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.
