now). The home cooked meals are as simple and time saving as I can make them. I'm throwing pasta in a big pot, putting pre-breaded frozen chicken in an air fryer, and using microwave ready vegetable packs. And sometimes I'm skipping those second two things. On the harder side sometimes I am making meal kits from hello fresh that take like 1.5 hours. I'm trying to make this as easy on myself as possible and it is still a huge mental strain and stressor all week every week. At this moment I am typing this comment rather than figuring out what I'm gonna do for dinner tonight since the fridge is barren. I do actually enjoy cooking and making things, but that is something i want to do once or twice a week when I have lots of spare time.

My brother in Christ, you need to embrace crock-pots.

My oldest daughter has the most annoying preference where she doesn't like different kinds of food items touching each other on her plate.

By making five fully separate food items I can usually satisfy all the kid preferences and still make something a little different for the adults.

My wife and I certainly love crockpot items, and I use them all the time for making host size meals

Yeah, poor kids in the Bronx don't have those sort of preferences, or if they do they get beat with the cooking spoon till they don't.

AFAIK there weren't even minor beatings for my father or his five siblings, but they're not necessary; reportedly "you don't get seconds unless you finish before there's nothing left, and no there are no snacks in the house" worked well enough to get everybody to generally eat what they were served, and quickly.

I don't do this myself and can't recommend this as a parenting style unless you're poor enough that food wastage is serious business, though. It doesn't actually get the kid to internalize healthy eating, and it might be a bit psychologically scarring. For the rest of his life my dad was always first in any line for food, and yet his idea of "vegetables" worth selecting voluntarily never expanded past corn and iceberg lettuce. His grandkids vary but even the pickiest isn't nearly that bad.

Corporal punishment against my kids for not eating food feels wrong to me.

I remember having food arguments with my parents as a kid. I went to bed hungry a few nights, but I still never learned to like broccoli.

I also do not recommend adopting the parenting habits of poor families in the Bronx, just pointing out the distance in experience. I was a horrifically picky eater growing up, but kids often grow out of it (it helped, also, to grow up in the first generation to learn that broccoli, brussels sprouts, etc. could actually be delicious if you char them instead of mushifying them).

My oldest daughter has the most annoying preference where she doesn't like different kinds of food items touching each other on her plate.

Is she picky otherwise? I've wondered about this preference and how it relates to a desire for order versus a meme picked up. Because the meme is out there, it is not uncommon.

Also, come on. Gumbo is clearly one ingredient with rice as the other. Be reasonable!

My wife is German and had the same preference when she was young, she still sort of has the preference, but can get over it mostly.

And yes my daughter is very picky otherwise. Mostly she judges with her eyes a lot, but if we can convince her to try a thing there is more chance of her liking it. Hilariously got her to try my medium rare steak at a restaurant one time, and now she loves steak. Anything vaguely "spicy" is a hard no. I'm not like a huge spice freak. Jalepenos are generally spicy but not too spicy to me. But she considers things spicy that I can't taste any spiciness in. Any hint of pepper (as in salt and pepper) is too spicy.

If it was up to her I'm sure she'd be happy to eat the same thing day in and day out. I've made her a PB&J for lunch at camp every day this summer, no sign of her getting sick of it. She'd happily eat pasta (with butter), chicken nuggets (with ketchup), and (cooked) broccoli every day for dinner. Or at least she did it for a week before I gave up the experiment and thought I should maybe feed her different things for her own health.

But she considers things spicy that I can't taste any spiciness in. Any hint of pepper (as in salt and pepper) is too spicy.

One thing to keep in mind is that kids are typically much more sensitive to food than adults are, due to a combination of more taste buds, thinner and more delicate membranes, and lack of desensitization from exposure. Spiciness in particular is quite literally a measure of how much of a chemical irritant a food is and while tolerance can be trained, children raised in milder food cultures usually don't get enough exposure to develop a tolerance for quite some time.

