Meet crony capitalism-owned government, Texas. The Texas grid failure is a perfect example of what markets do to systems we all depend on because they can, given bought governments.
Journalist understands the error in slavish devotion to markets
The Texas Tribune CEO Evan Smith appeared on All In with Chris Hayes and pretty much laid it out. And it was not pretty.
“If we’re going to talk about what happened here, how we got here, the texas moment for the ages,” Evan Smith said. “I think it has basically three key features to it familiar to anybody who’s followed the politics of the state over the last couple decades. The first is a slavish devotion to markets. Right? Markets are the be-all and end-all. Markets fix everything. That’s the attitude about everything here in the state of Texas except when they don’t fix things. And in this case, markets did not fix things, did not anticipate the problem adequately, and have left us where we are.”
Of course, he was not done there. Many Republican Texas politicians have the false belief that Texas can go it alone. Of course, Texas is dependent on many government programs among them, the military, NASA, and much more.
“The second is a stubborn independence,” Smith said. “We don’t want to be over-regulated. We don’t want to be told what to do, especially by the evil federal government who we sue and sue to keep at a safe distance.”
Smith then referenced a Texas Tribune story 10 years ago that pointed out the grid problems. A regulated system would likely have had to have them all fixed.
“The third is that unshakable belief in our own awesomeness that you referred to where you have politicians in Texas dunking on the state of California last year,” Smith continued. “The message of those tweets is that the policies of Democratic leaders in Blue States caused these problems. The last 48 hours is a goose meets gander moment for Texas.”
Here is the truth. This case of arrogance, false bravado, and incompetence of Republican Texas politicians is nothing but an act allowing corporatocracy control.