This Is How New York Will Collapse | Tom Bilyeu Show LIVE Clips

Summary

Podcast Summary:

Podcast: Tom Bilyeu’s Impact Theory
Episode: This Is How New York Will Collapse | Tom Bilyeu Show LIVE Clips
Date: November 1, 2025

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Episode Overview

This episode dives deep into the political and economic future of New York City, centering on the possible mayoral rise of Zoran Mamdani, his socialist-leaning policies, and the broader consequences of regulation-heavy governance. Using the current housing crisis and economic instability as focal points, Tom Bilyeu and his guest debate whether socialist economics and rent control policies will alleviate or exacerbate the city’s problems. The conversation covers free public services, housing affordability, capital flight, rent control controversies, and the market’s natural response to regulation.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The 'Villain' in New York’s Political Future (01:22–04:45)

• Zoran Mamdani is discussed as a leading candidate for New York’s next mayor.

• Debater 2 expresses concern over Mamdani’s policies, labeling him ideologically driven, and equates his agenda with Marxism/socialism, which they argue is the real “supervillain” threatening New York’s stability.

• The conversation cautions that well-intentioned free public services (like buses) come with hidden costs and can lead to unforeseen economic strain.

  • Quote:

    “The supervillain is Marxism itself, Socialism itself. When you look at the price of gold right now...it’s saying, bro, you’re in real trouble.”
    — Debater 2 [01:39]

  • Quote:

    “Everything that is wrong with the economy right now is based on debt, money printing. Mamdani is going to make that worse. The buses are never going to be free. Nothing is ever going to be free. Everything is going to be paid for by somebody.”
    — Debater 2 [01:46]

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2. Rent Control and Housing Crisis (04:45–09:24)

• Debater 2 draws on historical examples of rent control in New York (1960s–80s), arguing it led to property neglect, arson, and a shrinking incentive for entrepreneurial investment in housing.

• Key Analogy:
  Compares restricting apartment rent to artificially limiting shoe prices, leading to a drop in supply and quality.

• Rent freezes are criticized as counterproductive, ultimately punishing small landlords and leading to disrepair and financial desperation.

  • Quote:

    “What ends up happening is people go, wait a second. If at those rents I can’t afford to repair the plumbing, for instance, so they don’t. And they tell you, wrap a towel around it.”
    — Debater 2 [05:26]

  • Historical Note:

    “A quarter of all the buildings that burned in the Bronx were due to arson because it was cheaper to burn the building and collect the insurance money than it was to try to upkeep it.”
    — Debater 2 [05:35]

• The conversation highlights how housing is an entrepreneurial endeavor, not a charitable activity, and excessive regulation erodes the incentives aligned with property upkeep.

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3. Incentives, Regulation, and the Free Market (06:03–11:42)

• Debater 1 vs. Debater 2: Debater 1 pushes back, wondering if the failure is with the individuals (arsonists/landlords) and not policy. Debater 2 argues the policy itself creates perverse incentives.

  • Quote:

    “You should also recognize that the government put them in that position.”
    — Debater 2 [06:12]

• Personal Example:
  Debater 2 offers an example of a retiree whose rental income plan is destroyed by rent caps, highlighting the unintended personal consequences of such regulation.

• Debate on Housing Supply:
  The solution to affordability, Debater 2 insists, is to make more housing by deregulating, allowing upbuilding, and placing taxes or ownership restrictions rather than blanket rent controls.

  • Quote:

    “So you know the way to make housing more affordable? To make more housing.”
    — Debater 2 [08:03]

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4. Values Clash: Who Should Live Where? (09:24–12:01)

• Debater 1 raises the equity question — what about native New Yorkers being priced out?

• Debater 2 responds with market pragmatism: not everyone can afford every neighborhood; that’s a fact of supply and demand.

  • Quote:

    “Yes, of course you don’t have a right to live in whatever neighborhood you want to live in.”
    — Debater 2 [08:33]

  • Memorable Exchange:

    • “Now your beef is, I don’t want there to be places like Beverly Hills that poor people, they just can’t...”
      — Debater 2 [08:17]
    • “That’s all of Manhattan. Fine. So you’re saying it’s fine that they can’t afford it?”
      — Debater 1 [08:22]
    • “Yes, of course I’m saying it’s fine they can’t afford it.”
      — Debater 2 [08:29]

• The guest suggests smart, limited regulation (like taxes on multiple property ownership or limiting foreign buyers) paired with free market construction could solve long-term affordability.

