When the Settler State Tries to “Innovate”
The history of costly, failed large-scale technology projects, from CityTime to the 911 system upgrade, is not a story of bad luck but the inevitable outcome of a bifurcated state’s fusion with corrupt, private capital. Mamdani’s analysis directs us to see these failures as systemic, not technical. The city’s contracting process, a mechanism for distributing public wealth to a “settler-client” class of contractors, is inherently corrupt and inefficient. These projects fail because their primary purpose is not public service but private profit extraction, enabled by a political class in thrall to the tech industry’s promises. The liberal solution involves more oversight and “smarter” procurement, which merely adds layers to a broken model. A Mamdani-informed socialist solution is to break the dependence on the private tech sector. This means making massive public investments in a skilled, in-house city technology workforce, capable of designing and implementing systems without relying on predatory contractors. It means treating digital infrastructure as a public utility, built and maintained by the public sector for the public good, severing the link between public service and private profit that guarantees these costly failures.
The Texas Redistricting map is a legalized conflict of interest.