We Need to Touch the Stove Again to remind US that It's hot: NYC’s Socialist Experiment
New York City is about to become socialism’s laboratory, and the whole country gets to watch the results.
Tomorrow, New York City goes to the polls, and if the polling holds, they’re about to elect their youngest mayor in over a century—a 34-year-old Democratic Socialist named Zohran Mamdani who promises to freeze rent, make buses free, open city-run grocery stores, and raise the minimum wage to $30 an hour by 2030. Oh, and he’ll pay for all this by raising taxes on businesses and anyone earning over a million dollars. Because that’s never backfired before.
I’ve been watching this race with the same morbid fascination you’d have watching someone ignore the “Hot Surface” warning on a stove. You know what’s coming. History knows what’s coming. Economics knows what’s coming. But apparently, we need to learn this lesson again.
Every 20 to 50 years or so, we need a conspicuous and confined experiment with socialism so we can see what it looks like in reality.
THE MAMDANI PHENOMENON
Zohran Mamdani isn’t some fringe candidate squeaking into office on a technicality. He’s leading by double digits. He defeated former Governor Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic primary and is poised to beat both Cuomo, who’s running as an independent, and Republican Curtis Sliwa in Tuesday’s general election. His campaign has mobilized 50,000 volunteers, shattered fundraising records, and energized young voters across the country who see him as a national leader for their generation.
His platform reads like a greatest hits album of socialist policy:
1. Rent freeze on all rent-stabilized units (about 1 million apartments). Not rent control with some flexibility. A freeze. As in, your landlord can’t raise rent. Period.
2. Free city buses. Every bus line in NYC, fare-free. Because nothing signals “this service has value” quite like making it free.
3. City-owned grocery stores. One in each borough, run by the city government, to “drive down grocery prices” through competition with private stores.
4. Universal free childcare. For all New Yorkers, funded by...well, we’ll get to that.
5. $30 minimum wage by 2030. Because if $15 an hour created some problems, surely doubling it will create twice the prosperity, right?
6. 200,000 new affordable housing units. Built by the city, because private developers clearly can’t be trusted to build housing that people can afford.
All of this would be funded by raising taxes on corporations and individuals earning over $1 million annually—a cool $10 billion in new annual tax revenue.
It’s ambitious. It’s comprehensive. It addresses real problems that New Yorkers face every single day.
And it will absolutely, 100%, unequivocally fail to deliver on its promises while creating a cascade of unintended consequences that will take a decade to unwind.
THE NEW SLOGAN
The old Socialist slogan was powerful in its simplicity: “Workers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains.”
The new slogan, if Mamdani and his Democratic Socialist allies were honest, would be: “Trust us, this time, it won’t be a mess.”
Because that’s what every iteration of socialism requires—a belief that this time will be different. That this particular group of democratic socialists in this particular city at this particular moment in history has finally figured out how to make centralized planning, price controls, and government ownership of the means of production work where it’s failed everywhere else it’s been tried.
Venezuela thought they had it figured out. They had elections. They had democratic processes. They had oil wealth to fund their programs. How’d that work out?
The Soviet Union thought they had it figured out. Seventy years of trying to perfect the system. Collapsed under its own weight.
China thought they had it figured out. Then Deng Xiaoping realized the only way to save China was to inject massive doses of capitalism into the economy—which is why China today has billionaires and stock markets alongside its Communist Party rule.
But New York City in 2025? Yeah, this will be different.
THE EXPERIMENT THEORY
Here’s the thing: I don’t think Mamdani’s likely victory is necessarily catastrophic for America. In fact, there might be a silver lining to this particular cloud.
New York City is, in many ways, the perfect petri dish for this experiment. It’s:
Large enough to matter (8.3 million people)
Economically significant enough to generate real data
Geographically confined (you can’t easily escape an island city)
Already so heavily regulated and blue that incremental changes won’t shock the system
Wealthy enough to sustain bad policy for several years before complete collapse
Media-saturated enough that every consequence will be documented in real-time
In other words, NYC is about to become socialism’s laboratory, and the whole country gets to watch the results.