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5. Ideological Critique and Limitations of Policy (12:01–13:07)

• Debater 1 asks for clear end goals from both sides.

• Debater 2 calls Mamdani’s policies “so ignorant to how economies work,” claiming history proves heavy regulation always fails at producing affordable housing.

  • Quote:

    “We’ve run this scenario before, not only here but all over the world. It doesn’t work sometimes. It literally never works.”
    — Debater 2 [12:38]

• The segment ends on the point that current partial rent control in NYC has already led to “totally broken” housing for working- and middle-class residents.

  • Quote:

    “That’s my fucking point is even now, when you have some small amount of it going on, it hasn’t solved shit. Because what it does is it tells — it tells investors don’t invest here.”
    — Debater 2 [12:47]

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Notable Quotes/Moments

• “When you start mapping Marxist beliefs on somebody who’s really trying to make the poor’s life better, you’re going to be eternally confused because they’ll do things that are so obviously well documented that it doesn’t work and they do it anyway.”
  — Debater 2 [05:43]

• “Housing is an entrepreneurial endeavor. It is somebody who, their priority product is an apartment complex. You buy that product because you want to live inside of it.”
  — Debater 2 [05:03]

• “If you follow the math, you realize if you make it impossible for business to run, then business stops running.”
  — Debater 2 [12:17]

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Important Timestamps

• 01:22 — Introduction of Zoran Mamdani and his political approach.
• 04:45 — Historical failures of rent freezes and the economic motive for housing arson.
• 05:35 — Bronx arson and its economic roots.
• 06:12 — Example of small landlord (retiree) harmed by rent control.
• 08:03 — Argument for increased housing supply via deregulation.
• 08:33 — Rights and realities of neighborhood affordability.
• 12:01 — On socialism and the mathematics of regulation.
• 12:47 — Critique of current rent control’s effects in NYC.

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Summary

This lively and passionate episode of Impact Theory brings nuanced and sometimes heated debate over New York’s housing crisis, the dangers and pitfalls of socialist-leaning regulatory policies, and the broader philosophical and factual divide between proponents of market solutions and those seeking extensive intervention. Tom and his guest weave history, economics, and values into a critique that will resonate with anyone interested in the future of cities, equity, and prosperity.

Transcript

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[Debater 2]

Zoran Mandani is clearly going to be the next mayor of New York.

[Debater 1]

But.

[Debater 2]

But he is a villain. A charming villain. But here's what his fans are not thinking about.

[Debater 1]

The mayoral debate was yesterday. In the words of Tom, who calls Mom Donnie, his villain. Is he like your supervillain now? At this point? Like arch nemesis, the.

[Debater 2]

