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Government run grocery stores and slopulism
I am not an American and don't live in NYC, but I've recently been thinking about the news of there being government run grocery stores in NYC. In my mind, NYC is in at least one way a heart of capitalism in the world, so this at least has some symbolic significance. On a more serious note, I find it interesting what the idea that government-run grocery stores would fix anything reveals about its thinkers.
If you speak to most people, even very intelligent ones, they tend to have narrative-driven models of reality. For example, if you go on Reddit, talk to a co-worker or whatever about health insurance companies or grocery stores, they'll often make these entities responsible for high prices for groceries or healthcare, claiming greed, manipulation and dishonesty in some fashion.
While it is absolutely true that these entities operate out of greed and not e.g. compassion, if one looks at the claims, they are often weak at best. Both grocery stores and health insurance companies have rather low margins (typically 1-3% of net margin for grocery stores, 2-5% for health insurers) in most places. The idea that the only thing preventing us from a post-scarcity, food and healthcare-too-cheap-to-meter society are somehow corporations made up of morally abhorrent people seems to quite attractive to a lot of people.
While both grocery stores and health insurance companies do have plenty of issues, my personal view is that they act in as kind of stand-ins for people's rage; between choosing to believe that either:
a. Healthcare is an enormously and ever-more expensive thing in most of the world, with 15-20% of GDP (!) going to healthcare in the US and usually >10% in most developed nations, because people's expectations of healthcare service are ever-rising and people believe that healthcare is a "human right" and the fact that it's such an expensive thing and requires a lot of staff (health services are the number 1 employer in a lot of US states now) means that when you need healthcare, it'll cost you a lot and insurance premiums reflect that. Similarly with grocery stores; food is actually cheaper than ever as measured by % of people's income being spent on it
b. There are evil people colluding to drive up the prices of essential goods
most people choose b.)
Even most smart people! I have some very sharp colleagues who are economically extremely illiterate and I work in quantitative finance, a field where one would hope people understand things about supply and demand.
And this extends to the right as well! Most populists-right movements have been exerting more, not less, command upon the economy; even Mottizens veer into this, seeing working in finance as parasitising upon society rather than allocating where goods and services ought to go.
I think this sort of feel-good, narrative-driven politics is ultimately an issue simply because reality is not narrative-driven; the progression to the modern world has broadly shown that in a lot of cases, reality is random, cruel, senseless, not governed by human-compatible narratively satisfying laws. There isn't necessarily a cabal; a lot of things are driven by emergent phenomena.
However, the "grocery stores are not evil camp" tends to have shitty marketing (perhaps due to not thinking in terms of attractive narratives itself too much) and loses to people like Zoran Mamdani. Indeed, that is broadly the story of populism and demagoguery, which seems to recently have gained a lot of ground in a lot of places in the world. Maybe the internet and especially things like TikTok makes small soundbites do better these days.
I think, having looked a little at the notion and having had people discuss it with me, that the grocery stores are symbolic and really don't mean anything more than "Mayor Mamdani making good on campaign promises!"
There are going to be one store in each of the five boroughs, with the 30% below market price cap on certain staple goods. That's not going to do much of anything. For a family wanting/needing to reduce price of grocery bill, the expense and time in getting to the one store in the borough may well cost as much or more than going to the local big chain supermarket or grocery store and buying what's on offer there.
I won't say it's posturing but it's in the service of his 'man of the people' image and once he's out of office, I fully expect these stores to shut down and no more to be said about "groceries for the people, of the people, by the people".
It is posturing, but not to "the people."
It is posturing to the activist class, whose idea of poor is stuck in early 19th century, who imagine that the poor are starving and even 30% discount on bread and potatoes would alleviate their plight. Actual poor people never asked for this.
The average DSA voter? Or rather, I guess I should say party member going by this (college educated, but in poorly-paid job). "At last! Now I can afford to eat for the week, all week!"
I shouldn't laugh. Lots of people relying on food banks and help from charitable organisations. Just that the Mamdani Marts (as I've seen a reference calling them) are not the solution.
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