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Mamdani takes sardonic view of Polymarket’s ‘free grocery store’ stunt in New York
(www.theguardian.com)
This is what Polymarket posted
this post was submitted on 06 Feb 2026
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What's wrong with that? Where I live, we have government run (technically run by an company that's owned by a government investment holding but close enough) and a number of private companies. Everything's fine.
The only way I could see it making sense is if a government was doing it as an exercise to understand what it takes to open a business.
What environment have governments created where no one wants to open a grocery business?
Is it overly dominated by a handful of large corporations? Should these be taxed or broken up to make the market more competitive? Is the supply chain competitive or is it also not competitive?
Should government socialize insurance costs instead, for businesses that drive public good? Or other incentives like health coverage?
Are there bylaws and zoning barriers that are making entry prohibitive?
These are areas I think governments should be in, not operating a retail store. Policy is their area of expertise and has major impact.
Tell me why it has to be opened by some businessman?
Because of things like this:
Round tables and town halls for apple varieties, 8 years to get a shop underway... absolutely ridiculous.
There is obviously an issue, and government has a role, but this isn't it
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/jul/25/mamdani-nyc-public-grocery-stores
"According to Overstreet, the councilmember from Atlanta, community buy-in is key. In her district, Overstreet sought feedback about what kinds of products community members wanted access to, down to the preferred variety of apple. Overstreet and her team did this through roundtables, pop-up meetings, and both paper and online questionnaires to try to reach the widest array of people"
"Lastly, noted Christine Caruso, Myer’s co-author on the grocery store research, it is worth reminding community members that such an initiative will take time to realize. Overstreet noted that it took her eight years of work to get the new grocery store in her district under way."
I'm not sure we're even remotely talking about the same type of environments. I think you're blowing these far out if proportion. It's simply a company that's run like a regular company except owned by the government who sets up supermarkets along side numerous other supermarket companies.
The people running the stores and figuring how this works are experts in this field, not the member of parliament that the public has elected. Governments are more than the executive and legislative branches, the agencies and other bodies also exist.
It's not just a government run store, the products sold are being subsidized. Which is quite unfair to any small businesses/independents who have invested in the blast radius. Will they be compensated? (I'm not concerned about the large corps).
It wouldn't surprise me if NYC saw a net reduction in grocery stores as a result.
So public money to subsidize costs of goods, and public money to subsidize costs of less efficient operations.
Is this the most effective use of public dollars?
I see NYC has incentives to open up grocery stores, good idea. Starting footprint is 5k sq feet.. why so large? That would require something like an a million dollar build out... who is that incentive for?