New York Citys latest experiment in government-managed services is offering residents yet another glimpse of how slowly and expensively big-city socialism tends to operate.
According to the original report, Mayor Zohran Mamdani is touting a plan for city-run grocery stores that he hopes will be open by 2029, despite the fact that they are projected to cost ten times more expensive per square foot than a Whole Foods. That timeline, stretching nearly half a decade into the future for what is essentially a retail operation, invites obvious comparisons to large-scale national projects, with critics already noting that It'll turn out to be that the Artemis II mission was put together in less time.
The initiatives glacial pace is even more striking given that the broader push for such government interventions dates back to when Eric Adams still occupied City Hall. For New Yorkers tired of waiting for bureaucrats to spring into action... eventually, the message is clear: they can still exercise personal responsibility and take their own action in the marketplace rather than rely on City Halls social-engineering schemes.
Mamdanis lofty rhetoric has also drawn ridicule for its almost space-race-style grandiosity, with observers likening his announcement to John F. Kennedys 1961 moonshot speech, except with trash cans. As one biting paraphrase put it, We do these things not because they are easy, but because there are rats, a line that unintentionally underscores the absurdity of treating basic urban governance as if it were a heroic national crusade.
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