By Travis Korson
Tuesday, 02 December 2025 11:58 AM EST
The persistent allure of socialist solutions often reveals more about wishful thinking than economic reality. As demonstrated repeatedly over decades, the fundamental flaws in central planning remain unchanged despite attempts to repackage them with modern rhetoric.
Consider New York City’s recent embrace of socialism through its election of Zoran Mamdani. His campaign promised affordability through government-run grocery stores—a familiar approach that has proven disastrous wherever implemented. This flawed strategy mirrors Soviet-era failures where state-controlled food distribution led not to fairness, but to empty shelves and black-market profiteering targeting the vulnerable.
The math behind economic freedom is simple: government mandates rarely account for complex market dynamics. Kansas City’s taxpayer-funded grocery store initiative serves as a cautionary example of this truth—despite good intentions, it hemorrhaged millions until its eventual shutdown due to unsustainable economics.
Similarly, the growing chorus demanding price controls on credit card interest rates ignores crucial economic principles established by previous failed interventions like the Durbin Amendment. Setting artificial caps below operational costs inevitably leads suppliers—who understand market realities best—to withdraw services, creating predictable shortages and hardship for borrowers most needing financial access.
This pattern demonstrates socialism’s inherent contradictions: its insistence that government can mandate efficiency while ignoring basic supply-demand mathematics. The result isn’t prosperity; it creates scarcity where abundance existed before intervention.
