Richard D. Wolff

Charlie Rose recently interviewed Ted Koppel about his book "Lights Out" which is a expose on the dangers posed by cyberterrorists to the power grid and on a government that has done nothing to safeguard that system. I did some follow up reading which revealed the fact that it is the industry itself that is refusing to confront the danger because of the costs of doing so; moreover, I learned that although power distribution is overwhelmingly controlled by public companies, only 10% of power generation is under public control. Capitalists simply will not spend any money that does not contribute to their bottom line, even if the failure to safeguard power production exposes society to unimaginable calamity: without power, there is no water, no system of human waste disposal and consequently an increased likelihood of a public health crisis. I imagine that this failure is grounds enough to nationalize the entire energy system.