More comments

I second the crock pot and more generally, large batch cooking (though I suppose a lot of stuff is batched when it's for 5) as much as possible. There are lots of beans/rice/meat/vegetables that are set & forget and will make your house smell amazing when you get home. An oven roasted chicken on a bed of vegetables also goes a long way.

Also pressure cookers like Instant Pot can give you comparable-ish results to a crock-pot in a fraction of the time.

Is it because you want them to be less obese and more healthy? Well good news, we have a solution for that, they are called GLP-1s.

It may work to bluntly reduce obesity, but that's just fiddling with calories. It doesn't replace an actually healthy diet with fewer harmful additives, more varied vitamins and proteins, etc.

You have to be rich to afford a nice enough place to cook for yourself in New York. Even giving away food for free will not solve this problem.

I seem to recall reading that expectations of home cooking vary a lot, and that in big Asian cities (Singapore, Taipei, Tokyo) in particular home cooking isn't the norm. But those cities have relatively affordable, quick restaurant options. But last I checked, that isn't really an affordable option in NYC (uncertain about Europe). It's at least worth considering if that could be an option in the West.

It's very unlikely, for the simple reason that Asian cities are very OK with ruthlessly minimizing labour costs in a way NYC is notoriously not. Wages in these places are a lot lower for the sorts of people who work selling hot food(and Asian style food is also typically cheaper per serving than American style- rice is a lot cheaper than burgers), and this is accepted because orientals think renting a closet to live in is ok for low skill workers.

A big thing is density and zoning. Asian cities let hole the in walls and snack carts operate in a way New York doesn't. And a studio apartment is cheaper in almost all of the big Asian cities then New York. A fry cook in Tokyo is living much better than one in New York despite the lower wage.

Speaking of "food deserts", the New Yorker of all outlets decided to run a piece a week ago countering the common complaints from the usual suspects about them: https://archive.is/20260727102910/https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/08/03/food-justice-undone-hanna-garth-book-review

The way I see this going is for it to end up being a giant shoplifting subsidization scheme. If there's no profit motive, none of the employees or managers have any reason to care about shoplifting, and any politician who doesn't want to be seen as an alt-right fascist isn't going to want to crack down on it either. I expect the shelves to be emptied out by looters just brazenly and without even trying to hide it walking in, loading up bags, and walking out, leaving the store barren and useless until the next time it restocks. This is just going to be a massive welfare scheme that siphons taxes into the pockets of thieves.

There is not a lot of shoplifting prevention motive at other stores either. After a frustrating Amazon return experience, I told a WF employee I was just going to go steal some ingredients because Bezos owed me. They said that was fine, so I did it.

There is not a lot of shoplifting prevention motive at other stores either.

You are lucky I suppose. And I don't know how good is Whole Foods but Target is known to be good at preventing shoplifting: https://slate.com/life/2026/07/shoplifting-walmart-target-amazon-retail-florida.html

There's still some limit. There can't not be, because money comes from somewhere and capitalists gonna capitalist. Stores that take fewer losses than it would cost to hire security mostly don't bother. Some stores do hire security (There's a Walmart near me that we call Ghettomart because it's in a poor neighborhood and sees all sorts of poor people, and has security guards near the front). Stores that take enough losses to outweigh their profits close down, because they're not profitable. Not arresting the criminals and doing literally nothing isn't the same, the closing down is just a lot more subtle and less obviously connected to the crime from the outside.

Now this is a real question: is it ethical to shoplift from Whole Foods to collect on a debt if Amazon owes you money and refuses to pay?

The scheme is basically it will be a private grocery store whose land costs are covered by the government and in response they must offer certain items 30% discounted.

So the operator has an incentive to avoid shop lifters. But the operator also has an incentive to minimize the supply of the 30% discounted items.

Hmmm. Okay so it won't endlessly funnel taxes into shoplifter, it will just go out of business due to shoplifting and/or vandalism for the same reason all the other grocery stories in the area did (as far as I can tell that's the main reason food deserts occur).

So it's just going to be a giant misuse of public funds operation, like New York seems content to produce without stop for centuries now?