The last time we had a really good, highly visible socialist experiment in America was probably Seattle’s bizarre experiment with their city council in the 2010s, or Detroit’s decades-long decline under one-party progressive rule. But those were either too small or too slow to really capture the national imagination. New York City? That’s a different story. That’s the biggest city in America actively choosing full-throated socialism with its eyes wide open.
Every 20 years or so, we apparently need this. We need a generation that didn’t live through the last failure to touch the stove for themselves. The generation that remembers the 1970s—New York City’s last flirtation with these exact policies—is aging out of the electorate. Young voters today don’t remember when NYC was the crime capital of America, when Times Square was a haven for drugs and prostitution, when the city teetered on the edge of bankruptcy, or when rent control and aggressive tenant protection laws created housing shortages so severe that landlords literally abandoned buildings rather than try to maintain them at controlled rents.
They don’t remember because they weren’t alive. And because they weren’t alive, they’re susceptible to the siren song of “free” stuff and the promise that government can solve all their problems if we just give it enough power and enough money.
So let them learn. Let New York City become the teaching moment for the next generation.
THE ECONOMIC REALITY CHECK
Here’s what’s actually going to happen when Mamdani implements his platform (assuming he can get even half of it through the city council):
Rent Freeze = Housing Crisis
When you freeze rent, you eliminate the incentive for landlords to maintain properties. Why invest $50,000 in a new roof when you can’t raise rent to recoup the cost? Why renovate units when you can’t charge market rates? The result is predictable: property maintenance plummets, housing quality deteriorates, and landlords exit the market when they can.
Meanwhile, demand for rent-stabilized apartments will skyrocket because hey, frozen rent! But supply won’t increase—in fact, it will shrink as landlords convert to condos, find loopholes, or simply stop renting. The waiting list for affordable housing, already years long, will become decades long.
And here’s the kicker: rent freezes don’t help people who aren’t already in rent-stabilized apartments. They create a two-tier system where insiders get a great deal and everyone else pays through the nose—or leaves the city.
Free Buses = Degraded Service
New York City’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority is already struggling with maintenance, safety, and reliability. Making buses free doesn’t magically create more buses, better drivers, or improved routes. What it does create is:
Increased crowding (if it’s free, everyone uses it)
Reduced revenue for maintenance
Higher tax burden on productive residents
Decreased incentive for efficiency (no market signals)
The city will have to replace the lost fare revenue (~$2.6 billion annually for the entire system, a fraction of which is buses, but still substantial) with tax increases. Those taxes come from businesses and high earners—the same people Mamdani is already planning to hit with $10 billion in new taxes. At some point, those people and businesses do the math and leave.
City-Owned Grocery Stores = Subsidized Failure
Government-run grocery stores. In New York City. What could go wrong?
Let me count the ways:
The city has zero expertise in grocery retail
Government employees will run these stores with government efficiency (read: none)
The stores will be overstaffed, inefficient, and expensive to operate
They’ll require ongoing subsidies from taxpayers
They won’t actually compete with private grocers because they’ll be propped up with tax dollars regardless of performance
Private grocers will lobby against unfair government competition
Some private grocers will close, reducing overall options
The government stores will become political footballs with every election
And here’s the fundamental problem: if city-run grocery stores could actually be profitable and efficient, private companies would already be doing it. The reason grocery stores charge the prices they do is because of the costs of operation, supply chains, real estate, labor, and narrow profit margins. The city can’t magically make those costs disappear—they can only hide them in the budget and force taxpayers to cover the losses.
$30 Minimum Wage = Mass Unemployment
This one is just economically illiterate. New York City’s current minimum wage is $16 per hour. Mamdani wants to nearly double it to $30 by 2030.
What happens when you mandate that every entry-level position must pay $30/hour?
Teenagers can’t get summer jobs (employers won’t pay $30/hour for inexperienced workers)
Small businesses can’t compete (they can’t afford the labor costs)
Automation accelerates (robots don’t demand $30/hour)
Job losses mount (especially in restaurants, retail, and service industries)
Prices increase across the board (businesses pass costs to consumers)
Middle-class workers see their wages compressed (someone making $35/hour now is barely above minimum wage)
I’ve written about minimum wage before. It’s a feel-good policy that hurts the very people it’s supposed to help. When you price low-skilled workers out of the market, they don’t magically become high-skilled workers—they become unemployed workers.
