Once New York becomes a fully socialist society, those yellow tickets will fetch a good price on the black market, and otherwise will be handed out among the powerful and privileged.
By Robert Spencer, Frontpage Magazine
It wasn’t a Mamdani Mart, but it was a good indication of what the socialist grocery stores that Comrade Mayor promised to bestow upon New York City will be like.
Last week, the cryptocurrency outfit Polymarket opened, for five days only, what it billed as “New York’s First Free Grocery Store.”
And so the triumph of socialism was on full display in the Big Apple, right? Well, socialism certainly was, but “triumph” wasn’t exactly the word.
Fox News reported Thursday that “in a busy stretch of restaurants and boutiques in the West Village, hundreds of New Yorkers queued up outside a pop-up shop offering free groceries.”
That’s right: the first glory of socialism that New York’s First Free Grocery Store brought to Gotham was long lines.
As one of the last sclerotic rulers of the declining Soviet Union, Konstantin U. Chernenko told the Politburo in 1985: “Comrades, it is not unusual for one type of merchandise or another to disappear from shop counters, goods that are often the easiest to make and the most needed on a daily basis.”
Hence the long lines, which became so much a feature of ordinary life in the workers’ paradise that the New York Times observed: “So common and pervasive are the lines that they have evolved their own etiquette, even their own slang. Shoppers in a busy store can have their place held in one line while they stand in another. Women with small children pass freely to the front. Other privileged people, ranging from disabled war veterans to recipients of the title ‘Hero of Socialist Labor,’ are also allowed to go to the head of the line. Goods, in this world, are ‘handed out,’ not sold, as if to underline that the issue is not one of cost or choice, but simply one of finding the stuff.”
Chernenko also asked the Politburo: “Is there any explanation other than gross blunders for the obvious lack of good-quality footwear, especially children’s shoes?”
Why, sure, Konstantin. One primary explanation is that socialism, by confiscating the worker’s wealth and making it useless for him to try to work harder to get ahead, removes all incentive to do anything more than the minimum that will keep him out of the gulag.
A shoemaker in a capitalist society can get rich by providing cheap and comfortable shoes for the masses. In a socialist society, the shoes are even cheaper: they’re free.
But there is no reason for the worker to ensure their supply, as there is no reward for him in doing so. And so in the land where shoes are free, going shoeless becomes a fact of life.
And so in New York’s First Free Grocery Store, the demand far outstripped the supply, and the lines were Soviet-length.
“The scene was underscored,” said Fox, “by the city’s cost of living woes and anxiety over who would get a yellow ticket granting entry to the small shop before it ‘sold out’ of goods.”
Once New York becomes a fully socialist society, those yellow tickets will fetch a good price on the black market, and otherwise will be handed out among the powerful and privileged.
After all, everyone is equal, but some are indeed more equal than others.
Fox also noted that “shoppers characterized The Polymarket — which was separate from Mamdani-led efforts to unveil city-owned, subsidized grocery stores in each of the five New York City boroughs — as a learning moment for the mayor as residents cited concerns with security, running out of food and people cutting lines.”
That’s why socialist societies need secret police, so that the populace is too scared to cut in line no matter how anxious they are that the market will run out of food.
New York’s First Free Grocery Store hit the wall of reality quite early in the day. One woman recounted: “I literally got here at 9:00 … and basically what they said is that they ran out of tickets.”
A man said: “They told me that they ran out of tickets. I couldn’t get no more food.… I couldn’t get access to the store.”
A beleaguered security guard shouted just after 9 a.m.: “Let’s go people, let’s go. Go home. Do not linger, do not look, do not watch. Please go home.”
But ultimately, they will not. Aside from the gulags, the line is the most distinguishing feature of socialist life.
If Mamdani holds true to his promise and opens his low-cost grocery stores, we will see all this again, and likely with greater intensity and hotter tempers. Socialism is beautiful, comrade!
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