While the town is figuring out how to balance these competing demands, Lynch has been fielding phone calls from people interested in bringing publicly owned grocery stores to food deserts in their own communities. He’s eager to talk them through the process, and optimistic that Baldwin’s model can be replicated elsewhere.

“Should [local governments] be in private enterprise all the time?” he mused. “Maybe not. But for situations like this, yeah, definitely I believe they should.”

“Should [local governments] be in private enterprise all the time?” he mused. “Maybe not. But for situations like this, yeah, definitely I believe they should.”

What’s promising, he and others agree, is that communities struggling to draw a grocery store have another alternative they can consider. Matt Bruenig, the founder of the People’s Policy Project, a socialist think tank, likens it to having a “public option” for health care.

“The idea that a municipality should have to beg private companies to provide basic goods and services to its people is absurd,” he said. “And being able to say ‘we will just do it ourselves’ is very powerful.”

See previous VoxFairfax articles: https://voxfairfax.com/2019/05/12/can-we-please-relax-about-socialism/; https://voxfairfax.com/2018/10/14/socialism-is-all-around-us/; https://voxfairfax.com/2019/02/17/other-voices-socialist-bogeymen/; and https://voxfairfax.com/2018/09/02/thought-for-the-day-7/.