After Zohran Mamdani’s win in the New York City mayoral primary, conservatives dusted off their favorite insult: socialism is just “free stuff,” and Mamdani only won because that’s what he promised. (See here and here.) Donald Trump Jr, echoing his dad, sneered that no amount of “free stuff” will fix the city.

Yes, Mamdani’s program does have the audacity to offer New Yorkers free bus rides and free childcare. But it’s curious that the Trumps are so quick to ridicule the very idea, since Donald Trump himself received over $400 million of free stuff from his father. More broadly, as much as 50 to 60 percent of wealth in the West is simply inherited. Inheritance is the purest form of free stuff: you don’t earn it; you just get it because of who your parents are. Strangely, conservatives never seem to mind that. Free buses are socialism run amok; a trust fund is the American dream.

What’s going on when critics scoff at “free stuff”? I’m a philosopher. It’s my job to look for arguments and carefully analyze them. So let’s look to see what sense we can make of this ubiquitous conservative refrain.