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.

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‘Provocative … What makes this book so refreshing is that it never lets its reader off the hook … I see it as a kind of manual that will arm you with the technical knowhow (and the confidence) to demand more.’

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‘Nerdy, sharp, radical, and readable.’

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‘A welcome intervention.’

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’[T]his is an important and powerful book not least because it crushes the myth of artists as out-of-touch elitists. Rather than painting creatives as different, Giblin and Doctorow emphasise the similarities between the problems they face and those endured by the great bulk of the population at a time when 40 per cent of Americans say they could not find $400 to cover an unexpected expense … If we want change, Giblin and Doctorow say we need to act collectively. That’s true for artists; it’s also true for non-artists … It’s only together that we’ll shake it off.’

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‘A searing and comprehensive take on the oligopolies that control creative markets, from publishing to music distribution to film distribution.’

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‘[Chokepoint Capitalism] is a dark portrait of a cultural system captured by billionaires … [and] helps us start the daunting task of taking back control.’

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‘Chokepoint Capitalism is the book we need now. Comprehensive and accessible, stirring and enlightening, it is a roadmap for taking immediate action against the corporate chokepoints that are crushing our creative workers and, increasingly, the rest of the middle class as well.’

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‘Totally readable.’

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‘Chokepoint Capitalism offers an admirable antidote to the fiction that our economic systems operate the way they do because that’s how they are, rather than because a few companies managed to take early advantage of new technologies to manipulate those systems for their own benefit. You might not expect to find much hope in a book about the exploitation of people trying to earn a living doing what they love. But Giblin and Doctorow make a convincing case that taking on Big Tech and Big Content — seemingly a lonely and demoralising endeavour — is, in fact, an opportunity for community. Indeed, the fight demands community.’

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‘Chokepoint Capitalism is a call to unite and it also highlights other key actions that need to take place to build a future where creative workers get a fair share of the wealth generated by their work.’