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Breaking Away sounds a warning call alerting readers that their
privacy and autonomy concerns are indeed warranted, and the
remedies deserve far greater attention than they have received from
our leading policymakers and experts to date. Through the various
prisms of economic theory, market data, policy, and law, the book
offers a clear and accessible insight into how a few powerful firms
- Google, Apple, Facebook (Meta), and Amazon - have used the same
anticompetitive playbook and manipulated the current legal regime
for their gain at our collective expense. While much has been
written about these four companies' power, far less has been said
about addressing their risks. In looking at the proposals to date,
however, policymakers and scholars have not fully addressed three
fundamental issues: First, will more competition necessarily
promote our privacy and well-being? Second, who owns the personal
data, and is that even the right question? Third, what are the
policy implications if personal data is non-rivalrous? Breaking
Away not only articulates the limitations of the current
enforcement and regulatory approach but offers concrete proposals
to promote competition, without having to sacrifice our privacy.
This book explores how these platforms accumulated their power, why
the risks they pose are far greater than previously believed, and
why the tools need to be far more robust than what is being
proposed. Policymakers, scholars, and business owners, managers,
and entrepreneurs seeking to compete and innovate in the digital
platform economy will find the book an invaluable source of
information.
Two market experts deconstruct the drivers and inhibitors to
innovation in the digital economy, explain how large tech companies
can stifle disruption, assess the toll of their technologies on our
well-being and democracy, and outline policy changes to take power
away from big tech and return it to entrepreneurs. Silicon Valley's
genius combined with limited corporate regulation promised a new
age of technological innovation in which entrepreneurs would create
companies that would in turn fuel unprecedented job growth. Yet
disruptive innovation has stagnated even as the five leading tech
giants, which account for approximately 25 percent of the S&P
500's market capitalization, are expanding to unimaginable scale
and power. In How Big-Tech Barons Smash Innovation-and How to
Strike Back, Ariel Ezrachi and Maurice E. Stucke explain why this
is happening and what we can do to reverse it. While many distrust
the Big-Tech Barons, the prevailing belief is that innovation is
thriving online. It isn't. Rather than disruptive innovations that
create significant value, we are getting technologies that
primarily extract value and reduce well-being. Using vivid examples
and relying on their work in the field, the authors explain how the
leading tech companies design their sprawling ecosystems to extract
more profits (while crushing any entrepreneur that poses a threat).
As a result, we get less innovation that benefits us and more
innovations that surpass the dreams of yesteryears' autocracies.
The Tech Barons' technologies, which seek to decode our emotions
and thoughts to better manipulate our behavior, are undermining
political stability and democracy while fueling tribalism and hate.
But it's not hopeless. The authors reveal that sustained innovation
scales with cities not companies, and that we, as a society, should
profoundly alter our investment strategy and priorities to certain
entrepreneurs ("Tech Pirates") and cities' infrastructure.
"A fascinating book about how platform internet companies (Amazon,
Facebook, and so on) are changing the norms of economic
competition." -Fast Company Shoppers with a bargain-hunting impulse
and internet access can find a universe of products at their
fingertips. But is there a dark side to internet commerce? This
thought-provoking expose invites us to explore how sophisticated
algorithms and data-crunching are changing the nature of market
competition, and not always for the better. Introducing into the
policy lexicon terms such as algorithmic collusion, behavioral
discrimination, and super-platforms, Ariel Ezrachi and Maurice E.
