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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   4213 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 3, 2026

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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?

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?…”

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