The Tax Base Exodus
And here’s where the whole scheme collapses: when you raise taxes by $10 billion on businesses and high earners in a city that already has high taxes, some of those businesses and high earners leave.
They move to New Jersey. They move to Connecticut. They move to Florida or Texas or literally anywhere that doesn’t have a democratic socialist trying to fund his utopian vision by confiscating their earnings.
And when they leave, the tax base shrinks. Which means the revenue doesn’t materialize. Which means the programs can’t be funded. Which means either:
a) The programs get cut (defeating the whole purpose)
b) Taxes get raised even higher (accelerating the exodus)
c) The city goes into debt (kicking the can down the road) d) All of the above
This is what happened in the 1970s. This is what happened in Detroit. This is what happens every single time a city decides that businesses and successful individuals are piggy banks to be broken open for “the common good.”
THE DISCONNECT
Here’s what really bothers me about Mamdani’s platform: it’s built on a fundamental rejection of personal responsibility and individual agency.
Every policy assumes that people are helpless victims of circumstances beyond their control, and that government must step in to solve their problems. Can’t afford rent? Government will freeze it. Can’t afford transportation? Government will make it free. Can’t afford groceries? Government will open stores. Can’t afford childcare? Government will provide it for free. Can’t earn enough? Government will mandate higher wages.
At no point does anyone ask: “What can individuals do to improve their own situations?”
This is the fundamental divide between those who believe in personal agency and those who believe in government solutions. One side says: “Life is hard, circumstances are difficult, but individuals have the power and responsibility to navigate their own path.” The other side says: “Life is hard, circumstances are difficult, therefore government must step in and manage everything for you.”
The first approach builds resilience, self-reliance, and genuine prosperity. The second approach builds dependency, learned helplessness, and eventual collapse.
This principle applies to every aspect of life. Yes, housing is expensive in New York City. But why is it expensive? Because demand far exceeds supply. And why does demand exceed supply? Because zoning laws, building regulations, and tenant protection laws have made it nearly impossible to build new housing at scale. The solution isn’t rent freezes—it’s removing the regulatory barriers that prevent construction.
Yes, transportation is expensive. But why? Because operating costs are high, unions are powerful, and efficiency is low. The solution isn’t free buses—it’s reforming the system to reduce costs and improve service.
Yes, groceries are expensive. But why? Because commercial rent is high, labor costs are high, and logistics are complex in a dense city. The solution isn’t government-run stores—it’s reducing the costs through better policy and encouraging competition.
But none of that involves government giving people free stuff, which means it’s not politically attractive to democratic socialists.
HISTORICAL AMNESIA
The truly frustrating part is that New York City has tried all of this before. In the 1960s and 1970s, NYC pursued aggressive rent control, expanded government services, increased taxes on the wealthy, and ramped up spending on social programs.
The result?
White flight to the suburbs
Business exodus to other states
Spiraling crime rates
Infrastructure decay
Near-bankruptcy in 1975
A city that became synonymous with urban decay
It took decades to recover. The turnaround didn’t start until mayors like Ed Koch, Rudy Giuliani, and Michael Bloomberg pursued the opposite policies: reducing crime, cutting regulations, attracting businesses, and emphasizing personal responsibility over government dependence.
But that history is ancient to young voters in 2025. They don’t remember the bad old days. They just see expensive rent and think “someone should do something about that!” without considering whether the “someone” should be government or whether the “something” should be more centralized control.
This is why we need these periodic experiments. Not because they’re good policy—they’re terrible policy. But because some lessons can only be learned through experience, and each generation apparently needs to touch the stove for themselves.
THE SILVER LINING
For all of our collective common sense, I hope Zohran Mamdani wins. Let him implement his platform. Let New York City become the high-profile, real-time case study in why democratic socialism doesn’t work.
It’s a controlled experiment:
The failure will be geographically contained (NYC won’t drag down the whole country)
The timeframe will be limited (he’s got a 4-year term, and voters can course-correct)
The documentation will be thorough (every newspaper, think tank, and economist in America will be watching)
The lessons will be undeniable (the data will be impossible to spin)
And in 2029 or 2033, when the policies have predictably failed, when businesses have left, when the budget is in crisis, when housing is scarcer than ever, when unemployment is up and services are down, there will be a whole generation of young voters who will have seen, in real-time, what happens when you implement a socialist wish list.