Stucke explore the resulting impact on competition, our democratic
ideals, our wallets, and our well-being. "We owe the authors our
deep gratitude for anticipating and explaining the consequences of
living in a world in which black boxes collude and leave no trails
behind. They make it clear that in a world of big data and
algorithmic pricing, consumers are outgunned and antitrust laws are
outdated, especially in the United States." -Science "A convincing
argument that there can be a darker side to the growth of digital
commerce. The replacement of the invisible hand of competition by
the digitized hand of internet commerce can give rise to
anticompetitive behavior that the competition authorities are ill
equipped to deal with." -Burton G. Malkiel, Wall Street Journal "A
convincing case for the need to rethink competition law to cope
with algorithmic capitalism's potential for malfeasance." -John
Naughton, The Observer
Breaking Away sounds a warning call alerting readers that their
privacy and autonomy concerns are indeed warranted, and the
remedies deserve far greater attention than they have received from
our leading policymakers and experts to date. Through the various
prisms of economic theory, market data, policy, and law, the book
offers a clear and accessible insight into how a few powerful firms
- Google, Apple, Facebook (Meta), and Amazon - have used the same
anticompetitive playbook and manipulated the current legal regime
for their gain at our collective expense. While much has been
written about these four companies' power, far less has been said
about addressing their risks. In looking at the proposals to date,
however, policymakers and scholars have not fully addressed three
fundamental issues: First, will more competition necessarily
promote our privacy and well-being? Second, who owns the personal
data, and is that even the right question? Third, what are the
policy implications if personal data is non-rivalrous? Breaking
Away not only articulates the limitations of the current
enforcement and regulatory approach but offers concrete proposals
to promote competition, without having to sacrifice our privacy.
This book explores how these platforms accumulated their power, why
the risks they pose are far greater than previously believed, and
why the tools need to be far more robust than what is being
proposed. Policymakers, scholars, and business owners, managers,
and entrepreneurs seeking to compete and innovate in the digital
platform economy will find the book an invaluable source of
information.
Shoppers with Internet access and a bargain-hunting impulse can
find a universe of products at their fingertips. In this
thought-provoking expose, Ariel Ezrachi and Maurice Stucke invite
us to take a harder look at today's app-assisted paradise of
digital shopping. While consumers reap many benefits from online
purchasing, the sophisticated algorithms and data-crunching that
make browsing so convenient are also changing the nature of market
competition, and not always for the better. Computers colluding is
one danger. Although long-standing laws prevent companies from
fixing prices, data-driven algorithms can now quickly monitor
competitors' prices and adjust their own prices accordingly. So
what is seemingly beneficial-increased price
transparency-ironically can end up harming consumers. A second
danger is behavioral discrimination. Here, companies track and
profile consumers to get them to buy goods at the highest price
they are willing to pay. The rise of super-platforms and their
"frenemy" relationship with independent app developers raises a
third danger. By controlling key platforms (such as the operating
system of smartphones), data-driven monopolies dictate the flow of
personal data and determine who gets to exploit potential buyers.
Virtual Competition raises timely questions. To what extent does
the "invisible hand" still hold sway? In markets continually
manipulated by bots and algorithms, is competitive pricing an
illusion? Can our current laws protect consumers? The changing
market reality is already shifting power into the hands of the few.
Ezrachi and Stucke explore the resulting risks to competition, our
democratic ideals, and our economic and overall well-being.
Using dozens of vivid examples to show how society overprescribed
competition as a solution and when unbridled rivalry hurts
consumers, kills entrepreneurship, and increases economic
inequality, two free-market thinkers diagnose the sickness caused
by competition overdose and provide remedies that will promote
sustainable growth and progress for everyone, not just wealthy
shareholders and those at the top. Whatever illness our society
suffers, competition is the remedy. Do we want better schools for
our children? Cheaper prices for everything? More choices in the
marketplace? The answer is always: Increase competition. Yet, many
of us are unhappy with the results. We think we're paying less, but
we're getting much less. Our food has undeclared additives (or
worse), our drinking water contains toxic chemicals, our hotel
bills reveal surprise additions, our kids' schools are failing, our
activities are tracked so that advertisers can target us with
relentless promotions. All will be cured, we are told, by
increasing the competitive pressure and defanging the bloated
regulatory state. In a captivating expose, Maurice E. Stucke and
Ariel Ezrachi show how we are falling prey to greed, chicanery, and
cronyism. Refuting the almost religious belief in rivalry as the
vehicle for prosperity, the authors identify the powerful
corporations, lobbyists, and lawmakers responsible for pushing this
toxic competition-and argue instead for a healthier, even nobler,
form of competition. Competition Overdose diagnoses the disease-and
provides a cure for it.
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