I don't think that I've ever heard anyone in SV, at least not anyone with any real power, honestly suggest that. They don't want to pay people more than they absolutely have to now, and that's with most labor being done by humans. When humans stop being the engine of economic growth, why would those people suddenly want to implement UBI and end scarcity?
It's a fugazi meant to make you think that the people doing things have considered all of the angles, but they haven't.
It seems like as soon as any particular set of ideas starts to attract a dedicated following said group abandons reason in favor of dogmatism, lack of consistency be damned.
A more honest way of writing this might be ”we’re going to test UBI because it’s untested, but Mamdani is scary bc rent control has been shown over and over again to be bad for cities.”
I think you're right that this is what people believe. But as far as I've been able to tell, Mamdani's platform does not include anything about rent control.
The closest position he's advocating for is to freeze the rent stabilization rate for 5 years while massively ramping up the construction of new apartments to bring rental costs down.
Much of the pushback about Mamdani seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding of the difference betwene "rent control" and "rent stabilization". I think it's extremely rare to see a politician understand the supply/demand aspect of housing costs so well. He really seems to understand these dynamics, certainly better than anyone he's running against.
Is that difference relevant here? I'm not familiar with the difference, but looking it up real quick, they seem to be extremely similar. They both act as price controls, which implies the same sorts of economic consequences.
Yes. Rent control is what most people are familiar with (grandma living in a beautiful 3 bedroom apartment in Greenwich Village paying $200 / month, locked in since the 1970's). Rent stabilization is just a regulation that puts some type of reasonable cap on how much landlords can increase the rent every year, usually around 3-5% per year.
This is especially relevant in this election, as Cuomo is attacking Mamdani for living in a rent stabilized apartment, suggesting it's hypocritical because he can afford a more expensive apartment. This is deliberately trying to muddy the distinction between "rent stabilized" and "rent controlled" (about half of NY apartments are rent stabilized, and there is absolutely no cultural expectation that people move out when they get a raise, or whatever nonsense Cuomo's suggesting).
I'm still not sure what the important distinction is. Are you saying it's that rent control freezes the price entirely, while rent stabilization allows it to increase? That doesn't seem to be right from what I'm seeing; "rent control" includes systems where the rent can increase. NYC apparently has both and NYC rent control does allow for (capped) rent increases, according to the NYC government: https://hcr.ny.gov/system/files/documents/2024/01/fact-sheet...
While rent controlled apartments can increase the rent, it's extremely limited, usually based on the landlord's expenses and not market conditions.
Rent stabilization is roughly based on the inflation rate, so, while tenants who've lived in one place for a while might be getting something approximately considered a "sweet deal", it's not the ridiculous scenario rent control can produce. One other relevant distinction, rent controlled units can be passed down to family, keeping the same rent rate. Rent stabilized apartments can also be passed down, but it's the same as if a new tenant was taking over—the price can be reset back to market rate.
Finding an apartment in NYC is still terrible but we don't have a way to duplicate the Earth and remove rent control and re do the last 50 years. If there were no rent control, who's to say how things would look like today? $500/month studio apartments in mega highrises because we also deregulated zoning and housing regulations in this hypothetical.
I don't think that Silicon Valley's / NY Tech's primary concern about Mamdani is rent control. You think NY Tech CEO's are pro rent control for a reason Silicon Valley CEO's aren't?
Two separate sets of people maybe; I think this article is using "silicon valley" to talk about a small (but very influential) group of very wealthy investor types, and "new york tech scene" to mostly talk about NYC founders.
It's actually very straight-forward. UBI still means that most people's money eventually flows to the rent-seekers (Billionaires). Socialism (and I know this is not the Socialism Mamdani is proposing), means that most people own the means of production and rent-seeking isn't possible.
Ending scarcity and funding UBI is uniquely possible in a capitalist society, where there is excess wealth generation. In the UK we use our capitalist excess wealth to fund socialised healthcare.
But don't mistake socialised service provision for socialism
Socialism implies state control of the means of production.
The results of socialism, we witnessed in Eastern Europe and elsewhere during the 20th century: scarcity of goods and services
Eventually a socialist state runs out of private wealth to seize, and it becomes completely corrupt and totalitarian due to its monopoly over the means of production. And then the people rise up and demand a the restoration of a free society where people can own the fruits of their labour.
In all the actual examples I can think of, the totalitarianism came first. Eastern Europe mostly had socialism imposed by an occupying force, and that same force also imposed totalitarian governments. In other places, Communists took over, set up a totalitarian government, and then proceeded to implement whatever they thought socialism/communism entails.
>Socialism implies state control of the means of production.
Socialism literally implies the opposite. That's why it's called socialism. Under capitalism, capitalists own the means of production. Under fascism, the government and the state collaborate to own the means of production. Under socialism, the means of production are socially (collectively) owned. In the most extreme interpretation of socialism, communism, the goal is the elimination of the state entirely.
Granted, historically, communist states tended to centralize power rather than work towards their own elimination because that's the inherent evil of governments, particularly revolutionary governments. But to claim that socialism presupposes authoritarianism is to expose the fact that everything you know about socialism comes from capitalist propaganda.
>And then the people rise up and demand a the restoration of a free society where people can own the fruits of their labour.
> Under capitalism, capitalists own the means of production
What are "capitalists" and by which rules of capitalism do they hold a monopoly on the means of production?
I live in a capitalist country (the UK), I'm an ordinary member of the public, and I'm free to start a business, own it, and therefore own a means of production.
Which UK citizens are unable to own the means of production?
Socialism inevitably means state ownership only because states make themselves inevitable, not because state ownership is an inherent property of socialism per se. Plenty of examples exist of socialism working at a smaller scale, such as with worker owned cooperatives. If you're a programmer, you might own your own means of production. Free software is socialist in principle - all of that code is collectively owned.
But when the monopoly on violence gets involved, socialism often gets co-opted to serve the interests of the state rather than the people. I would argue that authoritarianism and and the creation of an elite centralizing and controlling wealth and resources for itself is as much a fail state for capitalism as it is for socialism, that it's just a different bunch of pigs feeding at the trough.
And to refer to your earlier comment, socialized provision of services is absolutely a form of socialism. If those services aren't being run for a profit under market principles, made available only to consumers who can afford it, and that profit isn't being captured to increase the wealth of private ownership, then it's a form of socialism.
In the US we have Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, which are ostensibly socialist programs (certainly they were denounced as such when created.) One might argue that they aren't truly socialist since they don't collectivize the means of production but they certainly aren't capitalist in principle.
Of course it also helps to remember that "socialism" encompasses a wide spectrum of ideology and theory, and that if you get five socialists in a room and ask for a definition of socialism you'll wind up with seven manifestos and a fistfight. There are socialists who will argue for Soviet and Chinese style central control, and will point out (as capitalists will about capitalism) that socialism brought those states out of grinding poverty and vastly improved their peoples' quality of life, and others who abhor the violence and oppression of authoritarian socialism, believing it can only be achieved through nonviolence and voluntarism.
Point being that absolutist phrases like "socialism inevitably means state ownership" don't work as a useful critique because they don't consider the flexibility and adaptability of socialism as a concept. They tend to be thought-terminating cliches, like "capitalism is the worst system, except for all others," which serve to to normalize the premise that criticism of capitalism is futile because no useful alternatives to capitalism can possibly exist.
