Download or read book Chokepoint Capitalism written by Rebecca Giblin and published by Beacon Press. This book was released on 2022-09-27 with total page 398 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A call to action for the creative class and labor movement to rally against the power of Big Tech and Big Media Corporate concentration has breached the stratosphere, as have corporate profits. An ever-expanding constellation of industries are now monopolies (where sellers have excessive power over buyers) or monopsonies (where buyers hold the whip hand over sellers)—or both. In Chokepoint Capitalism, scholar Rebecca Giblin and writer and activist Cory Doctorow argue we’re in a new era of “chokepoint capitalism,” with exploitative businesses creating insurmountable barriers to competition that enable them to capture value that should rightfully go to others. All workers are weakened by this, but the problem is especially well-illustrated by the plight of creative workers. From Amazon’s use of digital rights management and bundling to radically change the economics of book publishing, to Google and Facebook’s siphoning away of ad revenues from news media, and the Big Three record labels’ use of inordinately long contracts to up their own margins at the cost of artists, chokepoints are everywhere. By analyzing book publishing and news, live music and music streaming, screenwriting, radio and more, Giblin and Doctorow deftly show how powerful corporations construct “anti-competitive flywheels” designed to lock in users and suppliers, make their markets hostile to new entrants, and then force workers and suppliers to accept unfairly low prices. In the book’s second half, Giblin and Doctorow then explain how to batter through those chokepoints, with tools ranging from transparency rights to collective action and ownership, radical interoperability, contract terminations, job guarantees, and minimum wages for creative work. Chokepoint Capitalism is a call to workers of all sectors to unite to help smash these chokepoints and take back the power and profit that’s being heisted away—before it’s too late.

Download or read book Chokepoint Capitalism written by Rebecca Giblin and published by Beacon Press. This book was released on 2023-09-12 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A call to action for the creative class and labor movement to rally against the power of Big Tech and Big Media Corporate concentration has breached the stratosphere, as have corporate profits. An ever-expanding constellation of industries are now monopolies (where sellers have excessive power over buyers) or monopsonies (where buyers hold the whip hand over sellers)—or both. In Chokepoint Capitalism, scholar Rebecca Giblin and writer and activist Cory Doctorow argue we’re in a new era of “chokepoint capitalism,” with exploitative businesses creating insurmountable barriers to competition that enable them to capture value that should rightfully go to others. All workers are weakened by this, but the problem is especially well-illustrated by the plight of creative workers. From Amazon’s use of digital rights management and bundling to radically change the economics of book publishing, to Google and Facebook’s siphoning away of ad revenues from news media, and the Big Three record labels’ use of inordinately long contracts to up their own margins at the cost of artists, chokepoints are everywhere. By analyzing book publishing and news, live music and music streaming, screenwriting, radio and more, Giblin and Doctorow deftly show how powerful corporations construct “anti-competitive flywheels” designed to lock in users and suppliers, make their markets hostile to new entrants, and then force workers and suppliers to accept unfairly low prices. In the book’s second half, Giblin and Doctorow then explain how to batter through those chokepoints, with tools ranging from transparency rights to collective action and ownership, radical interoperability, contract terminations, job guarantees, and minimum wages for creative work. Chokepoint Capitalism is a call to workers of all sectors to unite to help smash these chokepoints and take back the power and profit that’s being heisted away—before it’s too late.

Download or read book Summary of Rebecca Giblin Cory Doctorow s Chokepoint Capitalism written by Everest Media, and published by Everest Media LLC. This book was released on 2022-10-10T22:59:00Z with total page 42 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 The culture market is a winner-takes-all system, in which a handful of people take almost all the rewards. This has always been the case, but now there is less and less to share. #2 The reason creative workers are receiving a declining share of the wealth generated by their work is the same reason all workers are receiving a smaller share—we have structured society to make rich people richer at everyone else’s expense. #3 Capitalism is supposed to be based on free markets, but markets have a natural tendency toward monopoly, destructive extraction, and rent-seeking. To keep those tendencies in check, governments have been forced to engage in vigilant stewardship of markets. #4 The culture market is a winner-takes-all system in which a handful of people take almost all the rewards. This has always been the case, but now there is less and less to share.

