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

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Australian scholar Beder has heard free market advocates argue that government control works against economic efficiency. She's also seen them campaign to deregulate the electrical power industry, promising lower costs, better management and harder-working employees. Still, after assembling evidence of the outcome of deregulating electricity markets in different settings, she's skeptical. For instance, California, which began deregulating its electricity market after a 1996 liberalization of its energy law, saw its politicians, industrialists, environmentalists and consumers united to support a program they believed would lower the price of power and bring the state publicity as a pioneer. The program did receive news coverage, but it was for blackouts, skyrocketing energy prices and possible fraud. The state paid dearly; one study estimated the 1996 deregulation law will cost Californians approximately $71 billion. Going beyond tales of duped industries and Enron's profiteering schemes in California, Beder meticulously documents the worldwide push by energy companies, developers and international bankers to proclaim the benefits of deregulated electricity markets, whereas, she indicates forcefully, disastrous effects in Brazil should be enough to challenge their credibility. As Beder catalogues lost jobs, rising prices and declining service, yet finds large profits going to private developers and power companies, she becomes convinced recent experiments in deregulation of electricity have been nothing more than a confidence trick. Beder's blistering indictment of the wealth transfer from the public to private industry (under the guise of achieving economic efficiency) powerfully urges readers to prevent such abuse of public trust in the future.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Description

The story behind the debacle of today's power outages and soaring electricity costs.

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 with free, pro-industry schoolbooks. Their actions heralded the advent of corporate public relations, and form a major chapter in the history of the industry.

In an eye-opening investigation, Sharon Beder's Power Play reveals the decades-long struggle to wrest control of electricity from public hands. Her analysis ranges from the machinations of American political power to grassroots struggles in South Asia aimed at stemming the environmental degradation caused by multinational energy providers. In so doing, she sets the stage for understanding the damage done by deregulation, the roots of the Enron scandal, and the contemporary debacle of electricity supply.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company (August 21, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 156584808X
• ISBN-13: 978-1565848085
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.5 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,324,824 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An articulate critic of corporate power, November 18, 2003

By	Malvin (Frederick, MD USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

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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.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best book on why U S electric power is in chaos, August 16, 2003

By A Customer

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.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars We are the latest generation of suckers, August 8, 2005

By	Newton Ooi (Phoenix, Arizona United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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.