Mamdani’s Traveling Magic Show

I wrote yesterday that progressivism is a fraud perpetrated on the people. I also linked that argument to the contemporary Democrat Party, which has unarguably adopted increasingly socialist-lite policies over the decades. That, in turn, has helped fuel the metastasizing of the Democratic Socialists of America—the communist tumor growing inside the party.

This is an observable phenomenon that demonstrates there is no such thing as being “a little socialist,” just as there is no such thing as being “a little pregnant.” Thomas Sowell famously observed that there are no solutions, only tradeoffs. Once the process begins, socialist-lite policies create new tradeoffs that require still more government intervention. Eventually, the logic of the system drives it toward greater control of the means of production—not necessarily because that was the original intention, but because the system cannot sustain itself otherwise.

Magic Mamdani has now announced that the Metropolis Marxists have finally broken the evil capitalists’ grip on grocery prices in New York City and are going to reduce prices by 30 percent in an industry where profit margins average roughly 3 percent.

This reveals collectivism’s greatest enemy.

Math.

Economies are systems, not isolated points of commerce. They consist of countless interconnected layers stretching from raw materials to finished goods. Cutting prices by 30 percent at one point in that chain does not magically reduce the cost of producing those goods. It simply means someone else must absorb the difference. In practice, that “someone” is the taxpayer, because every business farther up the supply chain must still be paid market prices for its labor, materials, transportation, and capital.

Collectivism solves that problem in only one way: by taking over more of the supply chain. Not because government planners suddenly become experts at farming, food processing, manufacturing, trucking, or resource extraction, but because the illusion cannot survive unless they gradually control the entire value chain.

Once government subsidizes a single stage of production, private competitors find themselves operating in an increasingly distorted marketplace. If government-run stores offer only a limited selection of products at artificially low prices, private grocers must either match those prices on the subsidized items while raising prices elsewhere to preserve their razor-thin margins, or simply close their doors altogether.

If private businesses fail, demand shifts to the government-owned stores. That, in turn, requires government to stock more products to serve its newly captive customers, which demands even greater taxpayer subsidies. If it refuses to expand its offerings, consumers are forced to drive farther to find what they need—or simply do without. Ironically, the process produces exactly what the political left claims to oppose: so-called “food deserts.”

The math never works for the consumer.

The truth is that it never does. Collectivism doesn’t eliminate costs; it merely conceals them.

Think of how well Obamacare turned out.

As Thomas Jefferson warned, “…this is the tendency of all human governments. A departure from principle in one instance becomes a precedent for a second; that second for a third; and so on, till the bulk of society is reduced to be mere automatons of misery, and to have no sensibilities left but for sinning and suffering.”

Marx himself understood this dynamic. He did not present socialism as a finished destination. He viewed it as an incomplete transitional stage leading toward global communism.

At least he was honest enough to acknowledge that the scheme could function only if everyone, everywhere, became part of the system. He understood that every input and every output ultimately had to be brought under centralized control.

But people are not machines, and nature is not a manufacturing plant.

Independence isn’t the goal, compliance is – and that is why coercion, force and authoritarianism is always employed, and because they are, all morality other than what is necessary to enact and enforce the government “plan” must be ignored.

Once the journey begins, you don’t have to travel very far before you realize you’re riding one of Mamdani’s free buses, headed wherever the comrade behind the wheel decides to take you, whether you wanted to go there or not.

There are no off-ramps on the road to serfdom.