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This sounds extremely non economically viable. The municipality which has monopoly on land taxes and costs will compete with stores that must pay taxes and ren

This sounds extremely non economically viable. The municipality which has monopoly on land taxes and costs will compete with stores that must pay taxes and rent? Won’t it just cause neighboring stores to close? Won’t a better option be subsidizing taxes for grocery stores, and let the discounts competitively pass unto the customers?

asdff 6mo ago
Major grocers are more inclined to form cartels on price than to engage in organic competitive action. These businesses are too large and incentives too perverse for free market dynamics to apply anymore.
- gruez 6mo ago
  >Major grocers are more inclined to form cartels on price than to engage in organic competitive action. Even if we take at face value that this is happening, their margins are famously low (ie. low single digits[1][2]) that any improvements are likely negligible. In the best case scenario where they're run as competently/efficiently as a normal grocery store, but don't take any profits, you'd be saving like 50 cents on a $10 pack of ground beef. Of course, all of this would go out the window if it's less efficient, either due to government incompetence[3], or lack of scale. [1] https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/ACI/albertsons/profit-margins https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/ACI/albertsons/pro... [2] https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/KR/kroger/profit-margins https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/KR/kroger/profit-m... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noe_Valley_public_toilet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noe_Valley_public_toilet
  - ceejayoz 6mo ago
    > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noe_Valley_public_toilet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noe_Valley_public_toilet Mamdani has clearly taken lessons like these to heart. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/07/nyregion/how-to-build-a-rest-stop-for-delivery-workers-in-a-hurry.html https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/07/nyregion/how-to-build-a-r... "The Transportation Department workers arrived at 9:15 p.m., right on time. Mr. Boyce and his crew were ready, having fitted the roof and rear wall panel 30 minutes before. By Monday, the structure was nearly complete. “This is all like synchronized swimming,” Mr. Mansylla said. “To build a structure in New York City in, what, 48 hours? That’s as fast as it gets.”
    - gruez 6mo ago
      Your article doesn't say anything about cost, only that it got built fast. Every time the toilet example gets cited, the punchline is the cost, not how long it took, although that was appalling as well. From the wikipedia article: >The toilet's original proposed cost of $1.7 million inspired media coverage and criticism of the San Francisco government.
      - ceejayoz 6mo ago
        Sure... because it was a prefab and still took two years at that cost.
      - b112 6mo ago
        Plus, the cost of building includes a lot of permits, inspections, studies, and money to sldo so. Taxes too. Was all this waived?
        ceejayoz 6mo ago
        I'm a firm believer that part of progressivism needs to be reining in these sorts of NIMBY obstacles.
        b112 6mo ago
        Environmental assessments are NIMBY? Well regardless, the point is it should be the same for everyone.
        ceejayoz 6mo ago
        > Environmental assessments are NIMBY? It's a kiosk being added to a concrete sidewalk in the middle of Manhattan, by the city itself. There must be a way to do projects of this small scale without spending years on paperwork.
        asdff 6mo ago
        The whole point is in principle these things are good ideas but in practice they are tools weaponized by NIMBYs. This is the fig leaf that keeps them around. "But why would you do away with environmental review???" As if you were to stab 55 gal drums of toxic waste and dump them into a river. But really you were trying to build an apartment as large as many other existing apartments in the middle of the city. Or in this case, install something on the sidewalk.
  - _whiteCaps_ 6mo ago
    It literally happened here in Canada: https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/loblaw-bread-price-settlement-1.7274820 https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/loblaw-bread-price-settleme... > The class-action case was brought against a group of companies that includes Loblaw and the Weston companies, Metro, Walmart Canada, Giant Tiger, and Sobeys and its owner, Empire Co. Ltd. > The plaintiffs allege those companies participated in a 14-year industry-wide price-fixing conspiracy between 2001 and 2015, leading to an artificial increase in packaged bread prices.
  - asdff 6mo ago
    Margins being low is fine when you've scaled across a nation. Annual gross profit for Kroger is $34b.
    - gruez 6mo ago
      >Annual gross profit for Kroger is $34b. What's the point of this observation other than for shock value? Yes, when you multiply small percentage by a huge number, you're still left with a huge number. That doesn't mean it's suddenly worth doing unless you can make the argument that it scales easily.
      - asdff 6mo ago
        It represents the privatized waste figure out of your grocery bill that is not going to the food you are bringing home.
        gruez 6mo ago
        See my previous comment: >That doesn't mean it's suddenly worth doing unless you can make the argument that it scales easily. Otherwise it's like saying "you know what everyone should do? Raise their own chickens! Sure, you might be only saving $1 or whatever a day, but multiply that 365 days per year and 340 million Americans, and that's billions we're all collectively saving!" And no, running a grocery store isn't something that scales easily.
        asdff 6mo ago
        Well, let's check back in 2028 after running this pilot study.
  - wahnfrieden 6mo ago
    The consumer cost of overcharges from price-fixed bread in Canada was estimated at 4-5 billion dollars. And that's just bread. Is that negligible? Usually if someone steals a millionth of that, they go to jail for a very long time. The same players are now under investigation for selling underweight meats.
    - asdff 6mo ago
      The whole egg fiasco is as far as I am concerned the biggest proof of price gouging cartel behavior there is. And people assume it is normal. Vast majority of product sold when inventory is low, they just go out of stock still at MSRP right to the last sku in the inventory. Then, you wait until more are available, also at that same price. Really, why would prices go up for the eggs in this situation if not for gouging? Sure plenty of chickens were culled. But the remaining chickens aren't costing more than they did before the cull. Whoever is producing the remaining eggs being produced is producing them for the exact same overhead they have always been producing. Feed is still probably the same. Maybe cheaper with an excess of feed on the market needing to be sold and moved out of feedlots before the next crop comes in, from the chicken culling your competitors were doing. Water is still probably the same. Power is still probably the same. Staff are still getting the same pay. Property taxes are still the same. Really, who is getting the $10 from the $12 dozen of eggs? Probably some guys smoking cigars if we are being honest.
      - gruez 6mo ago
        >Really, why would prices go up for the eggs in this situation if not for gouging? [...] Supply and demand. Just like blocking the Strait of Hormuz doesn't make oil 2x more expensive to produce everywhere else in the world, you're still left with the problem that the world has ~20% less oil to go around. That means the price of oil gets bid up until it's high enough to convince 20% of oil consumers to stop using oil.
