The Rise of Chokepoint Capitalism and How Workers Can Defeat It
Hardcover, 304 pages
Published Sept. 20, 2022 by Beacon Press.
A call to action for the creative class and labor movement to rally against the power of Big Tech and Big Media
Corporate concentration has breached the stratosphere, as have corporate profits. An ever-expanding constellation of industries are now monopolies (where sellers have excessive power over buyers) or monopsonies (where buyers hold the whip hand over sellers)—or both.
In Chokepoint Capitalism, scholar Rebecca Giblin and writer and activist Cory Doctorow argue we’re in a new era of “chokepoint capitalism,” with exploitative businesses creating insurmountable barriers to competition that enable them to capture value that should rightfully go to others. All workers are weakened by this, but the problem is especially well-illustrated by the plight of creative workers. From Amazon’s use of digital rights management and bundling to radically change the economics of book publishing, to Google and Facebook’s siphoning away of ad revenues from news media, and the Big Three …
A call to action for the creative class and labor movement to rally against the power of Big Tech and Big Media
Corporate concentration has breached the stratosphere, as have corporate profits. An ever-expanding constellation of industries are now monopolies (where sellers have excessive power over buyers) or monopsonies (where buyers hold the whip hand over sellers)—or both.
In Chokepoint Capitalism, scholar Rebecca Giblin and writer and activist Cory Doctorow argue we’re in a new era of “chokepoint capitalism,” with exploitative businesses creating insurmountable barriers to competition that enable them to capture value that should rightfully go to others. All workers are weakened by this, but the problem is especially well-illustrated by the plight of creative workers. From Amazon’s use of digital rights management and bundling to radically change the economics of book publishing, to Google and Facebook’s siphoning away of ad revenues from news media, and the Big Three record labels’ use of inordinately long contracts to up their own margins at the cost of artists, chokepoints are everywhere.
By analyzing book publishing and news, live music and music streaming, screenwriting, radio and more, Giblin and Doctorow deftly show how powerful corporations construct “anti-competitive flywheels” designed to lock in users and suppliers, make their markets hostile to new entrants, and then force workers and suppliers to accept unfairly low prices.
In the book’s second half, Giblin and Doctorow then explain how to batter through those chokepoints, with tools ranging from transparency rights to collective action and ownership, radical interoperability, contract terminations, job guarantees, and minimum wages for creative work.
Chokepoint Capitalism is a call to workers of all sectors to unite to help smash these chokepoints and take back the power and profit that’s being heisted away—before it’s too late.
This is the kind of topic that deserves the prestige of a book but where the ideas can fit in a blog post without losing anything important. Here, the length and examples are worthwhile. The show the scope of the problem in a way that is both interesting and enraging.
Mit ihrem Buch "Chokepoint Capitalism" weisen Rebecca Giblin und Cory Doctorow auf eine Eigenheit des Plattformkapitalismus à la Amazon oder Google hin, die bisher meiner Wahrnehmung nach nicht so klar angesprochen wurde: Plattformen sind bewusst darauf hinentwickelt, nicht nur Monopolist (also einziger Anbieter für ihre Kunden) zu sein, sondern gleichzeitig Monopsonist (also einziger Nachfrager für die Anbieter z. B. der Buchbranche). Auf diese Weise können sie in ihren Märkten sowohl aus den Anbietern von Produkten als auch aus den Kunden das meiste Geld herauspressen und sämtliche Renditen abschöpfen. Ein wichtiges Buch, das mal einen neue Dysfunktionalität unseres (digitalen) Wirtschaftssystems aufschlüsselt.
Doctorow is known for his activism in favor of the open web and privacy rights. In this book, with Rebecca Giblin, they describe how the corporate monopolies and monopsonies are strangling the culture industry and especially creators and makers upon whose content and creativity these corporations and platforms rely. And so, we learn a lot about how Amazon, Spotify, Live Nation, and Youtube, among others, have created bottlenecks (or chokepoints, hence the title) between creators and audiences, to the detriment of both. This accomplished through network effects, vertical and horizontal integration, blocking new entrants, regulatory capture, and manipulation of copyright laws, as well as non-compete clauses which lock in workers (as time of writing, FTC chair Lina Khan is proposing to eliminate those, which would be great). The first part of the book describes these mechanisms in clear detail. The second part of the book focuses on potential solutions to …
Doctorow is known for his activism in favor of the open web and privacy rights. In this book, with Rebecca Giblin, they describe how the corporate monopolies and monopsonies are strangling the culture industry and especially creators and makers upon whose content and creativity these corporations and platforms rely. And so, we learn a lot about how Amazon, Spotify, Live Nation, and Youtube, among others, have created bottlenecks (or chokepoints, hence the title) between creators and audiences, to the detriment of both. This accomplished through network effects, vertical and horizontal integration, blocking new entrants, regulatory capture, and manipulation of copyright laws, as well as non-compete clauses which lock in workers (as time of writing, FTC chair Lina Khan is proposing to eliminate those, which would be great). The first part of the book describes these mechanisms in clear detail. The second part of the book focuses on potential solutions to break those chokepoints and restore competition for healthier, more pluralistic, and more competitive cultural markets. Such potential solutions include reform of copyright and antitrust laws, unionization and minimum wage for cultural producers, among other things. The authors specify that, while the focus of the book is the cultural sector, monopolies and monopsonies exist elsewhere in our economies. I gave it 4 stars instead of 5 because it does go into the weeds of the cultural sector, which is sometimes tedious to read, especially in the second part of the book. That being said, it is well worth reading and important.
Very good state-of-the-world in a variety of fields. Timely. Funny. Amusing marketing (only releasing the chapter outlining the sins of Spotify as an audiobook on Spotify; only the chapter on Amazon via Kindle).