Nothing ever happens, truly.

Yep

It will be interesting to see if the Mamdani administration prefers shortages, or if they prefer lines. Each way has its pros and cons.

I expect the shelves to be emptied out by looters just brazenly and without even trying to hide it walking in, loading up bags, and walking out, leaving the store barren and useless until the next time it restocks.

This has been predicted sufficiently often that I predict that the NYC government will be prepared with defenses to prevent this. A politician can't be seen cracking down on this shoplifting due to the optics, but a politician can still crack down on it without being seen, and Mamdani certainly has a great incentive to crack down on such shoplifting. It would have to just be organized by a politician's orders by private citizens who have no credible link to the politician or his associates or to any organization, and it would have to be performed far away enough from the marts such that journalists can't get bad-looking photos, or journalists would have to be kept sufficiently away. An informal perimeter around each mart where private citizens police both journalists and the types of people who seem likely to loot seem like a decent solution for any sufficiently charismatic politician who wants to create the perception of these marts succeeding.

And that's just me spitballing; I'm sure a real politician who has real experience with power and optics and the time and incentives to use them could come up with better methods for cracking down on the looting while avoiding the bad optics.

In New York these people are called thé guardian angels and they’re loyal to Curtis Sliwa, an opponent of Mamdani.

Average age of a Guardian Angel: 73 years old.

Huh, Mamdani may be laying down the groundwork for the source material of a modernized 21st century remake of Gangs of New York.

And here I was expecting Escape from New York.

The latter is a sequel to the former.

Interesting proposal, a squad of goons operating in a legal gray area re: the state’s monopoly on violence, for the purpose of abetting the political fortunes of an avowed socialist. Pink-ertons, if you will.

Pink-ertons, if you will.

Here, take this groan of approbation!

... I don’t think AAQC's are appropriate for puns, but damn that was good.

If I were Mamdani I would let shoppers mob the store and simply make them do it in a semi-"controlled" way. The rush just prove what demand there is for State Grocery and how we need to expand the program, what a huge success. This argument will work on exactly the people it needs to work on.

If there's no profit motive, none of the employees or managers have any reason to care about shoplifting

None of the employees in any normal store have any reason to care about it, either, other than the threat of losing their jobs for not tackling it, which is unchanged here. Their wages aren't based on profits the store makes.

Plenty of low level employees do care, in the sense of "Fuck you, I have to do this shit to get my stuff. Why should your defectbot ass get it for free?"

The employees who don't have that attitude are usually the ones getting let go within a few months.

Nobody hates shoplifters like a low-wage clerk who has to watch it every day and isn't allowed/able to do anything. One time in Chicago I thought the kid at the counter was about to launch into that one Chris Rock bit.

No minimum wage cashier is tackling a tweaking drug addict shoplifter, I guarantee you.

Plenty would do it if they were just allowed to, if for no other reason than because winning a fight is a good way to get laid.

I once got into a scuffle with a breakfast thief at my hotel, because I was having a bad day and wanted an excuse to fight someone, and he kindly volunteered.

I think you vastly overestimate the number of people who are willing to risk injury to defend the honour and corporate profits of Aldi for minimum wage.

I stand by my assertion. There are plenty of young men in minimum wage roles who would love the chance to give thieves a good beating if the only risk were physical; if they knew for a fact that they would not be arrested or fired or sued after the act, but given a pat on the back and told "good job!".

Take a look at /r/crazyfuckingvideos. You can see several examples of employees fighting back against robbers, and people in the comment section cheering them for it. It is not in the nature of men to stand by with folded hands and meekly watch some asshole get away with defecting against the social order; it is as infuriating as it is emasculating.

Police and judges exist to protect criminals. Honest people know how to keep order; lynchings.

