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On June 28 2025 00:45 Mohdoo wrote:Show nested quote +On June 28 2025 00:23 LightSpectra wrote:Haven't read the whole conversation about city-run grocery stores but it doesn't look like anyone's mentioned that it was only for communities that are food deserts. They're not competing with private grocery stores. The general concerns people have brought up more so relate to the grocery store having zero accountability and being a black hole of tax payer money. Which I think is entirely valid. But I also think there are plenty of ways the idea can be strengthened and guarded against that kind of thing by simply putting effort and detail into the planning.
Mismanagement is the problem, not for-profit or non-profit.
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On June 28 2025 01:38 Magic Powers wrote:Show nested quote +On June 28 2025 00:45 Mohdoo wrote:On June 28 2025 00:23 LightSpectra wrote:Haven't read the whole conversation about city-run grocery stores but it doesn't look like anyone's mentioned that it was only for communities that are food deserts. They're not competing with private grocery stores. The general concerns people have brought up more so relate to the grocery store having zero accountability and being a black hole of tax payer money. Which I think is entirely valid. But I also think there are plenty of ways the idea can be strengthened and guarded against that kind of thing by simply putting effort and detail into the planning. Mismanagement is the problem, not for-profit or non-profit.
This is correct.
My complaint about socialist rot is actually a complaint about bureaucracy, no matter if it's public or private, for profit or not. Any business that gets too large suffers from bureaucratic rot. However, the big difference between a private business and a public one suffering from that rot is that a private business will simply go out of business or be forced to shrink back to a more agile model... layoffs or split-offs of various divisions where some go out of business and some find stability or new growth.
A public company will just keep digging into the taxpayer well for more money and allow the inefficiencies to continue. Once something is started, people fall into sunk cost fallacies. People also feel ownership of that thing and don't want to lose it (endowment effect)... so the black hole continues.
Moodoo's suggestion of metrics for staying in business is a good start and can defend against sunk cost and the endowment effect, but it's far from perfect.
Let's try to make a semi-realistic example: NYC's new LeninMart goes into a "food desert". Okay, why was it a food desert in the first place? If there was profit to be made, wouldn't a for-profit business move in there? People need to eat, right? It should be easy. Some condition is making food in a food desert unprofitable (it's crime). So LeninMart comes in with a nice business model to break even or turn a small profit, and then gets robbed blind and turns a loss.
It fails Moodoo's metrics and so is scheduled to shut down. In turn, voters in the food desert throw a fit... they're going to lose their only source of grocery shopping. They put pressure on the politicians and the politicians extend the metrics for another period of time. Repeat forever.
Better solutions:
A co-op, which I'm fully in favor of. People in a food desert want to start a co-op? Great. Do it. Either on their own or partner with an experienced co-op to put one in.
Major property tax break to a grocery store (or the co-op) for moving into a food desert. Basically make that part of the ledger free so that someone can be enticed to build there and stay.
A food pantry. They give away food for free, it's a reasonably well known sunk cost that can be budgeted for. If that's what we need to feed people, go for it. Just go in with clear eyes that it is a cost and we are making a choice to spend tax money to feed the poor and not some deluded plan for socialist grocery stores.
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On June 27 2025 22:10 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:Show nested quote +On June 27 2025 21:37 GreenHorizons wrote:On June 27 2025 21:17 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On June 27 2025 21:09 GreenHorizons wrote:On June 27 2025 21:03 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On June 27 2025 20:45 GreenHorizons wrote:As expected (and obviously hypocritical af), many "Vote blue no matter who" Dems are hesitant to get on board with the Dem party nominee. On Wednesday, many Democratic lawmakers and officials either denounced Mamdani or notably declined to rally around him.
The top two Democratic leaders in Congress, Sen. Chuck Schumer and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, both New Yorkers, declined to endorse Mamdani even as they applauded his victory.
New York Rep. Laura Gillen, from Nassau County, called Mamdani the "absolute wrong choice for New York."
Rep. Tom Suozzi, also from Nassau County, said he had "serious concerns."
Other House Democrats from New York who hadn't backed Mamdani were mostly tight-lipped Wednesday.
Reps. Pat Ryan, Josh Riley and Ritchie Torres — who went so far as to say he wouldn't run for governor if Mamdani won — all dodged reporters.
Rep. Dan Goldman, asked if he had any thoughts on the result, told Axios: "Not right now."
