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.
Originally posted 2026-02-25 18:02:37.
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