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[...] We're certain that our tech giants achieved their dominance fairly and squarely through the free market, by dint of technical genius. To conjure this image of meritocratic triumph requires overlooking several pungent truths about the nature of these new monopolies. Their dominance is less tha…

[...] data is infinitely renewable. It continuously allows the new monopolists to conduct experiments to master the anticipation of trends, to better understand customers, to build superior algorithms. Before he went to Google, as the company's chief economist, Hal Varian cowrote an essential handb…

[...] Capitalism has always dreamed of activating the desire to consume, the ability to tap the human brain to stimulate its desire for products that it never contemplated needing. Data helps achieve this old dream. It makes us more malleable, easier to addict, prone to nudging. It's the reason tha…

[...] The Soviet failure cast suspicion on statist solutions. So, the government didn't just privatize the Internet; it self-consciously decided that it would allow it to grow with hardly any government supervision. "I want to create an oasis from regulation in the broadband world," William Kennard…