        asdff 6mo ago
        You say bid up. I say gouged. Potato Potato I guess.
- KK7NIL 6mo ago
  Those are pretty extraordinary claims with very little evidence. And, even if they are true, the obvious solution would be to enforce the already existing antitrust and competition laws, not to have the government directly engage in commerce.
  - darth_avocado 6mo ago
    Why is government directly engaging in commerce such a controversial topic. The government already does it in various forms: VA hospitals, Medicare price negotiations, government subsidies in agriculture, owning 10% of Intel etc.
    - philipallstar 6mo ago
      I wouldn't argue that the US healthcare system is so good that no market distortion can be detected from its current structure.
      - asdff 6mo ago
        >Charges $100 for a tylenol because insurance or medicare will blindly pay for it Yup no distortions here just good old fashion free market!
        philipallstar 6mo ago
        Indeed.
  - asdff 6mo ago
    Too much to write in a HN comment so here is a substack post (1) probably worthy of its own HN post. And how is that the obvious solution? You see who is in the Whitehouse and you think this is a champion of antitrust and lifting up the little man? Quite the opposite. NYC government is a separate entity than federal government with different limits to its powers. They can't do anything about cartel behavior. They can, however, open a municipal grocery store. The government engages in commerce all the time. If we took that argument to its logical conclusion there would be no libraries as they compete with book stores. There would be no armies as they compete with Blackrock mercenaries. No public transit as it competes with private transit. No public events as that competes with ticketmaster. No public schools. No public universities. No scientific research grants. No sheltering or feeding the poor. No treating the sick. No treating veterans. No bridges. No roads. No harbors. No anything. What really would be the role of government after we stripped it of all its potential influences on the world of commerce? I can't even imagine what might even be left... No, it seems a big role in this country for government is facilitating conditions for commerce. Educating the populace such as to upskill the nation's labor pool. Building roads free for businesses to use in transporting goods to market. Treating the sick before they get so ill as to be an undue burden on the medical system that threatens its entire latent capacity. Offering cheaper food seems in line with that. People aren't going to use the spare money to throw into a river; they will use their extra money to circulate back into the economy probably in more productive ways than Kroger buying back its stock or its executives or shareholders squandering it on oysters and boat fuel. 1. https://grocerynerd.substack.com/p/grocery-update-17-how-grocery-cartels https://grocerynerd.substack.com/p/grocery-update-17-how-gro...
- woah 6mo ago
  Oh, that must be why the grocery business is wildly profitable
  - ceejayoz 6mo ago
    Low margins, high volumes. Walmart has low margins. Walmart is also wildly profitable.
  - asdff 6mo ago
    You know what they say about massively consolidated multinational corporations with tens of thousands of employees and millions of square feet in real estate: no one making money there.
- ilaksh 6mo ago
  I wonder if there is a way to improve pricing more systemically by combating some of this. Or if there could be some kind of network and information protocol that could provide a decentralized alternative. Maybe there could be an Internet protocol or NYC Internet protocol that food suppliers could list low price items with. Independent stores could order from here, shipped to their store, or maybe one or two city warehouses where they could pick up. Maybe another system where suppliers could voluntarily detail cost disruptions, allowing government or other organizations insight and sometimes the possibility of helping alleviate those issues etc. I mean the government already spends a lot to subsidize retail food purchases. Maybe another idea is just a very easily accessible new app for credits that is NYC only? It's just that making a single store puts all of the logistical and other issues onto one government department and location, which has been shown in socialist countries to break down. I am all for a few more socialist policies (I am lucky to have survived this long on outsourcing rates without a consistent healthcare plan), but it definitely needs to be a contemporary effort and not some centralized 1950s model.
  - asdff 6mo ago
    This is probably not far off from how things already work in distribution. Most restaurants are ordering from the same food wholesalers in a given region. When I go to more "independent" grocers or local chains they still have much of the same offerings as major grocers in my area, so I'm guessing they also order from the same sets of distributors (or lease shelf space to the same groups). And I'm not talking just the packaged stuff. But when certain varietals come in e.g. Cosmic Crisp apples, its like all the grocery stores in the area are getting the Cosmic Crisp apples over the next few weeks with the same sticker and all. I know for stuff like seafood there is a saturday night 1am fish market near our harbor where significant volume is sold wholesale to restaurants and grocers (but also individuals interested in filling a chest freezer). So I think already there are just few places to order food wholesale in a given region so those prices are probably somewhat even. Then of course you go to vons, kroger, ralphs, save4less, the local korean grocer, and see different prices for the exact same commodified product like Cosmic crisp apple or 6 pack of coca cola, there is your markup that comes from the grocer itself on top of the regional wholesale price. Grocers like to have flexibility in markup to play psychological games like rotating sales, coupons, and offer rewards programs. Seems that sort of finagling isn't tolerated at the next level of abstraction in business to business sales. Cost disruptions might be good to put the blame on who exactly in the chain is gouging prices. At the end of the day, the eggs in the egg shortage were not more costly to produce than beforehand. And the egg farms that were culled of their hens, were probably not that much of an anchor on operations given that they probably were not consuming their usual power, water, farmhands probably all laid off, land bought and paid for probably decades ago by this point, way out in marginal farmland where property taxes are probably quite low. Certainly not enough to quadruple the price of eggs. And how interesting how Trader Joes still sold $2.99 dozen racks during this whole crisis.
- halflife 6mo ago
  That may be, but you can direct subsidies towards inverse relation to the store’s income. You can even add extra taxes for large chains. But as others said, groceries are working on minimal margin. And all of them work with the same wholeselles (except those with vertical integrations), and this is a nation wide problem.
  - asdff 6mo ago
    >That may be, but you can direct subsidies towards inverse relation to the store’s income. You can even add extra taxes for large chains. Not really imo. Private market passes costs to consumers and leverages subsidy offers to achieve rat race outcomes out of competing local governments off each other. It is how you end up with the classic case of a city courting some business but offering enough tax abatement where the city isn't actually getting anything out of the business, and once the abatement expire the business just leaves for somewhere else that will cut them a better deal. City ends up hostage to the business demanding ever more favorable incentives and removal of all taxes (there's been free trade zones established in the middle of ho hum suburbs, stuff brought in there doesn't even count as imported to the US).