Download or read book Choke Points written by Jake Alimahomed-Wilson and published by Wildcat. This book was released on 2018 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These are the stories of the workers who undermine capitalism at its weakest point

Download or read book Please Unsubscribe Thanks written by Julio Vincent Gambuto and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2023-08-08 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Atomic Habits meets The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F**k in this life-changing guide to freeing yourself from the automated behaviours, values, and relationships that keep you from being happy. When the pandemic essentially brought the world to a standstill, author Julio Gambuto came to understand a powerful truth: in the pre-pandemic world, Americans were exhausted, lonely, unhappy, wildly overworked and overbooked, drowning in sea of constantly being on the go and needing to buy more, more, more. But when that pressure disappeared, people rediscovered what was important to them. They quit jobs that made them unhappy and moved their families to suburbs. Simple things like outdoor walks replaced gym memberships; home cooking and backyard gardens replaced takeout; less commuting meant more time for family and creative projects; and for perhaps the first time in a long time, people were being honest. Honest about what they wanted, what they believed in. Honest about the problems they were facing within their families, friend groups, workplaces, towns, and society overall. That honesty, he noticed, had the potential to make the ground shift. It created a capacity for change. But he also knew that it likely wouldn’t last, because the most powerful forces running our world would not allow it to. They wanted control over our clicks, our conversations, our dollars, our work, our votes—our lives. The only way that we could beat those systems, would be to resist the calls to keep moving, and to “go back to normal.” In order to change, we had to unsubscribe. Now, in Please Unsubscribe, Thanks!, Gambuto gives us a radical blueprint for the ways we can take a deep breath, renew and commit to a life that we really want, individually and collectively, from unsubscribing to emails and automated subscriptions to reevaluating the presence of people and ideas and habits that no longer serve us or make us happy. Infused with the practical advice in James Clear’s Atomic Habits and the humor of Sarah Knight’s The Life-Changing Magic of Not Giving a F**k, Please Unsubscribe, Thanks! helps us focus on where we find joy in our lives and encourages us to toss out what doesn’t bring us joy in this modern world.

Download or read book Rentier Capitalism written by Brett Christophers and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2020-11-24 with total page 513 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How did Britain’s economy become a bastion of inequality? In this landmark book, the author of The New Enclosure provides a forensic examination and sweeping critique of early-twenty-first-century capitalism. Brett Christophers styles this as ‘rentier capitalism’, in which ownership of key types of scarce assets—such as land, intellectual property, natural resources, or digital platforms—is all-important and dominated by a few unfathomably wealthy companies and individuals: rentiers. If a small elite owns today’s economy, everybody else foots the bill. Nowhere is this divergence starker, Christophers shows, than in the United Kingdom, where the prototypical ills of rentier capitalism—vast inequalities combined with entrenched economic stagnation—are on full display and have led the country inexorably to the precipice of Brexit. With profound lessons for other countries subject to rentier dominance, Christophers’ examination of the UK case is indispensable to those wanting not just to understand this insidious economic phenomenon but to overcome it. Frequently invoked but never previously analysed and illuminated in all its depth and variety, rentier capitalism is here laid bare for the first time.

Download or read book Music Artist Managers written by Guy Morrow and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-07-05 with total page 103 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To what extent is it possible to do good work in music artist management? Drawing upon original research, this shortform book explores and evaluates motivation, remuneration and equity stakes within the music industries. The author ponders the apparent managerial exodus from the music industries and whether this brain drain could be addressed by providing better remuneration via equity. Based on evidence from Australia, the book illuminates how pay in this sector has remained flat despite increasing responsibility. Emphasising the quality of the subjective experience of music artist managers, this concise book provides readers with new insights into the important role managers play in the music business. The result is a book that will be useful reading for academics and reflective practitioners.

