Hacker News Reader

Comment by ryandrake | Hacker News Reader

When your road is all the way to the right, then yea, none of it is middle of the road.

Please explain how city run grocery stores are middle of the road politics. Perhaps they’re middle of the road when your road is all the way to the left.

Cities run all sorts of things. What's the big difference between garbage trucks and sewers and a grocery store?

Also, several states have state-run beer and/or liquor stores. It's not some wild unheard of experiment. We've gotten so used to the acceptable political spectrum spanning from "far right" to "extreme right" that we forget what left even means.

I'm almost 50 and the last president we ever saw that was even remotely towards the left was in office when I was born.

Whether or not public grocery stores are a good idea, the comparison to state-run liquor stores doesn't really make sense; the justification for state control of liquor sales is entirely different (arguably even kind of the opposite) as the justifications presented for public grocery stores.

> several states have state-run beer and/or liquor stores

Actually could not believe this, so had to look it up. I find this wild.

Yeah, pretty terrible outcome from prohibition designed to curtail alcohol consumption. It’s pretty the worst example to go for if you’re trying to convince people that state stores are good.

I mean, yes...but having lived in multiple states with various forms of state monopoly on alcohol sales: state-run liquor stores suck. Citing them as an argument in favor of state-run anything is sort of making the case for the other side.

I lived in a state when the state-run liquor stores were closed and it transitioned to the private sector. It was a massive improvement, a big win.

The weirdest part of the transition was the fear mongering about consequences. This despite the reality that most states don’t have state-run liquor stores.

I’ve never lived in a state where state-run liquor stores weren’t worse than what you had in states without them.

The original claim was that his policies are middle of the road. Based on the very few US cities with govt-run grocery stores, it's pretty clear that the policy is not middle of the road. It is an outlier.

The state should step in and run anything that the private market cannot. I don’t live in NYC, but if there’s a market failure in groceries, do it.

Couldn’t do worse than the grocery stores in nyc that already exist. Terrible service, horrendous price, bad inventory, etc.

I did all my groceries in nyc via Amazon fresh for the last two years because of this.

Really depends on where you are in the city; I used to shop at Whole Foods on the UWS and it was lovely, and when visiting this past summer my friend and I visited both the Bowery Whole Foods and the Wegmans near Astor Place and zero complaints with either of them.

But TBH I don't think the grocery deserts he's looking to service are going to be anywhere near where the average HN user lives.

Sounds like you have a great option then, no need for the govt to open taxpayer-funded stores.

They said they have _an_ option. They did not say anything about it being "great".

There isn't a market failure in groceries in NYC. There's a huge number and diversity of stores, and profit margins are as low as anywhere else in the world. Also, of course, see the sibling comment who is complaining about grocery stores while using Amazon Fresh. There's a competitive delivery market.

Of all of his policies, I actually don't really care if he wants to try to put some grocery stores in grocery deserts. It probably won't work, but whatever.

There aren’t any food deserts in NYC?

I'm sure there are, just like everywhere else.

Sounds like the government should step in and fix that then.

The market failure in NY is due to the local government, so clearly the local government stepping in to offer a replacement is the solution. On an unrelated note, I have a bridge to sell you.

Last I checked, if you wanted to buy more than a 12 pack of beer in the state of Pennsylvania, it had to be from a state run store. Is Pennsylvania socialist?

That's a pretty bad policy PA has, however you want to characterize it.

I'd agree, but I would also point out that a state monopoly is a much more extreme policy than a few state run stores. And considering the discussion was about where these policies sit on the ideological spectrum, an example of a more conservative state with a policy further to the left does suggest that maybe this is in fact "middle of the road".

I live in PA and can literally walk to a private beer distributor from my house and walk out with something larger than a 12 pack. There are no state owned beer distributors as far as I’m aware.

Most (not all) Liquor / Wine sales are somewhat monopolized by the state but it’s a remnant from prohibition and nobody except the people getting their palms greased by the system likes it.

Fair correction, I apparently merged the laws about beer and liquor/wine in my mind. Beer in quantities larger than 12 packs comes from distributors which are regulated more than bottle shops but aren't state run, while it's liquor and wine that needed to come from state shops.

No worries. It’s been in flux over the past decade. A few of the major grocery chains pushed to change the laws so they could sell beer and wine under a certain ABV. It has to be in a dedicated area and they can only sell during certain hours.

The state shops themselves aren’t all that horrible IMO but they’re nothing to write home about either. That being said It’s pretty hard to screw up liquor sales when you’re the only game in town.

In this regard, yes it is; the biggest reasons they keep it around are the jobs it provides and the money the state makes off of it. In return, residents get low prices but less choice, and in some areas, poor access. Most people hate it.

Only in the last decade or so has some competition been allowed.

>In this regard, yes it is;

Great, then "socialism" doesn't have to be the scary word that it is made out to be in the US! We have at least 17 socialist states already.[1]

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcoholic_beverage_control_sta...

I did write:

> Most people hate it.

Not exactly an endorsement. If your pitch is that socialism means more places work like the liquor stores, you'll be creating a lot of capitalists.

I see it as a middle of the road statement to say that government should work for its constituents, and help ensure that they get basic nessesities like shelter, food, schooling and health care (yes, I know that this is already controversial).

Using the market is well and fine, but if it for some reason does not work it's the government's job to find a solution which works. Think about how things are handled in emergencies. The neutral thing is to find a solution, not be married to some ideological ball and chain saying that THAT particular necessity must be solved in one particular way no matter what.

When that is said I don't live in NYC, idk how the food desert situation is there. But I have heard enough stories from credible sources that I would be surprised if it's all made up.

The problem with the idea that it is the government's job to ensure "necessities" is that the list of what is a "necessity" only ever gets larger – it never shrinks.

I think if you go to Scandinavia or the UK you will find the opposite. Housing is an example of a field where the government was much more active pre the 80s. Idk if the US has had the same development, but it is certainly not a global truth that it only goes one way.

Yes when you run out of money the actual interventions invariably shrink, but AFAICT the expectation has not changed.

The expectation certainly has changed. Do you not remember Thatcher?

Housing as mentioned above. There was also a time the railway was a obvious public responsibility. Similarly for airlines (Scandinavian Airlines, British Airways). Telephone companies(British Telecom, Telenor), mail (Royal Mail), gas (Gas Act 1948), iron and steel (Iron and Steel Act 1967), and electric production ( Electricity Act 1947).

If anything it is rather opposite, the moment something is privatised it's hard to get it under public control again. But even if you don't agree with that it should certainly be clear that removing something from the public sector is both possible and has happened to a large degree.

The government selling food directly to it’s citizens represents the raised red fist of communism to American conservatives ?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com