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With Zohran Mamdani’s election as NYC’s new mayor, I can’t help but hope he falls flat on his face, that the city craters under his policies, and that the voters who put him there get every last bit of what they voted for. Why? Because his brand of democratic socialism, complete with rent freezes, public grocery stores, free universal childcare, fare free buses, and soaking the rich with new taxes to fund it all, has been tried before, and scholarly research shows it leads straight to economic stagnation, inefficiency, hardship, and systemic corruption for everyone involved.
Let’s look at the evidence. Economic studies consistently demonstrate that socialist systems, defined by heavy government control over production and resources, slash long term growth. As economists Robert Lawson and Benjamin Powell document in their analysis of socialist regimes, places like Venezuela, once praised by socialists like Bernie Sanders, collapsed under price controls and attacks on private property, leading to widespread hunger where three quarters of the population lost an average of 19 pounds in a single year due to shortages. Cuba’s government run economy fares no better: state hotels are moldy and unreliable, while tiny private sectors outperform them because owners have incentives to deliver quality. North Korea? A literal dark spot on satellite maps, with incomes at 1700 dollars per person versus South Korea’s 37000 dollars, all while millions starve under centralized planning.
Historical examples pile up the proof. Take the Soviet Union: after 70 years of Marxism, farms couldn’t feed the people, factories missed quotas, and citizens lined up for blocks to buy basic goods. As a book from the Institute of Economic Affairs surveys over two dozen failed experiments, from the Warsaw Pact to Maoist China, socialism follows a pattern: a honeymoon phase of praise, then collapse, with supporters always claiming it wasn’t real socialism. But the failures are real, and they repeat because the ideology is exploitative and corrupt at its root, exploiting idealism while delivering tyranny.
Even nations that dabbled and ditched socialism tell the tale. Israel, India, and the UK all embraced it post WWII, nationalizing industries, centralizing decisions, and saw initial growth give way to decline as planners couldn’t keep up with population booms and competition. They rejected it for free markets and boomed again. As Margaret Thatcher put it, the problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.
Why does this happen every time? Scholarly work pins it on socialism’s core flaws: it ignores human incentives. Without market prices, profits, losses, and private property, there’s no drive for efficiency or innovation. It promises equality but delivers misery, achieving parity only in shared poverty.
But let’s emphasize the economic exploitation at the heart of it all: socialism doesn’t liberate workers; it exploits them through a systematic process that degrades everyone under its grip. Scholarly analyses break it down step by step: First, the state seizes control of the means of production and resources, justifying it as ending capitalist exploitation, but this expropriation itself is a form of theft from those who built or earned wealth, creating a centralized monopoly that bureaucrats wield for their own power. Who in their right mind would allow a government to have control over the means for you to live? What the government gives, they can take away. Second, without private incentives, production becomes inefficient: workers are forced into low wage or even starvation wage labor under state mandates, where output is dictated not by market needs but by planners who misallocate resources, leading to shortages and black markets. Third, to fund expansive programs, the regime imposes crushing taxes or outright confiscations on the productive class, but this backfires as those with means, entrepreneurs, investors, and the wealthy, flee to avoid the burden, taking their capital and skills elsewhere and leaving the immobile poor to suffer in a hollowed out economy. Finally, the system perpetuates itself through coercion, viewing citizens as disposable tools for the collective, where dissent is crushed and individual potential is stifled under the guise of equality. This isn’t liberation; it’s a cruel cycle of exploitation that abuses the vulnerable while enriching the elite.
And make no mistake: those who think the millionaires will foot the bill are deluding themselves. Scholarly research on wealth taxes in socialist leaning systems shows they trigger capital flight and emigration, even small rate hikes prompt the rich to relocate to low tax havens, draining revenue and exacerbating inequality for those left behind. In Europe, such policies led to avoidance and outflows, raising little money as the mobile elite simply moved. You can’t tax people with high mobility; they’ll head to Florida, Texas, or even just 500 feet outside NYC jurisdiction, leaving the rest to pick up the tab in a cratering economy.
This exploitation is inextricably linked to corruption, which scholarly analyses identify as inherent to socialist ideologies when implemented. Corruption, defined as the misuse of public office for private gain including bribery, embezzlement, and rent extraction through monopolistic control, arises from structural features like the concentration of power in a ruling elite, limited accountability, and the absence of competitive markets. These create incentives for officials to exploit positions, leading to leaders accumulating wealth while the population endures shortages and starvation. Peer-reviewed studies show corruption was necessary for command economies, where administrative decisions fostered illicit payments and favoritism.
Empirical research documents this across regimes. In the Soviet Union, under Lenin, rationing caused millions to starve in the 1921-1922 famine, yet special stores provided luxuries to party members. The nomenklatura system granted elites privileges amid public shortages. In Cuba, Fidel Castro ruled for 49 years, amassing over 900 million dollars and owning luxurious properties while citizens faced malnutrition in the 1990s Special Period. Venezuela under Chávez and Maduro saw hyperinflation and poverty, with leaders accumulating billions through graft as infant mortality soared. In Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega controls vast assets while citizens live in poverty, suppressing dissent with force. Post-socialist transitions reveal persistent corruption legacies.
Mechanisms include centralization creating monopolies for bribes, lack of accountability allowing rent extraction, elite networks normalizing corruption, and state capture enriching leaders. Power retention uses corruption to co-opt enforcers and dismantle checks, with no voluntary ceding of control.
And the cruelty? It’s baked in. Socialist regimes have justified mass killings, over ten million in the Soviet Union alone, to eliminate interferers with their plans for a new socialist man. In the end, it oppresses and degrades, treating people as disposable cogs in a machine that grinds them down.
Long term, socialism like what Mamdani promotes leads only to Stalin era communism, where the pursuit of a socialist utopia evolves into authoritarian state building under a single party monopoly, complete with mass mobilization, coercion, and purges to enforce centralized control and eliminate opposition. Scholarly analyses show this progression: starting with ideological commitments to building socialism in one country, it escalates into a militarized regime justifying violence as essential for defending and expanding a communist empire, as seen in Stalin’s Great Terror, which purged perceived enemies to accelerate the transition from socialism to full communism amid perceived threats. This totalizing worldview treats dissent as counterrevolutionary, leading to draconian repression and the consolidation of lethal personal authority to achieve a classless society, ultimately resulting in tyranny rather than equality.
Mamdani’s policies echo these failed experiments: government run groceries sound nice until shortages hit; taxing the top one percent to fund everything might feel fair until businesses flee and growth tanks. Scholarly research screams that this has never worked and never will: it’s a flawed, exploitative, cruel ideology that abuses and oppresses, viewing citizens as disposable cattle to be herded by the state. NYC voters, you asked for it. Let’s see if history repeats.
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