The socialist hypothesis has been falsified: Did New York get the memo?

By Ed Tarnowski 
Real Clear Wire

In January 1996, Democratic President Bill Clinton declared during his State of the Union address that “the era of big government is over.” And following America’s decisive victory in the Cold War, it seemed it might be so. Socialism began as a hypothesis – that central planning would improve the human condition. The ensuing decades-long experiment, stretching across all corners of the world, resulted in the opposite: Where communism spread, liberty’s flame was extinguished, ushering in unprecedented human suffering for billions.

By every empirical measure, the socialist hypothesis has been falsified. And yet, socialism is catching fresh wind in its sails – not in Moscow, Havana, or Hanoi, but in New York City, capitalism’s capital.

This week, New York voters elected self-declared and unapologetic socialist Zohran Mamdani, a man endorsing proposals like widespread rent control, fare-free public transit, and government-run grocery stores. In November 2025, the Democratic mayor-elect declared during his victory speech, “We will prove that there is no problem too large for government to solve and no concern too small for it to care about."

The incoming mayor’s policies have been tried and tested many times, and robust evidence shows they don’t work, putting their continued advance in the same category as flat Earth theory, Moon-landing denial, and chemtrail conspiracies.

Let us begin with rent control. Central to Mamdani’s campaign, the appeal of housing-focused messaging comes as no surprise. In terms of pure price, New York City has the highest rents in the country. But rent control is poised not to improve this crisis, but to worsen it. A 2022 meta-review spanning 36 countries and varying rent control regimes concludes that while rent control (obviously) lowers rents for incumbents, it has broadly harmful effects on the general housing market, shrinking supply, driving up prices overall, and deteriorating housing quality.

Meanwhile, good old-fashioned supply and demand is being tested again in real time in the cities of Austin and Buenos Aires. Following sweeping reforms like loosened height limits, eliminated parking mandates, and a shortened permitting process, the rental supply in Austin has increased 14%, and rents have declined 22% from their 2023 peak. In Buenos Aires, after President Javier Milei repealed a 2020 rent control law, housing supply surged by 212% from December 2023 to June 2024, while the real price of renting fell 27%.

Nearly as alluring as promises to “freeze the rent” is Mamdani’s proposal to make New York’s transit system fare-free. Much like rent control, this idea has been tested many times. A randomized controlled trial suggests that while removing fares from public transit does increase ridership, it has “no meaningful effects on paid hours worked or earnings.”

Further, a report on fare-free transit demonstrations in Denver, CO; Trenton, NJ; and Austin, TX, concluded that it is “nearly certain that fare-free implementation would not be appropriate for larger transit systems.” While these examples were again found to increase ridership, new riders were not found to be coming from the target demographics (motorists who would decrease traffic congestion and reduce air pollution). In fact, the ensuing chaos reportedly discouraged longtime riders and those who would be switching from other modes of transportation.

The large transit systems ditching fares experienced overcrowding and “dramatic rates of vandalism, graffiti, and rowdiness” from younger passengers, causing “numerous negative consequences,” leading to a swelling of related maintenance and security costs. The report also determined that people are less concerned about fare costs than they are with safety, travel time, frequency and service reliability, schedule availability, stop infrastructure, and driver courtesy — all things made harder to fund when fare revenue disappears.

Perhaps the starkest element of Mamdani’s agenda is the establishment of government-run grocery stores. Famously, in September 1989, Boris Yeltsin, then a member of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, had the opportunity to visit an average American grocery store. The abundance he witnessed was so comparatively striking to the Soviet condition that Yeltsin is reported to have sat “motionless” with his “head in his hands” on the plane ride following the visit, remarking on the “pain” it sparked in him. He is said to have asserted, “I think we have committed a crime against our people by making their standard of living so incomparably lower than that of the Americans.”

An aide credits this experience with the collapse of Yeltsin’s “last vestige of Bolshevism.” Commonplace in the Soviet Union and throughout the communist world, the state-run grocery store evokes vivid memories of bread lines, dusty shelves, and widespread food shortages for those who lived through it. Nevertheless, this failed concept, once thought to have been sentenced to the ash heap of history, is now a priority for New York City’s next mayor.

For years, New York’s leaders have failed to address too many of the city’s problems with serious policy or the urgency they demand. It was only a matter of time before that failure drove New Yorkers toward the false promise of socialism, something that should serve as a warning across America. Instead of governing with hollow platitudes, our leaders should champion proven, liberty-centric policy. On each path, the results will speak for themselves.

Ed Tarnowski is a writer for Young Voices, a Policy and Advocacy Director at EdChoice, and host of the State of Choice Podcast. His work has been published in National Review, The Washington Examiner, Fox News, Education Next, New Hampshire Journal, PennLive, and GoLocalProv. Follow him on X.com @edtarnowski. The views and opinions expressed in this writing are strictly his own and do not reflect the views of his employer.

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