Venezuela started failing only after the sanctions put on them that isn't free market at all but economic war.
Same issue with Iran.
BTW, the city housing initiative would have worked if the city reinvested the rents in maintenance. Without the profit margin that landlords take, it would be cheaper overall.
These days landlords are private equity which adds another layer of bullshit jobs and profits that go to shareholders etc.
Rob, you always bring the receipts. Your points are sophisticated and nuanced - thank you for sharing.
You're absolutely right about Venezuela and sanctions - economic warfare definitely muddies the waters on any system analysis. Most of what I know about what happened there is from friends who were displaced after the fall there. And you make a fair point about the NYC housing: maybe it failed due to mismanagement rather than inherent flaws.
Here's where I think we're probably on the same page though: there are no free markets. That's part of my larger thesis. People argue about socialism vs capitalism while they all roll up to the same bankers. The sanctions on Venezuela? The financialization of housing? Different tentacles, same beast.
I'm not an economist and not an expert in these systems, but I've seen enough to know we don't have unfettered anything. When I critique "socialism" I'm really worried about concentrating more power in institutions that are already captured. And when I defend "capitalism," I mean actual market accountability - not this crony corporatist mess where PE firms get bailouts and regular people get "market discipline."
Maybe the real question isn't government vs private ownership, but how to break the financialized extraction machine that's capturing both systems.
Jesus Christ you guys, why do I even bother (this is meant as a compliment)? Maybe work on a 10-15 minute comprehensive if that’s possible. People may just view this as a NYC problem. Mine takes a solid 90 minutes to read, which is way too long. As long as evil trillionaires control our govt & media nothing is truly reformable. Good luck and God bless
Not all landlords in NYC are private equity, but the smaller landlords will be forced out if something like a rent freeze comes into effect. The only ones that can afford to ride something like that out are the large holders with tons of property.
Just a bit of navel gazing here, and thought experiments.
Having spent my career as an applied linguist, I was fascinated with that clip showing Mamdani's skill at code-switching ... much more effective than Ben Shapiro's steamrolling Gish Gallop. But I am also torn about how much free choice he has in the matter.
Yes, there is that family arc and the benefits of high-caste nepotism. That is a great line ... 'What we have is socialism for the rich—bailouts, subsidies, and regulatory capture for corporations and the wealthy—combined with brutal market discipline for everyone else.' Reminds me of a book from a somewhat popular book, 2013's 'Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea' by Mark Blyth — which basically summed up Reaganomics, Thatcherism, and Abenomics as socialism for the rich, austerity for the rest of us.
But Mamdani's uncanny capacity to mimic the speaking style of others may be an indication of what some might consider a genetically influenced medical condition ... psychopathy. And like many successful CEOs and politicians, a high-functioning one at that.
I have no clue regarding how to deal with this condition on an individual level, much less the socio-political implications. Counseling is considered dangerous because high-functioning psychopaths observe the counseling techniques, and like Star Trek's Borg, incorporate those techniques into their own skill set. But I can understand why psychopaths, from birth, have to become better in skills of observation, planning, and mimicry. Without those skills, they would be lost in a world of neurotypical people whose mirror neurons automatically kick-in with authentic emotions of empathy, shame, remorse, and so on.
I guess the real problem begins when psychopaths extend those three skills into manipulation ... hence the overlapping with other Cluster B personality types — pathological narcissism, Machiavellian opportunism, and / or sadism.
What is tragic to the collective human genome is that the majority of people are neurotypically emotional, and prone to react to epiphenomena. And as we necessarily tend to judge others through the lens of our own typical temperament and values, we also tend to underestimate the calculating callousness of psychopathic behavior at its worst. It is so far beyond our own neurotypical capacity that we tend to attribute such behavior to non-human entities ... aliens, demons, and so on. They are simply those few who populate one extreme tail of a bell-curve for human morality.
One metaphor I find useful is a general difference between pack carnivores (think, Man-is-wolf-to-man) and herbivores (closer to John Locke's view of humans, or Rousseau's 'noble savage' rather than Thomas Hobbes or Machiavelli). Wolves are neither good nor bad, but of biological necessity, have to plan, work in groups, and target the weak. Sheep or deer are also neither good nor bad, but out of necessity, tend to live in the moment, alert and reactive to only immediate danger.
Another apt metaphor is the distinction between the Morlocks and the Eloi H.G. Wells' 'The Time Machine'.
Like the fable of the Scorpion and the Frog, psychopaths (with a few exceptions such as James Fallon) are predatory by nature, more capable of playing the long game, and good at forming transactional cartels ... though history is filled with the fratricide and patricide that comes with a constant game-of-thrones. And we are constantly making the mistake of projecting ourselves onto these shape-shifting predators.
I can't think of any institution, system, heuristics, or ideology that is safe from capture, corruption, and eventual weaponization ... natural born predators imposing their will on natural born prey.
One confounding variable is probably scale. Joseph Tainter's 'The Collapse of Complex Societies' implies that complex systems inevitably reach a tipping point beyond which the energy necessary to maintain a system exceeds the resources available. Small communities and families have their share of psychopaths, but populations smaller than Dunbar's number seem to be able to deal with these 'kulangeta' (thanks Mathew Crawford, for the Inuit word). Beyond Dunbar's number, there are so many more niches and opportunities for psychopaths to exploit. Even the definition of Dunbar's number implies a limit to the size of populations capable of emapthy-driven morality ... which coincidentally (or not) is about the same as the maximum size of a chimpanzee troop (about 200).
I guess we are all guilty of some behavior similar to Cluster B types ... narcissistic when prepping for a first date, opportunistic when competing for a job, and more self-indulgent with our hobbies than empathizing with starving children in a developing country. But when the behavior begins to threaten a population, that's when it becomes 'sociopathic', literally, pathological to society.
One of my few consolations is the belief that as with a nearly infinite range of social contexts as well as our own Jungian shadow, those more permanent character traits of humanity are not gored on the horns of a simple 'either-or' false dilemma.
On my good days, I believe the moral dimensions of humanity are spread out along a bell curve. If the predators and their inhumane behavior are a couple of standard deviations at one end of that bell curve, and the majority of neurotypicals are herding closer to the center, what's at the other tail of that curve?
On my good days, I want to believe that there are a few who embody the best of humanity, the modest angels and heroes among us ... on their good days.
It is intriguing to say the least Steve. I think I'll re stack this with a copy and paste from one of the paragraphs with particularity relevant reflections of how my own family was forced into a condition of genocide by these aggressive predator/prey dynamics. The paragraph in question was:
"These weren't coincidences—they were features of the system. Socialist states have always had to prevent exit because their economics don't work and their politics require captive populations."
I have a Venezuelan friend who explained to me in the early 00’s that tho she and had dual citizenship with a European country she couldn’t take her kids out of Venezuela without permission from the government because they co-owned all children!! The erosion of parental rights here in the name of medical rights for kids concerns me greatly.
In my case, they did not just take ownership of our biological son, but they claimed their "allegations" gave them ownership over my wife and I and incarcerated us under the pretext of "Protecting the Child". Those who worship at the feet of State power have arrogated to themselves the power (not the right) to steal and sell whole families by allowing no reasonable debates or dissent. One of the case laws I researched was a 1925 "Peirce vs The Society of Sisters" among others. But I think Thomas Sowell nailed it about their anti-human, anti-family egregores.
The video is:"Sowell EXPOSES the SATANIST LGBTQ Agenda to OWN Your Children | Thomas Sowell Today"
Thanks for the message. Joshua's posts are thought-provokingly brilliant. And sometimes necessarily dark. I hear you about your personal experience, and how it emerges into macro-scale patterns. Without that hard ground of personal experience, theories and ideas just become another twist of a kaleidoscopic word-salad.
Ooo ... and that quote is great. It must have floated right by me it in the flood of ideas. That quote reminds me of Joshua's previous post about Kennedy's plan to have all Americans wearing health monitoring devices within 4 years ... and without doubt, it will become the equivalence of a digital prison.
I find it ironic that the more "automated" the system, the less it makes sense to me as a natural flesh and blood man who lives an independent reality of the "Decision makers". Last week I received a ream of paperwork from "Medicare" who opted to automatically enroll me into their "benefits" system. Of course even though I know it's all directed towards their straw man identity, their assertions have real time consequences. If I only get $311.00 a month in Social Security "retirement" and the new "enrollment" is going to cost me $11.50 a month, who are the beneficiaries, and who is the benefactor? Since I know I cannot trust the Medical Industrial Complex to have my best interest at heart, I feel like once again, I am reduced to the status of being an irrelevant spectator in my own life. Just another product or unit who must be micromanaged by abstractions that have no real bearing on my reality other than letting me know that some abstraction has made a decision, no consent required.
Uggh. That is horrible. I remember a few years ago when deploying weapons from a computer console was once considered a moral dilemma. My, my, my ... how A.I. has turbocharged us beyond that problem.
I guess it is that same kind of dehumanization and opportunistic feeding that drive me to write and depend on the few friends I have. If I did not have those two options as therapy ...
Take care Clyde.
Spill their guts in a Substack post (like buddy Dean).
I still get post from Dean Scoville's, but every Substack that goes behind a paywall excludes people like me with a "limited hangout". I still prefer Whitney Webb's "Unlimited Hangout" as I know that I cannot never get the master gaslighters to tell me the truth, at least some people understand that truth has no agenda, it is what it is.
I hear you Clyde. Like you, I am on a fixed, limited income too and can not afford to be one of Dean's paying readers either. But he relented a bit and now lets us post comments for a month for free before restricting us with a paywall.
And I like Whitney Webb's work too. She is a hell-of-a-journalist and doesn't mince words in talking truth to power. I just hope some of the powers-that-be don't send a hitman after her.
Meh. All part of the fractured multilayered reality in which we live. I've haven't understood New Yorkers for many years. I suspect too many young, inexperienced voters who believe in freebies. There ain't no free lunch anywhere. That's the true nature of the world no matter where you live in the world or under what kind of regime.
“The unthinkable... New York City—America's financial capital and largest metropolis—chose Zohran Mamdani as its mayoral nominee. A 33-year-old socialist...”.
This is not only ‘Thinkable’ but inevitable given the mental and spiritual decline of those who still dwell in the Now Rotten Apple. The unthinkable would be that a person of sense and moral convictions would be seen as the popular political choice in such a depraved place.
The Sensible Class of New Yawkers – such as they may have been – have been in a long Conga-line of perpetual movement South to a more sane place like Florida. Sane only because a more sensible Governor has been running the place for the last few years. Sensible New Yorkers can relocate to place that is not on a death wish towards suicide and insanity – while still being able to root for the Yanks and Mets and Rangers from more hospitable seasons.
“If You Can Make It There You Can Make It Anywhere” – the song goes. But all you can make in the State of New York now seems to be more Leftists and more degradation. That’s what happens when all the sensible people leave and you are left with – The Left. Which could also be called the Left-Overs. The Left-Out (meaning They were not in the line to get sensible brains and useful morals and ethics).
The Indispensable Nation itself has been on a path toward Leftist Oblivion in most all places dominated by the Blue Party. Which brings another song to mind – this one by Bobby Vinton: “Blue on blue, heartache on heartache Blue on blue, now that we are through Blue on blue, heartache on heartache And I find I can't get over losing you ...”.
Well, we’d better get used to it. We have lost New York. And like once-vibrant lover who crept away before we took enough notice... New York is Gone.
This might have been considered good news one day for places like Chicago and Los Angeles and San Francisco and Seattle and Houston and the like. But not so because those places are now just as effed up as The City That Never Sleeps.
You cannot save a population hell-bent on destroying themselves. That’s what exists now in major cities in United States Incorporated. The cities are rotting themselves out from the inside with people who want the Mommy-Daddy State and nothing at all asked of them of thing like good purpose and sound values.
As the saying goes... the first thing that has to happen for a problem to be solved is that one acknowledges that they have a problem. Yet the majority of people in these fallen regions do not think they have a problem and just want more of the same things that are leading to their destruction.
(Sensible) New Yorkers are fleeing to Florida. Californians are fleeing to Nevada and Arizona. Chicagoans are fleeing to Tennessee and the Carolinas. Sensible Houston is fleeing to... um, where do Houstonians flee to? Galveston? One wonders.
One last song to reference: Once the rot is fully completely in the Blue Lands, all we’ll be hearing is continuous loop of that famous refrain from ‘Steam’: “Na-na-na-na, na-na-na-na, hey, hey, hey, goodbye...”.
Goodbye, once-great American cities. Goodbye. Let's hope that some of real America survives... somewhere.
I regretted hitting send because I knew you were going to call me out on that line, Shaman. Haha.
FWIW, a couple of years ago I thought about moving to Florida or Texas - then I found out about Bill Gates' mosquito programs in both places :-(
Make no mistake: this is a global attack. We can buy ourselves time by fleeing to saner places, but it's creeping everywhere.
I live in a rural area now and count my blessings daily, but even here you can feel the influence spreading. The question is whether we can wake people up before it's too late, or if we're just documenting the decline for future historians (and hope it doesn't all get erased).
Joshua Stylman: “The question is whether we can wake people up before it's too late, or if we're just documenting the decline for future historians...”.
I don’t believe that we can ‘wake’ anybody up. That’s like trying to explain to someone what the color Green looks like that never saw green in their life and they have no idea what you’re talking about. For Leftist thinkers... Leftism and Wokeism have become their holy religion as well as now becoming their own personal core identity structure. You can’t remove these things from them because they feel there would be nothing left of them – an existential threat that they will vigorously protect themselves against. Like someone trying to pull out all their teeth and leaving their mouth empty with stinging gums and nothing left to chew with. Their teeth might be rotted but They refuse to part with them.
What we do is – simply but profounding share our points of view. This we must do or we are at fault for not sending out into Universe a framework of alternative vision for even one other person to find value in. There are some people who yet haven’t fully drunk down the Leftist sewer water. And some young people who might still listen.
But it’s not our job to save anyone. We can’t do this, anyway. But it is our job to protect ourselves from depraved thinking and the encroaching absence of good values. Whether or not the United States and the World in general become a full-on Globalist Prison Planet is beyond our control. We just tend to our own personal gardens and keep them free of invasive weeds and hope that something will remain of a Garden – and a World – worth living in.
Josh, Your analysis is not bad, but many comments are intolerable. Apparently among your subscribers are people who have not succeeded and are jealous of those who have. Many of these comments read like things I heard about in high school and discarded in college when I grew a brain.
Successful people generally get there by working hard and are by in large responsible for their own success (with some luck thrown in, of course). As you know, I am the child of immigrants but have worked 100 hour weeks since I was 12 and have done just fine -- I do not regret any of it. Many others fall in this same category. I did not get a lift from big banks, big pharma, big tech, big anything...and there are many who are similarly situated
And these are the people who actually PAY THE BILLS. People that work like that to get where they are have a vanishingly small interest in being both disrespected for what they have contributed and (my favorite) berated for not paying "their fair share". So they work hard, make money which is then extorted from them to pay for those who do not work so hard, and get a rash of crap besides. It is no wonder that people leave to go to greener pastures. And leave they will.
Since many who comment seem to be unaware of NYC economics but would rather sing Venezuela's praises (please, go live there) a look at NYC's tax structure is helpful. This data is from the NYC Independent Budget Office for 2021-2023 (PIT is Personal Income Tax):
Top 1% Dominance: The top 1% (AGI ~$900,000+) paid 47.9% of NYC PIT in 2021 (~$6B)
Top 5%: The 90th–95th percentiles (top 5%, AGI ~$300,000–$900,000) paid 32.1%, totaling 81.8% with the top 1%, confirming the heavy reliance on high earners.
Bottom Half: The lower 50% (AGI <$30,000) paid just 0.2%, reflecting exemptions, credits, and low taxable income.
Aggregate Shares and Economic Impact (Considers NYS and NYC)
This approach focuses on the overall contribution of income groups and their economic significance, combining IBO data with 2016–2023 trends from the Citizens Budget Commission (CBCNY)
Total NYC PIT Revenue (2021): ~$12.55B, or 21.2% of city tax revenue and 13.8% of total revenue.
High earners drive this, with filers earning $1M+ (0.7% of filers) contributing 38.9% ($4.88B).
Top 200 Taxpayers: In 2023, the top 200 NYS taxpayers (many NYC residents) paid 6.3% of NYS PIT, with NYC’s share significant due to high-income concentration.
Top 200,000: The top 200,000 taxpayers (5.1% of filers) paid 49.8% of NYS PIT, with NYC filers dominating due to the city’s wealth concentration.
Millionaires’ Share: In 2021, NYC millionaires (0.7%, ~27,300 filers) paid 47% of PIT, slightly up from 38.9% in 2016, reflecting rising incomes and progressive rates
So, essentially, around 27,000 of NYC's 8,000,000 people are carrying fully half the total income tax burden At least 4,000,000 of NYC's people are carrying NONE of the freight...and they are the ones costing the most. And the next 2,000,000 people are paying next to nothing. So how, exactly, does one characterize "fair share". It is hard to get my blood to boil, but this does it.
Maggie Thatcher said it best when she opined that "The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money." The idea that ANYONE owes you or the City or whomever because they happen to have more than you do is antithetical to what most reasonable people believe in my experience.
Let me just deal with one comment that characterizes the blind spots here: Rob says "The City housing initiative would have worked if the City reinvested the rents in maintenance". And Perpetual Motion would work if we could only figure out how to break the laws of physics. The fact is that almost NOTHING the government does works anywhere, never has, and never will. Of course if we had smart, perfect people executing in smart, perfect ways in government it would be wonderful. That is the primary lie of all socialistic/communistic takes. As a matter of fact, there has NEVER been a communist government where there has not been immediate concentration of wealth to the "leaders" and where the population has not suffered, often in more-than-dire fashions. Human nature is immutable, and pretending that "if only the government worked" or "if only we 'communisted' better it would all be wonderful" is right up there with "if only we had masked harder" for covid. Sheesh.
Don't know how you get in front of this. But it would not take a lot of move-outs to bankrupt NYC...Then people will go crying that the Federal government will have to go to other states to extort the money from those who moved. The cycle is predictable and horrible.
I love NY, but some of the thinking reflected here will surely not save it but just hasten its doom.
Thanks Doc. I was hoping you would chime in on this, glad you did.
I was trying to present an argument based on Zohran’s words, the history of these movements, and basic reasoning - you brought the devastating economic data that shows the real-world impact. Those NYC tax numbers are staggering and make the "fair share" rhetoric look economically illiterate.
Generally the comment section here is fantastic and I'm grateful for that. I have no problem with well-reasoned disagreements or even arguments that aren't perfect but remain civil - that's how we learn from each other and sharpen our thinking. It's the ad-hominems and bad faith stuff that doesn't add value to anyone.
Your point about government execution is crucial… even if someone believes in these policies theoretically, the idea that NYC bureaucracy would somehow implement them better than every other attempt in history requires magical thinking.
As always, I appreciate you bringing hard data to counter the fantasy.
Josh, I have a half written response to your wearables article, but it keeps being pre-empted. But this one just needed some facts to remind people of how the world actually works. You may be writing the most interesting Substack at the moment. More people need to read it.
Another fantastic article! I will share widely. Especially to my young daughters. I was in East Berlin a few weeks before the wall came down. My earlier progressive leanings were appropriately shattered. The day I crossed over, a national parade was being held in center square but the public was not invited! The government considered it too dangerous for a couple had just taken refuge in the American embassy. I spit on the Marx and Lenin statue as I entered the gates back to West Berlin. I later joined the month long party in when the wall came down. I remember some of it.
I gave you a like (in Substack, a little red heart) for too many reasons to list here in a 5 sentence quick reaction but to be honest; you lost me when you went full on 1960's John Birch and Barry Goldwater anti-Soviet, pro-Ukranian. Yes, thanks for letting me know about Zohran's support for gender affirming care, which I strongly oppose, but so what if his father wrote a book about the CIA and 9/11? That's my real red line, not the economic virtues or flaws of a mixed economy. The conflation with fatally flawed Bernie and Barrack set aside, for a minute, what is Zohran's stance on forever wars; the War for NATO Enlargement in Ukraine and the Balkanization of Russia, Israel's war for regional dominance in West Asia and the extermination of Palestinians, and the neo-colonial IMF and global bankster backed wars for resource extraction in Sudan and Congo? Peaceful multi-polarism with BRICS or continued (hopeless) American militarization to maintain the imperial hegemony that's already led the economy of the United States into complete bankruptcy; thats the 350 trillion dollar question.
PS, a confession, the only "communist" economy I have any familiarity with is that of the " former Yugoslavia." It worked fairly well, for the majority of citizens, until the IMF, politicians and global banksters summarily decided that the country needed to be re-balkanized. So that the largest American military base in Europe could be built in the middle of the most resource rich semi-autonomous province, Kosovo. Also the territory where the historical ethnic tensions and separation had been whipped up for many decades, after WW2.
Mike, thanks for the thoughtful engagement - clearly you read the piece carefully, which I appreciate.
I think you may have misread my intent on a few points, however...
I'm not going "anti-Soviet" in some 1960s way - I'm documenting how specific economic policies failed when implemented. There's a difference between "this didn't work" and red-scare rhetoric.
On the CIA book - I actually might agree with some of his father's critiques (haven't read it yet). I mentioned it only as evidence of ideological evolution, not to dismiss his views on foreign policy.
You're absolutely right about my focus being NYC governance, not geopolitics. I explicitly said Mamdani was right to refuse Israel pandering - the mayor should focus on the city, not foreign policy. That's exactly my point.
I oppose forever wars too ("both parties bought by same interests"), but I can oppose the military-industrial complex AND worry about someone implementing failed economic policies in NYC. These aren't contradictory positions.
My core question is simple: Should someone who wants to seize the means of production run a $100 billion city budget? That's about municipal governance, not global empire.
Thanks for the Yugoslavia perspective - you're right about external forces playing a role in breakups (all wars are bankster wars, IMHO) though the diversity there may actually supports my broader point about implementation challenges.
Excellent piece, I'm in basic agreement with all of this, I wish I could articulate it as well as you.
What upsets me the most right now is that my fellow NYers seem totally incapable of recognizing Machiavellian, dark triad personalities. The entire culture is drowning in illusion and designed around short term gratification and making people feel good and feel "validated" in the short term; at the expense of any long term mental/spiritual/social health. It's a perfect environment for sociopaths to feed.
As a New Yorker, I'm trying to decide how worried I should actually be, because while I agree with all of your concerns, I think Mamdani's real skill is as an actor, he's great at catching the algorithm. But is there any real substance there? What will he actually be able to implement at the policy level? Maybe he will be able to get some of his insane ideas implemented, idk. NYC is highly dependent on federal funding to function, without it we're done.
Every now and then I read an article and think "Phew! I don't have to write it; someone else did it brilliantly." This one lands in that category. You and I are seemingly in perfect accord on all the bases regarding Mamdani, as well as our early pro-socialist tendencies that were exploded by self-education and the whole Covid enterprise.
I can remember sitting in a lecture hall at Stanford in the 80s, listening to a PoliSci professor say, "I don't know about you, but I sure as heck would rather be RED than DEAD." Lots of chuckles and head-nodding from all of us, including me. I was clueless about history, and happily stayed that way until 9/11 -- when I experienced what I can only describe as a personal, slow-moving apocalypse that reached its apotheosis in 2020.
Long way of saying: I'm with you, Joshua, and thanks for articulating all of it so well.
Brilliant piece. I suspect this brand of “socialism” is poised to usher in Technofeudalism and that it is no accident he has anonymous backing. I have so many thoughts and no time to coherently express them. I really like the angle Joshua took in framing this essay. As one who lived in Tanzania at the height of its “socialist experiment” and who also lived in Uganda in the aftermath of the Idi Amin horror (where the vultures still roosted in the trees outside of the Nile Hotel where the political prisoners were kept), I think there is something deeply suspicious about this candidate rising to prominence at this time on a socialist platform. Joshua’s is the most well-rounded and on point critique I have seen.
Thank you so much for this. Your perspective from Tanzania and Uganda adds incredible weight to the analysis. Having lived through actual socialist experiments and their aftermath, you understand the patterns in ways most of us don't.
Your point about technofeudalism is spot on - this isn't your grandfather's socialism, it's something far more sophisticated and dangerous. The anonymous backing makes it even more suspicious. One point though is that I believe it's creeping in on both sides (see some of my other writing, including Psyop Season from a couple of weeks ago).
Anyway, I appreciate you taking the time to share your insights. People who've seen this playbook before are exactly who need to be sounding the alarm.
It is a difficult alarm to sound because so many Americans are hypnotized by the Left-Right swinging pendulum and whatever archetypal fear of the day has hijacked their attention. And yes, I have noticed that the same technocratic, technofeudal agenda is being enacted from both “sides” using different languaging and playing on different fears. There is a saying I came across a few years ago: The eye cannot see what the mind does not know. This plays a critical role in the current situation as far as I can tell. To illustrate this concept I wrote a short piece that I think you might find interesting. It will take you 5 minutes to read. It is a phenomenon I wish every American could understand. You already get it. I think it goes with the gift for pattern recognition.
"And that $30 minimum wage? It just leads to more outsourcing and automation because businesses can't survive the cost structure, prices go up, and you end up with fewer jobs and more expensive everything."
In my experience, it has been an exercise in futility to try to explain the difference between nominal wages and purchasing power, and how focusing on nominal wages is not merely using the incorrect metric to determine wealth, but actively impoverishing larger and larger swathes of lower-middle class Americans.
Agreed completely about the observations regarding corporate cronyism. Too big to fail was such an insulting canard.
Economic conditions determine our lives. Living under the heel or jackboot of ruling class power calling itself capitalism or communism still leaves the laboring masses of us exploited and oppressed. It's only reasonable to demand economic as well as political rights that are inalienable to us as humans, no matter how much ruling ideology casts that as evil incarnate, a dangerous threat to all that is holy to the rule of 'law and order', or provenly, practically impossible according to the dismal 'science' championing neoliberal rollback of redistributed wealth a la von Hayek and the Mont Pelerin Society and Friedman and the Chicago School (the post-WW2 welfare state's 'compromise' between capital and labor was doomed to failure from the start insofar as it continued corporate and government cronyism in programs like public housing).
Ruling class politics, left to right, must always sell itself to us as the welfare of the people in order to manufacture our consent. The rhetoric may change from republicanism to democracy to socialism, but the substance to the noble lies is accumulation of wealth and power by the favored few. "The world is a business, Mr. Beale."* Or more like the bizzness of organized crime against humanity.
The necessity of illusion in representing our subjugation as benevolent leaves any politician playing by the rules of the racket liable to ludicrous contradiction between rhetoric and reality, though the psywar production of historical amnesia seems to keep making enough people suckers every electoral circus. Scions of privilege posing as populists like Trump are every bit as full of shit as this wannabe hero of the people in NYC. In line with CEOs accountable to shareholders/stakeholders, the brands of politics these puppets are pushing depend on who's pulling their strings and what roles they're to follow in larger agenda lost behind the diversionary spectacle. Such prostitution by another name is about all that's consistent to the oldest profession (sex for sale the oldest oppression).**
I'm not sure why argument that real socialism has yet to be achieved is "theoretical deflection" while claiming that real capitalism currently doesn't exist in the U$ isn't. Nonetheless, about the only real freedom to free market mythology is free-for-all predation upon people reduced to commodified units of production and consumption. Even at the earliest stages of capitalist class development from feudal forms of class rule, the state, and its monopoly upon institutionalized violence, has been instrumental in enforcing its ascendancy and hegemony.
Accordingly, enclosure laws imposed dispossession of peasants from the more self-sustaining commons for an urban proletariat's forced dependency as 'free labor' with no choice but to work as wage slaves to private property owners of the means of production. This pattern of accumulation through dispossession may be perceived in latecomers to industrial development like Russia/USSR and China where state bureaucracy has performed accelerated transition to the same set-up of the few over the many, only in the name of communism (state capitalism).
The profit-making, grow-or-die, imperialist logic of capital as an economic system is rooted in intra-class war as well to control markets by means of monopolistic monsters from Standard Oil to BlackRock. It seems just more historical amnesia to believe that the corporate state, and its fascist nature (as Mussolini pointed out), has not been an 'organic' outcome to the march of modern progress in population control such that now global totalitarianism threatens us all.
Semantic switches to 'socialism for the rich' (aka 'wealthfare') confuse egalitarian movements with oligarchy east to west. The cruel irony is that so-called private enterprise, and all the supposed efficiency of business, wouldn't make bank without massive subsidies paid for by the general public (taxation without representation), particularly through the Pentagod. The only part of the nation's economy that belongs to the people is the national debt, and the wars waged to bleed us dry under occupation to a nation-state that's been at war almost every year of its history.
What rights we do have, far from being granted us by a capitalist or socialist corporate state, have been fought for by common people seeking freedom and justice on a more genuine egalitarian basis than these phony rivals must forever promise. What limited gains were made for the common good during a previously propagandized golden era of capitalism and American Dream were replaced by libertarian ideology legitimating a return to the Satanic mills of the nineteenth century under austerity of debt bondage to financial capital (of which NYC's demise was an early forerunner). Jumpstarted with the global coup of convid covering for collapse far beyond the 2008 bailouts, the collectivism of technocracy now takes over to replace neoliberalism's failing political economy with (pseudo)scientific dictatorship to end class war once and for all with biodigital slavery to global gods weaponizing the means of production for our destruction. Capitalism continually revolutionizes itself, as Marx observed, to reserve the right to rule for the "masters (monsters) of mankind" (Smith) and their "vile maxim" of all for them, nothing for us.
It may be arguable that similar to the emergence of capitalism from its marginal position in ancient and medieval civilization socialism as the real movement of human equality beyond the history of class rule takes no small amount of time, struggle, and good fortune. Certainly, the threat of a good example, an alternative to capitalism, has been met with relentless resistance by capitalist class rulers. From invasion of Russia to reverse its working class revolution in 1917 to over half a century of economic warfare and state terror against Cuba to coup against Chavez in Venezuela's experiment in socialism for the 21st century, regime change's been a constant. As Iron Lady Thatcher (TINA) laid down like iron law, There Is No Alternative.
The possibility of an alternative will not be given us. It must be taken by us voluntarily forming social relations based on a different scale of values than the vices made virtues under capitalism, beginning with inequality as an incentive to compete in a dog-eat-dog war of all against all while poverty kills so many as to dwarf the conventional history of genocide. Those values have not been lost but lie latent, like a "subterranean fire" (Spies), within the everyday anarchism of our lives wherever mutual associations of care speak of a human nature no longer "red in tooth and claw" (Tennyson) but integral to a cooperative society where "the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all" (Marx).
“The State is a condition, a certain relationship between human beings, a mode of behavior; we destroy it by contracting other relationships, by behaving differently toward one another… We are the State and we shall continue to be the State until we have created the institutions that form a real community.”
"Yes, you have, Manny. You used to be a monarchist. Then you supported the Falange. Then you backed Franco. After that, you were a democrat. Not long ago you were with the socialists and now you're on the right. And you say you haven't changed your thinking?"
"Not at all, Pepe. My thinking has always been the same: to be mayor of this town."
(Eduardo Galeano, Upside Down: A Primer for the Looking Glass World)
Also:
Control, Crisis and Compliance: Endgame Logic of Late Capitalism
Venezuela started failing only after the sanctions put on them that isn't free market at all but economic war.
Same issue with Iran.
BTW, the city housing initiative would have worked if the city reinvested the rents in maintenance. Without the profit margin that landlords take, it would be cheaper overall.
These days landlords are private equity which adds another layer of bullshit jobs and profits that go to shareholders etc.
Rob, you always bring the receipts. Your points are sophisticated and nuanced - thank you for sharing.
You're absolutely right about Venezuela and sanctions - economic warfare definitely muddies the waters on any system analysis. Most of what I know about what happened there is from friends who were displaced after the fall there. And you make a fair point about the NYC housing: maybe it failed due to mismanagement rather than inherent flaws.
Here's where I think we're probably on the same page though: there are no free markets. That's part of my larger thesis. People argue about socialism vs capitalism while they all roll up to the same bankers. The sanctions on Venezuela? The financialization of housing? Different tentacles, same beast.
I'm not an economist and not an expert in these systems, but I've seen enough to know we don't have unfettered anything. When I critique "socialism" I'm really worried about concentrating more power in institutions that are already captured. And when I defend "capitalism," I mean actual market accountability - not this crony corporatist mess where PE firms get bailouts and regular people get "market discipline."
Maybe the real question isn't government vs private ownership, but how to break the financialized extraction machine that's capturing both systems.
Thanks for the compliment! 😊
Bingo… yes and we should not be constrained by labels invented in the past when the situation was different.
It doesn't have to be any of the isms, which just weigh things down with history.
But like you said, it should be run by the people that do things for it, not the ones that sit on it.
Rentier capitalism is the problem not just in housing but all of the industries.
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/kevin-carson-the-rentier-economy-vulture-capital-and-enshittification
Jesus Christ you guys, why do I even bother (this is meant as a compliment)? Maybe work on a 10-15 minute comprehensive if that’s possible. People may just view this as a NYC problem. Mine takes a solid 90 minutes to read, which is way too long. As long as evil trillionaires control our govt & media nothing is truly reformable. Good luck and God bless
Not all landlords in NYC are private equity, but the smaller landlords will be forced out if something like a rent freeze comes into effect. The only ones that can afford to ride something like that out are the large holders with tons of property.
Just a bit of navel gazing here, and thought experiments.
Having spent my career as an applied linguist, I was fascinated with that clip showing Mamdani's skill at code-switching ... much more effective than Ben Shapiro's steamrolling Gish Gallop. But I am also torn about how much free choice he has in the matter.
Yes, there is that family arc and the benefits of high-caste nepotism. That is a great line ... 'What we have is socialism for the rich—bailouts, subsidies, and regulatory capture for corporations and the wealthy—combined with brutal market discipline for everyone else.' Reminds me of a book from a somewhat popular book, 2013's 'Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea' by Mark Blyth — which basically summed up Reaganomics, Thatcherism, and Abenomics as socialism for the rich, austerity for the rest of us.
But Mamdani's uncanny capacity to mimic the speaking style of others may be an indication of what some might consider a genetically influenced medical condition ... psychopathy. And like many successful CEOs and politicians, a high-functioning one at that.
I have no clue regarding how to deal with this condition on an individual level, much less the socio-political implications. Counseling is considered dangerous because high-functioning psychopaths observe the counseling techniques, and like Star Trek's Borg, incorporate those techniques into their own skill set. But I can understand why psychopaths, from birth, have to become better in skills of observation, planning, and mimicry. Without those skills, they would be lost in a world of neurotypical people whose mirror neurons automatically kick-in with authentic emotions of empathy, shame, remorse, and so on.
I guess the real problem begins when psychopaths extend those three skills into manipulation ... hence the overlapping with other Cluster B personality types — pathological narcissism, Machiavellian opportunism, and / or sadism.
What is tragic to the collective human genome is that the majority of people are neurotypically emotional, and prone to react to epiphenomena. And as we necessarily tend to judge others through the lens of our own typical temperament and values, we also tend to underestimate the calculating callousness of psychopathic behavior at its worst. It is so far beyond our own neurotypical capacity that we tend to attribute such behavior to non-human entities ... aliens, demons, and so on. They are simply those few who populate one extreme tail of a bell-curve for human morality.
One metaphor I find useful is a general difference between pack carnivores (think, Man-is-wolf-to-man) and herbivores (closer to John Locke's view of humans, or Rousseau's 'noble savage' rather than Thomas Hobbes or Machiavelli). Wolves are neither good nor bad, but of biological necessity, have to plan, work in groups, and target the weak. Sheep or deer are also neither good nor bad, but out of necessity, tend to live in the moment, alert and reactive to only immediate danger.
Another apt metaphor is the distinction between the Morlocks and the Eloi H.G. Wells' 'The Time Machine'.
Like the fable of the Scorpion and the Frog, psychopaths (with a few exceptions such as James Fallon) are predatory by nature, more capable of playing the long game, and good at forming transactional cartels ... though history is filled with the fratricide and patricide that comes with a constant game-of-thrones. And we are constantly making the mistake of projecting ourselves onto these shape-shifting predators.
I can't think of any institution, system, heuristics, or ideology that is safe from capture, corruption, and eventual weaponization ... natural born predators imposing their will on natural born prey.
One confounding variable is probably scale. Joseph Tainter's 'The Collapse of Complex Societies' implies that complex systems inevitably reach a tipping point beyond which the energy necessary to maintain a system exceeds the resources available. Small communities and families have their share of psychopaths, but populations smaller than Dunbar's number seem to be able to deal with these 'kulangeta' (thanks Mathew Crawford, for the Inuit word). Beyond Dunbar's number, there are so many more niches and opportunities for psychopaths to exploit. Even the definition of Dunbar's number implies a limit to the size of populations capable of emapthy-driven morality ... which coincidentally (or not) is about the same as the maximum size of a chimpanzee troop (about 200).
I guess we are all guilty of some behavior similar to Cluster B types ... narcissistic when prepping for a first date, opportunistic when competing for a job, and more self-indulgent with our hobbies than empathizing with starving children in a developing country. But when the behavior begins to threaten a population, that's when it becomes 'sociopathic', literally, pathological to society.
One of my few consolations is the belief that as with a nearly infinite range of social contexts as well as our own Jungian shadow, those more permanent character traits of humanity are not gored on the horns of a simple 'either-or' false dilemma.
On my good days, I believe the moral dimensions of humanity are spread out along a bell curve. If the predators and their inhumane behavior are a couple of standard deviations at one end of that bell curve, and the majority of neurotypicals are herding closer to the center, what's at the other tail of that curve?
On my good days, I want to believe that there are a few who embody the best of humanity, the modest angels and heroes among us ... on their good days.
Good post here Joshua.
Keep up the good fight, and cheers from Japan.
It is intriguing to say the least Steve. I think I'll re stack this with a copy and paste from one of the paragraphs with particularity relevant reflections of how my own family was forced into a condition of genocide by these aggressive predator/prey dynamics. The paragraph in question was:
"These weren't coincidences—they were features of the system. Socialist states have always had to prevent exit because their economics don't work and their politics require captive populations."
I have a Venezuelan friend who explained to me in the early 00’s that tho she and had dual citizenship with a European country she couldn’t take her kids out of Venezuela without permission from the government because they co-owned all children!! The erosion of parental rights here in the name of medical rights for kids concerns me greatly.
In my case, they did not just take ownership of our biological son, but they claimed their "allegations" gave them ownership over my wife and I and incarcerated us under the pretext of "Protecting the Child". Those who worship at the feet of State power have arrogated to themselves the power (not the right) to steal and sell whole families by allowing no reasonable debates or dissent. One of the case laws I researched was a 1925 "Peirce vs The Society of Sisters" among others. But I think Thomas Sowell nailed it about their anti-human, anti-family egregores.
The video is:"Sowell EXPOSES the SATANIST LGBTQ Agenda to OWN Your Children | Thomas Sowell Today"
And the link is:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwYexI6V5HE
Hi Clyde.
Thanks for the message. Joshua's posts are thought-provokingly brilliant. And sometimes necessarily dark. I hear you about your personal experience, and how it emerges into macro-scale patterns. Without that hard ground of personal experience, theories and ideas just become another twist of a kaleidoscopic word-salad.
Ooo ... and that quote is great. It must have floated right by me it in the flood of ideas. That quote reminds me of Joshua's previous post about Kennedy's plan to have all Americans wearing health monitoring devices within 4 years ... and without doubt, it will become the equivalence of a digital prison.
We have our work cut out for us.
Cheers buddy!
I find it ironic that the more "automated" the system, the less it makes sense to me as a natural flesh and blood man who lives an independent reality of the "Decision makers". Last week I received a ream of paperwork from "Medicare" who opted to automatically enroll me into their "benefits" system. Of course even though I know it's all directed towards their straw man identity, their assertions have real time consequences. If I only get $311.00 a month in Social Security "retirement" and the new "enrollment" is going to cost me $11.50 a month, who are the beneficiaries, and who is the benefactor? Since I know I cannot trust the Medical Industrial Complex to have my best interest at heart, I feel like once again, I am reduced to the status of being an irrelevant spectator in my own life. Just another product or unit who must be micromanaged by abstractions that have no real bearing on my reality other than letting me know that some abstraction has made a decision, no consent required.
Uggh. That is horrible. I remember a few years ago when deploying weapons from a computer console was once considered a moral dilemma. My, my, my ... how A.I. has turbocharged us beyond that problem.
Reminds me of one of George Carlin's best ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJeFrqBJF6E
I guess it is that same kind of dehumanization and opportunistic feeding that drive me to write and depend on the few friends I have. If I did not have those two options as therapy ...
Take care Clyde.
Spill their guts in a Substack post (like buddy Dean).
Waving back across the pond to you too Steve.
I still get post from Dean Scoville's, but every Substack that goes behind a paywall excludes people like me with a "limited hangout". I still prefer Whitney Webb's "Unlimited Hangout" as I know that I cannot never get the master gaslighters to tell me the truth, at least some people understand that truth has no agenda, it is what it is.
I hear you Clyde. Like you, I am on a fixed, limited income too and can not afford to be one of Dean's paying readers either. But he relented a bit and now lets us post comments for a month for free before restricting us with a paywall.
And I like Whitney Webb's work too. She is a hell-of-a-journalist and doesn't mince words in talking truth to power. I just hope some of the powers-that-be don't send a hitman after her.
Absolutely brilliant!! Thank you.
Fabulous as usual. This is going to be a very interesting time in history for sure Josh.
Meh. All part of the fractured multilayered reality in which we live. I've haven't understood New Yorkers for many years. I suspect too many young, inexperienced voters who believe in freebies. There ain't no free lunch anywhere. That's the true nature of the world no matter where you live in the world or under what kind of regime.
NYC has long been a place to avoid.
“The unthinkable... New York City—America's financial capital and largest metropolis—chose Zohran Mamdani as its mayoral nominee. A 33-year-old socialist...”.
This is not only ‘Thinkable’ but inevitable given the mental and spiritual decline of those who still dwell in the Now Rotten Apple. The unthinkable would be that a person of sense and moral convictions would be seen as the popular political choice in such a depraved place.
The Sensible Class of New Yawkers – such as they may have been – have been in a long Conga-line of perpetual movement South to a more sane place like Florida. Sane only because a more sensible Governor has been running the place for the last few years. Sensible New Yorkers can relocate to place that is not on a death wish towards suicide and insanity – while still being able to root for the Yanks and Mets and Rangers from more hospitable seasons.
“If You Can Make It There You Can Make It Anywhere” – the song goes. But all you can make in the State of New York now seems to be more Leftists and more degradation. That’s what happens when all the sensible people leave and you are left with – The Left. Which could also be called the Left-Overs. The Left-Out (meaning They were not in the line to get sensible brains and useful morals and ethics).
The Indispensable Nation itself has been on a path toward Leftist Oblivion in most all places dominated by the Blue Party. Which brings another song to mind – this one by Bobby Vinton: “Blue on blue, heartache on heartache Blue on blue, now that we are through Blue on blue, heartache on heartache And I find I can't get over losing you ...”.
Well, we’d better get used to it. We have lost New York. And like once-vibrant lover who crept away before we took enough notice... New York is Gone.
This might have been considered good news one day for places like Chicago and Los Angeles and San Francisco and Seattle and Houston and the like. But not so because those places are now just as effed up as The City That Never Sleeps.
You cannot save a population hell-bent on destroying themselves. That’s what exists now in major cities in United States Incorporated. The cities are rotting themselves out from the inside with people who want the Mommy-Daddy State and nothing at all asked of them of thing like good purpose and sound values.
As the saying goes... the first thing that has to happen for a problem to be solved is that one acknowledges that they have a problem. Yet the majority of people in these fallen regions do not think they have a problem and just want more of the same things that are leading to their destruction.
(Sensible) New Yorkers are fleeing to Florida. Californians are fleeing to Nevada and Arizona. Chicagoans are fleeing to Tennessee and the Carolinas. Sensible Houston is fleeing to... um, where do Houstonians flee to? Galveston? One wonders.
One last song to reference: Once the rot is fully completely in the Blue Lands, all we’ll be hearing is continuous loop of that famous refrain from ‘Steam’: “Na-na-na-na, na-na-na-na, hey, hey, hey, goodbye...”.
Goodbye, once-great American cities. Goodbye. Let's hope that some of real America survives... somewhere.
I regretted hitting send because I knew you were going to call me out on that line, Shaman. Haha.
FWIW, a couple of years ago I thought about moving to Florida or Texas - then I found out about Bill Gates' mosquito programs in both places :-(
Make no mistake: this is a global attack. We can buy ourselves time by fleeing to saner places, but it's creeping everywhere.
I live in a rural area now and count my blessings daily, but even here you can feel the influence spreading. The question is whether we can wake people up before it's too late, or if we're just documenting the decline for future historians (and hope it doesn't all get erased).
Joshua Stylman: “The question is whether we can wake people up before it's too late, or if we're just documenting the decline for future historians...”.
I don’t believe that we can ‘wake’ anybody up. That’s like trying to explain to someone what the color Green looks like that never saw green in their life and they have no idea what you’re talking about. For Leftist thinkers... Leftism and Wokeism have become their holy religion as well as now becoming their own personal core identity structure. You can’t remove these things from them because they feel there would be nothing left of them – an existential threat that they will vigorously protect themselves against. Like someone trying to pull out all their teeth and leaving their mouth empty with stinging gums and nothing left to chew with. Their teeth might be rotted but They refuse to part with them.
What we do is – simply but profounding share our points of view. This we must do or we are at fault for not sending out into Universe a framework of alternative vision for even one other person to find value in. There are some people who yet haven’t fully drunk down the Leftist sewer water. And some young people who might still listen.
But it’s not our job to save anyone. We can’t do this, anyway. But it is our job to protect ourselves from depraved thinking and the encroaching absence of good values. Whether or not the United States and the World in general become a full-on Globalist Prison Planet is beyond our control. We just tend to our own personal gardens and keep them free of invasive weeds and hope that something will remain of a Garden – and a World – worth living in.
There are some of us still here. Idk how long I will last, but I made it through Covid here and that was a very dark time.
Josh, Your analysis is not bad, but many comments are intolerable. Apparently among your subscribers are people who have not succeeded and are jealous of those who have. Many of these comments read like things I heard about in high school and discarded in college when I grew a brain.
Successful people generally get there by working hard and are by in large responsible for their own success (with some luck thrown in, of course). As you know, I am the child of immigrants but have worked 100 hour weeks since I was 12 and have done just fine -- I do not regret any of it. Many others fall in this same category. I did not get a lift from big banks, big pharma, big tech, big anything...and there are many who are similarly situated
And these are the people who actually PAY THE BILLS. People that work like that to get where they are have a vanishingly small interest in being both disrespected for what they have contributed and (my favorite) berated for not paying "their fair share". So they work hard, make money which is then extorted from them to pay for those who do not work so hard, and get a rash of crap besides. It is no wonder that people leave to go to greener pastures. And leave they will.
Since many who comment seem to be unaware of NYC economics but would rather sing Venezuela's praises (please, go live there) a look at NYC's tax structure is helpful. This data is from the NYC Independent Budget Office for 2021-2023 (PIT is Personal Income Tax):
Top 1% Dominance: The top 1% (AGI ~$900,000+) paid 47.9% of NYC PIT in 2021 (~$6B)
Top 5%: The 90th–95th percentiles (top 5%, AGI ~$300,000–$900,000) paid 32.1%, totaling 81.8% with the top 1%, confirming the heavy reliance on high earners.
Bottom Half: The lower 50% (AGI <$30,000) paid just 0.2%, reflecting exemptions, credits, and low taxable income.
Aggregate Shares and Economic Impact (Considers NYS and NYC)
This approach focuses on the overall contribution of income groups and their economic significance, combining IBO data with 2016–2023 trends from the Citizens Budget Commission (CBCNY)
Total NYC PIT Revenue (2021): ~$12.55B, or 21.2% of city tax revenue and 13.8% of total revenue.
High earners drive this, with filers earning $1M+ (0.7% of filers) contributing 38.9% ($4.88B).
Top 200 Taxpayers: In 2023, the top 200 NYS taxpayers (many NYC residents) paid 6.3% of NYS PIT, with NYC’s share significant due to high-income concentration.
Top 200,000: The top 200,000 taxpayers (5.1% of filers) paid 49.8% of NYS PIT, with NYC filers dominating due to the city’s wealth concentration.
Millionaires’ Share: In 2021, NYC millionaires (0.7%, ~27,300 filers) paid 47% of PIT, slightly up from 38.9% in 2016, reflecting rising incomes and progressive rates
So, essentially, around 27,000 of NYC's 8,000,000 people are carrying fully half the total income tax burden At least 4,000,000 of NYC's people are carrying NONE of the freight...and they are the ones costing the most. And the next 2,000,000 people are paying next to nothing. So how, exactly, does one characterize "fair share". It is hard to get my blood to boil, but this does it.
Maggie Thatcher said it best when she opined that "The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money." The idea that ANYONE owes you or the City or whomever because they happen to have more than you do is antithetical to what most reasonable people believe in my experience.
Let me just deal with one comment that characterizes the blind spots here: Rob says "The City housing initiative would have worked if the City reinvested the rents in maintenance". And Perpetual Motion would work if we could only figure out how to break the laws of physics. The fact is that almost NOTHING the government does works anywhere, never has, and never will. Of course if we had smart, perfect people executing in smart, perfect ways in government it would be wonderful. That is the primary lie of all socialistic/communistic takes. As a matter of fact, there has NEVER been a communist government where there has not been immediate concentration of wealth to the "leaders" and where the population has not suffered, often in more-than-dire fashions. Human nature is immutable, and pretending that "if only the government worked" or "if only we 'communisted' better it would all be wonderful" is right up there with "if only we had masked harder" for covid. Sheesh.
Don't know how you get in front of this. But it would not take a lot of move-outs to bankrupt NYC...Then people will go crying that the Federal government will have to go to other states to extort the money from those who moved. The cycle is predictable and horrible.
I love NY, but some of the thinking reflected here will surely not save it but just hasten its doom.
Thanks Doc. I was hoping you would chime in on this, glad you did.
I was trying to present an argument based on Zohran’s words, the history of these movements, and basic reasoning - you brought the devastating economic data that shows the real-world impact. Those NYC tax numbers are staggering and make the "fair share" rhetoric look economically illiterate.
Generally the comment section here is fantastic and I'm grateful for that. I have no problem with well-reasoned disagreements or even arguments that aren't perfect but remain civil - that's how we learn from each other and sharpen our thinking. It's the ad-hominems and bad faith stuff that doesn't add value to anyone.
Your point about government execution is crucial… even if someone believes in these policies theoretically, the idea that NYC bureaucracy would somehow implement them better than every other attempt in history requires magical thinking.
As always, I appreciate you bringing hard data to counter the fantasy.
Josh, I have a half written response to your wearables article, but it keeps being pre-empted. But this one just needed some facts to remind people of how the world actually works. You may be writing the most interesting Substack at the moment. More people need to read it.
Most days I feel like an old guy yelling at my TV. Glad you’re getting value from my rants :-)
Another fantastic article! I will share widely. Especially to my young daughters. I was in East Berlin a few weeks before the wall came down. My earlier progressive leanings were appropriately shattered. The day I crossed over, a national parade was being held in center square but the public was not invited! The government considered it too dangerous for a couple had just taken refuge in the American embassy. I spit on the Marx and Lenin statue as I entered the gates back to West Berlin. I later joined the month long party in when the wall came down. I remember some of it.
I gave you a like (in Substack, a little red heart) for too many reasons to list here in a 5 sentence quick reaction but to be honest; you lost me when you went full on 1960's John Birch and Barry Goldwater anti-Soviet, pro-Ukranian. Yes, thanks for letting me know about Zohran's support for gender affirming care, which I strongly oppose, but so what if his father wrote a book about the CIA and 9/11? That's my real red line, not the economic virtues or flaws of a mixed economy. The conflation with fatally flawed Bernie and Barrack set aside, for a minute, what is Zohran's stance on forever wars; the War for NATO Enlargement in Ukraine and the Balkanization of Russia, Israel's war for regional dominance in West Asia and the extermination of Palestinians, and the neo-colonial IMF and global bankster backed wars for resource extraction in Sudan and Congo? Peaceful multi-polarism with BRICS or continued (hopeless) American militarization to maintain the imperial hegemony that's already led the economy of the United States into complete bankruptcy; thats the 350 trillion dollar question.
PS, a confession, the only "communist" economy I have any familiarity with is that of the " former Yugoslavia." It worked fairly well, for the majority of citizens, until the IMF, politicians and global banksters summarily decided that the country needed to be re-balkanized. So that the largest American military base in Europe could be built in the middle of the most resource rich semi-autonomous province, Kosovo. Also the territory where the historical ethnic tensions and separation had been whipped up for many decades, after WW2.
Mike, thanks for the thoughtful engagement - clearly you read the piece carefully, which I appreciate.
I think you may have misread my intent on a few points, however...
I'm not going "anti-Soviet" in some 1960s way - I'm documenting how specific economic policies failed when implemented. There's a difference between "this didn't work" and red-scare rhetoric.
On the CIA book - I actually might agree with some of his father's critiques (haven't read it yet). I mentioned it only as evidence of ideological evolution, not to dismiss his views on foreign policy.
You're absolutely right about my focus being NYC governance, not geopolitics. I explicitly said Mamdani was right to refuse Israel pandering - the mayor should focus on the city, not foreign policy. That's exactly my point.
I oppose forever wars too ("both parties bought by same interests"), but I can oppose the military-industrial complex AND worry about someone implementing failed economic policies in NYC. These aren't contradictory positions.
My core question is simple: Should someone who wants to seize the means of production run a $100 billion city budget? That's about municipal governance, not global empire.
Thanks for the Yugoslavia perspective - you're right about external forces playing a role in breakups (all wars are bankster wars, IMHO) though the diversity there may actually supports my broader point about implementation challenges.
Appreciate the substantive discussion.
I am kind-of intrigued by his father's book and may agree with his stance there. This whole story seems very convoluted.
Replying to my own comment to add a very informative footnote on the economics of national debt:
https://open.substack.com/pub/alexkrainer/p/why-governments-cant-balance-their
NYC exists to show the rest of us what not to do, and we thank them for their service.
Excellent piece, I'm in basic agreement with all of this, I wish I could articulate it as well as you.
What upsets me the most right now is that my fellow NYers seem totally incapable of recognizing Machiavellian, dark triad personalities. The entire culture is drowning in illusion and designed around short term gratification and making people feel good and feel "validated" in the short term; at the expense of any long term mental/spiritual/social health. It's a perfect environment for sociopaths to feed.
As a New Yorker, I'm trying to decide how worried I should actually be, because while I agree with all of your concerns, I think Mamdani's real skill is as an actor, he's great at catching the algorithm. But is there any real substance there? What will he actually be able to implement at the policy level? Maybe he will be able to get some of his insane ideas implemented, idk. NYC is highly dependent on federal funding to function, without it we're done.
Every now and then I read an article and think "Phew! I don't have to write it; someone else did it brilliantly." This one lands in that category. You and I are seemingly in perfect accord on all the bases regarding Mamdani, as well as our early pro-socialist tendencies that were exploded by self-education and the whole Covid enterprise.
I can remember sitting in a lecture hall at Stanford in the 80s, listening to a PoliSci professor say, "I don't know about you, but I sure as heck would rather be RED than DEAD." Lots of chuckles and head-nodding from all of us, including me. I was clueless about history, and happily stayed that way until 9/11 -- when I experienced what I can only describe as a personal, slow-moving apocalypse that reached its apotheosis in 2020.
Long way of saying: I'm with you, Joshua, and thanks for articulating all of it so well.
Brilliant piece. I suspect this brand of “socialism” is poised to usher in Technofeudalism and that it is no accident he has anonymous backing. I have so many thoughts and no time to coherently express them. I really like the angle Joshua took in framing this essay. As one who lived in Tanzania at the height of its “socialist experiment” and who also lived in Uganda in the aftermath of the Idi Amin horror (where the vultures still roosted in the trees outside of the Nile Hotel where the political prisoners were kept), I think there is something deeply suspicious about this candidate rising to prominence at this time on a socialist platform. Joshua’s is the most well-rounded and on point critique I have seen.
Thank you so much for this. Your perspective from Tanzania and Uganda adds incredible weight to the analysis. Having lived through actual socialist experiments and their aftermath, you understand the patterns in ways most of us don't.
Your point about technofeudalism is spot on - this isn't your grandfather's socialism, it's something far more sophisticated and dangerous. The anonymous backing makes it even more suspicious. One point though is that I believe it's creeping in on both sides (see some of my other writing, including Psyop Season from a couple of weeks ago).
https://stylman.substack.com/p/welcome-to-psyop-season
Anyway, I appreciate you taking the time to share your insights. People who've seen this playbook before are exactly who need to be sounding the alarm.
It is a difficult alarm to sound because so many Americans are hypnotized by the Left-Right swinging pendulum and whatever archetypal fear of the day has hijacked their attention. And yes, I have noticed that the same technocratic, technofeudal agenda is being enacted from both “sides” using different languaging and playing on different fears. There is a saying I came across a few years ago: The eye cannot see what the mind does not know. This plays a critical role in the current situation as far as I can tell. To illustrate this concept I wrote a short piece that I think you might find interesting. It will take you 5 minutes to read. It is a phenomenon I wish every American could understand. You already get it. I think it goes with the gift for pattern recognition.
https://open.substack.com/pub/arealityapart/p/a-story-about-paradigms?r=wyphr&utm_medium=ios
(My Substack offerings are pretty paltry. Getting my thoughts coherently formatted into the written word takes time I don’t seem to be able to make.)
"And that $30 minimum wage? It just leads to more outsourcing and automation because businesses can't survive the cost structure, prices go up, and you end up with fewer jobs and more expensive everything."
In my experience, it has been an exercise in futility to try to explain the difference between nominal wages and purchasing power, and how focusing on nominal wages is not merely using the incorrect metric to determine wealth, but actively impoverishing larger and larger swathes of lower-middle class Americans.
Agreed completely about the observations regarding corporate cronyism. Too big to fail was such an insulting canard.
Economic conditions determine our lives. Living under the heel or jackboot of ruling class power calling itself capitalism or communism still leaves the laboring masses of us exploited and oppressed. It's only reasonable to demand economic as well as political rights that are inalienable to us as humans, no matter how much ruling ideology casts that as evil incarnate, a dangerous threat to all that is holy to the rule of 'law and order', or provenly, practically impossible according to the dismal 'science' championing neoliberal rollback of redistributed wealth a la von Hayek and the Mont Pelerin Society and Friedman and the Chicago School (the post-WW2 welfare state's 'compromise' between capital and labor was doomed to failure from the start insofar as it continued corporate and government cronyism in programs like public housing).
Ruling class politics, left to right, must always sell itself to us as the welfare of the people in order to manufacture our consent. The rhetoric may change from republicanism to democracy to socialism, but the substance to the noble lies is accumulation of wealth and power by the favored few. "The world is a business, Mr. Beale."* Or more like the bizzness of organized crime against humanity.
The necessity of illusion in representing our subjugation as benevolent leaves any politician playing by the rules of the racket liable to ludicrous contradiction between rhetoric and reality, though the psywar production of historical amnesia seems to keep making enough people suckers every electoral circus. Scions of privilege posing as populists like Trump are every bit as full of shit as this wannabe hero of the people in NYC. In line with CEOs accountable to shareholders/stakeholders, the brands of politics these puppets are pushing depend on who's pulling their strings and what roles they're to follow in larger agenda lost behind the diversionary spectacle. Such prostitution by another name is about all that's consistent to the oldest profession (sex for sale the oldest oppression).**
I'm not sure why argument that real socialism has yet to be achieved is "theoretical deflection" while claiming that real capitalism currently doesn't exist in the U$ isn't. Nonetheless, about the only real freedom to free market mythology is free-for-all predation upon people reduced to commodified units of production and consumption. Even at the earliest stages of capitalist class development from feudal forms of class rule, the state, and its monopoly upon institutionalized violence, has been instrumental in enforcing its ascendancy and hegemony.
Accordingly, enclosure laws imposed dispossession of peasants from the more self-sustaining commons for an urban proletariat's forced dependency as 'free labor' with no choice but to work as wage slaves to private property owners of the means of production. This pattern of accumulation through dispossession may be perceived in latecomers to industrial development like Russia/USSR and China where state bureaucracy has performed accelerated transition to the same set-up of the few over the many, only in the name of communism (state capitalism).
The profit-making, grow-or-die, imperialist logic of capital as an economic system is rooted in intra-class war as well to control markets by means of monopolistic monsters from Standard Oil to BlackRock. It seems just more historical amnesia to believe that the corporate state, and its fascist nature (as Mussolini pointed out), has not been an 'organic' outcome to the march of modern progress in population control such that now global totalitarianism threatens us all.
Semantic switches to 'socialism for the rich' (aka 'wealthfare') confuse egalitarian movements with oligarchy east to west. The cruel irony is that so-called private enterprise, and all the supposed efficiency of business, wouldn't make bank without massive subsidies paid for by the general public (taxation without representation), particularly through the Pentagod. The only part of the nation's economy that belongs to the people is the national debt, and the wars waged to bleed us dry under occupation to a nation-state that's been at war almost every year of its history.
What rights we do have, far from being granted us by a capitalist or socialist corporate state, have been fought for by common people seeking freedom and justice on a more genuine egalitarian basis than these phony rivals must forever promise. What limited gains were made for the common good during a previously propagandized golden era of capitalism and American Dream were replaced by libertarian ideology legitimating a return to the Satanic mills of the nineteenth century under austerity of debt bondage to financial capital (of which NYC's demise was an early forerunner). Jumpstarted with the global coup of convid covering for collapse far beyond the 2008 bailouts, the collectivism of technocracy now takes over to replace neoliberalism's failing political economy with (pseudo)scientific dictatorship to end class war once and for all with biodigital slavery to global gods weaponizing the means of production for our destruction. Capitalism continually revolutionizes itself, as Marx observed, to reserve the right to rule for the "masters (monsters) of mankind" (Smith) and their "vile maxim" of all for them, nothing for us.
It may be arguable that similar to the emergence of capitalism from its marginal position in ancient and medieval civilization socialism as the real movement of human equality beyond the history of class rule takes no small amount of time, struggle, and good fortune. Certainly, the threat of a good example, an alternative to capitalism, has been met with relentless resistance by capitalist class rulers. From invasion of Russia to reverse its working class revolution in 1917 to over half a century of economic warfare and state terror against Cuba to coup against Chavez in Venezuela's experiment in socialism for the 21st century, regime change's been a constant. As Iron Lady Thatcher (TINA) laid down like iron law, There Is No Alternative.
The possibility of an alternative will not be given us. It must be taken by us voluntarily forming social relations based on a different scale of values than the vices made virtues under capitalism, beginning with inequality as an incentive to compete in a dog-eat-dog war of all against all while poverty kills so many as to dwarf the conventional history of genocide. Those values have not been lost but lie latent, like a "subterranean fire" (Spies), within the everyday anarchism of our lives wherever mutual associations of care speak of a human nature no longer "red in tooth and claw" (Tennyson) but integral to a cooperative society where "the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all" (Marx).
“The State is a condition, a certain relationship between human beings, a mode of behavior; we destroy it by contracting other relationships, by behaving differently toward one another… We are the State and we shall continue to be the State until we have created the institutions that form a real community.”
(Gustav Landauer)
*
Network (1976) - The World Is a Business Scene
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A64rR5Dp07s
**
"Manolo, how you've changed your thinking!"
"No, Pepe, not at all."
"Yes, you have, Manny. You used to be a monarchist. Then you supported the Falange. Then you backed Franco. After that, you were a democrat. Not long ago you were with the socialists and now you're on the right. And you say you haven't changed your thinking?"
"Not at all, Pepe. My thinking has always been the same: to be mayor of this town."
(Eduardo Galeano, Upside Down: A Primer for the Looking Glass World)
Also:
Control, Crisis and Compliance: Endgame Logic of Late Capitalism
(Colin Todhunter)
https://off-guardian.org/2025/07/01/control-crisis-and-compliance-endgame-logic-of-late-capitalism/