The supervillain is Marxism itself, Socialism itself. When you look at the price of gold right now and realize how rapidly it's going up, and the price of gold is an indication as to how stable the market thinks your economy is. And it's saying, bro, you're in real trouble. Everything that is wrong with the economy right now is based on debt, money. Printing Mamdani is going to make that worse. The buses are never going to be free. Nothing is ever going to be free. Everything is going to be paid for by somebody. But this all becomes abstracted. If New York decides that what they want is free buses, then my only question is, what aren't you going to do to be able to pay for that? If what we see is a measurable improvement in something that we all care about based on that. And you don't see capital flight because they're like, okay, yeah, this is the thing that we're, that's worth paying for. Great, no problem. I have exactly zero belief that that's how this is going to go. I think he's doing it from an ideological standpoint. I think no matter what happens economically, whether he gets the funding or not, whether tax revenue goes down or not, he's going to keep pushing his agenda because he believes from an ideological standpoint this is what we ought to do. The city's too expensive. I think that housing has become too expensive essentially ubiquitously across all of America. I think it is one of the most catastrophic problems. We have tried rent freezes before in New York. In fact, we're doing rent freezes already in New York. It hasn't solved the problem. We did rent freezes in the extreme back in the 60s and 70s and it led to the burned out buildings in the 70s and 80s. People do not understand that even buildings. Housing is an entrepreneurial endeavor. It is somebody who, their priority product is an apartment complex. You buy that product because you want to live inside of it. And what ends up happening is imagine if I told you, hey, you can't charge people, you can't charge them that amount for a pair of shoes. Well, all of a sudden the number of people making shoes goes down because it has a knock on consequence to all the things that they can make those shoes from. And so upkeep in a building to take it back to real estate. When you put rent freezes, they're like, well, you've now just made it impossible for me to make money off my building. Maybe you make it break even, which just reduces somebody's incentive because they're like, wait, I'm gonna have to work this hard and I'm gonna have nothing to show for it. Why would I do that? So people aren't gonna run businesses out of charity. What ends up happening is people go, wait a second. If at those rents I can't afford to repair the plumbing, for instance, so they don't. And they tell you wrap a towel around it. And so you end up in a situation, this is real, you end up where a quarter of all of the buildings that burned in the Bronx were due to arson because it was cheaper to burn the building and collect the insurance money than it was to try to upkeep it. When you start mapping Marxist beliefs on somebody who's really trying to make the poor's life better, you're going to Be eternally confused because they'll do things that are so obviously well documented that it doesn't work and they do it anyway. So it's like, why are they doing that? If you map them as resentful people who want to punish the wealthy, all of a sudden all of their moves make sense. In the cross cultural study, what they found was if people had the opportunity to create a tax policy that made the poor's lives better but also helped the wealthy, they won't vote for it. Not as much as they'll vote for something that makes the life of the poor worse, but punishes the wealthy across cultures. The thing that people will actually vote for is the thing that hurts the rich. They won't vote for the thing that helps the poor. And so helping the poor would be let the free market stop putting so many regulations on housing and let people go in and build new apartments, build new buildings and, and charge whatever rent they can get away with charging now putting some restrictions on it. Like, we're not going to let foreign investors buy property. Okay, I get that. With every additional property that a person buys, just charge them bigger and bigger taxes. If somebody wants to buy the third property and you're charging them 50% tax, okay, well that's on them. Let them do their thing. Very simple things like that would, over, let's say the next five years, make housing very, very simple.

[Debater 1]

I don't think that's necessarily a fault of the policy as opposed to a fault of the person.

[Debater 2]

Of course it's fault policy.

[Debater 1]

I feel like we should be more mad at the arsonist and not mad at the person whose rents are lower.

[Debater 2]

You should be mad at the arsonist because it's illegal. You should also recognize that the government put them in that position. And I would bet dollars to donuts if I described a scenario where let's say that your mom had bought a house her whole life was like, when I get to 65, I'm going to retire. I'm going to move to a really small apartment near my son. I am counting on the rent that I'm going to be able to get from that house and my upkeep on the house with property taxes and maintenance and all of that, let's say, is seventeen hundred dollars a month. And then the government comes along and says you can't charge more than $1,500 a month for that apartment. Now your mom's like, hold on a second. Now I'm losing money every month with no hope of ever making.

[Debater 1]

Or you can Sell the building.

[Debater 2]

Who's going to buy the building? When I say you can't make money, you will lose money. And so now your mom is like, no one's going to buy this, so you just tank the value of my real estate. Because anybody even considering buying this building is going to ask, can I make money off of maintaining it off of the property taxes? And if the answer is no, she's left holding a building that she literally can't sell. That's what happens. And now, remember, this is your mom who for 30 years paid into this building with a plan for how she was going to retire. And then somebody says, you can't charge what the market is willing to pay. And now your mom's entire, like, plan for the rest of her life is just over. She can't sell the building. And now she's looking at it going, I. I have to get the money out of that, otherwise I'm going to be working until the day that I die. And this is where people get put into desperate situations. Now, I'm not saying that your mom is a good person if she burns the building down, but I am saying I get why one day, late at night, she's like, well, that is an option.

[Debater 1]

Housing, I think, is a different bucket here. Even the grocery store thing, I can kind of take that point and see is that a different bucket.

[Debater 2]

So you know the way to make housing more affordable? To make more housing, you come up with a narrative that we can't build up, which I totally reject wholeheartedly.

[Debater 1]

I'm just saying when we build up, especially in New York City, you've never seen a high rise that's more affordable than the unit that.

[Debater 2]

So now your beef is, I don't want there to be places like Beverly Hills that poor people, they just can't.

[Debater 1]

Afford this neighborhood that's all of Manhattan. Fine. So. So you're saying it's fine that they can't afford it?

[Debater 2]

Yes, of course I'm saying it's fine they can't afford it.

