New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is making a killing from her online store, which recently began selling t-shirts emblazoned with her leftist slogans.
Rep. Cortez, the de facto leader of the far-left faction of Democratic congresswomen known as “the Squad” by the press, is living the capitalist dream. Not only is she pushing merch like it’s no ones business, but she’s getting free advertising from allegedly neutral news outlets like Reuters. The U.K.-based outlet’s headlines read like a campaign advertisement.
None of the slogans featured on the t-shirts are particularly surprising, although they are a bit confusing. For example, one of the shirts reads “drink water, don’t be racist.” It’s unclear how what the relationship is between being hydrated and having any level of racial bigotry, but this is AOC we’re talking about — it doesn’t have to make sense. Others are more or less the typical left-of-center calls to action, such as “tax the rich.”
As anyone who has either started a business or has purchased anything from anyone will be able to tell you, AOC is engaging in free-market capitalism. As much as we hate to admit it, she seems to be fairly good at it. The dumb part is that the New York bartender-turned-lawmaker stubbornly refuses to admit that she’s doing this.
According to AOC, “transactions aren’t capitalism.” She further justifies her foray into the free market by denying that she makes any profit from the merchandise, and that all proceeds go towards things like tutoring and environmental charities.
We could raise a lot of questions here, but for the sake of argument we’re going to let this one go. Let’s say she really is ditching all the profits and sending money towards charitable causes. First of all, that’s fine — great even. Second of all, that’s still capitalism. No one is compelling the Representative to do this. She’s raising money and allocating it to something else on her own free will. That’s the free market in a nutshell.
This story is rich, just like AOC is. Here’s the Podcast of the Lotus Eaters with the full breakdown.
