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[...] the privatization and commercialization of much of the digital media infrastructure does not take place by force, but merely reproduces existing property relations by extending them into the digital realm. The background of compulsion is built into the legal structure and regulatory regimes that enable the privatization process. [...]
this is good and important
Privacy-based critiques do not quite capture the element of productive power and control at work in the promise of monitoring-based marketing. If privacy violations constitute an invasion—a loss of control over the process of self-disclosure— market monitoring includes an additional element of control and management: the systematic use of personal information to predict and influence. The critique of exploitation addresses this element of power and control. Defenders of market monitoring will argue that individual consumer behavior remains uncoerced. Critical approaches, however, locate coercion not solely at the level of discrete individual decisions, but also in the social relations that structure them. In this regard, the invocation of the notion of exploitation parallels Jonathan Beller’s claim in his contribution to this volume that, “an interest in labor should force us to rethink the logistics of media platforms and see them as technologies formed in the struggle between labor and capital and thus by and for the expropriation of labor.”
[...] A valuable asset of so-called sharing-economy businesses like Uber or AirBnB is typically their network of committed suppliers--Uber's drivers or AirBnB's hosts. This too is an asset of lasting value that both companies have invested heavily to develop (and which they invest to protect, for example, against legal actions requiring them to treat their suppliers as employees).
pretty straightforward, but an aspect that's often neglected in the discourse. their assets aren't just the algorithms/etc - it's the reputation, brand, community
[...] Google, Microsoft and Facebook need relatively few tangible assets compared to the manufacturing giants of yesteryear. They can scale their intangible-asset bundle or software and reputation and so get very big. This type of scalability is, of course, enhanced by network effects.
also straightforward but maybe useful to cite?
Finally, we should consider the possibility that the true nature of intangible investment has changed. Maybe it conceals rent-seeking activities that superficially look like they increase productivity but actually do nothing of the sort.
trying to explain why corporations are investing less in R&D-type stuff. no shit dudes
[...] the rise of intangibles might be expected to increase inequality both of wealth and income. Increasingly intangible intensive firms will need better staff to create synergy with their other intangible assets: better managers, better movie stars, better sports heroes. Firms will screen them more thoroughly and pay them more handsomely. [...]
so many normative assumptions concealed within the word "better". better at what? at extracting rent? and what the fuck does screening them more "thoroughly" mean? like putting up more and more arbitrary barriers to make managers feel like they're prestigious and selective and only hire the "best"?
This intensifies what policymakers call "tax competition": the idea that businesses and owners of capital will shop around for the most favorable tax policies. This makes it harder for governments to increase taxes and exacerbates the problem that led to lower taxes on capital in the first place.
[...] because it is unusually internationally mobile, intangibles increase tax competition, which makes it harder for governments to reduce inequality by taxing capital more.
on the rise of intangibles being innately linked to rising incidence of shifting tax jurisdictions
A third aspect of finance is the perception that venture capital will be very important for the economies of the future. It is hard to think of a major developed country whose government has not spent taxpayers' money in an attempt to build or grow its VC sector. Most developed countries have put in place coinvestment schemes or tax breaks to try and stimulate a venture capital sector like that of the United States.
to cite for diss - claiming that govts have doubled-down on the VC model because they think it works, TINA?
like Canadian R&D credit - remember all these stupid products that were being funded it ... doubling down on this model because it's the most prominent option w/o considering whether it's structurally fucked, incentivising wasteful creations
The exercise of authority seems like a good description of the Amazon warehouse above. A lot of careful process engineering has combined to allow a system where the optimal route around the warehouse can be computed very efficiently. As the economist Luis Garicano has pointed out (2000), enhancements in information technology have improved the flow of information around the organization. A fall in the price of information might lead to less authority: the breakdown of hierarchies, with autonomous workers e-mailing ideas up tot he boss. However, monitoring has also become more efficient with the growth of IT, so, in the Amazon case, IT has reinforced a "command and control" type of organizational design.
Thus part of the reason for the perhaps unexpected growth in this type of very nonautonomous work is that the intangibles of organizational development and software enable more and more effective monitoring. Thus they are substitutes for autonomy. [...] Marxist economists have a name for this additional monitoring role: "power-biased technological change"
interesting how even these dickheads admit it
[...] Establishing these kinds of exchanges is a major undertaking, requiring significant coordination between rights-holders, content platforms, collection agencies, and governments. But it may be worth the effort: efficient markets and platforms for exchanging IP will be economically valuable in an intangible economy.
specifically referring to FB and Goog. not only is Jaron Lanier's idea obviously dumb on its own merits, but the way these guys describe it ("efficient markets" for "exchanging IP") is somehow worse