Download or read book Culture is not an industry written by Justin O'Connor and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2024-02-27 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Culture is at the heart to what it means to be human. But twenty-five years ago, the British government rebranded art and culture as ‘creative industries’, valued for their economic contribution, and set out to launch the UK as the creative workshop of a globalised world. Where does that leave art and culture now? Facing exhausted workers and a lack of funding and vision, culture finds itself in the grip of accountancy firms, creativity gurus and Ted Talkers. At a time of sweeping geo-political turmoil, culture has been de-politicised, its radical energies reduced to factors of industrial production. This book is about what happens when an essential part of our democratic citizenship, fundamental to our human rights, is reduced to an industry. Culture is not an industry argues that art and culture need to renew their social contract and re-align with the radical agenda for a more equitable future. Bold and uncompromising, the book offers a powerful vision for change.

Download or read book How to Protect Bookstores and Why written by Danny Caine and published by Microcosm Publishing. This book was released on 2023-09-19 with total page 170 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Can bookstores save the world? As bastions of culture, anchors of local retail districts, community gathering places, and sources of new ideas, inspiration, and delight, maybe they can. But only if we protect them and the critical roles they fill in our communities.Danny Caine, author of the bestselling sensation How to Resist Amazon and Why and co-owner of the Raven Book Store in Lawrence, Kansas, makes a compelling case for the power of small, local businesses in this thoughtful examination of the dynamic world of bookstores. At once an urgent call to action and a celebration of everything bookstores can do, Caine's new book features case-study profiles of a dozen of the most interesting, creative, and progressive bookstores of today, from Minneapolis to Paris. Through a well-informed analysis of these case studies, Caine offers actionable strategies to promote a sustainable future for bookselling, including policy suggestions, ideas for community-based action, and tips on what consumers can do to help. A captivating read for any lover of books, patron of bookstores, or champion of the survival of these vital institutions, How to Protect Bookstores and Why makes the strongest possible case for the importance of a resilient, inclusive, and progressive bookstore landscape.

Download or read book Love in the Time of Self Publishing written by Christine M. Larson and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2024-06-04 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lessons in creative labor, solidarity, and inclusion under precarious economic conditions As writers, musicians, online content creators, and other independent workers fight for better labor terms, romance authors offer a powerful example—and a cautionary tale—about self-organization and mutual aid in the digital economy. In Love in the Time of Self-Publishing, Christine Larson traces the forty-year history of Romancelandia, a sprawling network of romance authors, readers, editors, and others, who formed a unique community based on openness and collective support. Empowered by solidarity, American romance writers—once disparaged literary outcasts—became digital publishing’s most innovative and successful authors. Meanwhile, a new surge of social media activism called attention to Romancelandia’s historic exclusion of romance authors of color and LGBTQ+ writers, forcing a long-overdue cultural reckoning. Drawing on the largest-known survey of any literary genre as well as interviews and archival research, Larson shows how romance writers became the only authors in America to make money from the rise of ebooks—increasing their median income by 73 percent while other authors’ plunged by 40 percent. The success of romance writers, Larson argues, demonstrates the power of alternative forms of organizing influenced by gendered working patterns. It also shows how networks of relationships can amplify—or mute—certain voices. Romancelandia’s experience, Larson says, offers crucial lessons about solidarity for creators and other isolated workers in an increasingly risky employment world. Romancelandia’s rise and near-meltdown shows that gaining fair treatment from platforms depends on creator solidarity—but creator solidarity, in turn, depends on fair treatment of all members.

