Business, Economics & Law
March 2024
Markets and power in digital capitalism
by Philipp Staab
Today's global capitalism runs through digital networks. Its leaders are internet giants such as Google, Apple, Amazon and Tencent. Their technologies are ubiquitous: we carry high-performance computers around in our pockets, manage our lives in the cloud and display them on social media. They have also literally privatised the market, transforming capitalism in the process. Philipp Staab takes us on a virtual tour of modern digital capitalism. He shows how digital surveillance and evaluation practices have proliferated throughout the economy, exacerbating social inequality in the process. What is specific to digital capitalism, Staab argues, is the emergence of 'proprietary markets'. In the past the focus was on producing things and selling them at a profit. Today the meta-platforms extract their profits by owning the market itself.