    - halflife 6mo ago
      Interesting. I think it really depends on the competitiveness of the market. In a highly competitive market, every cost saved would be passed to the consumer, obviously this is simplistic microeconomics and doesn’t actually works this way. In my city, there’s a supermarket approximately every 150 meters. Food cost is high, but for the entire country. Actually research shows that food cost is higher in low density towns where there is much less competition.
wahnfrieden 6mo ago
In some neighborhoods there are only luxury grocery options. Groceries also form cartels as the other commenter mentioned. The biggest grocers in Canada did it for many years until they were penalized for it (though it’s likely still continuing in other ways - the same players are now under investigation for selling underweight meats) The estimated cost to consumers from bread price-fixing was $4-5 billion
- halflife 6mo ago
  It’s about supply and demand. Luxury grocers provide a shopping “experience”, where low cost grocers do not. In a luxury neighborhood it would make sense the shoppers are looking for experience more so than low cost.
  - wahnfrieden 6mo ago
    The neighborhoods I'm talking about also have many people living in poverty or near it. Looks like you live in Israel which is perhaps less integrated / more segregated than Brooklyn (I don't know though, I haven't been to see first hand)
  - rsynnott 6mo ago
    What’s a ‘luxury neighborhood’? In any large city, most central areas are generally a bit of a mix; “this is only for rich/poor people” is more of a suburban phenomenon. If the shops are only catering to the high end, a problem can develop. (I am less sure why this happens to such a great extent in large US cities vs elsewhere, vs more of a balance of shops, but it does seem to.)
    - wahnfrieden 6mo ago
      The poster appears to be Israeli. I’m not an expert and have never been but I understand spatial wealth segregation is quite extreme there and may explain their take. Here’s one study: https://www.ref-inst.org/en/articles-and-studies/spatial-inequality-in-israel-tal-and-leventhal https://www.ref-inst.org/en/articles-and-studies/spatial-ine... So it may just be that where they are from, the concept of “luxury neighborhoods” which do not need to cater to the poor and disadvantaged populations does indeed exist, due to segregation factors
yohannparis 6mo ago
Why does everything needs to be economically viable?
- koolba 6mo ago
  Because that’s what has traditionally allowed western countries to have a wide availability and inventory of goods vs communist economies.
  - deleted 6mo ago
    [deleted]
  - bojan 6mo ago
    But why does the availability have to be wide? Maybe those stories can do few things, but do them well. Sell staple foods and healthy choices.
    - halflife 6mo ago
      Because than people won’t come to your store. People buy where they can purchase the maximum of their shopping cart in a single place. That is why you have loss leader grocers, where they pull people with dramatic discounts on specific items, but the total cart costs the same
      - yohannparis 6mo ago
        I understand your point of view. But in cities of all sizes, it's easier to not have to do that. For example in NYC, a medium size city, you can easily go do your shopping in multiple places, and not at the same time.
        halflife 6mo ago
        Yes, and some people do that. Some consumers go to specific stores to purchase specific qualities of brands. But most do not, especially for convenience products. You get it where you can.
tacostakohashi 6mo ago
I think that's essentially the entire point, considering that most of the economically viable grocery stores already exist.
shimman 6mo ago
You sound extremely privileged and frankly out of touch (not uncommon with the HN demographic). Do you think working families in NYC don't deserve the same monetary relief that massive corporations get with their own welfare programs? Why should trillion multinational companies take our public money to subsidize their businesses and we can't do the same for workers? Why do you prefer helping non human entities (corporations) over literal humans?
- deleted 6mo ago
  [deleted]
- halflife 6mo ago
  Subsidies can go to small businesses owners. Not just large corporations.
tencentshill 6mo ago
He won by not being a capitalist. He campaigned on doing something to actually meet the basic needs of the people who elected him. This is the cost of that promise. This will force them to compete on those terms instead of directly on money.
deleted 6mo ago
[deleted]
darth_avocado 6mo ago
> Won’t it just cause neighboring stores to close? Hopefully they kept all those profits around from the time they price gouging consumers in the name of “supply chain issues”, “transitory inflation”, “bird flu” etc. I still remember all the headlines about bird flu and how egg prices were doubling because of it. Turns out the egg production barely dropped and it was all a ruse to make more money.
- SpicyLemonZest 6mo ago
  You can't conclude it was a ruse without knowing the elasticity of egg demand! This is ultimately the kind of thing that worries me about a municipal grocery store. Will voters allow it to respond in rational ways to market conditions, or will they expect the city to go out and extort some egg suppliers when market prices rise above what they consider reasonable?
  - ceejayoz 6mo ago
    The DOJ thinks it was a ruse. https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/us-egg-producers-face-new-wave-price-fixing-lawsuits-2025-11-18/ https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/us-egg-producers-fa... As did a jury: https://apnews.com/article/egg-producers-price-gouging-lawsuit-conspiracy-8cd455003a3a40bab74d0f046d0f2c9d https://apnews.com/article/egg-producers-price-gouging-lawsu...
    - deleted 6mo ago
      [deleted]
    - SpicyLemonZest 6mo ago
      It could potentially be a ruse by egg producers. Certainly there's reason for suspicion. But darth_avocado's claim was that grocery stores were in on the ruse and must have extracted huge profits from price gouging consumers. I think that's obviously false. You'll note that in the jury case the plaintiffs were themselves megacorporations, and substantially larger ones than the producers they were suing at that. I don't blame consumers for deciding they don't care about the underlying market structure and just want cheap eggs. But you can't run a store on that basis, and if the city feels like it has to there'll be problems.
lexicality 6mo ago
> Won’t a better option be subsidizing taxes for grocery stores, and let the discounts competitively pass unto the customers? I'm sure this time trickle-down economics will work and not simply line the pockets of business owners
- philipallstar 6mo ago
  It's not trickling down. Lower costs do result in lower prices.
- halflife 6mo ago
  When you have a highly competitive market with plenty of actors lower cost does trickle down. Otherwise you’re talking about an extremely complicated cartel which cannot exist.
  - cherry_tree 6mo ago
    Do we have a highly competitive market? If so how do we measure that? If not how do we create one?
ceejayoz 6mo ago
> This sounds extremely non economically viable. Many things government does are not economically viable. That's why they get left to government. > Won’t it just cause neighboring stores to close? The idea is to build these where that has already occurred.
- WalterBright 6mo ago
  [flagged]
  - ceejayoz 6mo ago
    > Maybe they should look into why the closings occurred. Do you think there's no research on the causes of food deserts?
    - WalterBright 6mo ago
      Store closings are nearly always the result of them not being profitable.
      - ceejayoz 6mo ago