Download or read book Decentralized Music written by Paulo de Assis and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2024-08-14 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a thorough exploration of the potential of blockchain and AI technologies to transform musical practices. Including contributions from leading researchers in music, arts, and technology, it addresses central notions of agency, authorship, ontology, provenance, and ownership in music. Together, the chapters of this book, often navigating the intersections of post-digital and posthumanist thought, challenge conventional centralized mechanisms of music creation and dissemination, advocating for new forms of musical expression. Stressing the need for the artistic community to engage with blockchain and AI, this volume is essential reading for artists, musicians, researchers, and policymakers curious to know more about the implications of these technologies for the future of music.

Download or read book Raising Hell Living Well written by Jessica Elefante and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2023-10-10 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Part cultural criticism, part rueful confessional, a reformed brand strategist brings to light the impact of influence on us and our society and offers an escape in this ironically persuasive case for not being so easily influenced anymore. “Jessica Elefante practices what she preaches by rising above complaints to confront modern, twisted problems right in the face.”—Jaron Lanier, bestselling author of Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now We live in a world that is under the influence. Our lives are being choreographed by forces that want something from us. Everything from ingrained family values to mind-altering algorithms create our foundations, warp how we see the world, manipulate our decisions, and dictate our beliefs. Yet rarely do we question these everyday influences of our modern times even as we go further down the path of unwell, unhappy, and unhinged. A high-spirited exploration through the troublesome influences of our world, Raising Hell, Living Well, Jessica Elefante’s eye-opening debut, follows one bullshit artist’s journey, from small-time salesperson to award-winning corporate strategist to founder of the digital wellbeing movement Folk Rebellion, in coming to terms with how she was wielding influence—and the forces she was under herself. With whip-smart writing and wry humor, Elefante’s collection of essays is a head-trip through her misadventures. From explaining productivity as a symptom of the influence of capitalism to how the wellness industry makes us feel more unwell or our unquestioning participation in oversharing, optimization, and instant gratification, she invites us to reexamine our world, our pasts, and ourselves through the lens of influence. Now a reformed brand strategist, Elefante lays bare her own culpability, sharing what she learned—and what she got wrong. She offers a new take on intentional living and provides a simple practice to deconstruct how the powers-that-be are attempting to modify our behaviors. Before you know it, you’ll be questioning everything from how you take your coffee to how our social institutions are structured. And you’ll learn how to live free from the influences around us—including Elefante herself. The much-needed subversive voice to demystify these times, Elefante will make you angry, make you laugh, and make you think about how you’re really living. Unpretentious, sharply observed, and devil-hearted, Raising Hell, Living Well holds out a hand to help you climb out from under the influence.

Download or read book The Ordinal Society written by Marion Fourcade and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2024 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Organizations now measure and rank nearly every aspect of our lives, using data to make predictions about our purchasing power, tastes, and character. The Ordinal Society shows how these predictions structure life chances, producing a hollow morality that launders familiar forms of social advantage into an illusion of merit.

Download or read book The Bezzle written by Cory Doctorow and published by Tor Books. This book was released on 2024-02-20 with total page 187 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New York Times bestseller Cory Doctorow's The Bezzle is a high stakes thriller where the lives of the hundreds of thousands of inmates in California’s prisons are traded like stock shares. The year is 2006. Martin Hench is at the top of his game as a self-employed forensic accountant, a veteran of the long guerrilla war between people who want to hide money, and people who want to find it. He spends his downtime on Catalina Island, where scenic, imported bison wander the bluffs and frozen, reheated fast food burgers cost 25$. Wait, what? When Marty disrupts a seemingly innocuous scheme during a vacation on Catalina Island, he has no idea he’s kicked off a chain of events that will overtake the next decade of his life. Martin has made his most dangerous mistake yet: trespassed into the playgrounds of the ultra-wealthy and spoiled their fun. To them, money is a tool, a game, and a way to keep score, and they’ve found their newest mark—California’s Department of Corrections. Secure in the knowledge that they’re living behind far too many firewalls of shell companies and investors ever to be identified, they are interested not in the lives they ruin, but only in how much money they can extract from the government and the hundreds of thousands of prisoners they have at their mercy. A seething rebuke of the privatized prison system that delves deeply into the arcane and baroque financial chicanery involved in the 2008 financial crash, The Bezzle is a sizzling follow-up to Red Team Blues. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Download or read book Data Enclaves written by Kean Birch and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2023-12-11 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book focuses on our increasing dependence upon Big Tech to live, manage, and enjoy our lives. The author examines how we freely exchange our personal data for access to online platforms, services, and devices without proper consideration of the implications of this trade. Our personal data is the defining resource of the emerging digital economy, and it is increasingly concentrated in a few data enclaves controlled by Big Tech firms, cementing an increasingly parasitic form of technoscientific innovation. Big Tech controls access to these data, dictates the terms of our use of their services and products, and controls the future development of key technologies like artificial intelligence. The contention of this book is that we need to rethink our political and policy approach to data governance and to do so requires unpacking the peculiarities of personal data and how personal data are transformed into a valuable asset.

