The Mamdani-City Council ‘Delivery Protection’ scheme is outright idiocy

Why are New York City politicians so confident in their ability to micromanage the private sector when so few of them have ever held an adult job there?

Mayor Zohran Mamdani just gave his backing to the Teamsters-supported Delivery Protection Act, which would force Amazon to directly employ thousands of drivers and warehouse workers.

The bill bans the use of third-party contractors to handle “last-mile” deliveries, but it’s hard to see what’s wrong with using contractors to save money — when the city itself contracts out billions in social-services work.

For all the talk about affordability, this would cost New Yorkers hundreds of dollars a year in higher delivery costs, because Amazon won’t eat the added expense.

Indeed, costs would nearly double for all deliveries, with service also likely slower and less reliable.

And hundreds of New Yorkers would lose their jobs, while the small-scale, often minority- and women-owned firms that employ them — entrepreneurs who built their businesses from scratch — go out of business or leave town so they can operate outside City Hall’s reach.

Amazon doesn’t have to put warehouses inside the five boroughs, either: This idiocy will likely also force longer delivery times, more traffic congestion and more pollution.

This is a moronic effort to curry favor with the Teamsters in the name of bashing big bad Amazon, but (as with most of the City Council’s and mayor’s efforts to “help” low-end service workers) the perverse results should be obvious.

Before the politicians do any more meddling in industries they clearly don’t understand at all, they should invest some sweat into improving how the government they run works.