Chokepoint Capitalism
by Rebecca Giblin, Cory Doctorow · first published 2022
52% recommend45% neutral3% critical
Why HN recommends it
Explains how a few dominant intermediaries (Ticketmaster, Amazon, Spotify, the labels, Google) squeeze creators and consumers, and why low prices alone don't prove competition. For readers of antitrust and reform.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
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Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
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…works with anyone besides Ticketmaster then you won't be able to book any acts that do work with TM, which is "pretty much fucking everyone". There's a lot more to this, Doctorow and Giblin's recent book "Chokepoint Capitalism" has a couple of chapters that examine this whole setup in great detail. https://craphound.com/chokepoint/2022/09/27/twitch-does-a-ch...
on “Ask HN: Why is it so hard to disrupt Ticketmaster?” ↗…choice, competition, new innovation, and the like. Current US antitrust legal theory mostly ignores this based on the Bork / Posner / Director (all Chicago School) tradition. See Cory Doctorow's new book Chokepoint Capitalism for a revised take: <https://doctorow.medium.com/what-is-chokepoint-capitalism-b8...>
on “Google pays ‘enormous’ sums to maintain search-engine dominance, DOJ says” ↗…least initially -- but generally the point is locking in consumers to eventually squeeze them, and I don't think it's great for _society_, which of course effects "consumers". Giblin and Doctorow's _Chokepoint Capitalism_ is worth checking out. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/710957/chokepoint-c...
on “Amazon shuts newspaper and magazine subscriptions for Kindle and print” ↗…actually _do_ what most people think of antitrust, which probably means undoing the Bork-influenced "immediate consumer welfare only" interpretation of the law. Cory Doctorow has a lot to say about this in Chokepoint Capitalism. That book mainly talks about the big tech aspect of it, but it explains things like chickenization, which is total vertical and horizontal integration of a business, and how it's basically oligopolies…
on “Do High Interest Rates Fix High Inflation?” ↗Cory Doctorow, Chokepoint Capitalism. Specifically the remedies chapters, which are not based on personal actions but rather social and regulatory mechanisms.
on “How to Kill a Decentralised Network (Such as the Fediverse)” ↗…and publishers, avoiding the pitfalls of media monopolies, again whether in news, book publishing, education, or entertainment, which harm both the audience and individual creators. See Cory Doctorow's Chokepoint Capitalism and many blog postings and speeches on the harms of the latter.
on “Hacker News and “Paying for Media”” ↗…built around releasing software to minimize risk and increase certainty of success. I also really enjoyed: “Joinery, Joists and Gender: A History of Woodworking for the 21st Century” by Deirdre Visser “Chokepoint Capitalism: How Big Tech and Big Content Captured Creative Labor Markets and How We'll Win Them Back” by Cory Doctorow, Rebecca Giblin “Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World” by David Epstein “How…
on “Ask HN: Books you read in 2023 and recommend for 2024” ↗Chokepoint Capitalism: How Big Tech and Big Content Captured Creative Labor Markets and How We'll Win Them Back, by Rebecca Giblin and Cory Doctorow. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chokepoint_Capitalism
on “Ask HN: What's the best book you've read so far in 2024?” ↗Cory Doctorow's books "Chokepoint Capitalism" and "The Internet Con" discuss a good number of possible reforms, if anyone is interested
on “Copyright reform is necessary for national security” ↗You should check out Chokepoint Capitalism by Cory Doctorow and Rebecca Giblin. To put it briefly, you've been fooled. You're making an argument that empowers the likes of Amazon, not "writers", and it's by design that you've been fed that story.
on “The Amazon Kindle War Against Piracy” ↗…a separate entity. Amazon cannot offer their own competing products on their Marketplace. Google must divest their digital advertising from their search engine (or vice versa). Doctorow & Giblin's Chokepoint Capitalism is a terrific take on our current rentier economy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chokepoint_Capitalism
on “Privacy Badger is a free browser extension made by EFF to stop spying” ↗Most of Google's value is the moat they've built around the things that bring in money... their advertising market, google play store, vertical integration, etc. See also Doctorow's Chokepoint Capitalism. Building even a tiny fraction of those moats is mind-bogglingly difficult. Building a third of that moat is insanely hard. To claim that the AI industry's "expected endgame moat size" is one-third…
on “The AI bubble is 17 times bigger than the dot-com bust” ↗…articles to publish a thematic book, “How To Build a Low-tech Internet?”. There are other books with concrete proposals: pretty sure Cory Doctorow's published a few, though I can't remember which off-hand (Chokepoint Capitalism, also by Rebecca Giblin, and Enshittification, come to mind). You can read these if you would like. But the important part is using and maintaining credible alternatives, reducing both our dependence…
on “California moves to exempt Linux from its age-verification law after backlash” ↗…formidable force. Libraries will typically offer free meeting space to any group of three or more. I'm not a fan of individual initiative as a systemic solution, and authors such as Giblin and Doctorow (Chokepoint Capitalism) explain in detail why that's a very limited approach, and what can be done instead. Still, there are personal accommodation options you might consider: - Buying and renting physical media remains an…
on “How do we fix this? Televisions are badly broken” ↗There’s a great new book on how a lot of market leaders did exactly this; it’s called “Chokepoint Capitalism”. It’s from the guy who coined the term “enshittification”
on “Introducing GPTs” ↗