Originally Posted by
Dan Druff
The city-owned grocery store thing is a good example of his naivete.
The grocery store seems like a simple place when you visit as a customer, but it's actually a complex industry where experience matters. For-profit grocery stores have over 100 years experience of inventory control, efficient operation, and customer service. The city of New York has... none of this experience.
And if your response is, "Oh, they'll just hire experienced people to run it, or they'll hire consultants to learn what to do", all you have to do is look at the gambling regulatory bodies which have popped up in states all over the US. Most of these gambling commissions are run by morons with no clue about the industry, and none are interested in consulting with experienced people to teach them what's up. This is even true in Nevada when it comes to anything online-related, or basically anything poker-related.
In short, you should never count on the government to enter an industry as an inexperienced player, and then learn on the job. It always ends in disaster.
Now, let's say Mamdani's plan was to buy existing grocery stores at prices so high that ownership couldn't refuse, and then employed the exact same people to run them without city interference, but with the only difference having the goal to break even rather than turn a profit, and without the burden of rent or utilities payments. That, in theory, could work. But that doesn't appear to be his plan. He thinks he's just going to open city-owned stores and they will naturally end up so cheap that it puts all other stores out of business, and all the residents of NYC will be winners. As I said... very naive.