Idk, I occasionally see thieves running from cops at subway stations, amd there are always at least a couple of us willing to run up and try to trip/tackle the scumbag, purely out of a sense of civic responsibility and/or the thrill of playing Batman for a few seconds. I've plenty ofvideos of random clerks at little independent convenience stores (not owners) pulling guns on/beating the shit out of would-be thieves. Take away the explicit "if you fight a shoplifter we'll fire you for insurance reasons" and you'd be surprised how many good samaritans are willing to dish out a little street justice.

Rephrase it as "defend the principles of civil society and a morally sanctioned opportunity to be hostile to an asshole". Karens work at Aldi, too.

Man, I hate living a polite and well-ordered society of well-behaved people.

So... did you get laid?

Well, no. But I did manage to stop the thief from stealing breakfast, and, in the end, isn't that what's really important?

Now I'm curious -- how did you, um -- identify this breakfast bandit? Like a smelly hobo was in front of you loading his bindle full of scrambled eggs? Dominating the toaster while swilling cheap wine?

Enquiring minds want to know!

More comments

For the most part you don't have to actually interact. The videos of utterly brazen thieves are the tip of the iceberg. The other 90% will bail to try later or somewhere else if a staffer is just hanging around suspiciously close. "Hey, can I help you with anything?" is the best practical defense.

None of the employees in any normal store have any reason to care about it, either, other than the threat of losing their jobs for not tackling it, which is unchanged here.

It is changed, in the owner cares, the owner hires the manager presumably putting pressure on him to care. The problem with the public sector is that especially for people who don't live next to them, these issues are so diffuse voters don't care enough to vote across ideology. Until things get very very bad, at which point the solution can end up being the equivalent of a shock treatment. So the "manager" rarely gets pressure to care.

EDIT: Someone pointed out as a response elsewhere in the thread the operators of the store still would care about profitability, then in this case yeah, disregard my comment.

The usual defence of shoplifting is that stores price in shrinkage. So if the NYC city administration is going to be paying for all this, then the for-profit operators can just pass the costs of the shoplifting on to them. Certainly, if I were going to sign a contract for this, I'd be sure to load all or as much of the liability onto the city as I could get away with.

If stores price in shrinkage then that just means the shoplifter is stealing from their neighbor who does not shoplift and is paying 3% more because you are stealing.

Honestly seems worse to me. Better to steal from evil corp than your neighbor John. And economics would tend to indicate you are stealing from John.

Yes, all shoplifting is theft from the community. But that's a second order consequence, so it's functionally inscrutable High Arcana to the people who need to hear it.

I think it's great. As policy it's terrible, but it's the kind of local experimentation we should encourage. Then, if and when it's a disaster, it's a useful data point for people to point to.

Food deserts are kind of a meme, but I can agree that it's on the whole good to make sure every place has a nearby convenient grocery store to do conventional shopping and create low skill jobs, even if uneconomic. The fix for that is targeted tax exemptions that will be credibly maintained for a long time and a greater level of police presence. This isn't too different from Mamdani's proposal, except it's more open to any entrant and is still subject to a lightened market discipline.

The thing with having an advanced society is having technocratic government that is efficient and knows what works and what does not work. And this idea in our technocracy is solidly in the does not work camp. I don’t think you should say old failed ideas can never be tried again but you shouldn’t do that very often. The point of education is to develop best practices.

I suppose the initial five stores are the pilot scheme to see how it goes, but if he really wants to help the hard-pressed lower-income families, then there needs to be way more than five and a lot of thought into "who runs this exactly, how much will it cost exactly, will it bring jobs to the local area, and what goods will be sold there exactly?" No good selling discounted carrots and heads of cabbage if nobody wants to buy them. Cheap(er) eggs and milk, yeah that could work, but prices there are being shoved up by general costs of production. So mandating that "30% below market prices" means either (a) markups on the non-mandated staples or (b) the city makes up the difference, which whoo, that could come to a pretty penny.

Aldi and Lidl seem to be expanding in NYC so that demonstrates that it can be done and that there's a market, I'm curious as to what exactly Mamdani's city-owned stores are supposed to be doing. Will they be even cheaper than the discount stores? What is the plan?

