Kshama Sawant is not only a Seattle City Councillor and the most prominent socialist in the United States today, she is also someone who can inflict a lot of damage and pain not only to her native municipality but to the rest of the country.
Sawant was victorious in her plight to institute a $15 minimum wage in Seattle. This has already come with a plethora of unintended consequences, like severe job losses (SEE: Report: Seattle restaurant industry suffers worst job loss since economic collapse) and benefit reductions (SEE: Seattle minimum wage workers already losing 401k, paid vacation benefits).
Another idea she has is to bring the likes of Amazon and Microsoft into public ownership “under democratic workers’ control to be run for public good, not private profit.” Sigh…
The socialist politician is now supporting Bernie Sanders for president. Vermont Senator Sanders, another diehard socialist, is gaining momentum on Hillary Clinton, though his campaign is futile since Clinton will ultimately win the nomination and presidency.
With Sawant gaining national attention, her words and ideas can garner widespread support since they sound nice but are not based on any form of reality, neither in the second dimension or the ninth. She decries capitalism, free markets, wealth and business, all talking points for the average American these days who detests these elements.
Her latest initiative is a complexing and dangerous one.
Sawant is trying to transform the tech revolution. But not through new inventions and innovations that can change the world for the better – like smartphones, the Internet and mobile apps – but on getting rid of “profit-making billionaires” from the industry. Sawant believes this would diminish the “digital divide” between large tech firms and smaller businesses as well as the rich and the poor.
The former software engineer’s first target are the telecommunications giants, Comcast and CenturyLink. She’s targeting them because they are some of the most hated companies in the United States today. She knows she couldn’t target Amazon or Apple because people love those brands.
In April and June, the Internet got disconnected in much of Seattle because of a damaged fiber line at Comcast. Although these things happen, to Sawant it was the last straw.
“Small business owners, tech companies, restaurants, ordinary working people – all of them were severely impacted,” Sawant said. “Does Comcast care? No. To me, that’s a really powerful starting point for a campaign.”
Sawant’s plan is to establish a city-owned broadband Internet utility. The publicly-controlled network would take advantage of and expand Seattle’s current fiber network and allow gigabit speeds to enter homes and businesses across the city. She believes this would allow service to get better and give low-income areas an improved infrastructure. At the same time, it would eliminate the need for Comcast and CenturyLink.
Of course, she needs money to accomplish this. To construct such a network, it would cost $665 million and 40 percent of the population would spend a monthly bill of $75. Socialists like to think they can get something for free, but they have to realize there is never, ever any free lunch.
“Does it benefit us to have an endless range of phones where, actually, we could have a few models of really well-functioning smartphones, and not have all these massive resources being devoted to having a little bit of an edge here, a little bit of an edge there?” Sawant asks. “Rather than having those resources dedicated to solving the basic problems of society?”
Drew Atkins of Crosscut destroys her premises on a couple of points:
“There’s an old joke about Soviet Russia: if you wanted a car there, pick out a color. Because there’s only one model to choose from.”
“She decries competition in tech, but that’s often what is missing in the Internet provider space. Further, the gigabit speeds of the proposed municipal network are way beyond what most people would need.”
What should be mentioned is that this planned economy idea has been tried before. In fact, it has been tried in socialist and communist countries everywhere. This is why the Soviet Union had to eventually resort to the Sears catalogue to dictate prices. What they tried failed miserably.
Economist Ludwig von Mises eloquently wrote about this in his book “Planned Economy.” According to the iconic 20th century economist, central planning creates a distorted, disorderly and chaotic economy as opposed to the initial intentions of order and prosperity.
In centrally planned economies, or sectors like the ones Sawant wants to intervene in, governments tell entrepreneurs what and how to produce, what prices to buy and sell and from whom. The governments tell businesses what wages workers will receive and when and how. And “under what terms the entrepreneurs should entrust their funds.” Free and voluntary market exchange is simply non-existent or an illusion or perhaps even illegal in socialist societies.
Here is an excerpt from Mises’s superb work:
“As all prices, wages and interest rates are fixed by the authority, they are prices, wages and interest rates in appearance only; in fact they are merely quantitative terms in the authoritarian orders determining each citizen’s income, consumption and standard of living. The authority, not the consumers, directs production. The central board of production management is supreme; all citizens are nothing else but civil servants. This is socialism with the outward appearance of capitalism. Some labels of the capitalistic market economy are retained, but they signify here something entirely different from what they mean in the market economy.”
It is impossible for governments to manage an economy. The iPhone is a perfect example of this.
No one ever told Steve Jobs to create this groundbreaking mobile device. He had a vision and went ahead with it and provided a product the consumer wanted. He made a lot of money and kudos to him. A bureaucrat didn’t tell him that because such a person wouldn’t have any clue about it.
You can go back even further. Governments, politicians or bureaucrats didn’t instruct Galileo Galilei to discover four satellites of Jupiter or order him to improve upon the telescope.
It’s as simple as this: governments can’t plan anything. And when they do plan then you get what you see in Venezuela. It’s akin to what economist Milton Friedman said: if the government were in control of the Sahara Desert there would be a shortage of sand within a month.
Let’s refer back to Mises for a moment.
What’s behind this whole concept of socialism and big government? Envy.
Here is another excerpt from his book.
“The interventionists do not approach the study of economic matters with scientific disinterestedness. Most of them are driven by an envious resentment against those whose incomes are larger than their own. This bias makes it impossible for them to see things as they really are. For them the main thing is not to improve the conditions of the masses, but to harm the entrepreneurs and capitalists even if this policy victimizes the immense majority of the people.”
Sawant is a dangerous person, and unfortunately people will eat it up. She is receiving national attention. Who knows? Perhaps she would become Bernie Sanders’s running mate in the general election should he overcome the impossible and become the Democratic nominee. Yikes!
Where’s Jeff Bezos when you need him?!
Photo by: Dennis Bratland
I think the author should change his name to Moron – as that seems more appropriate. I agree that Kshama Sawant had some ideas that I would not advocate for if they are as described by author Moron. But her idea to build a municipal network is *spot on*. Whether you are a Comcast or CenturyLink customer, you can expect sub-par service levels and customer service. The city already operates utilities for Seattle and some surrounding communities – electric, water and sewer. These were developed decades back when the incumbents (at the time) were more concerned with profits than serving the residents of Seattle. Internet access is as important in today’s economy as water and electric.
Seattle, as well as many other communities, needs a municipal network option. It doesn’t put either Comcast or CenturyLink out of business (in Seattle), but will definitely put them in a position where they would start to put the needs of the customer ahead of profits or customers would move to the municipal network option. It’s the reason they are always on the bottom of the list of hatred companies in America. And they don’t care because most folks have only a single provider for broadband Internet!
Dave, Sounds like you don’t actually know much about the history of Seattle City Light and Seattle PUD. Do a google search and read up. Spouting misinformation is embarrassing, especially for someone riding on such a high horse.
Water, Sewer and Electricity aren’t run by the city for altruistic reasons, but due to the nature of Sewer lines, electricity generation and water sources.
As to your points on a city run internet service; the smart answer is to allow multiple companies to compete. Let THEM spend their hundreds of millions on a new network and then compete with each other for our business. Once Century Link (CL) has their GB network available in more neighborhoods, the prices will go down for both Comcast and CL and service should go up. If we are able to get a third private company involved, then both price and service should improve even further.
This author is a dinosaur. The people are waking up and you can expect to see more socialist candidates in the future as a result. We are tired of corporate rule and we’re taking our country back.