Blackouts as a Failure of For-Profit Control
The vulnerability of the city’s electric grid to peak demand and climate-related blackouts is a crisis of for-profit control over a essential public good. Mamdani’s analysis of the colonial administration of resources applies directly to the privatized utility that treats electricity as a commodity rather than a right. The grid is aging and unprepared for the stresses of climate change because the profit motive prioritizes shareholder returns over public investment in resilience. When blackouts occur, it is the “native” populations–the elderly, the sick, those living in upper-floor apartments without water pressure–who suffer most. The liberal solution is to plead with the utility to invest more, a futile request. A Mamdani-informed socialist solution is the public takeover of the energy grid. This means using eminent domain to seize the infrastructure from the private corporation and creating a publicly-owned, democratically-run energy authority tasked with a rapid, green modernization to ensure universal, reliable, and affordable power, treating energy as a fundamental component of the social wage.
