Boycott Anything Trump, Goya Foods & Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Truth is so obscure today, and falsehood so established, that, unless we love the truth, we cannot see or know it. For this reason, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Robert Unanue are both frightened and hard at work creating their own respective realities. Ms. Cortez regularly distracts her constituents by shouting, "The people from my Bronx/Queens district are being taken advantage of". Goya Foods fears under producing/extinction as a private enterprise in a mature industry. Unanue is trying to squeeze as much as he can from a dying brand through protectionism. The Goya CEO is trying to slowdown the latest trends in American supermarkets which call for carrying highly selective products, offering private-label products (not Goya), offering small, neighborhood stores that exude warmth, providing attentive employees and offering extraordinary value.

The savvy Bronx politician and (legacy entrepreneur) Unanue's talking points are half truths and narrow minded. Instead, Americans should focus on creating a way, a path, for us to work with citizens and government in a format that eliminates these ingrained fears by understanding both supply and demand. On the demand side, the commons situation encourages a race to the bottom by overuse—what economists call a congested–public-good problem. On the supply side, the commons rewards free-rider behavior—removing or diminishing incentives for individual actors to invest in developing more output.

The tragedy of the commons predicts only three possible outcomes.

1- Actors with coercive power to enforce an allocation policy on behalf of the people (A.O.C.’s socialist solution).

2-The commons to break up as village members, fence-off bits they can defend and manage sustainably.

3- The sea of mud many think we have today.

For Republicans, governments are socialist only when they redistribute wealth to benefit the multitude–say, for infrastructure, education and art. Republicans fear slow economic growth, less entrepreneurial opportunity and competition, and a potential lack of motivation by individuals due to lesser rewards. If you like A.O.C.’s 70% tax rate for high income earners, chances are you’re really angry with capitalism. Whereas, the Trump administration (endorsed by Unanue) was an aberration, an outrage, but most of all, a great big fraud. Voters who thought President Trump would at least try to fulfill his populist, America-first campaign promises are still waiting. Trump placates these supporters with rhetoric, distracts them with cultural warfare and encourages them to seek refuge in cultural chauvinism and economic ignorance.

Both Goya Foods and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will continue to rationalize their positions by holding firm to where they each have drawn the line. Yet, before you sign up as a member of the Communist Party, you need to realize one thing: it is not capitalism itself at fault, just one type – free market capitalism. In Robert Unanue and Donald Trump's defense, Goya Foods strategy is more inline with "Russia Like" cronyism than free market capitalism. In fact, capitalism can be a very effective way of managing the economy. For example, the profit motive, or the desire to make money, is a powerful driver. A great many inventions and innovations have resulted from people’s desire to create a successful enterprise. And capitalism is also an efficient method of coordinating the economy. The market is a great way to ensure that labor and capital quickly gets to the areas where it is needed the most. Without the market directing people where they are needed, we might end up with hundreds of companies like Goya Foods, instagram influencers, rappers and not enough plumbers.

Despite the advantages that capitalism can bring, it can be incredibly dangerous if not regulated properly. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez well intended but short sighted rhetoric makes it more difficult to move away from the free market and build a better, fairer, and safer capitalist system.
One way we could do this is to apply the idea of bounded rationality – the idea that we make better choices when we have a limited range of options. We shouldn't give government more power in the economic system if by government we mean the likes of Ms. Cortez. US Representative Cortez feverishly seek out under informed voters & unintentionally hinder democracy, lack economic curiosity, is mostly illiterate to policy and their economic consequences and prefer to practice scapegoating instead of encouraging constituents to address areas of self improvements. What processes could be put in place to minimize corruption? Should bankers make investment in food companies who are more efficient and do a better job at forecasting customer demand than Goya Foods? Should an inexperienced bureaucrat like Ms. Cortez replace these bankers decision processes? Unfortunately, the widespread secularization both Ms. Cortez and Mr. Unanue subscribe to increasing descends into a moral, intellectual and spiritual nihilism that denies not only the one who is the truth, but the very idea of the truth itself.

Ms. Cortez, are you a selfless leader? Would you refuse a promotion you desire to a more capable team member for the greater good? While striving for change, don't let your ego become a controlling factor in the way you act and make decisions. If that's what you're already doing, tell yourself a different story. Fortunately, the stories we tell ourselves are just labels that put us at odds not just with reality, but with the real strategy that made us successful in the first place. From that place, we might think that success in the future is just the natural next part of the story—when really it’s rooted in a process made up of work, creativity, persistence, and luck. All processes within time, may work better, worse, cease to work or change. Individuals with power to influence a process can be the process’s best friends and worst enemies.

Mr. Unanue, are you a selfless leader? As CEO of Goya Foods are you seeking to make your current processes sustainable through servant leader beliefs similar to what programmers do with software? Part of the answer certainly lies in the fact that using software does not decrease its value. Instead, widespread use of your processes (I'm thinking Amazon) tends to increase its value, as users fold in their own fixes and features. In this inverse commons, the grass grows taller when it's grazed upon. That this public good cannot be degraded by overuse takes care of half of the congested–public-goods problem. It doesn't explain why open source doesn't suffer from under provision. Why don't other food distributors who know the open-source community exists universally exhibit the same free-rider behavior as Goya Foods Inc. waiting for others to do the work they need, or (if they do the work themselves) not bothering to contribute the work back into the commons?

Part of the answer lies in the fact that people don't merely need solutions, they need solutions on time. It's seldom possible to predict when someone else will finish a given piece of needed work. If the payoff from fixing a bug or adding a feature is sufficient to any potential contributor, that person will dive in and do it (at which point the fact that everyone else is a free rider becomes irrelevant). Another part of the answer lies in the fact that the putative market value of small patches to a common source base is hard to capture. Being reactive by only sitting on the sidelines while not being able to compete in stores offering private-label products gains nothing. Instead, it incurs a future cost—the effort involved in growing shelf space in supermarkets only offering private labels. So the payoff from not keeping up with demand is actually negative.

Jose Franco is a self anointed "Public Intellectual"