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

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Summary: The best book on why U S electric power is in chaos
Review: 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.

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Summary: An articulate critic of corporate power
Review: 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 payrolls in order to boost bottom-line profits. Ms. Beder also shows how obscene profits earned by a few large corporations such as Enron often act as a drag on local economies. The leading example of course is California, where escalating prices forced many businesses to shut down. Moreover, the payments that the state was forced to make to greedy suppliers during the energy crisis easily exceeds the state's current budget deficit, causing hardship for many.

Interestingly, "Power Play" was completed prior to the 2003 blackout in the U.S. and Canada. This unfortunate event validates Ms. Beder's work. The author points out that the dynamics of an unregulated market and the quest for instant profits provides a disincentive for producers to maintain equipment and transmission lines, resulting in more frequent failures and service disruptions. Ms. Beder goes on to point out that the expense and risk associated with added capacity is increasingly borne by the public even while profits accrue to private interests; this assertion also appears to have been prescient, as witnessed by the huge subsidies that the U.S. government has recently proposed to pay for upgrades to the country's electric grid for the benefit of many privately-held energy producers.

By cutting through the smokescreen of self-serving corporate propaganda, "Power Play" serves as a wakeup call for citizens everywhere. It helps us understand how we might be able to reverse this trend for the better before more damage is inflicted on us all.

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Summary: Essential reading for Western Australians
Review: I very strongly recommend this book to fellow Western Australians. It details how and why our State Government is currently lying to us about how and why Western Power is to be 'reformed'. The section on electricity privatisation in Australia is one of the most detailed and thorough in this detailed and thorough book and deserves very careful reading. In general, this book demolishes many myths about how globalisation and capitalism are supposed to work and explains clearly how modern economic management really works. Enron was the highest mark of that system, and this book explains how and why it made so much money, and how so much money was made by the rich and lost by others in its collapse.