Pluralistic: Apple vs the "free market" (15 Aug 2024)


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Pluralistic: The one weird monopoly trick that gave us Walmart and Amazon and killed Main Street (14 Aug 2024)


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Pluralistic: Red Lobster was killed by private equity, not Endless Shrimp (23 May 2024)


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Pluralistic: Middlemen without enshittification; The Bezzle excerpt (Part II) (19 Feb 2024)


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Pluralistic: How Amazon transformed the EU into a planned economy (14 June 2023)


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Pluralistic: Rural towns and poor urban neighborhoods are being devoured by dollar stores (27 Mar 2023)


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Pluralistic: The antitrust Twilight Zone (16 Dec 2022)


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Pluralistic: 07 Nov 2022 The good news is that Penguin Random House can't buy all the other publishers


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What is Chokepoint Capitalism?

Why copyright alone can’t unrig creative labor markets.

A middle school doorway. Three cigarette-smoking hoodlums block it from a small schoolboy, seen from behind, carrying a backpack.
Buffalo Police Department/Public Domain (modified); Erik B. Anderson/CC BY-SA 4.0 (modified)

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.

The cover for the Beacon Press edition of Chokepoint Capitalism.

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.
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Pluralistic: 17 Aug 2022: Chokepoint Capitalism Kickstarter is live


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