re: Minneapolis free-food experiment runs out of money, crowds overwhelm café and neighbors

quote:

---

Blind and dead Ray Charles could have seen that coming from a mile away.

---

Exact same thing will happen in NYC with those subsidized grocery stores.

Madamni is next

So THIS GUY couldn't make an idea like this work out?



I couldn't make my restaurant's numbers work. So I took prices off the menu.

quote:

---

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Dylan Alverson, 45, who owns Post Modern Times, a pay-what-you-can restaurant in Minneapolis. It has been edited for length and clarity.

---

quote:

---

Late last year, after federal immigration raids shook our neighborhood, we started offering free meals with help from a local grant. I noticed something immediately: People who needed food often wouldn't ask for it.

Then Alex Pretti, our neighbor, was killed during an immigration operation. Our community was reeling, and everyone was angry, so we took prices off the menu as part of a tax strike — we weren't charging for meals and therefore weren't generating sales tax.

It was a way to fight back and also provide comfort to our neighborhood, so anyone could get a hot meal if they needed one.

After seeing the spark of hope that change caused, we haven't gone back. People can now pay whatever they can afford. Or nothing at all.

---

I understand wanting to be able to do things like this - and actually doing things like this. It isn't greed to run a business. It's necessity. You can operate some kind of charity-arm of your business but it will still need actual money to function. Money that comes from sold goods. Sold goods that are then able to have overhead, material markups, and profit in the equation.

He wants to help people out but by running things like this, he's helping NOBODY out because he's closed. There's other people though that are running business like it MUST be run who are able to help people. In turn, they're actually helping people while this guy is like "I don't get it..."

Maybe he learned a little bit of a lesson here.

Every sane and rational person knows things like this won’t work. It’s the same with socialism.
Unfortunately, we aren’t dealing with sane or rational people.

quote:

---

There goes the highly educated folks again thinking they know better.

---

I’ll take a fella with a high school diploma that has built up a multi-million dollar construction business any day of a week over those goobers