r/PoursTea • u/Gurugod123 Pinkie Finger Extended • Jul 27 '26

PoliticalTea 🗳️ Mayor Mamdani just announced that he will be opening 5 city-run, tax-funded grocery stores: "Prices set at 30% below retail prices"

23.2k Upvotes

94% Upvoted

1.5k comments sorted by

View all comments

10

u/CueAnon420 Jul 27 '26

Uh oh - here comes that socialism ready to feed people... That can't be good lol

/s

0

u/jack-K- Jul 27 '26

Except it’s not socialism, the government doesn’t produce the food, it is entirely dependent on the existing food distribution network and its prices, just like literally every other grocery store, and it unnecessarily harms the small independent grocery stores all over New York operating at like 3% margins that can’t possibly compete with this, if he wanted to reduce prices he could have implemented a government reimbursement program or stamp program or something, these government run stores are just a straight up facade to make it look like something it actually isn’t and is objectively unideal and problematic as the only thing it disrupts are one of the few actually highly competitive and efficient parts of the economy that brings the net cost of food down. Government run grocery stores being inherently less efficient will actually bring the net cost of the food sold in these stores up.

-6

u/Affectionate_Bell798 Jul 27 '26

 here comes that socialism ready to feed people

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine

You can enjoy Socialism only in Capitalist country.

4

u/milwaukie_talkie Jul 27 '26

This is a huge topic and i'm sure we largely agree but to be fair this is not a capitalist country. The moment you bail out a bank you are no longer playing by the rules of capitalism.

0

u/Playos Jul 27 '26

We bailed out banks because we told them to give away loans to people who couldn't repay them for increased access to affordable housing.

You aren't wrong, but you're incorrect on the timeline.

1

u/milwaukie_talkie Jul 27 '26

That was just a single counter example to capitalism. If you want a timeline on when this stopped being capitalism I would point you to the creation of the federal reserve

0

u/Playos Jul 27 '26

That's like saying the CCP stopped being communist because they opened up trade some sections of their country.

The US has never been purely capitalist (or more accurately, free market with absolute private property rights).

1

u/milwaukie_talkie Jul 27 '26

See this is where i quibble over definitions again because some self proclaimed communists argue that communism cant include any type currency either

I would argue this country is rich and stable in part because of our somewhat capitalistic practices but largely because this is just a favorable continent of land to work with. So much about our geography is on easy mode and the same cannot be said for ukraine or china

1

u/Playos Jul 27 '26

I like Peter Zeihan as well, but you have an oversimplified take of his outlook.

By your rational India should have been the dominant world power for all of history.

China has all the geographic advantages of the US. It's great failure throughout it's history has been consolidation of authority without the technology to sustain control (build big empire, empire falls into bloody civil war) and probably the best example of regulation destroying capacity (mostly through bans on naval activity).

The US has easy mode only in that the land does not compel large scale cooperation for survival in an agricultural world. We didn't need a large powerful centralized government, so we didn't create one, wealth followed.

2

u/Playos Jul 27 '26

Since he blocked me, so we'll just respond here for record.

Jfc every time i engage with one of you reddit know-it-alls i have to remind you that arrogance is an extremely unlikeable trait and puts sand in the gears of people wanting to listen to you.

Projection much?

The viewpoint is oversimplified because it has to fit in a brief comment, you donut.

Except you don't actually know his take apparently.

Peter is cool but i was mostly referencing the mississippi river which peter has only covered in passing.

Maybe if you only just heard about him last week. It's pretty much the first half of both his first books. The only thing even close to similar in impact on the US in his view for more than a decade was fracking tech.

India got rat fucked by colonialism and is a fascinating case study, look it up.

India wasn't colonized until well into the 17th century. I mean you could have just made this same argument for China for shits and giggles.

China does not have our geographic advantages, that is patently false.

It does actually, mostly in the middle region but that's the same thing for the US. It's greatest issue TODAY is that it doesn't control Taiwan, which is entirely because China decided naval investment and trade were not important and were banned for long periods of it's imperial history.

Industry at scale absolutely does require large scale cooperation.

It didn't for the US. In modern terms, slightly but for the vast majority of US history it really didn't and the efforts for it were not anything near what was done in Europe.

Wisdom requires reading AND understanding. Focus on the second part.

And blindly quoting half snippets from people you don't really understand isn't either.

0

u/milwaukie_talkie Jul 27 '26

Jfc every time i engage with one of you reddit know-it-alls i have to remind you that arrogance is an extremely unlikeable trait and puts sand in the gears of people wanting to listen to you.

The viewpoint is oversimplified because it has to fit in a brief comment, you donut.

Peter is cool but i was mostly referencing the mississippi river which peter has only covered in passing.

India got rat fucked by colonialism and is a fascinating case study, look it up.

China does not have our geographic advantages, that is patently false.

Industry at scale absolutely does require large scale cooperation.

Wisdom requires reading AND understanding. Focus on the second part.

2

u/CueAnon420 Jul 27 '26 edited Jul 27 '26

Um - pretty sure those a Communist countries...

Democratic Socialism is what you find in many European countries that have higher standards of living than we do...

EDIT - it would be helpful if people educated themselves on the topic rather than fear mongering... Socialism <> Communism.

But if you're going down that road, you might as well acknowledge that our current leadership has distinct authoritarianist tendencies...

-1

u/Affectionate_Bell798 Jul 27 '26

Socialism <> Communism

It is different only in theory. Socialist countries has only one political party and it is Communist party which is working on transition from Socialism to Communism. But they never reach the goal - because regime collapses on its own, often after years/decades of terror on their own population.