Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

The next mayor of New York City is .... Zohran Kwame Mamdani. Mamdani and I share a birthday.  He was born on October 18, 1991, the day I turned thirty-three.  At any rate, I believe I have already shared my view that Mamdani's election in likely to be a disaster for the City that has now placed itself in his hands.  I would like today to address the question: will that disaster help or hurt President Donald Trump? I've heard one theory that Trump needs a good bogeyman.  After all, Nancy Pelosi was his bogeywoman for a long time. She remains in the House of course but has faded into the background and her successor in party leadership there, Hakeem Jeffries, has a much lower profile.   The mayor of New York City has long been a national figure -- Jimmy Walker, Fiorella LaGuardia, John Lindsey all come to mind -- even though the post doesn't seem to work as a stepping stone to higher office. So ... a mayor of New York, one who attaches the label "socialist" ...

My friend Gary Weiss has becoming very focused on the NYC mayoral campaign.  Weiss, author of books on crime, financial and otherwise (his book on the rise and fall of Crazy Eddie's, a very New York centric tale, is pertinent here)  is anti-Mamdani with some fervor.  He has a very well written article on the subject in Discourse this week. Rather than paraphrase it, I'll just link you to it and give you a brief quote.  https://www.discoursemagazine.com/p/trouble-right-here-in-new-york-city?fbclid=IwY2xjawLgpqlleHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETE4T0dqTzExQm0zdWp3MEhsAR7jw4RugcsWBNFa4YOhxFNdvSyoW7yJ1kOzGbJO1HuRbYoTilv1rrpwLMpyPg_aem_S-eWO8EvUTeDik6MBziqqA   After discussing his objections to Mamdani's "rent freeze" plan Weiss turns on himself and says,  " See how much detail it took to address just  two words  blasted out by Team Mamdani? That is the essence of an effective con. Be simple while your critics are compelled to be complicated as they dig throu...

What are the reasons for believing that Mamdani, even if he wins the mayor's office, will find that it is for him a dead end?  There is his rent freeze thing, to begin. My old anarcho-cap instincts kick in here. Markets are very useful things -- it is precisely in the valuation of assets (and of transferable liabilities) that they most directly prove their worth, and rent control in all its forms is a direct attack on this function. New York City's history with "rent stabilization" is a solid illustration of this point. The history is not happy. And intensifying the war on the discovery of value will do a good deal of harm to actual values.      Brenda Richardson wrote a fine brief piece in Forbes on some of these issues two years ago.   The bottom line is that Mamdani seems likely to mess with the housing market in ways that effectively freeze new construction of livable spaces, force further skimping on maintenance, lead to longer waitlists and reduced m...

 This is the sort of come-from-nowhere figure who can really enliven politics, even in the eyes of jaded folks who think they've seen it all. Mamdani was a nobody when he entered the race for the Democrati Party's nomination for Mayor of New York City.  He was a member of the New York State Assembly, 36th district, a district within NYC, hugging the East River from the Queens side. In the last two elections for that seat, he ran for re-election unopposed. When Mamdani first entered the race for the Mayoral nomination, he was laughed off and the pollsters were giving him 1 percent. His opponents included a former Governor of the State, Andrew Cuomo [not merely a former Gov., but the son of the Gov. the state recently named a bridge for] and Brad Lander, the incumbent Comptroller of NYC.  Lander went so far as to get himself arrested in the act of protesting Trump deportation policies during the campaign. It looked for 15 minutes like a brilliant political move.  It d...