A FINANCIAL TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR A call to action for the creative class and labour 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. 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 analysing 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. 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.