Maybe someone should just create a program where the government qualifies low income participants and then subsidizes their purchases of food from grocers. Some kind of supplemental nutrition assistance program. Seems simpler and more efficient with less opportunity for corruption.

I don't think sympathetic media, to the extent that they are able, would treat it as a useful example. It might get reported if it fails, but it'd probably be treated in an isolated way rather than in a general sense that "these ideas don't really work."

Outlets won't even have to lie to defend it either because there will always, always be an external cause ready for use that places the blame elsewhere. The defense will always write itself. "The idea was good, the conditions were wrong."

That wasn't Real Communal Groceries!

I think it's great. As policy it's terrible, but it's the kind of local experimentation we should encourage. Then, if and when it's a disaster, it's a useful data point for people to point to.

It doesn't work this way. The official results of the policy are whatever the "experimenters" wish it to be. We saw this with the Seattle minimum wage (study showed disaster, official results are it's great) and plastic bag bans in NJ and CA (studies by proponents showed more plastic waste, not less, no relaxation of bans contemplated) for instance. Experimentation with a priori dumb shit is only good if we're going to get accurate results and act on them. Otherwise, "experimentation" is just an excuse to do obviously dumb shit.

My prediction is that one of two things will happen by August 4, 2029:

  1. It will have been cancelled without implementation because of all the obvious issues with it. Key point here is the cancellation: this prediction encompasses it being cancelled because of all the wreckers/Trump/whatever.

  2. It will go ahead as planned, run into all the issues, and it will be widely perceived as a failure, after a long stream of articles by the Post etc. The national mainstream media will mostly memory hole it, but no one will bring it up as a Mamdani success. There will be no other major cities that will create Mamdani-style groceries.

maybe the outcome is that nobody bids and mamdami blames those lousy capitalists

Somebody will bid, even if it's a company the DSA spins up to do it.

Oh dear trying to imagine DSA leftists running a grocery store when they cant manage a coffee shop…

I am tempted to link that infamous clip of the DSA convention where, genuinely God bless the girl doing the moderating, she had the patience of Job dealing with the, um, diverse and inclusive set of members making contributions to the discussion.

"I'm sorry, the comrade on till 3 has been triggered by their sensory issues and the use of gendered language, so we will be closing down that cash register until further notice. If you are not using the self-service checkout, kindly identify yourself with your preferred pronouns when paying by library card".

Good idea or disaster waiting to happen?

I don't know if it's a disaster waiting to happen, I would venture probably funding and some glazing arcicles can paper over a failure for as long as the media feels like they should support this (as long as keeping the socialists on-side against Trump). Maybe excessively fund one or two nicer ones, potemkin grocery stores if you will, so the media can go and film reports there about what a success it is.

There are domains where the question of whether private vs public is better not fully resolved, or at least where there are significant zone of shadow, ambiguity or compromise. Healthcare, public security, etc... Grocery stores and food supply is not one of them. Grocery stores is an issue that has been thoroughly adjudicated during the Cold War and capitalism has been found to win it so overwhelmingly that within the lore it's a large contributor to the end of the Soviet Union (you know the one, the 80s story about Yelstin's visit to a random American grocery store). Food availability, distribution, accessibility across the socioeconomic spectrum has been found to be massively better in market economies compared to command economies. That market works about as efficiently as anyone could hope. If private operators are unwilling to serve a specific market, it's not because they are unwilling to take meager profits or because poor people's money is icky, it's because there are not profits to be made at all for some reason. There are grocery stores in some really horrible neighborhoods, and if it was possible to run them profitably in some other horrible neighborhoods, someone would. As you mention, they need to consider and fix why some places just aren't profitable to run a grocery store in. Throwing public money at the issue is not going to fix it.

Average gross margins for grocery stores in NYC is 1,6% on total revenue of around $50 billion a year. The proposed stores should offer unachievable 30% discount with revenue of around $50 million, one thousandth of overall grocery store market volume. It cannot work for a problem at hand, it is not designed to do it.