[Debater 1]

But I thought the problem was housing affordability.

[Debater 2]

Yes, of course you don't have a right to live in whatever neighborhood you want to live in. What I'm saying is stop artificially making it impossible for people to live somewhere that it's. The government regulation is making it impossible. For instance, stop freezing rents. Because if building a business in. Building a building in Manhattan was lucrative, then a whole bunch of people would do it. And if a whole bunch of people were doing it and renovating these buildings and knocking them down and building new things with more tenants, it's going to become more affordable. Now if in doing that the wealthiest people in America are like, actually, I want to migrate to the city, yes, it is very possible that given that that is just a fixed finite piece of land, that the wealthiest people are going to keep pouring in. But my instinct is that isn't going to be true.

[Debater 1]

It's the number one city in the world, arguably.

[Debater 2]

Right, but are you trying to regulate who can and can't come there? I don't understand if you are saying no neighborhood should ever be able to be out of reach of, and I don't know if you'd say anyone, but are you saying every neighborhood should have low income housing?

[Debater 1]

I have not said that, no.

[Debater 2]

Perfect then. Now you're just into what you just said a minute ago, which is there will always be a supply and demand problem when Manhattan is of finite size. What I'm saying is the free market is going to lower the prices. It's not going to take them up. Regulation is going to take them up. It's not going to lower them. So I'm saying, yeah, it's possible that an area just becomes so desirable for a whole host of reasons. Take the Hollywood Hills for instance. The Hollywood Hills are always going to be more expensive because they have a view. And there's just always going to be a certain type of person that's going to be willing to pay for that view. So limited amount of hills, how many.

[Debater 1]

Additional units we try to build on Hollywood Hills, we are going to reach the upper threshold. Yeah, exactly. We ran out of hills.

[Debater 2]

Right, right. But I'm saying if you want to lower it as much as you can, then you would deregulate as much as is safe. I'm not saying you take it to zero and then if you're going to put limitations on it, put limitations of habitation. So I get a regulation that says you can only own a house here if you actually live in it at least 51% of the time or whatever. Now you're going to find out when it is single family ownership, single family dwellings, what becomes the price. And then if that price is just, it's too high, there's so many people that can afford that place and want to live in that place. Well, Manhattan is just more or less off limits for anybody that's making less than whatever $350,000 a year.

[Debater 1]

I understand the A, the Z of what that laid out, but the end result of that policy would be this is just how much it is either you got it or you don't. It's like you're at the bar.

[Debater 2]

It's like always going to be the case.

[Debater 1]

You got to cover it.

[Debater 2]

You can't, you can't own a house on a minimum wage job, which is not going to be possible.

[Debater 1]

Now enter mom Danny, who's saying there are people who are quote unquote residents of New York who are born in New York who are now getting priced out of this same thing because the demand is too high, because the prices are rising, because New York is number one city in the world, because people are still flooding in, they are getting price. So what he's saying is I'm going to artificially hold this amount of units just so that way I can help those specific people.

[Debater 2]

And if it worked, I'd cheer for it. It doesn't work. It goes the exact opposite direction. It will make a housing crisis. It will make it so that nobody wants to invest in the area.

[Debater 1]

There's rent controlled units now. There's people who still want to live in New York. New York does not have a vacancy problem. I guess this is the fundamental, this is a values problem. So I think we could talk about housing, but you have to tell me.

[Debater 2]

What, what the end result is that.

[Debater 1]

You want to get personally understands how the economics are working. The reason I'm trying to argue Mandani's point is because I think a lot of times when we talk about him on the show, it becomes, oh, that's the socialist. And we kind of minimize like what he's trying to.

[Debater 2]

Mamdani's policy is full. It, it is so ignorant to how economies work that the very thing I'm screaming for is for people to just follow the math. If you follow the math, you realize if you make it impossible for business to run, then business stops running. Business is how you get affordable homes in anywhere. And he's raising that equation. We've run this scenario before, not only here, but all over the world. It doesn't work sometimes. It literally never works.

[Debater 1]

But we're doing that now though. And that's the thing that I think.

[Debater 2]

When I literally hear yourself, you're saying, hey, New York is totally fucked, it's totally broken and we're already running as policy. That's my fucking point is even now, when you have some small amount of it going on, it hasn't solved shit. Because what it does is it tells, it tells investors don't invest here.

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