On Tuesday, Harlem voters advanced Zohran Mamdani—to the Democratic nomination for New York City Mayor. His general election win is all but guaranteed, yet beyond the feel-good headlines lies a deeper story: a society so economically dislocated that it’s reaching for the comforting illusions of socialism. Again.
Mamdani’s platform of public housing expansion, free groceries, guaranteed incomes—isn’t revolutionary. It’s recycled. America has walked this road before. From the Robert Taylor Homes and Cabrini-Green in Chicago to food pantry dependency in nearly every urban neighborhood, we’ve tried to substitute top-down benevolence for organic opportunity. The results were grim: crime, stagnation, and lives robbed of upward mobility.
What we’re seeing now isn’t just a leftward lurch. It’s the byproduct of a deeper systemic collapse. The industrial economy that powered the 20th century is disintegrating. Jobs are either automated, outsourced, or digitized. Institutions that once promised stability, government, corporations, even the traditional university—are breaking faith with those they were built to serve. Into that void step politicians with utopian promises and government apps.
But socialism isn’t a solution. It’s a mechanism of control—one that always promises equality but consistently delivers hierarchy. It replaces free enterprise with bureaucratic gatekeeping. It infantilizes the public by removing the consequences of choices. Most dangerously, it convinces people they’re safe—when in fact, they’re being managed.
We don’t need to guess how this plays out. We’ve seen it. Public housing morphed into crime-ridden vertical ghettos. Government food support grew into an entrenched poverty industry. Now, with the help of AI and digital surveillance, the same ideas are being rebranded—coded into policy dashboards and distributed through blockchain rationing apps. What was once central planning is now algorithmic planning. The digital revolution has not, as some hoped, democratized opportunity. It’s bifurcating it.
We are fast approaching what I think of as a very dystopian 10-10-80 society:
- 10% of the population will thrive in a decentralized digital economy, owning assets and operating across borders.
- 10%—the technocratic elite—will manage the platforms, policies, and surveillance systems.
- The remaining 80%? They’ll be digitally tethered, economically stagnant, and politically irrelevant.
The convenience of “free groceries” today is the gateway to algorithmic feudalism tomorrow. You’ll eat what the system decides is sustainable. Work where it deems efficient. Live where it allocates you. All in the name of fairness.
There is an alternative, but it’s harder to sell because it demands something of people. It’s not free. It’s freedom.
Decentralized capitalism—the fusion of digital tools with entrepreneurial energy—is the only real counterweight to the coming regime of control. Blockchain, tokenized ownership, peer-to-peer markets, and truly open digital platforms offer a way forward. Not a utopia. But a chance. A system where prosperity is earned, not rationed. Where opportunity is shared, not issued.
Candidates like Mamdani may be the villains, but they’re more, they’re symptoms. If we continue electing policies of dependence, we will forfeit what little agency remains. We’ll move not toward equality, but toward managed sameness.
In an era of collapsing institutions, we face a stark choice. Not left vs. right. But extreme freedom or extreme control.
Harlem just cast its vote. In November, the rest of us will too—at the ballot box, in the marketplace, and in the systems, we choose to build or accept.
