America handed its vital systems to private owners. Now public survival depends on corporate choices, shareholder math and trusting the oligarchs to do the right thing.
First, private ownership of electric grid and telecommunications infrastructure was predicated on a compact, dating back to the early 20th century, with government that the corporate owners were responsible to protect the public interest, and would submit to government oversight and regulation. In exchange, they became among the wealthiest, most stable corporations in the US (AT&T, Con Edison etc.) As a former utility regulator, and later, a utility regulatory and government affairs professional, I can attest that this compact was taken literally inside utilities. Many electric utilites were managed by Navy veterans, who had a lot of experience with power systems, and they took protecting the nation most seriously. During the Reagan administration, the kleptocrats finally succeeded in cracking open the vault of public money and weakening regulations. That ongoing operation has been particularly damaging to the US in the utitlity and financial sectors.
Second, the high tech sector has managed to create a new technology infrastructure entirely without government oversight. That has allowed them to have outsized power and control over the nation's businesses, and is now building itself into an out-of-control monolith intended to crush and control citizens with AI and massive data center. This must be stopped at all costs.
Third, the role of the foreign influence operation, what Anne Applebaum calls Autocracy, Inc., cannot be overstated. It would be theoretically possible for the kleptocrats to be Americans who help themselves to public money, while simulataneously protecting the US from foreign adversaries. That is not what is happening. The current batch of authoritarian kleptocrats are explicitly stealing money, deliberately destroying the economy, impoverishing citizens in every way possible, damaging the food supply, trying as hard as possible to make citizens sick, and crushing the federal government's ability to protect the nation against theft, famine, plague, and cyber attacks. The situation is that a foreign influence operation has decapitated the federal government, installed an authoritarian kleptocracy, and is in the process of razing the US to the ground. They must be stopped, either the easy way or the hard way, whatever it takes.
This is the terrifying conclusion I've also come to. We are engaged in a war with foreign adversaries that we are losing, and most Americans have no idea.
This is really on point. As a CA resident, I continue to be astonished that electrical lines in heavily wooded or grassy areas are not undergrounded to prevent wildfires due to heavy winds. After the Paradise and Santa Rosa fiascos, PG&E *finally* started doing just that, but mostly for PR reasons and because the legal payouts to the government and families who sued started to become more costly than just doing the work. My motto is never to trust any company that has to do an ad campaign to convince the public they are doing right by them.
Indeed, private ownership of essential services and infrastructure is fraught. We need these resources to be controlled by the working class in the interest of workers, not by the capitalist class. Operation and maintenance in the interest of workers, not by money-grubbing capitalists.
A number of sources I follow in very different directions are sounding the same warning - which is something that tells me we are getting to a "critical mass" point where several things are converging. Shortages of critical resources needed for survival - fuel, food, water - are expected to hit in a matter of months, not years, across much of the world. At the same time, climate change is going to make the impact of a lot of those shortages even harder.
And there is only so much people can take before they will explode. I keep thinking of that distribution center in Southern California that an employee lit on fire. "All they had to do was pay us a living wage. . ."
Lady Libertie brings up important points.
First, private ownership of electric grid and telecommunications infrastructure was predicated on a compact, dating back to the early 20th century, with government that the corporate owners were responsible to protect the public interest, and would submit to government oversight and regulation. In exchange, they became among the wealthiest, most stable corporations in the US (AT&T, Con Edison etc.) As a former utility regulator, and later, a utility regulatory and government affairs professional, I can attest that this compact was taken literally inside utilities. Many electric utilites were managed by Navy veterans, who had a lot of experience with power systems, and they took protecting the nation most seriously. During the Reagan administration, the kleptocrats finally succeeded in cracking open the vault of public money and weakening regulations. That ongoing operation has been particularly damaging to the US in the utitlity and financial sectors.
Second, the high tech sector has managed to create a new technology infrastructure entirely without government oversight. That has allowed them to have outsized power and control over the nation's businesses, and is now building itself into an out-of-control monolith intended to crush and control citizens with AI and massive data center. This must be stopped at all costs.
Third, the role of the foreign influence operation, what Anne Applebaum calls Autocracy, Inc., cannot be overstated. It would be theoretically possible for the kleptocrats to be Americans who help themselves to public money, while simulataneously protecting the US from foreign adversaries. That is not what is happening. The current batch of authoritarian kleptocrats are explicitly stealing money, deliberately destroying the economy, impoverishing citizens in every way possible, damaging the food supply, trying as hard as possible to make citizens sick, and crushing the federal government's ability to protect the nation against theft, famine, plague, and cyber attacks. The situation is that a foreign influence operation has decapitated the federal government, installed an authoritarian kleptocracy, and is in the process of razing the US to the ground. They must be stopped, either the easy way or the hard way, whatever it takes.
This is the terrifying conclusion I've also come to. We are engaged in a war with foreign adversaries that we are losing, and most Americans have no idea.
This is really on point. As a CA resident, I continue to be astonished that electrical lines in heavily wooded or grassy areas are not undergrounded to prevent wildfires due to heavy winds. After the Paradise and Santa Rosa fiascos, PG&E *finally* started doing just that, but mostly for PR reasons and because the legal payouts to the government and families who sued started to become more costly than just doing the work. My motto is never to trust any company that has to do an ad campaign to convince the public they are doing right by them.
Indeed, private ownership of essential services and infrastructure is fraught. We need these resources to be controlled by the working class in the interest of workers, not by the capitalist class. Operation and maintenance in the interest of workers, not by money-grubbing capitalists.
They used to call it “the Free Market” economy and anybody who challenged them was labeled a “socialist”.
A number of sources I follow in very different directions are sounding the same warning - which is something that tells me we are getting to a "critical mass" point where several things are converging. Shortages of critical resources needed for survival - fuel, food, water - are expected to hit in a matter of months, not years, across much of the world. At the same time, climate change is going to make the impact of a lot of those shortages even harder.
And there is only so much people can take before they will explode. I keep thinking of that distribution center in Southern California that an employee lit on fire. "All they had to do was pay us a living wage. . ."