        Sure. Lots of things governments need to do are unprofitable, like delivering the mail or repairing the roads. I can go to my local public library, borrow the free books, use the free computers, sit in the free chairs, ask the librarian for free guidance, enjoy the free air conditioning, and even book a free meeting room to meet up with some friends to work on a project. Profitable? Fuck no. Great to have in my city? Fuck yes.
        WalterBright 6mo ago
        Privately run grocery stores have been profitable for 250 years in the US. What has changed recently? Could it be the decriminalization of shoplifting? Or maybe excessive taxes? Or mandates on wages? Vandalism? I forgot to add homeless camping around them, which discourages shoppers.
WalterBright 6mo ago
In Seattle, the proposal for a government grocery store included exemption from paying property taxes and rent.
- halflife 6mo ago
  So they have an unfair advantage over the competition. Or it’s just a way to neutralize the ineffectiveness of the management, since it’s not profitable based, who’s going to be fired?
bastawhiz 6mo ago
> and let the discounts competitively pass unto the customers This is the same trickle down economics principle that has proven not to work over, and over, and over again. There's exactly zero reason to believe these businesses would pass on the savings to consumers. Consider! Ingles (a supermarket brand here in NC) is criticized for holding huge amounts of abandoned/vacant/dilapidated properties [0], which stifles competition and lets them hold an effective monopoly and makes neighborhoods objectively worse. It's not about the taxes. Don't underestimate a chain's ability to eat costs by maintaining their market position. [0] https://avlwatchdog.org/opinion-ingles-markets-often-raises-the-ire-of-locals-but-it-shouldnt-be-that-way/ https://avlwatchdog.org/opinion-ingles-markets-often-raises-...
- halflife 6mo ago
  I didn’t specify on the subsidies themselves. You can create subsidies which are inverse to the stores income. It doesn’t HAVE to go to large chains. There are many way to encourage small businesses to open. Competing with them is not one.
- wenc 6mo ago
  You're thinking a tax break which is an unconditional subsidy. That relies on the business passing savings through which folks are right to be skeptical about. But that's not all subsidy mechanisms. The best ones are where pass-through is enforced, not assumed. You already know of one that works: WIC. It lowers the effective price for customer, which the store receives as reimbursement. It's not about trickle-down -- that's ideology. It's more about designing the right mechanism.
thinkingtoilet 6mo ago
Oh no! Struggling Americans will be able to buy food cheaper! What will we do? Also, if anyone has any reservations about a government run grocery store, go ask your representatives to come out against military commissaries. I bet you will not be able to find one active politician who will try to remove that. You know why? Because government run grocery stores work. End of story. Period. There is no discussion. You are wrong if you disagree. We do this. It exists. It works. And people love it. Try to find one politician that will end that service.
- cindyllm 6mo ago
  [dead]
- halflife 6mo ago
  Grocery costs has to come from some formula. If the mamdani stores actually do sell at a lower cost, where did the discount come from?
  - thinkingtoilet 6mo ago
    Again. This exists. There is no theoretical here. Go look up how the military commissaries work. That will answer your question.
    - halflife 6mo ago
      military commissaries are subsidized with taxes. So would these stores have lower prices because of tax subsidies? What prevents rich people from exploiting these subsidies?
      - thinkingtoilet 6mo ago
        Yes. They will be subsidized, just like other food-based welfare programs. As for the rich, is this really your concern? A few rich people getting some cheaper groceries is so bad that we have to deny poor people from getting affordable food? Why do so many Americans hate poor people? You know there's literally trillions of waste in agriculture, military, pharmaceutical, oil, etc... subsidies and that's just the tip of the ice berg if you examine the tax code. If you're deeply concerned about rich people gaming the system, why don't you start in those places and then when we figure that out, we can worry about rich people shopping in one of five total grocery stores.
jmyeet 6mo ago
To anyone who espouses these claims that the government isn't capable of anything or that it's somehow a moral hazard I just have to ask: how's that working out for you in particular and society in general? Does it feel like things are going well? What we have now is the result of unfettered private control. Private companies collude to raise prices and lower wages. The standard of living in real terms has been in decline for over 50 years. Education, medical, housing and food costs continue to spiral. Where we do have publicly owned alternatives, such as with municipal broadband, those publicly-owned alternatives are always far better. Are we going to make the same argument that EPB in Chattanooga is somehow a moral hazard and has an unfair advantage to Verizon, AT&T, Comcast and Spectrum? Let's just say that it's true that they do. Why is that a problem? Why is it good that billion or trillion dollar companies can charge higher prices than the government can so their owners can buy another mega-yacht at the expense of the people who depend on that service? Because that's what's going on now.
pollorollo 6mo ago
Government owned grocery stores already exist [1]. They are run by the U.S. military, have 200+ locations, and charge at least 25% less than other brands [1]. "Surveys consistently rate the commissaries as one of the military's top non-pay benefits." NYC wants to provide similar benefits for residents. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_Commissary_Agency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_Commissary_Agency [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQOXdtPBGXI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQOXdtPBGXI
- gruez 6mo ago
  From your own article: >In 2024, DeCA estimated that it saved patrons $1.58 billion and had an operations cost of $1.7 billion, $1.5 billion of which was funded from appropriations.[8] Isn't this the "selling $1 for 75 cents" business model (aka moviepass) that people made fun of a few years ago?
  - ceejayoz 6mo ago
    Sure. It's also the business model of your local library.
    - gruez 6mo ago
      Well no, because the library is often the sole provider of book lending services and there's no private sector alternative. The same can't be said for grocery stores. To continue your analogy, it would be closer to the government setting up its own streaming service, even though there's netfilx and several other competitors. Even though people hate netflix for its price hikes or whatever, it's unclear how the government can do a better job here than netfilx (or other competitors), aside from strongarming/expropriating rights holders.
      - ceejayoz 6mo ago
        > To continue your analogy, it would be closer to the government setting up its own streaming service… https://www.pbs.org/ https://www.pbs.org/
hitekker 6mo ago
The nyc subreddit which I'd say is pretty pro-Mamdani shared your concerns. https://old.reddit.com/r/nyc/comments/1sjq9v9/mayor_zohran_mamdani_will_announce_plans_to_open/ https://old.reddit.com/r/nyc/comments/1sjq9v9/mayor_zohran_m...
ModernMech 6mo ago
Who knows, let's try it and see. I've heard all my life about how new ideas are potentially not economically viable, so we keep trying old ideas which proven not economically viable. My feeling is that the economy is such a large, chaotic, dynamic system that most people, including experts, have no idea what is theoretically viable or not viable. So making decisions based on "my first order analysis is that this is not economically viable" is misguided. You have to try it first and see how the system actually responds.

