The mythology of New York City is dead. The idea of a thriving metropolis of boundless energy and opportunity is a fantasy. The city has been in a malaise for years, powered by a 24/7 party scene of clubs and consumption, not actual progress. Now, it faces a figure who represents the logical conclusion of this decline. Zohran Mamdani’s political platform is not a plan to fix a struggling city; it is a program of economic suicide designed to pull the plug.
His proposal to force a $30 minimum wage on the city is a theatrical gesture that will trigger a wave of bankruptcies, not prosperity. To fund this and other schemes, he points to NYC’s AI sector as a cash cow ready for slaughter.
Let’s be real about this so-called NYC AI sector. It’s bullshit. It is overwhelmingly composed of:
- Bloated Consulting Firms: Companies like PwC are not core AI developers; they are middlemen who will be the first to be cut in a real economy.
- Gimmicky “Feature-AI” Companies: Firms like Grammarly and Rokt are not foundational. They build features on top of existing innovation and will be rendered obsolete by the next technological leap.
- Cash-Burning Startups: The rest are overwhelmingly small-time ventures with no viable business models, destined to go up in flames the second venture capital dries up.
This flimsy collection of middlemen cannot support a city. For a preview of what happens when this kind of economic reality denial takes hold, look at San Francisco. The city’s core of “software, services, and finance” completely collapsed under the weight of its own radical politics. The Salesforce Tower, its supposed crown jewel, now stands largely vacant and is physically leaning—a perfect, sinking monument to a failed ideology. New York City is poised for an even greater collapse.
This is not a wake-up call; it is a diagnosis. The political system in New York is so broken that a communist whose rhetoric includes “seizing the means of production” is a leading candidate. There is no hidden bench of “true leadership” waiting in the wings to save the day. The situation is what it is. For the great majority of Americans who do not live in such “concrete jungle” conditions, this spectacle confirms the wisdom of their choices.
The threat Mamdani represents goes beyond disastrous economics. I could potentially see the use of “cybersecurity” to police “hate speech” … a direct assault on the First Amendment. His open support for the “Holy Land Five”—convicted financiers of the terrorist organization Hamas—should be disqualifying for any public office in America.
New York’s future is being written by an ideology of resentment and control. For the rest of America, the lesson is clear: this is not a model to be reformed, but a failure to be observed and avoided at all costs.
Leave a Reply