Zohran Mamdani’s Bad Plan for Government Grocery Stores

…And, of course, New York politicians would have a strong incentive to use these new enterprises for political gain, compounding the risk of cronyism, corruption, and inefficiency—as California politicians’ recent, union-backed crusade to ban self-checkout depressingly demonstrates… 

Almost anyone living in a control state can attest to ABC stores’ awfulness, yet the systems persist because, as the [R Street] Institute’s Jarrett Dieterle documented in Virginia, they employ thousands of people (who are also voters), generate hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenue for state and local coffers, and—in classic bootleggers-and-Baptists fashion—are often supported by both Big Alcohol and pro-temperance religious groups (not to mention local socialists). That’s an irresistible combination for the vast majority of state and local politicians, so these Prohibition-era relics remain—regardless of their consequences or consumers’ preferences.