The Daily Signal - Victor Davis Hanson: Mayor Mamdani’s Socialist Vision Is Setting NYC Up for Failure

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Starting point is 00:00:24 Get the yes you've been waiting for at Capital One.ca.ca. Terms and conditions apply. Zoran Mondami was elected mayor of New York City, not just the financial capital of the United States, but of the world, and he's a devout socialist. If we look at the contemporary world in the recent past and in the present, everywhere a socialist paradigm has been implemented, it has done two things. Destroyed the economy and made people poor and two deprived people of their civil liberties. The Soviet Union collapsed Mao's China. collapsed. Cuba is in free fall since the Castro brothers took over in 1959. Venezuela was at one time the wealthiest country in Latin America. It's collapsed to a lesser extent.

Starting point is 00:01:13 Peru, Colombia. Anybody who adopts it, it has not done well. Socialism has nothing to offer. Hello, this is Victor Davis-Hansom for the Daily Signal. Socialism is in the news. Zoran Mondami did the unthinkable. He was elected to be mayor of New York City, the financial capital, not just of the United States, but of the world at large. And he's a devout socialist. but he is admitted, he likes to deny it, that he's really a communist because he's advocated seizing the means of production.

Starting point is 00:01:59 And almost every day a quote from his past comes out that suggests that he's not just a socialist who wants the government to control utilities or housing, but he wants to seize the means of production. That means the industrial base and private property itself. Why is that scary? Because we have a whole generation who have gone through K through 12 and higher education and heard about the glories of statism, socialism, communism in the universities and our school system, but not the merits of capitalism. And it's not really socialism versus capitalism. It is Socialism has nothing to offer, and we know that for two reasons. If we look at the contemporary world in the recent past and in the present, everywhere a socialist paradigm has been implemented

Starting point is 00:03:01 it has done two things. It has destroyed the economy and made people poor, and two, it has deprived people of their civil liberties. I should add, it also has created greater inequality. equality, at least in terms of the ruling elite who feel they're not subject to the ramifications of their socialist ideology, and they live a very refined and affluent lifestyle. Take a look, for example, the Soviet Union, when it collapsed, Mao's China collapsed. Cuba is in free fall since the Castro brothers took over in 1959. Venezuela was at one time the wealthiest country in Latin America. It's collapsed. You can ditto the other countries that are collapsing to a lesser extent, Peru, Colombia.

Starting point is 00:04:01 Anybody who adopts it has not done well. China is doing well better than it did because it has an odd mixture of communist authoritarian government, but it allows free market principles to save the economy from itself. The same thing is true of Putin's Russia. It achieved levels of GDP, oil production that were superior to the communist past just simply because it had elements of a market economy. Some market economy is better than none. Why then secondly, does socialism fail. It's contrary to human nature. All of us want to be rewarded for our own efforts. We're unique individuals. We don't want to be a like Tessera and just one large mosaic. There's a famous

Starting point is 00:04:54 anecdote. I have no idea if it's true or not, that when Marx had people and Ingalls over to their parlor to discuss the principles of socialism in mid-19th century Europe, he had the idea that he'd have a tray of money, and these poor intellectuals would come in. And of course, as you remember from Das Kapital, each according to their own need, would be rewarded for their labor. So he said, if you're poor, just take what you need. Well, you know how that would work out humans being what there are. One person or two people or three people would take it all and say that they had greater need than somebody else, even if they didn't, given that there would be no deterrence from being dishonest, as long as you cloaked your selfishness in a larger ideological veneer.

Starting point is 00:05:45 And that's what socialism does. It tries to say that we're all brothers, and we all love each other, and we all want the same thing. That's what Mondami is saying. But look at Mondami himself. He comes from one of the more affluent families in New York. His father, is an endowed professor. It's very well compensated, hardcore Marxist, pro-Hamas. His mother is a multi-million dollar filmmaker.

Starting point is 00:06:11 He grew up in affluence. He lives in a rent-controlled apartment, even though by any standard he would be qualified as a wealthy person and doesn't need a state subsidy and could do better to give that apartment to someone with less means. So my point is that socialism destroys private initiative. If you think the harder you work, the better ideas you have, have, the more efficiency you can create in your business or in your own life, but you're not going to be compensated more than someone who does not either show those traits or doesn't want to show those traits, or just simply says, live and let live, I just want to stay in my

Starting point is 00:06:54 house, watch TV and get pizza, and he will get the same amount as you do in terms of cars or housing or federal supplements. It doesn't work. We have one last more controversial proof that it doesn't work. Since the Obama age, the rate of socialist practices, policies, agendas in the United States have vastly accelerated. And after the Obama presidency, the rather esoteric political term, red state, blue state became commonplace. And it basically denotes those states who are more socialist and those states that are more free market. California is a socialist state in the sense that we're talking like New York, a 13 plus income tax rate at the highest rates. We have the highest gas and oil prices, natural gas and oil.

Starting point is 00:07:58 We have the highest energy prices. We have some of the highest housing prices. The same is true of New York, the same is true of Minnesota, Michigan, all of these states. Why? Because the central government, first of all, it goes after the opposition. And most of these states are one party state without a viable opposition to keep it in check. Number two, the people who have created this socialist system are not subject to it themselves. week, if you look at California, it's the Nancy Pelosi's, the Barbara Boxers, the late

Starting point is 00:08:35 Diane Feinsteins, the Jerry Browns, the Gavin Newsom's. They all have one thing, Nancy Pelosi, they all have one thing in common. They were very, very wealthy. They lived lives completely distinct, separate from the masses whom they said would benefit from their socialist policy. And the result is they took a paradise like California and turned it into purgatory. So there's no empirical evidence, whether within the United States or abroad, that there's a socialist cure for what socialism has done. Mondami has basically taken a New York under Bill de Blasio and prior mayors that was a socialist paradigm and is in dire straits and he thinks more socialism will cure it. One final observation. In the Western world, we say that the Europeans are more.

Starting point is 00:09:30 advanced, some people naively think that, they were socialist. They had the VAT tax, they had higher inheritance taxes and income taxes at one time than we did. I'm not sure that's still true, but they governed every aspect of the economy. And of course, if you object to socialism or communism and who wouldn't, the state then has to come in and restrict free speech. So what we're seeing in Europe today is disastrous policies, importing poor illegal aliens with antithetical, political, religious, cultural, social views than Europeans themselves, and then suggesting that if anybody complains, they're guilty of racism and suppressing their free speech. And meanwhile, the idea is everybody is going to get a flat and a high-rise, take mass transit, and be about the same.

Starting point is 00:10:23 Are people happy? No. As we speak, there are right-wing, if I could use that term, conservative, free market governments in places like Hungary, the Czech Republic, Italy, and growing in places like Britain, Netherlands, Austria, and France itself, the opposition who opposes socialism is gaining and the people are behind it. Why? Is it because they don't know socialism? No, it's because they know it all too well. Thank you very much. This is Victor Davis-Hanson for The Daily Signal. Thank you for tuning in to the Daily Signal. Please like, share, and subscribe to be notified for more content like this. You can also check out my own website at victorhansen.com and subscribe for exclusive features in addition. Thank you.

The Daily Signal - Victor Davis Hanson: Mayor Mamdani’s Socialist Vision Is Setting NYC Up for Failure

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