[SkipperCat]

This is what legitimate government looks like. Leaders actually advocating for the people who are being deceived by those in power instead of helping those in power.

While this may be a trivial issue, being able to cancel a gym or newspaper subscription, it sends a signal. Companies need to view customers as partners in a business transaction and not objects to be exploited.

[ianmarcinkowski]

I have similar feelings.

I am sympathetic to a perspective that says this is not the responsibility of a mayor of a single city... But also; who else is going to do it?

Normal people have very little say over the politicians that govern them in larger electoral regions like states or provinces, and maybe this can signal to other levels of government that they should implement similar rules... If it works.

[colechristensen]

>I am sympathetic to a perspective that says this is not the responsibility of a mayor of a single city... But also; who else is going to do it?

With a population of 8.5 million if NYC was a state it would be the 13th largest so I'm quite all right with the city going beyond the normal purview of a city government.

[culi]

And if it were a country, it would be the 10th largest economy in the world and the 105th most populous

[myko]

Truly insane that the US political system fucks people who live in population centers. Horribly designed.

[DangitBobby]

Completely agree. It's a bad system, to put it mildly. I'd say it's a surprise it's lasted 250 years, but it hasn't. It lasted 100 years until the Civil War practically rewrote the Constitution with the 14th Amendment and it's been 150 years since then.

[voidhorse]

Mamdani has been doing great in NYC so far. The hope is that he will inspire similar behavior in others. And drive similar approaches to politics in other constituencies.

[Gigachad]

I'm actually struggling to believe he's done all this stuff. Like it's crazy to see it was possible to fix everything the whole time and all it took was slightly increasing taxes on billionaires and not being corrupt.

[dfxm12]

It also shows that one election can make a big difference, so it's not hard to understand why R's are making it harder for Americans to vote. Remember that, not just this November, but when primaries roll around too.

[aliasxneo]

I'm all for it. Would be great to see exactly how all of his policies play out across a larger area.

[krapp]

I don't think it would be possible without a serious restructuring of the Democratic Party. It's far too beholden to capital and corporate interests and too afraid to be seen as "socialist" to allow someone like Mamdani anywhere near levers of national power.

[sillyfluke]

Is there a website for New York City where people can petition for things like this?

If there's anybody from the mayor's office reading this, how about that all banks must provide their services at minimum on a browser through a web app and cannot mandate the use of a smartphone.

[hughw]

CFPB once played that role for financial services. Ah well.

[nonethewiser]

>This is what legitimate government looks like.

Do you mean good government? Or well-functioning? Any government that is formed legally is legitimate.

[SkipperCat]

Good question.

Government should represents and advocate for the best interests of the entire population. It should legislate for both people and companies to behave fairly towards each other.

Consider the gym membership. You join and sign a one year contract. The terms are that you can cancel after that period, but if the gym hides or dark-patterns the cancel procedure, are they really offering you the contractually agreed upon ability to cancel? They are not.

We all know what fair is. Just because companies (and sometimes individual people) have outsized power against their customers, it does not give them the moral right to abuse that power.

So, I believe in this case Mamdani is engaging in both good and well-functioning governance. And that to me is morally legitimate.

[inigyou]

Not every law is legitimate. Governments used to be formed legally by a hereditary succession, was that legitimate?

[amazingamazing]

Lol wait for enforcement before declaring victory

[gib444]

Right!

Some British media / reddit 'users' did the same over-the-top congratulatory puffery for some laws passed in the UK.

Like hello, Parliamentary supremacy and a whopping majority, the Lords who will at most suggest a few tweaks for anything that's been sold well, a Prime Minister who was a Barrister - passing laws is the easy part!

Call something the Renter's Rights Act for example and people lose their minds falling over congratulating the Government and Parliament before it even passes.

(In defence of some of our media, they did write one or two articles about all the people who got kicked out prior to the law coming into effect - just a couple of weeks before it coming into effect...)

We're software devs - we should know writing code (particularly now) is frequently the easy part. Tests, deployment, versioning, monitoring, logs, effect on revenue etc, bit trickier.

[jafo1989]

> Leaders actually advocating for the people who are being deceived by those in power instead of helping those in power.

Who is deceiving who now? And I'm not sure who is in power here...