If he is smart, then he will offer some selected number of discounted goods with limited volume per person as with normal shops, who use this promo tactic to attract buyers. He can then make photo ops with happy customers, while the rest of the store will be competitively priced in order to prevent empty shelves and related PR disaster. It will work splendidly for the main purpose: generate positive PR and reward people in his circle who will be involved in this money hog.

reward people in his circle who will be involved in this money hog.

That's my cynical take on it, but you all know my stony, cold, black, wizened heart 😁

What Mandami's grocery stores point out most is the total control he and the DSA have over the narrative. The press absolutely loves all this, whereas would a Republican or even Eric Adams try it, they'd be 24/7 hating on it.

How command economies with fixed price levels actually work is shortages- there’s simply none of whatever item is popular and unprofitable available. Grocery net profit isn’t high enough for this to be a short list, either- thé grocery stores will feature lots of empty shelves.

The opposite is true from a different vantage point. All businesses that aren’t ran horizontally are essentially command economies from the top.

I can also relate a different experience of my own back when I was younger and was an assistant manager at a local pharmacy/grocery store. Because vendors paid us to house their products and paid an additional premium for front row shelving space (this is what happens at virtually every grocery store you will ever go to), when the advertisement papers for the month went out to customers at the front of the store, pressure is put on all of us to upsell the customer on all the particular items resellers paid a spot in the advert for. Well, this is where one day things got interesting…

Naturally not every item that goes on sale or gets heavily promoted sells. Depending on what sells how much and when and where, products can easily get pushed into the background, cause price fluctuations or become delisted entirely. Anyway, there was another local store of ours that was being managed and the product was grossly underachieving its target for the month early on, based on their estimates. Well I came up with an idea to pair it with a different item we had that was about to go on sale (different from the ad sheet), create a table for it and sell it as a combo. It worked so unbelievably well it lost the store money. We sold out so quickly, huge amounts of customers were coming in and asking for rain checks on the item at it’s on-sale price, even after the sale had ended because our inventories couldn’t keep up. I ended up getting into trouble for that. One of the few times in my life I executed a task so well it actually completely backfired on me. My argument back to our director was that this came more as a failure of our policy when it came to honoring rain checks than it did as a sales pitch. Our task was to sell the item and you can bet your ass that I sold that item alright. Though when I was processing our paperwork for the month and was reviewing the numbers for everything I definitely scratched my head and spent considerable time reviewing things and said to myself “how in the fuck did this happen?…”

This is the Moldbug thesis: everything that actually works is a vertical command structure restrained/guided by price mechanisms. With, uh, certain fluctuations, because the price mechanism is a cruel mistress.

Agree with him entirely on the first point, 100%. I’m more of a Listian-Historicist and Post-Keynesian, economically speaking. I think fulfillment of demand should be the primary national objective of the economy rather than pure profit maximization.

I'm a great believer in the Hamiltonian-Listian outlook too. However, in the long run, price is the only true discipline in economics, and you can't count on wise men forever.

True, I don’t think you can do away with price (nor do I think it’s desirable), but without some overall management of the economy or state coordination, unrestrained capitalism leads to horrible suboptimal outcomes in numerous places. Let the market do what the market can adequately optimize for in the short-run and medium term. Let the state do what it’s good at in the long-run.

Mayor Mamdani's grocery stores. Good idea or disaster waiting to happen?

Good idea, but needs little tweaking. The perfect, universally popular bipartisan compromise would be:

Nation wide federal government owned grocery stores, selling only Israeli products.

You will eat hummus made of apartheid and genocide, and you will like it.

Mamdani Marts where all products are legally mandated to be sourced from Israeli companies at a cost that guarantees those companies profit would be so hilarious that I want to see it happen, US Constitution be damned. Bonus points if the buyer ID program is modified to only allow verified, practicing, devout Muslims to be buyers.

"I will never eat bugs!"

"Not even Israeli bugs? Why are you so anti-semitic?"

If you are the private operator, you have a strong incentive to ensure there are frequently shortages with respect to the 30% discounted items.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats