"Socialist Zombies"
by Joel Bowman
“We will replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism.”
~ Zohran Mamdani, from his Inauguration Speech, January 1, 2026
Buenos Aires, Argentina - "For every silver lining, a clamorous thundercloud. For every sweet-smelling rose, a procession of funeral mourners. And for every measured and thoughtful student of history, a cocksure Zohran Mamdani. Naturally, the mainstream media has been holding the new mayor’s feet to the fire, speaking truth to power, afflicting the comfortable and comforting the afflicted, etc., etc., etc... Just look at these hard-hitting headlines from The New York Times:
Amid Opening Sprint, Mamdani Paused to Socialize With Steven Spielberg (Jan. 8)
Handing Out Free Tickets, Mamdani Says Theater Should Not Be ‘a Luxury’ (Jan. 9)
Mamdani Brings Affordability Push to Arts With Pick to Lead Film Office (Jan. 13)
Down here at the End of the World, meanwhile, we’ve been tracking a curiously underreported political experiment, one rooted in unfashionable sentiments and unpopular concepts... like liberty, self-determination and “rugged individualism.” It’s that rare brand of politics once practiced by cautious men, men who were wary of the state’s reliable, historical tendency to overstep its mark... to engage in mission creep... and to meddle in the private lives of decent, ordinary people.
At its heart, “libertarianism” is a recognition that governments are made up of men – not angels – and that mere men are prone to err, especially when tempted by that most corrupting seductress: power. In other words, it is exactly the kind of laissez-faire politics that keeps the Bernie Sanders, AOCs and Zohran Mamdanis of the world awake at night, fretting that someone, somewhere might be pursuing “life, liberty and happiness” on their own accord.
The Warmth of Collectivism: There is nothing new about Mamdani’s promises, of course, except a brand new cohort of mental lemmings willing to fall for his spiel. Here he is on...
State run labor: “As the cost of living explodes in New York City, the City must be a leader in setting a minimum wage that better meets New Yorkers’ needs. I have committed to raising the minimum wage in New York City to $30/hr by 2030.”
State run groceries: “I will create a network of city-owned grocery stores, whose mission is lower prices, not price gouging. These stores will operate without a profit motive... and will pass on those savings to you.”
State run housing: “Whether you call it the abolition of private property or you call it a statewide housing guarantee, it’s preferable to what is going on right now.”
Never mind that these things have all been tried and tried again, always to disastrous results. To take just one example...Last year, the United Socialist State of California (USSC) raised its fast food minimum wage to $20... and (according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics) promptly lost 36,000 jobs as a result. Fast food prices in the Golden State also went up 10% faster than across other states as businesses passed rising costs onto consumers, rubbing greasy salt into the wounds of newly unemployed burger flippers. As one former employee (interviewed for Stossel TV) noted: “Twenty-dollar minimum wage don’t matter much if you ain’t got a job no more.”
A Loss of Blood to the Brain: As for state-run groceries and state-run housing, one only need visit one of the fast-failing socialist utopias of the world – from Cuba to Venezuela, North Korea to Eritrea – to discover the ubiquitous misery of empty shelves and crumbling public housing.
As it happens, Argentina provides a textbook example of how not to intervene in a rental market, by way of 2020’s disastrous “Ley de Alquiler” (2020 Rental Law), which essentially amounted to national rent control. The law reads so badly, in fact, we’d be surprised if a copy of it is not sitting on Mamdani’s photocopier...
The basic Peronist pitch, common to all such “government knows best” conceits, relied on the heart taking a massive advanced loan of blood from the brain, such that feelings – for the poor, for the lame, for “those experiencing unhousedness” – take on lifelike animations… while reason, logic and empirical evidence were left to flail and fold, like an unarmed sock puppet.
The law itself, among the most draconian rent control measures in the world, mandated landowners shackle themselves to strict, three-year leases. Meanwhile, all contracts were required to be denominated in pesos, which the econo-clowns at the nation’s central bank were busy printing into oblivion. It also gave tenants wide discretion to dictate terms of lease termination and weighed heavily against landlords who sought to evict deadbeat tenants, even on grounds of property destruction and failure to keep up with payments. All of which was designed to stop evil capitalists from “ripping off” the poor and downtrodden workers of the world. Can you guess what happened next?
Home Sweet Homeless: Predictably, instead of leasing their apartments to the rental equivalents of “tenants with tenure,” a situation in which they were virtually guaranteed to lose money thanks to the government’s world-beating inflation, many landlords simply kept their places vacant... or sold them for dollars.
Thus, by 2022, some 200,000 apartments were left vacant in the capital of Buenos Aires, up 45% from a year earlier. By 2023, as many as one in seven homes in the entire country sat empty, an historic supply shortage in exactly the thing most needed by precisely the group the state claimed to be helping.
Not until Javier Milei arrived with his trademark chainsaw in 2023 and tore the disastrous Ley de Alquiler to shreds was some semblance of normalcy restored. In fact, the return to free(r) market capitalism was so dramatic, even the mainstream press was obliged to notice. From The Wall Street Journal: "The country’s new president, Javier Milei, has scrapped the rental law, along with most government price controls, in a fiscal experiment that he is conducting to revive South America’s second-biggest economy.
The result: The Argentine capital is undergoing a rental-market boom. Landlords are rushing to put their properties back on the market, with Buenos Aires rental supplies increasing by over 170%. While rents are still up in nominal terms, many renters are getting better deals than ever, with a 40% decline in the real price of rental properties when adjusted for inflation since last October, said Federico González Rouco, an economist at Buenos Aires-based Empiria Consultores."
Milei’s move to undo rent-control regulations has resulted in one of the clearest-cut victories for what he calls “economic shock therapy.” He is methodically taking apart a system of price controls, closing government agencies and lifting trade restrictions built up over eight decades of socialist and military rule in an effort that has upended the lives of many Argentines. Of course, lessons only matter if you’re paying attention... something it’s hard to do when you’re busy fleecing taxpayers, dolling out other people’s money and generally eating the rich."
More on the free market side of the coin in your
next Notes From the End of the World...
No comments:
Post a Comment