Major Democratic donors — who poured tens of millions into a Super PAC for Cuomo — were having private discussions Wednesday about whether to back an independent run by Cuomo in November's general election, or rally behind unpopular incumbent Mayor Eric Adams, who's also running as an independent. www.axios.comThere's also Hochul's hesitation: New York Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul directly avoided saying whether she will back Democratic mayoral primary winner and assemblyman Zohran Mamdani in the upcoming election for New York City mayor. www.newsweek.comAdams and Cuomo are such obvious scumbags, I have a hard time believing Dems won't eventually reluctantly rally around Zohran, but I can't rule it out. Of course, if they don't, then it exposes the "vote blue no matter who" crew as hypocrites and/or useful idiots. It definitely pisses me off when some Democratic leaders who push for the "vote blue no matter who" argument end up being hypocrites when their preferred "blue" candidate doesn't become the nominee. I had no problem uniting behind the moderate Democratic nominees when my preferred progressive candidates lost their primaries, but if the Democratic establishment is going to actively sabotage left-wing nominees instead of getting in line, the party will eventually split and be screwed. Would you feel like those Democratic leaders exploited you as their useful idiot? I united behind Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden because I actually felt they were the best nominees in their respective general elections, based on their histories and policy proposals, not because I was persuaded or tricked by some of the potential hypocrites you listed, so I don't personally feel like I was being exploited. I was always going to vote for the Democratic nominee, because I actually prescribe to the "vote blue no matter who" perspective, when the alternative is the current Republican party. (I know you and I disagree on the "lesser of two evils" approach, and the potential shifting of the Overton window, and so on.) So they will take advantage of your sincerity again. You'll be pissed, see their hypocrisy, then fall in line behind them again, indistinguishably from a useful idiot, but actually as someone with a sincere belief in something. This should help you and others understand how people on the right keep apparently being useful idiots for their politicians despite their hypocrisy and ineffectualness at achieving the things that actually serve their voters and/or adhere to their principles. I think we might be missing each other semantically on how "useful idiot" is defined. I don't consider myself a naive supporter of 2016 Clinton or 2020 Biden or 20204 Biden/Harris in their respective general elections. I don't think they took advantage of my vote, and I don't think voting for them undermined my other preferences during the 2016 and 2020 Democratic primaries. I also think that 2020 Biden was a generally successful presidency, and that 2016 Clinton and 2024's Biden or Harris would have been far more successful than Trump's presidencies. I would have been happy with all of those. Would a Sanders presidency have been even better? Maybe! But my general election votes for Clinton/Biden/Harris weren't due to some promise or belief or trusted reciprocation that they would rally behind a more progressive nominee if there ever was one in a future election. I think it's actually that I missed a "functionally", as in "You'll be pissed, see their hypocrisy, then fall in line behind them again. *Functionally* indistinguishable from a useful idiot, but actually someone with a sincere belief in something."
Also, the implication (or outright explicit argument, that I remember rejecting multiple times) was always that there was the expectation that if Bernie won a primary then the "vote blue no matter who" crowd would fall in line behind him instead.
That was always an indispensable part of the rationale behind all the variations of "if progressives/dem socs win the primaries" rhetoric.
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On June 28 2025 02:31 RenSC2 wrote:
It fails Moodoo's metrics and so is scheduled to shut down. In turn, voters in the food desert throw a fit... they're going to lose their only source of grocery shopping. They put pressure on the politicians and the politicians extend the metrics for another period of time. Repeat forever.
Better solutions:
A co-op, which I'm fully in favor of. People in a food desert want to start a co-op? Great. Do it. Either on their own or partner with an experienced co-op to put one in.
I think this distinction is worth a bit more analysis and discussion. At face value, you broadly gestured towards "government is inefficient and ineffective, whereas private ventures or ventures with less people are better". But it does not need to be this way and there are many examples of government programs or government efforts being entirely efficient and effective.
The species of humans are the same in both cases. People will need to learn along the way and nothing will go perfectly in both cases. In theory there should be no barriers to the co-op outperforming the city-run grocery store. I think a better reason needs to be given. If nothing else, we ought to strive for better than that. Giving up so easily doesn't provide value.
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"But the tax payer money" is the biggest fucking joke when we let Walmart let pay people like shit and cause their workers to need to rely on government assistance to get by.
Oh, right, but then we can just call them welfare queens that need to pull themselves up by their boostraps.
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In GH's world a useful idiot is a person who is coherent to their values and morals and votes accordingly. He doesn't like it when other people use his justifications for their voting behavior because only he is worthy of choosing who to support and who not to support. If you happen to fall apon a meridad of tripwires it is then infinitly better to allow a regime to do the worst they want to, beacuse getting part of the way to where you want to go is the worst outcome.
See Kamala not denouncing Israel justifies GH's material support in the election for concentration camps and ICE black bagging civilians on the street. I don't see why no one else doesn't see the sense in this.
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Liberal vs. progressive friendly fire is fucking stupid no matter who does it. There aren't enough liberals or enough progressives to win any elections on our own, we need to be coming together to stop authoritarianism. There isn't going to be a rule of law or scientific community remaining if we keep up this circular firing squad bullshit.
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Agreed. Also, celebrate those wins, the last month has been all about how the establishment dems were so bad and evil this would never happen. Now it happens and we are on to how they are going to definitely going to do evil stuff behind the scenes. Now is the time to celebrate, work together to get him elected AND then make sure his policies work. The bad Dem bad no matter what talk is just grating and pointless.
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Hoffman is laying in state today alongside her husband and dog. They've got 12 golden retrievers rotating in as an honor guard for the dog who was too much of a good boy to be a therapy dog. Only the 20th to lay in state in Minnesota and the first woman.
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EPT
