New York Wakes Up Under Socialism after Mamdani Sworn In

So definitely maintaining a separation of powers and an independent judiciary. Even though it may look different than what we have today. 

Socialism is primarily an economic policy--the age-old problem of trying to satisfy unlimited wants with finite resources. It can segue into a governmental policy depending on the degree of government control. Socialism can exist with a rigid authoritarian government or no government at all (just custom).

Stupid Tom objects to socialism because he can only imagine the rigid, authoritarian version. Even so, that's the best alternative when resources are finite and sharply limited. China is a true socialist country with a frosting of capitalism, and that's appropriate for them because they have a lot of mouths to feed and barely enough resources to do that. Similarly, if a moon colony is ever established, it will have to be authoritarian socialist or everyone will die in short order. NO private property, not even clothing or IPhones.

The judicial and executive branches of a socialist government shouldn't and don't look much different from a capitalist government. 

Socialism is like the first day of kindergarden.  You go with your parents to pick out all your school supplies with pride.  And then as soon as you get to school they are taken from you and put in with everyone elses supplies for the whole classroom to use.  Soon all the good crayons are broken because there is no pride of ownership .And we can't have little Sally having nicer supplies than the rest of the class.

Man, that's a silly and naive...let's be generous and call it an oversimplification.

"Pride of ownership" means that some people have advantages over others. That's fine in and of itself, but inequalities lead to strife and social unrest.

Conservatives say that people who have more wealth, resources, etc. are in that position because of their natural superiority, their noble pluck, their derring-do, and therefore the survival of the fittest means that the "weak" should not be helped out in any way and should be allowed to die. Liberals say that circumstances are largely a matter of luck and that the unfortunate should be helped.

For what it's worth, my views are somewhere in the middle. A social safety net is both common decency and desirable. If we become social Darwinists, yeah, we might become stronger overall. But a lot of people would suffer and die in the process of winnowing out the weak and "undeserving."

Socialism defuses a lot of potential conflicts. Think of how much effort is made--and how much blood is spilled--to make one person richer than another. Little Sally, with her nicer crayons, won't coexist peacefully with the other kids; they'll be jealous and resentful, and she'll be haughty and prideful. Material differences are destablizing to society and sweet Jesus, how many billions have died because of them.

I'm not saying that HORRIBUL SOOOOOOCIALISM is desirable or even all that good of an idea. I am saying, though, that unfettered capitalism leads to widespread misery and death. Therefore, we belong somewhere in the middle. But socialism DOES work very well in certain contexts and situations. Take kibbutzim as an example. Socialism in action. Or the first Chinese government in five thousand years to be able to feed all of its people. 

Your kindergarten analogy is weak for another reason. Under socialism, your parents didn't have to buy the crayons; they're already at the school. And every box is identical. Sad for little Sally, who wanted to stand out, but good for everyone else.

Yeah. Kinda. Pretty good anology. For some styles of Socialism anyway. 

Terrible analogy, because it implies that under socialism, the government confiscates all your assets and throws them into a great big hopper from which everyone draws their allotment. It doesn't work that way. Makes for good propaganda to paint that picture, though.

Under a socialist regime, Sally's parents wouldn't have to buy her crayons at all. And one social benefit is that no kid would end up with better or worse crayons than any other. Fewer fights in art class.

For those that don't think the mamdami gang is socialist or communist

Longtime housing activist Cea Weaver, the new director of the Office to Protect Tenants, received a boost from Mamdani even as controversy engulfed his administration over her recently unearthed posts branding homeownership “a weapon of white supremacy” and declaring, “Seize private property.”

In a March 2021 video, Weaver said property should be transitioned toward a model of “shared equity” that would mean “families, especially white families, but some POC families who are homeowners as well, are gonna have a different relationship to property than the one that we currently have.”

“Private property including any kind of ESPECIALLY homeownership is a weapon of white supremacy,” she spouted in 2019.

And, as landlords exit the market, using state action to acquire properties and leverage disinvestment to convert thousands of homes into publicly and democratically controlled land/housing,” she wrote in the New Labor Forum.

   Anyone praising this communist Mamdani will soon get a dose of reality. 

Penn Jillete  of Penn and Teller once commented that he would have loved for the 2016 election and presidential debates to have been Rand Paul vs Bernie Sanders. 

He commented that the country is never going to go all the way Paul, or all the way Bernie and probably shouldn't. But hopefully we can listen carefully to both and meet somewhere in the middle. Seems pretty agreeable to me. 

If you want to evaluate the success of a given socioeconomic system, you should measure:

Health/life expectancy

Wealth and productivity 

Citizens' happiness

Standing within the world community

The Western European democracies continually rank very high in all four categories.

Where are we?

23rd in life expectancy despite a healthcare system that is twice as expensive as anyone else's.

Immense wealth but very unevenly distributed. Productivity steadily declining.

Middling score on the happiness scale.

The world hates us and knows we can't be trusted.