Zohran Mamdani, the newly elected future mayor of New York City, is a much-needed breath of fresh air. For decades now, Democrats have focused increasingly on identitarian appeals while offering few real solutions to an economy that puts basic needs like housing out of reach for millions. At best, this has left established power structures unchallenged — at worst, it has even reinforced them.
By focusing on affordability, Mamdani has broken out of this trap. While he certainly does not shy away from asking how municipal policies can help marginalized groups, he is primarily focused on improving well-being for the majority of New Yorkers. But to ensure that life is easier for the current and future generations of New Yorkers, his policies should go beyond mitigating the symptoms of a broken system.
For a particularly illustrative example, take halal carts — a staple of New York City dining. Halal cart licenses are expensive because they have been put on the market, leaving their price subject to the speculative behavior of rentiers. One way to keep the price down on both halal cart licenses and their menu items is to cut out the middleman, decommodify them, and bring them into the hands of those who actually run the halal carts.
Encouragingly, Mamdani has promised exactly this. But it shouldn’t stop there. As strange as it may sound, by focusing on ownership, Mamdani’s new policy on halal cart licenses could lay the groundwork for a bigger framework that could finally help make New York City affordable again.
In principle, there are two ways of organizing ownership in the market economy.
Ownership can be treated as a commodity that is freely traded on the market, which makes some degree of speculation on its price a legitimate part of the game. In such scenario, an asset can be bought by anyone seeking a financial return.
The stock market as an organized market for business ownership is perhaps the most glaring example of such a system for the allocation…
Auteur: Tej Gonza