asdff 6mo ago

Major grocers are more inclined to form cartels on price than to engage in organic competitive action. These businesses are too large and incentives too perverse for free market dynamics to apply anymore.

gruez 6mo ago
>Major grocers are more inclined to form cartels on price than to engage in organic competitive action. Even if we take at face value that this is happening, their margins are famously low (ie. low single digits[1][2]) that any improvements are likely negligible. In the best case scenario where they're run as competently/efficiently as a normal grocery store, but don't take any profits, you'd be saving like 50 cents on a $10 pack of ground beef. Of course, all of this would go out the window if it's less efficient, either due to government incompetence[3], or lack of scale. [1] https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/ACI/albertsons/profit-margins https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/ACI/albertsons/pro... [2] https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/KR/kroger/profit-margins https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/KR/kroger/profit-m... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noe_Valley_public_toilet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noe_Valley_public_toilet
- ceejayoz 6mo ago
  > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noe_Valley_public_toilet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noe_Valley_public_toilet Mamdani has clearly taken lessons like these to heart. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/07/nyregion/how-to-build-a-rest-stop-for-delivery-workers-in-a-hurry.html https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/07/nyregion/how-to-build-a-r... "The Transportation Department workers arrived at 9:15 p.m., right on time. Mr. Boyce and his crew were ready, having fitted the roof and rear wall panel 30 minutes before. By Monday, the structure was nearly complete. “This is all like synchronized swimming,” Mr. Mansylla said. “To build a structure in New York City in, what, 48 hours? That’s as fast as it gets.”
  - gruez 6mo ago
    Your article doesn't say anything about cost, only that it got built fast. Every time the toilet example gets cited, the punchline is the cost, not how long it took, although that was appalling as well. From the wikipedia article: >The toilet's original proposed cost of $1.7 million inspired media coverage and criticism of the San Francisco government.
    - ceejayoz 6mo ago
      Sure... because it was a prefab and still took two years at that cost.
    - b112 6mo ago
      Plus, the cost of building includes a lot of permits, inspections, studies, and money to sldo so. Taxes too. Was all this waived?
      - ceejayoz 6mo ago
        I'm a firm believer that part of progressivism needs to be reining in these sorts of NIMBY obstacles.
        b112 6mo ago
        Environmental assessments are NIMBY? Well regardless, the point is it should be the same for everyone.
        ceejayoz 6mo ago
        > Environmental assessments are NIMBY? It's a kiosk being added to a concrete sidewalk in the middle of Manhattan, by the city itself. There must be a way to do projects of this small scale without spending years on paperwork.
        asdff 6mo ago
        The whole point is in principle these things are good ideas but in practice they are tools weaponized by NIMBYs. This is the fig leaf that keeps them around. "But why would you do away with environmental review???" As if you were to stab 55 gal drums of toxic waste and dump them into a river. But really you were trying to build an apartment as large as many other existing apartments in the middle of the city. Or in this case, install something on the sidewalk.
- _whiteCaps_ 6mo ago
  It literally happened here in Canada: https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/loblaw-bread-price-settlement-1.7274820 https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/loblaw-bread-price-settleme... > The class-action case was brought against a group of companies that includes Loblaw and the Weston companies, Metro, Walmart Canada, Giant Tiger, and Sobeys and its owner, Empire Co. Ltd. > The plaintiffs allege those companies participated in a 14-year industry-wide price-fixing conspiracy between 2001 and 2015, leading to an artificial increase in packaged bread prices.
- asdff 6mo ago
  Margins being low is fine when you've scaled across a nation. Annual gross profit for Kroger is $34b.
  - gruez 6mo ago
    >Annual gross profit for Kroger is $34b. What's the point of this observation other than for shock value? Yes, when you multiply small percentage by a huge number, you're still left with a huge number. That doesn't mean it's suddenly worth doing unless you can make the argument that it scales easily.
    - asdff 6mo ago
      It represents the privatized waste figure out of your grocery bill that is not going to the food you are bringing home.
      - gruez 6mo ago
        See my previous comment: >That doesn't mean it's suddenly worth doing unless you can make the argument that it scales easily. Otherwise it's like saying "you know what everyone should do? Raise their own chickens! Sure, you might be only saving $1 or whatever a day, but multiply that 365 days per year and 340 million Americans, and that's billions we're all collectively saving!" And no, running a grocery store isn't something that scales easily.
        asdff 6mo ago
        Well, let's check back in 2028 after running this pilot study.
- wahnfrieden 6mo ago
  The consumer cost of overcharges from price-fixed bread in Canada was estimated at 4-5 billion dollars. And that's just bread. Is that negligible? Usually if someone steals a millionth of that, they go to jail for a very long time. The same players are now under investigation for selling underweight meats.
  - asdff 6mo ago
    The whole egg fiasco is as far as I am concerned the biggest proof of price gouging cartel behavior there is. And people assume it is normal. Vast majority of product sold when inventory is low, they just go out of stock still at MSRP right to the last sku in the inventory. Then, you wait until more are available, also at that same price. Really, why would prices go up for the eggs in this situation if not for gouging? Sure plenty of chickens were culled. But the remaining chickens aren't costing more than they did before the cull. Whoever is producing the remaining eggs being produced is producing them for the exact same overhead they have always been producing. Feed is still probably the same. Maybe cheaper with an excess of feed on the market needing to be sold and moved out of feedlots before the next crop comes in, from the chicken culling your competitors were doing. Water is still probably the same. Power is still probably the same. Staff are still getting the same pay. Property taxes are still the same. Really, who is getting the $10 from the $12 dozen of eggs? Probably some guys smoking cigars if we are being honest.
    - gruez 6mo ago
      >Really, why would prices go up for the eggs in this situation if not for gouging? [...] Supply and demand. Just like blocking the Strait of Hormuz doesn't make oil 2x more expensive to produce everywhere else in the world, you're still left with the problem that the world has ~20% less oil to go around. That means the price of oil gets bid up until it's high enough to convince 20% of oil consumers to stop using oil.
      - asdff 6mo ago
        You say bid up. I say gouged. Potato Potato I guess.
KK7NIL 6mo ago
Those are pretty extraordinary claims with very little evidence. And, even if they are true, the obvious solution would be to enforce the already existing antitrust and competition laws, not to have the government directly engage in commerce.
- darth_avocado 6mo ago
  Why is government directly engaging in commerce such a controversial topic. The government already does it in various forms: VA hospitals, Medicare price negotiations, government subsidies in agriculture, owning 10% of Intel etc.