Download or read book Shapers of Worlds Volume III written by Edward Willett and published by Shadowpaw Press. This book was released on 2022-10-11 with total page 477 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From outer space to inner space, from realms of magic to the here-and-now, from the distant past to the far future, the twenty-one stories and poems in this third collection of science fiction and fantasy by authors featured on the Aurora Award-winning podcast The Worldshapers will take you on incredible adventures in the company of unforgettable characters. A pampered, overweight cat from the present saves the world from alien invasion in Ancient Egypt. A musician whose special horn helped bring down the walls of Jericho is fated to bring down walls again and again throughout history. A house ghost is troubled by a new owner who proves unhauntable. Robots programmed to love humanity take the only action they can to save us from ourselves. A CDC agent is prepared to do whatever it takes to prevent a novel pathogen from spreading . . . Shapers of Worlds Volume IIIfeatures new fiction from Griffin Barber, Gerald Brandt, Miles Cameron, Sebastien de Castell, Kristi Charish, David Ebenbach, Mark Everglade and Joseph Hurtgen, Frank J. Fleming, Violette Malan, Anna Mocikat, James Morrow, Jess E. Owen, Robert Penner, Cat Rambo, K.M. Rice, and Edward Willett, new poetry by Jane Yolen, and previously published stories by Cory Doctorow, K. Eason, Walter Jon Williams, and F. Paul Wilson. Among these authors are established, international bestsellers and winners of every major award in science fiction and fantasy as well as writers still at the start of what promises to be stellar careers. All of them have crafted stories and verse hat will excite, enchant, enlighten, and entertain. Enter their fantastical worlds, and enjoy!

Download or read book Communications Breakdown written by Jonathan Strahan and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2023-10-31 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An exciting science fiction collection that looks at what future communication might look like and how our shifting relationships with technology could change this most human of capabilities. In Communications Breakdown, award-winning editor Jonathan Strahan asks some of the world’s best science fiction writers to consider how the very idea of communication might change in the future. Rich terrain for speculation, this anthology brims with human stories about the future face of our age-old need to connect. As cyberpunk pioneer William Gibson said, “The future is already here—it’s just not evenly distributed.” So what happens when inequalities keep the future from everyone’s front door? Who is in control? These stories show humanity’s ability to construct the best possible worlds while also battling our potential to inflict unlimited harm. Communications Breakdown features contributions from Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Famer Cory Doctorow, the winner of the Times of India AutHer Award Lavanya Lakshminarayan, Hugo Award winner Ian McDonald, as well as an interview with digital privacy activist Chris Gilliard by author and journalist Tim Maughan. Breaking down how we think about communication, Communications Breakdown calls readers to look at how vulnerable our modes of communication—and indeed, we ourselves—are. Contributors Elizabeth Bear, S.B. Divya, Cory Doctorow, Chris Gilliard, Lavanya Lakshminarayan, Ken Macleod, Tim Maughan, Ian McDonald, Anil Menon, Premee Mohamed, and Shiv Ramdas. Artwork by Ashley Mackenzie