Some of them will learn the lesson. Some will double down on the ideology. But the experiment will be complete, and we’ll have fresh evidence for the next debate.
Every 20 years or so, we apparently need this reminder. The Berlin Wall fell in 1989—that’s 36 years ago. The Soviet Union collapsed in 1991—34 years ago. Venezuela’s collapse happened slowly over the 2000s and 2010s, but younger voters don’t connect the dots between socialist policies and economic catastrophe.
So let New York City be the lesson for the 2020s. Let it be obvious. Let it be undeniable. And let the next generation of voters see what happens when you prioritize good intentions over economic reality.
My unCommon Sense
I get the appeal of Mamdani’s message. Rent is too damn high. Groceries cost too much. Childcare is unaffordable. Transportation eats up too much of people’s income. These are real problems, and people are genuinely struggling.
But here’s the thing about real problems: they require real solutions, not feel-good policies that make the problem worse.
Mamdani’s platform is built on a seductive lie: that government can provide abundance through decree. That we can freeze rent and somehow create more housing. That we can raise the minimum wage to $30 and somehow create more jobs. That we can tax the rich and somehow keep them in the city. That we can make things free and somehow improve their quality.
None of that is true. All of it is economically illiterate. And all of it has been tried before, with predictable results.
But we’re going to try it again anyway, because apparently every generation needs to learn this lesson for themselves.
So fine. Let’s run the experiment. Let’s watch what happens when New York City elects a 34-year-old Democratic Socialist who promises to solve all their problems with government action. Let’s document the failure in real-time. Let’s create a case study that will be taught in economics classes for the next 20 years as an example of what not to do.
And in the meantime, those of us who understand economics, who value personal responsibility, who believe in free markets and individual liberty, will watch from outside the blast radius and say, “We told you so.”
Because we did tell you. History told you. Economics told you. But you didn’t listen.
You touched the stove anyway, and learned it’s still hot.
Here in Cherokee County, we’re about 900 miles south of New York City. Far enough that their experiment won’t directly affect us, close enough that we’ll be able to watch the whole thing unfold on the national news.
I’ll be watching. I don’t take pleasure in people suffering the consequences of bad policy, but they’re voting for it. At some point, I will take satisfaction that comes from being proven right.
And when young voters in places like Woodstock or Atlanta or anywhere else in America point to New York City and say, “See! Socialism works!” Smart people will point to the actual data and say, “No, actually, here’s what happened.”
The thing about personal responsibility—the principle that connects everything I write about—is that it applies to collective decisions too. New Yorkers are about to choose their own path. They’re going to elect Mamdani because his message resonates with their desire for someone else to solve their problems.
And when it doesn’t work—when the policies fail, when the unintended consequences pile up, when the tax base erodes, when the city spirals into crisis—they won’t be able to blame anyone else. They chose this. They voted for it. They enthusiastically embraced it.
That’s the beauty of democracy and the curse of bad policy: you get exactly what you vote for.
My advice for New Yorkers who don’t want to live through the coming crisis: get out now. Move to a state that values economic freedom, personal responsibility, and limited government. Let the socialists have their experiment without you. Just do not move to Georgia or South Carolina (LOL).
To everyone else in America: pay attention. Watch what happens. Learn the lesson. Because in 20 to 50 years, someone in your city or state may be promising the same things Mamdani is promising today, and you’ll need to remember what happened in New York.
Real prosperity, real solutions to real problems, doesn’t come from government programs or mandated wages or frozen rents. It comes from individuals taking ownership of their lives, making smart decisions, working hard, and yes, sometimes struggling through difficult circumstances without a government safety net to catch every fall.
That’s the only way anything actually gets better—when individuals take ownership of their lives and their choices.
New York City is about to learn that lesson the hard way and realize that yes, the stove is still HOT.
If you want to have a constructive conversation about this or anything else, message me at dan@thrailkill.us, and let’s grab coffee or a beer.
Have a good one,
Dan