  - philipallstar 6mo ago
    I wouldn't argue that the US healthcare system is so good that no market distortion can be detected from its current structure.
    - asdff 6mo ago
      >Charges $100 for a tylenol because insurance or medicare will blindly pay for it Yup no distortions here just good old fashion free market!
      - philipallstar 6mo ago
        Indeed.
- asdff 6mo ago
  Too much to write in a HN comment so here is a substack post (1) probably worthy of its own HN post. And how is that the obvious solution? You see who is in the Whitehouse and you think this is a champion of antitrust and lifting up the little man? Quite the opposite. NYC government is a separate entity than federal government with different limits to its powers. They can't do anything about cartel behavior. They can, however, open a municipal grocery store. The government engages in commerce all the time. If we took that argument to its logical conclusion there would be no libraries as they compete with book stores. There would be no armies as they compete with Blackrock mercenaries. No public transit as it competes with private transit. No public events as that competes with ticketmaster. No public schools. No public universities. No scientific research grants. No sheltering or feeding the poor. No treating the sick. No treating veterans. No bridges. No roads. No harbors. No anything. What really would be the role of government after we stripped it of all its potential influences on the world of commerce? I can't even imagine what might even be left... No, it seems a big role in this country for government is facilitating conditions for commerce. Educating the populace such as to upskill the nation's labor pool. Building roads free for businesses to use in transporting goods to market. Treating the sick before they get so ill as to be an undue burden on the medical system that threatens its entire latent capacity. Offering cheaper food seems in line with that. People aren't going to use the spare money to throw into a river; they will use their extra money to circulate back into the economy probably in more productive ways than Kroger buying back its stock or its executives or shareholders squandering it on oysters and boat fuel. 1. https://grocerynerd.substack.com/p/grocery-update-17-how-grocery-cartels https://grocerynerd.substack.com/p/grocery-update-17-how-gro...
woah 6mo ago
Oh, that must be why the grocery business is wildly profitable
- ceejayoz 6mo ago
  Low margins, high volumes. Walmart has low margins. Walmart is also wildly profitable.
- asdff 6mo ago
  You know what they say about massively consolidated multinational corporations with tens of thousands of employees and millions of square feet in real estate: no one making money there.
ilaksh 6mo ago
I wonder if there is a way to improve pricing more systemically by combating some of this. Or if there could be some kind of network and information protocol that could provide a decentralized alternative. Maybe there could be an Internet protocol or NYC Internet protocol that food suppliers could list low price items with. Independent stores could order from here, shipped to their store, or maybe one or two city warehouses where they could pick up. Maybe another system where suppliers could voluntarily detail cost disruptions, allowing government or other organizations insight and sometimes the possibility of helping alleviate those issues etc. I mean the government already spends a lot to subsidize retail food purchases. Maybe another idea is just a very easily accessible new app for credits that is NYC only? It's just that making a single store puts all of the logistical and other issues onto one government department and location, which has been shown in socialist countries to break down. I am all for a few more socialist policies (I am lucky to have survived this long on outsourcing rates without a consistent healthcare plan), but it definitely needs to be a contemporary effort and not some centralized 1950s model.
- asdff 6mo ago
  This is probably not far off from how things already work in distribution. Most restaurants are ordering from the same food wholesalers in a given region. When I go to more "independent" grocers or local chains they still have much of the same offerings as major grocers in my area, so I'm guessing they also order from the same sets of distributors (or lease shelf space to the same groups). And I'm not talking just the packaged stuff. But when certain varietals come in e.g. Cosmic Crisp apples, its like all the grocery stores in the area are getting the Cosmic Crisp apples over the next few weeks with the same sticker and all. I know for stuff like seafood there is a saturday night 1am fish market near our harbor where significant volume is sold wholesale to restaurants and grocers (but also individuals interested in filling a chest freezer). So I think already there are just few places to order food wholesale in a given region so those prices are probably somewhat even. Then of course you go to vons, kroger, ralphs, save4less, the local korean grocer, and see different prices for the exact same commodified product like Cosmic crisp apple or 6 pack of coca cola, there is your markup that comes from the grocer itself on top of the regional wholesale price. Grocers like to have flexibility in markup to play psychological games like rotating sales, coupons, and offer rewards programs. Seems that sort of finagling isn't tolerated at the next level of abstraction in business to business sales. Cost disruptions might be good to put the blame on who exactly in the chain is gouging prices. At the end of the day, the eggs in the egg shortage were not more costly to produce than beforehand. And the egg farms that were culled of their hens, were probably not that much of an anchor on operations given that they probably were not consuming their usual power, water, farmhands probably all laid off, land bought and paid for probably decades ago by this point, way out in marginal farmland where property taxes are probably quite low. Certainly not enough to quadruple the price of eggs. And how interesting how Trader Joes still sold $2.99 dozen racks during this whole crisis.
halflife 6mo ago
That may be, but you can direct subsidies towards inverse relation to the store’s income. You can even add extra taxes for large chains. But as others said, groceries are working on minimal margin. And all of them work with the same wholeselles (except those with vertical integrations), and this is a nation wide problem.
- asdff 6mo ago
  >That may be, but you can direct subsidies towards inverse relation to the store’s income. You can even add extra taxes for large chains. Not really imo. Private market passes costs to consumers and leverages subsidy offers to achieve rat race outcomes out of competing local governments off each other. It is how you end up with the classic case of a city courting some business but offering enough tax abatement where the city isn't actually getting anything out of the business, and once the abatement expire the business just leaves for somewhere else that will cut them a better deal. City ends up hostage to the business demanding ever more favorable incentives and removal of all taxes (there's been free trade zones established in the middle of ho hum suburbs, stuff brought in there doesn't even count as imported to the US).
  - halflife 6mo ago
    Interesting. I think it really depends on the competitiveness of the market. In a highly competitive market, every cost saved would be passed to the consumer, obviously this is simplistic microeconomics and doesn’t actually works this way. In my city, there’s a supermarket approximately every 150 meters. Food cost is high, but for the entire country. Actually research shows that food cost is higher in low density towns where there is much less competition.

