Catholic thinker G. K. Chesterton once wrote, “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.” Socialism is the opposite. For the past century and more, starry-eyed socialists have imposed their will on reality time and again. Unless they abandon their misguided ideals, socialist enterprises have never yet avoided disaster.

This dismal track record never seems to dissuade the starry-eyed socialists, however. A new generation always stands ready to turn longstanding institutions into guinea pigs, to test out their notions that government is the solution and private enterprise is the problem. Such an experiment is underway right now in New York City, where left-wing lab-coat Zohran Mamdani rode a wave of far-Left ferment to mayoral victory in America’s largest city.

Mamdani’s Masterplans

Mamdani has announced a “Block by Block” housing plan, which forces many landlords to make repairs they cannot afford at city-mandated rents, or else the city will seize their property and hand it over to Left-wing non-profits. He also plans to spend $22 billion over the next five years to build and preserve 400,000 “affordable” housing units.

“We will focus on the worst landlords in New York City,” Mamdani declared. “When necessary, we will take aggressive legal action to remove negligent owners and property managers. And for buildings that have suffered chronic neglect, we will work to transfer ownership to responsible stewards. Not more responsible private companies, but “Stewards that include community land trust and nonprofits.”

“We shouldn’t be surprised that the mayor is embarking on this mission,” reflected Joel Griffith, senior fellow at Advancing American Freedom, on “Washington Watch.” “He ran as a socialist. We know that he is a Marxist. And his ‘block by block’ renovation program is actually a block-by-block private property seizure program.”

Mamdani has also announced a plan to open a city-owned grocery store in every borough before his mayoral term expires.

Economic Illiteracy

Both plans show a preference for direct government intervention in economic activity, as well as a fundamental misunderstanding of the economic principles at play.

Regarding housing, “We all recognize that housing and affordability is a big problem, especially in New York City,” granted Griffith. “But the driver of the housing affordability problem in New York City are the left-wing policies that have been in place for decades: things like land-use regulations, rent control.”

“The price controls on rent as well have caused there to be a shortage of housing supply,” he explained. “Because, if you’re an investor, why would you put money into renovating a unit or building a new unit if you knew that you were not going to be able to recoup the costs of your investment?”

“For that reason, yes, there are many dilapidated units in New York City. But that’s because the landlords … cannot invest the resources to upgrade those properties, because there’s no way they’ll lawfully be allowed to charge the rent that would be necessary to recoup their investments. This is a government-caused problem in New York City. And unfortunately, Mayor Mamdani’s proposal to simply seize the property — that is only going to make matters worse.”

Likewise with grocery stores, Mamdani is not trying to address a lack of grocery stores, but a perceived problem that food prices are perceived as too high. “In one of the neighborhoods in Harlem where the mayor is proposing to open up this new grocery store, there are nearly a dozen private grocers, including Aldi’s and Whole Foods, within one mile, which is about a 15-minute walk, of this new, government-owned store,” Griffith said. “By the way, the construction costs in that store, by estimates, are about ten times the construction cost that you would see a privately-owned grocery store have to put into effect. So the taxpayers are going to have to front that bill.”

Indeed, taxpayers will continue to foot the bill, Griffith suggested. “With the government-owned stores not being able to turn a profit, [it] doesn’t mean they’ll go out of business because ultimately the taxpayers can foot the bill.” New York City is “running a multibillion-dollar deficit, or they were. And now the New York state government is kicking in some resources to help them pay their bills. … My fear on this is that these government grocery stores … might actually stay in operation, but that bill is going to be distributed towards taxpayers.”

Once the city government’s less-efficient, money-draining store is established — assuming that it opens on time and on budget — “you’re going to see that store competing, of course, with the private stores that are just trying to … get by,” said Griffith.

Thus, “you could very easily have a situation in which New Yorkers overall have to pay even higher taxes for this needless government business,” Griffith concluded. “And you’ll see private grocery stores have to hike the charges that they put on customers to make up for the business they’ll lose to the government-subsidized operations,” which isn’t turning down a profit down the street.

