What Mamdani can do about monopolies in the food sector

Good morning!

I wrote this New York Times oped on how Zohran Mamdani (with the city council) can address price gouging, price discrimination, and bring life back to local groceries.

We've got to start building democracy from the ground up, and cities have a lot of unused power. In the oped, I talk about four things big cities (and states to take on the stranglehold of big chain grocery stores and big distributors/suppliers:

• Banning suppliers from giving sweetheart deals to big chain stores
• Enforcing city price gouging laws against suppliers
• Public investment in infrastructure that supports small farmers
• City level prohibitions against exclusive contracts that shut out small suppliers.

There's more! If Zohran does set up city owned grocery stores, they will actually serve a really important purpose that hasn't gotten talked about enough.

Those grocery stores will be in a great position to expose the pricing games that big suppliers play, whether its with gouging or violating existing federal law against price discrimination. Most independent grocery stores are understandably scared of suing their suppliers even if there's a violation, because of fear of retaliation, but a city-owned store wouldn't face the same threat. And Mamdani has shown he's pretty good with bullies.

Municipal antimonopoly joins two things we need more of– decentralized economic power and decentralized political power.

Hope you enjoy,

Zephyr

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