Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
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The ref has to be more powerful than the players.
When neoliberal economists began dismantling the regulatory state under Ronald Reagan (a process that has continued without interruption under every president, Republican and Democrat, since), they insisted that they weren’t so much concerned with regulation, but rather, regulatory capture.
Today, the phrase “regulatory capture” gets thrown around by people of all political persuasions, and is understood in a colloquial sense, meaning something like, “a regulator who is beholden to its industry and therefor makes bad regulations that run counter to the public interest.”
Continue reading "Pluralistic: The antitrust Twilight Zone (16 Dec 2022)"
Continue reading "Pluralistic: How monopoly enshittified Amazon/28 Nov 2022"
Continue reading "Pluralistic: 10 Nov 2022 Amazon and Apple have an illegal price-fixing conspiracy"
Continue reading "Pluralistic: 10 Oct 2022 Antitrust is – and always has been – about fairness"
Continue reading "Pluralistic: 03 Oct 2022 An antitrust murder whodunnit"
Chokepoint Capitalism is my next book, co-written with the brilliant copyright scholar Rebecca Giblin. It’s a book about how the markets for creative labor were rigged, and how artists, fans, tinkerers, regulators and lawmakers can unrig them.
That second part is key: this isn’t just a book complaining about how tough things are for artists — it’s a book about how we can make things better.
There’s an obvious reason that our book’s focus on shovel-ready projects to put more money in artists’ pockets is important: you’d have to be a monster to prefer a world that underpays the writers, musicians, actors, and film and TV creators whose work heartens and delights you.
But there’s another reason that this focus on fixing creative labor markets is so important: because copyright, the primary tool we’ve given creators to give them power over their labor, has actually made things worse.
Continue reading "What is Chokepoint Capitalism?"