wahnfrieden 6mo ago

In some neighborhoods there are only luxury grocery options. Groceries also form cartels as the other commenter mentioned. The biggest grocers in Canada did it for many years until they were penalized for it (though it’s likely still continuing in other ways - the same players are now under investigation for selling underweight meats) The estimated cost to consumers from bread price-fixing was $4-5 billion

halflife 6mo ago
It’s about supply and demand. Luxury grocers provide a shopping “experience”, where low cost grocers do not. In a luxury neighborhood it would make sense the shoppers are looking for experience more so than low cost.
- wahnfrieden 6mo ago
  The neighborhoods I'm talking about also have many people living in poverty or near it. Looks like you live in Israel which is perhaps less integrated / more segregated than Brooklyn (I don't know though, I haven't been to see first hand)
- rsynnott 6mo ago
  What’s a ‘luxury neighborhood’? In any large city, most central areas are generally a bit of a mix; “this is only for rich/poor people” is more of a suburban phenomenon. If the shops are only catering to the high end, a problem can develop. (I am less sure why this happens to such a great extent in large US cities vs elsewhere, vs more of a balance of shops, but it does seem to.)
  - wahnfrieden 6mo ago
    The poster appears to be Israeli. I’m not an expert and have never been but I understand spatial wealth segregation is quite extreme there and may explain their take. Here’s one study: https://www.ref-inst.org/en/articles-and-studies/spatial-inequality-in-israel-tal-and-leventhal https://www.ref-inst.org/en/articles-and-studies/spatial-ine... So it may just be that where they are from, the concept of “luxury neighborhoods” which do not need to cater to the poor and disadvantaged populations does indeed exist, due to segregation factors

yohannparis 6mo ago

Why does everything needs to be economically viable?

koolba 6mo ago
Because that’s what has traditionally allowed western countries to have a wide availability and inventory of goods vs communist economies.
- deleted 6mo ago
  [deleted]
- bojan 6mo ago
  But why does the availability have to be wide? Maybe those stories can do few things, but do them well. Sell staple foods and healthy choices.
  - halflife 6mo ago
    Because than people won’t come to your store. People buy where they can purchase the maximum of their shopping cart in a single place. That is why you have loss leader grocers, where they pull people with dramatic discounts on specific items, but the total cart costs the same
    - yohannparis 6mo ago
      I understand your point of view. But in cities of all sizes, it's easier to not have to do that. For example in NYC, a medium size city, you can easily go do your shopping in multiple places, and not at the same time.
      - halflife 6mo ago
        Yes, and some people do that. Some consumers go to specific stores to purchase specific qualities of brands. But most do not, especially for convenience products. You get it where you can.

tacostakohashi 6mo ago

I think that's essentially the entire point, considering that most of the economically viable grocery stores already exist.

shimman 6mo ago

You sound extremely privileged and frankly out of touch (not uncommon with the HN demographic). Do you think working families in NYC don't deserve the same monetary relief that massive corporations get with their own welfare programs? Why should trillion multinational companies take our public money to subsidize their businesses and we can't do the same for workers? Why do you prefer helping non human entities (corporations) over literal humans?

deleted 6mo ago
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halflife 6mo ago
Subsidies can go to small businesses owners. Not just large corporations.

tencentshill 6mo ago

He won by not being a capitalist. He campaigned on doing something to actually meet the basic needs of the people who elected him. This is the cost of that promise. This will force them to compete on those terms instead of directly on money.

deleted 6mo ago

[deleted]

darth_avocado 6mo ago

> Won’t it just cause neighboring stores to close? Hopefully they kept all those profits around from the time they price gouging consumers in the name of “supply chain issues”, “transitory inflation”, “bird flu” etc. I still remember all the headlines about bird flu and how egg prices were doubling because of it. Turns out the egg production barely dropped and it was all a ruse to make more money.

SpicyLemonZest 6mo ago
You can't conclude it was a ruse without knowing the elasticity of egg demand! This is ultimately the kind of thing that worries me about a municipal grocery store. Will voters allow it to respond in rational ways to market conditions, or will they expect the city to go out and extort some egg suppliers when market prices rise above what they consider reasonable?
- ceejayoz 6mo ago
  The DOJ thinks it was a ruse. https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/us-egg-producers-face-new-wave-price-fixing-lawsuits-2025-11-18/ https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/us-egg-producers-fa... As did a jury: https://apnews.com/article/egg-producers-price-gouging-lawsuit-conspiracy-8cd455003a3a40bab74d0f046d0f2c9d https://apnews.com/article/egg-producers-price-gouging-lawsu...
  - deleted 6mo ago
    [deleted]
  - SpicyLemonZest 6mo ago
    It could potentially be a ruse by egg producers. Certainly there's reason for suspicion. But darth_avocado's claim was that grocery stores were in on the ruse and must have extracted huge profits from price gouging consumers. I think that's obviously false. You'll note that in the jury case the plaintiffs were themselves megacorporations, and substantially larger ones than the producers they were suing at that. I don't blame consumers for deciding they don't care about the underlying market structure and just want cheap eggs. But you can't run a store on that basis, and if the city feels like it has to there'll be problems.

lexicality 6mo ago

> Won’t a better option be subsidizing taxes for grocery stores, and let the discounts competitively pass unto the customers? I'm sure this time trickle-down economics will work and not simply line the pockets of business owners

philipallstar 6mo ago
It's not trickling down. Lower costs do result in lower prices.
halflife 6mo ago
When you have a highly competitive market with plenty of actors lower cost does trickle down. Otherwise you’re talking about an extremely complicated cartel which cannot exist.
- cherry_tree 6mo ago
  Do we have a highly competitive market? If so how do we measure that? If not how do we create one?

ceejayoz 6mo ago

> This sounds extremely non economically viable. Many things government does are not economically viable. That's why they get left to government. > Won’t it just cause neighboring stores to close? The idea is to build these where that has already occurred.

WalterBright 6mo ago
[flagged]
- ceejayoz 6mo ago
  > Maybe they should look into why the closings occurred. Do you think there's no research on the causes of food deserts?
  - WalterBright 6mo ago
    Store closings are nearly always the result of them not being profitable.
    - ceejayoz 6mo ago
      Sure. Lots of things governments need to do are unprofitable, like delivering the mail or repairing the roads. I can go to my local public library, borrow the free books, use the free computers, sit in the free chairs, ask the librarian for free guidance, enjoy the free air conditioning, and even book a free meeting room to meet up with some friends to work on a project. Profitable? Fuck no. Great to have in my city? Fuck yes.
      - WalterBright 6mo ago
        Privately run grocery stores have been profitable for 250 years in the US. What has changed recently? Could it be the decriminalization of shoplifting? Or maybe excessive taxes? Or mandates on wages? Vandalism? I forgot to add homeless camping around them, which discourages shoppers.

