Power Play: The Fight to Control the World's Electricity

by Sharon Beder

Book Overview

As electrification spread across America in the early twentieth century, private corporations moved quickly to reap unprecedented profits from millions of new paying customers. Blocking their path was the widespread view that electricity was a basic need and that its production should be regulated--if not owned outright--by the public. The electricity companies fought back, buying up newspapers, radio stations, and politicians, and flooding the schools...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 156584808X
• ISBN13: 9781565848085
• Release Date: July 2003
• Publisher: New Press
• Length: 416 Pages
• Weight: 1.82 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.4" x 6.3" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

We are the latest generation of suckers

It has been said that each new generation forgets the mistakes of those that came before it. This book proves this point with respect to the privatization of utilities. The auhor delves into the history of electric and power privatization in industrial countries since 1900, with an emphasis on the US and UK, the two countries with the longest history of mass electricity usage. In this book, the author shows: 1. How the control of power generation, transmission, and usage has shifted back and forth between the public and private (corporate) sphere over the last century. 2. The times of public control saw minimal blackouts or rationing, low and steady rates, high investment in environmentally friendly technology, and high investment in research for more efficient technology. 3. The times of private control saw numerous blackouts and rationing, high and increasing rates, minimal investment in environmentally friendly technology, and low investment in research for more efficient technology. 4. The drive for privatization is always from big corporations who are either large-scale consumers of electricity, or large-scale producers of electricity. 5. The drive for public control always results from the poor service provided by privately-owned utilities. 6. Any time public and privately held utilities operated in the same geographical marketplace, the public utilities ALWAYS offer lower rates and more dependable service. 7. The switch from privately owned utilities to public control is always due to overwhelming public pressure at the grassroots level. 8. The switch to deregulate public utilities is due to propaganda put out by corporations and their sponsored think tanks. 9. The electricity industry by its nature and evolution in America is a prototypical natural monopoly and trying to privatize different segments of it leads to chaos. 10. Over the last decade, both the Bush and Clinton administrations contrived with Enron to force other countries to deregulate their utilities so Enron could buy them up and make profits on them. Overall, this is a great book. It shows how big corporations, primarily Western ones, have collaborated over the last century to take control of the electric utilities around the world, solely to increase their profits. I highly recommend reading it.

An articulate critic of corporate power

Hegel once remarked that the only thing people learn from history is that people have learned nothing from history. To that end, the philosopher no doubt would have been intrigued by Sharon Beder's outstanding book "Power Play." In it, the author shows how the neo-liberal ideologies and financial self-interests that once conspired to create chaos in the electric power industry in the 1930s have been resurrected in our own time to produce similarly disastrous results. Importantly, her analysis helps us understand what needs to be done to restore order to an out-of-control system that garners most of its profits at the public's expense. In my estimation, Sharon Beder has established herself as one of the most articulate critics of corporate power. As a Professor of Social Sciences, Media and Communications in Australia, Ms. Beder has demonstrated in prior books such as "Global Spin" a remarkable knack for deconstructing propaganda and uncovering the agendas that are often hidden behind corporate messages. I found "Power Play" to be a carefully reasoned, well-supported and convincing piece of research that makes for compelling reading.The book is divided into five sections. The first deals with the history of power politics in the U.S. for most of the 20th century. We learn how private interests used the media and political influence to promote deregulation, and how the industry's eventual implosion was a major contributing factor in the stock market crash of 1929 and subsequent Great Depression. The second section discusses the push to deregulate in the latter part of the century to the present day. We see how legislation enacted in the 1930s to protect against corporate abuse was eventually rolled back, which in turn set the stage for companies like Enron to suffer a fate similar to that which befell Samuel Insull's energy empire in the 1930s.The third, fourth and fifth sections deal with deregulation in Britain, Australia and other parts of the world. The global perspective provided by Ms. Beder is useful. Clearly, ideology and financial interests have been the driving forces behind the privatization agenda; interestingly, we learn that the outcomes in various locales have been remarkably similar. Ms. Beder relates how large corporations are often able to exercise market power in order to extort unusually large fees from their customers. The winners are large industrial users and the banks, investors and consultants working on behalf of the energy companies. The losers include taxpayers, farmers, the poor, small businesses and the environment.In my opinion, although "Power Play" does not explicitly tie the economic inefficiencies of the deregulated power industry with the current economic downturn, it provides ample evidence that the crisis in the power industry significantly contributes to job loss and siphons capital from other productive sectors of the economy. For example, the author explains that privatized energy companies often cut payroll

The best book on why U S electric power is in chaos

Beder has written the indispensable account of why the American electric power industry is in extreme disarray. This is an account of deregulation, Enron, artificial prices and gross exploitation. It is the book of the moment: timely and relevant to the electric blackouts of August 2003, easy to understand, and really essential. Extremely informative.