Technology and Oligopoly Capitalism is a major contribution to our understanding of how technology oligopolies are shaping America’s social, economic, and political reality.
Technology oligopolies are the most powerful socioeconomic entities in America. From cradle to grave, the decisions they make affect the most intimate aspects of our lives, how we work, what we eat, our health, how we communicate, what we know and believe, whom we elect, and how we relate to one another and to nature. Their power over markets, trade, regulation, and most every aspect of our governance is more intrusive and farther-reaching than ever. They benefit from tax breaks, government guarantees, and bailouts that we must pay for and have no control over. Their accumulation of capital creates immense wealth for a minuscule elite, deepening disparities while politics and governance become ever more subservient to their power. They determine our skills and transform employment through the tools and services they create, as no other organizations can. They produce a vast array of goods and services with labor, marketing, and research that are more intrusively controlled than ever, as workplace rights and job security are curtailed or disappear. Our consumption of their products—and their capacity to promote wants—is deep and far reaching, while the waste they generate raises concerns about the survival of life on our planet. And their links to geopolitics and the martial domain are stronger than ever, as they influence how warfare is waged and who will be vanquished.
Technology and Oligopoly Capitalism’s critical, multidisciplinary perspective provides a systemic vision of how oligopolistic power shapes these forces and phenomena. An inclusive approach spans the spectrum of technology oligopolies and the ways in which they deploy their power. Numerous, previously unpublished ideas expand the repertory of established work on the topics covered, advancing explanatory quality—to elucidate how and why technology oligopolies operate as they do, the dysfunctions that accompany their power, and their effects on society and nature. This book has no peers in the literature, in its scope, the unprecedented amount and diversity of documentation, the breadth of concepts, and the vast number of examples it provides. Its premises deserve to be taken into account by every student, researcher, policymaker, and author interested in the socioeconomic and political dimensions of technology in America.
1. Introduction
2. Power
Pricing
Co-Respectiveness
Shareholder Returns
Mergers and Acquisitions
Entry Barrier Engineering
Neo-Conglomerates
Standards Setting
Deregulation
Innovation
Development vs. Research
Technological Barriers
Intangibles
International Projection
Trade and the Dollar
Cross-Shareholding
Public Governance
Anti-Regulatory Praxis
Lobbying and Patronage
Money in Politics
Revolving Doors
Judiciary System
3. Accumulation
Value
Commodity Value
Product Markets
Competition
Capital and Labor
Accumulation and Pricing
Oligopolistic Accumulation
Consolidation
Speculative Finance
New Technologies
Input Markets
Imposing Terms
Dual Oligopoly: Inputs, Products
Labor Markets
Insecurity
Contingency Labor
Uselabor
Dual Oligopoly: Labor, Products
Compound Oligopoly
Complexity and Lock-In
4. Transformation
Elements
Labor
Capital
Production
Research and Product Development
Commodification
Commodity Fetishism
Technological Fetishism
Data Commodification
Standardizing and Systematizing
Reproduction
Capital Resources
Capacity for Work
Labor Intangibles
Capacity Utilization
Excess Capacity
Capacity-Price Engineering
Typologies
Extraction and Assemblage
Integrative Production
Inventive Appropriation
5. Dysfunction
Employment
Technocapitalist Control
Compensation and Productivity
Long-Term Deficit
Consumer Exploitation
Pricing Differential
Add-Ons
Data Exploitation
Clouds
Networks
Wants Contrivance
Overconsumption
Addictions
Typologies
Waste
Toxicity and Pollution
E-Waste
Agro-Tech
Microbiome Disruption
Eco-Planetary
Techno-Fixes
Efficiency Mirage
The Commons
Lauderdale Paradox
Access and Benefit
Appropriation
6. Domination
Commodity Chains
Arbitrage
Labor Arbitrage
Value Arbitrage
Control Hierarchies
Biotechnology
Intellectual Property
Cybernetics
Financial
Socio-Political
Enforcement
Enforcement Platform
Multimodality
Taxpaying
Contractual Money
Taxpayer Exploitation
7. Techno-Oligarchy
Biography
Luis Suarez-Villa is Professor Emeritus of Social Ecology and of Planning, Policy, and Design at the University of California, Irvine. Among his previous books are Corporate Power, Oligopolies, and the Crisis of the State; Globalization and Technocapitalism; and Technocapitalism.