WalterBright 6mo ago

In Seattle, the proposal for a government grocery store included exemption from paying property taxes and rent.

halflife 6mo ago
So they have an unfair advantage over the competition. Or it’s just a way to neutralize the ineffectiveness of the management, since it’s not profitable based, who’s going to be fired?

bastawhiz 6mo ago

> and let the discounts competitively pass unto the customers This is the same trickle down economics principle that has proven not to work over, and over, and over again. There's exactly zero reason to believe these businesses would pass on the savings to consumers. Consider! Ingles (a supermarket brand here in NC) is criticized for holding huge amounts of abandoned/vacant/dilapidated properties [0], which stifles competition and lets them hold an effective monopoly and makes neighborhoods objectively worse. It's not about the taxes. Don't underestimate a chain's ability to eat costs by maintaining their market position. [0] https://avlwatchdog.org/opinion-ingles-markets-often-raises-the-ire-of-locals-but-it-shouldnt-be-that-way/ https://avlwatchdog.org/opinion-ingles-markets-often-raises-...

halflife 6mo ago
I didn’t specify on the subsidies themselves. You can create subsidies which are inverse to the stores income. It doesn’t HAVE to go to large chains. There are many way to encourage small businesses to open. Competing with them is not one.
wenc 6mo ago
You're thinking a tax break which is an unconditional subsidy. That relies on the business passing savings through which folks are right to be skeptical about. But that's not all subsidy mechanisms. The best ones are where pass-through is enforced, not assumed. You already know of one that works: WIC. It lowers the effective price for customer, which the store receives as reimbursement. It's not about trickle-down -- that's ideology. It's more about designing the right mechanism.

thinkingtoilet 6mo ago

Oh no! Struggling Americans will be able to buy food cheaper! What will we do? Also, if anyone has any reservations about a government run grocery store, go ask your representatives to come out against military commissaries. I bet you will not be able to find one active politician who will try to remove that. You know why? Because government run grocery stores work. End of story. Period. There is no discussion. You are wrong if you disagree. We do this. It exists. It works. And people love it. Try to find one politician that will end that service.

cindyllm 6mo ago
[dead]
halflife 6mo ago
Grocery costs has to come from some formula. If the mamdani stores actually do sell at a lower cost, where did the discount come from?
- thinkingtoilet 6mo ago
  Again. This exists. There is no theoretical here. Go look up how the military commissaries work. That will answer your question.
  - halflife 6mo ago
    military commissaries are subsidized with taxes. So would these stores have lower prices because of tax subsidies? What prevents rich people from exploiting these subsidies?
    - thinkingtoilet 6mo ago
      Yes. They will be subsidized, just like other food-based welfare programs. As for the rich, is this really your concern? A few rich people getting some cheaper groceries is so bad that we have to deny poor people from getting affordable food? Why do so many Americans hate poor people? You know there's literally trillions of waste in agriculture, military, pharmaceutical, oil, etc... subsidies and that's just the tip of the ice berg if you examine the tax code. If you're deeply concerned about rich people gaming the system, why don't you start in those places and then when we figure that out, we can worry about rich people shopping in one of five total grocery stores.

jmyeet 6mo ago

To anyone who espouses these claims that the government isn't capable of anything or that it's somehow a moral hazard I just have to ask: how's that working out for you in particular and society in general? Does it feel like things are going well? What we have now is the result of unfettered private control. Private companies collude to raise prices and lower wages. The standard of living in real terms has been in decline for over 50 years. Education, medical, housing and food costs continue to spiral. Where we do have publicly owned alternatives, such as with municipal broadband, those publicly-owned alternatives are always far better. Are we going to make the same argument that EPB in Chattanooga is somehow a moral hazard and has an unfair advantage to Verizon, AT&T, Comcast and Spectrum? Let's just say that it's true that they do. Why is that a problem? Why is it good that billion or trillion dollar companies can charge higher prices than the government can so their owners can buy another mega-yacht at the expense of the people who depend on that service? Because that's what's going on now.

pollorollo 6mo ago

Government owned grocery stores already exist [1]. They are run by the U.S. military, have 200+ locations, and charge at least 25% less than other brands [1]. "Surveys consistently rate the commissaries as one of the military's top non-pay benefits." NYC wants to provide similar benefits for residents. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_Commissary_Agency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_Commissary_Agency [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQOXdtPBGXI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQOXdtPBGXI

gruez 6mo ago
From your own article: >In 2024, DeCA estimated that it saved patrons $1.58 billion and had an operations cost of $1.7 billion, $1.5 billion of which was funded from appropriations.[8] Isn't this the "selling $1 for 75 cents" business model (aka moviepass) that people made fun of a few years ago?
- ceejayoz 6mo ago
  Sure. It's also the business model of your local library.
  - gruez 6mo ago
    Well no, because the library is often the sole provider of book lending services and there's no private sector alternative. The same can't be said for grocery stores. To continue your analogy, it would be closer to the government setting up its own streaming service, even though there's netfilx and several other competitors. Even though people hate netflix for its price hikes or whatever, it's unclear how the government can do a better job here than netfilx (or other competitors), aside from strongarming/expropriating rights holders.
    - ceejayoz 6mo ago
      > To continue your analogy, it would be closer to the government setting up its own streaming service… https://www.pbs.org/ https://www.pbs.org/

hitekker 6mo ago

The nyc subreddit which I'd say is pretty pro-Mamdani shared your concerns. https://old.reddit.com/r/nyc/comments/1sjq9v9/mayor_zohran_mamdani_will_announce_plans_to_open/ https://old.reddit.com/r/nyc/comments/1sjq9v9/mayor_zohran_m...

ModernMech 6mo ago

Who knows, let's try it and see. I've heard all my life about how new ideas are potentially not economically viable, so we keep trying old ideas which proven not economically viable. My feeling is that the economy is such a large, chaotic, dynamic system that most people, including experts, have no idea what is theoretically viable or not viable. So making decisions based on "my first order analysis is that this is not economically viable" is misguided. You have to try it first and see how the system actually responds.