“Of course, none of us wants anyone to go hungry in this country,” Griffith added. “And this is why we have an incredible array of programs, including EBT, that ensure that, if you’re indigent, you’re not going to starve …. But the proper way to do this is to get those types of benefits directly into the hands of those that need them, not by opening up a government-run business to compete with the private sector.”

Nothing New

Mamdani and his supporters elide the fact that socialist plans like those he has proposed for New York housing and groceries have already been implemented — with disastrous consequences.

“Government-owned housing projects are not a novel idea,” argued Griffith, but such places are “not pleasant places to live.” Indeed, the New York City Housing Authority already operates 150,000 housing units. But it is under federal supervision for its poor quality, which includes problems ranging from lead to mold to pests to broken heating and elevators.

“This is even worse because it’s not just government-owned housing. This is government seizing, by regulation, private property.”

On government-run grocery stores, Mamdani should “consult Venezuela,” Griffith suggested, “because those government grocery stores are still in operation. And those shelves are often quite empty.”

“What you see in New York is … far worse than what we used to see across the socialist, formerly socialist countries in Europe. You’re seeing Mamdani act in a way that is really more akin to a Fidel Castro or Che Guevara. This is very dangerous to our economic future,” Griffith warned. “This is something that you would expect in communist Cuba or Venezuela or Cambodia, not in the United States of America.”

“Government management of any economic sector is not desirable, especially when it comes to housing,” Griffith summarized. “It has been a failure in each and every place where it’s been tried.”

This point is relevant because socialists like to present their ideas as novel and fresh, as if real socialism has never been tried before. But that notion is only true in the sense that real socialism believes man is (or at least can be) inherently good. Thus, real socialism only works in Utopia (“No Place”), not in the real world where human beings are fallen sinners.

Warring Worldviews

Griffith said socialism and a free-market system were “at odds with each other,” and he argued the free-market system (which he also called “capitalism”) was philosophically and economically superior.

In a free-market system, “We as free people, either working individually or working through others through businesses — we get to make determinations about how we want to live, how we want to earn our living, what we want to spend our dollars on and consume, and how we want to invest those dollars.” Under socialism, government or other experts make those decisions for everyone else. Thus, socialism constitutes “an assault against basic human liberty.”

In practice, the free-market system has also been proven to be more efficient, Griffith continued. “That’s because individuals collectively — we all know better what we both want and … need from the economy. This is much in opposition to the notion of central planners in Washington, D.C., or Brussels determining how resources will be allocated.”

In fact, the free-market system is so much more efficient than a socialist system that “you can have a free market system generate enough tax revenue to have a very wasteful welfare system, but we can all still have a relatively comfortable standard of living,” Griffith argued. “When you have the government step in and seize the actual means of production, whether it's seizing the farms or, in this case, seizing the distribution networks or part of the distribution networks via the grocery stores. That is far more dangerous. In effect, you begin to see the government strangle the goose that laid the golden egg.”

The free-market system also takes a more realistic view of human nature. It does not try to change or ignore the fact that people can be selfish, or that they will almost always act in their own self-interest. Rather, it harnesses that principle to turn what is effectively a private vice into a public virtue. Under a principle of free exchange, for someone to get something they want (usually money), they must produce something of value to another person, or else the other party will simply refuse to make the trade.

Socialism, by contrast, places its faith in the goodness and wisdom of a cadre of central planners. And these always turn out to disappoint that trust. Not only do the rulers show their true wickedness, but also economic producers, when the monetary motivation to work hard is removed, lose their spirit of innovation and industriousness.

Griffith urged Americans to stop New York City’s new brand of socialism in its tracks, before it spread any further. He urged state and federal governments to not bail the city out when its plans ultimately led to fiscal ruin. And he urged New Yorkers, who voted for this government for themselves, to think more wisely the next time they had an opportunity at the polling booth. Not by coincidence, real political freedom often coincides with real economic freedom, while socialist states often slip into totalitarianism.

It turns out that believing that people are inherently sinful leads to better social outcomes than believing that people are inherently good.