"Across twenty meticulous chapters, Braverman explored the process by which capitalists siphoned value out of their workers. This extraction splintered the human being. Body was torn from mind; motions became mechanical; knowledge was locked away in business suites. Here was “the degradation of work in the twentieth century,” as Braverman’s subtitle had it. But alongside degradation ran a second process. As workers were automated out of industrial production, capital furrowed its way into other realms of life. Factories gave way to offices, the coppersmith to the clerk, and then to sprawling postindustrial economies of services and care. The genius of Labor and Monopoly Capital was to narrate these two developments together. Capital reconstituted itself over and over in an endless cycle. But in so doing it created new worlds of labor, a molten working class.

Half a century after its publication, Labor and Monopoly Capital remains a classic. It has sold over one hundred thousand copies and continues to inform studies of capital, labor, and class. But it has also been subject to partial or plainly incorrect assessments. Many have reduced Braverman to the “deskilling thesis” — the idea that capitalism linearly forces workers to perform ever-simpler and more menial labor — when in fact he insisted that this was too simple a claim. Others have accused him of a wistful nostalgia for artisanal labor, when in fact Braverman countered that objection in his introduction (although this is a point to which we will return). Worst of all, despite its impressive reach in radical circles, Labor and Monopoly Capital has been ignored by mainstream historians of capitalism and dismissed by many sociologists of labor. (With some important exceptions: for instance, the labor historian David Montgomery and many of his students.) The feeling was mutual, though."

https://jacobin.com/2025/06/braverman-labor-monopoly-capital-legacy

#Labor #Marxism #Capitalism #WageSlavery #Monopolies #Competition #Antitrust #ClassWarfare

"These companies are at an inflection point. With Mr. Trump’s election, Silicon Valley’s power will reach new heights. The president named David Sacks, a billionaire venture capitalist and A.I. investor, as his A.I. czar and empowered another tech billionaire, Elon Musk, to slash through the government. Mr. Trump brought a cadre of tech executives with him on his recent trip to Saudi Arabia. If Senate Republicans now vote to prohibit states from regulating A.I. for 10 years, Silicon Valley’s impunity will be enshrined in law, cementing these companies’ empire status.

Their influence now extends well beyond the realm of business. We are now closer than ever to a world in which tech companies can seize land, operate their own currencies, reorder the economy and remake our politics with little consequence. That comes at a cost — when companies rule supreme, people lose their ability to assert their voice in the political process and democracy cannot hold.

Technological progress does not require businesses to operate like empires. Some of the most impactful A.I. advancements came not from tech behemoths racing to recreate human levels of intelligence, but from the development of relatively inexpensive, energy-efficient models to tackle specific tasks such as weather forecasting."

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/30/opinion/silicon-valley-ai-empire.html

#AI #BigTech #SiliconValley #GenerativeAI #Oligarchy #Monopolies #Oligopolies

"Google isn’t satisfied with its monopoly on the questions we search.

Google wants to use AI to monopolize the very answers themselves.

As one Google executive recently explained: “Organizing information is clearly a trillion-dollar opportunity, but a trillion dollars is not cool anymore. What’s cool is a quadrillion dollars.”

Google plans to use AI to consume and replace the open web.

I believe demolishing independent sites like mine was Google’s first step in clearing ground so it has space to rebuild search from the ground up for an “AI-first” future.

Google envisions a future where “Google does the Googling for you,” its AI and ads do the answering – and users never need to leave Google.

Google will just source information from a handful of sources and partner websites that it controls and selects – effectively creating an information cartel.

If Google can use AI to censor a travel website from the web arbitrarily and without opportunity for appeal – it can do the same to any source of information it wants.

And American citizens and Internet users everywhere will be worse off for it.

So while you may not really care about the plight of some random travel website getting censored, everyone should care about the way Google is deploying AI to build a censorship cartel that lets it control the flow of information online.

What follows is a lengthy summary of my experiences and my opinions as an independent publisher trying to survive in a monopolist’s information economy.

To start, let me explain how we got to this point where Google has the power to do this:"

https://travellemming.com/perspectives/ftc-letter-google-censors-indie-publishers-with-ai/

#Google #SearchEngines #AI #AISearch #OpenWeb #Monopolies #Antitrust #Competition #BigTech

I find it astonishing how authors are so afraid that AI is going to steal their readers. If AI only generates derivative works, why are you, as a creator and the only entity capable of producing truly creative works so afraid?

Unless you believe in the fiction that you can own artificial property. In reality, once you let a work out in the world, you can't possibly expect to "own" it and control its distribution - unless you want to enforce a totalitarian dictatorship. So, I repeat, what are you so afraid of?

Unless authors start to understand that creative works can't be really protected against unauthorized copying and distribution and that copyright is a monopoly granted by States, they will continue to repeat the same mistakes, will depriving the public of access to knowledge and culture.

"In late 2024, we surveyed over 400 members of the Australian Society of Authors, the national peak body for writers and illustrators. We asked about their use of AI, their understanding of how generative models are trained, and whether they would agree to their work being used for training – with or without compensation.

79% said they would not allow their existing work to be used to train AI models, even if they were paid. Almost as many – 77% – said the same about future work.

Among those open to payment, half expected at least $A1,000 per work. A small number nominated figures in the tens or hundreds of thousands.

But the dominant response, from both established and emerging authors, was a firm “no”.

This presents a serious roadblock for those hoping publishers might broker blanket licensing agreements with AI firms. If most authors are unwilling to grant permission under any terms, then standard contract clauses or opt-in models are unlikely to deliver a practical or ethical solution."

https://theconversation.com/new-research-reveals-australian-authors-say-no-to-ai-using-their-work-even-if-money-is-on-the-table-257243

#Australia #AI #GenerativeAI #AITraining #Copyright #RentSeeking #Monopolies

COMPLETE TRAVESTY: Creativity is not an industry. Anyone who dares to say that knows nothing about art, culture, creativity, and manufacturing. You cannot manufacture creativity. Either a work is considered creative by the public and the critics or not.

Am I stealing your words in favor of a rent-seeking, money-grabbing little scheme by copying and pasting it here? Do I have to pay you a license for your fake, artificial property? And you consider yourself a representative of artists and authors?

"My colleagues and I from all sides in the House of Lords have acted where the government has refused, adding emergency transparency measures to the legislation – the data (use and access) bill – that is passing through parliament. Our amendment would allow existing copyright law to be enforced: copyright owners would understand when, where and by whom their work was being stolen to train AI. The logic being that if an AI firm has to disclose evidence of theft, it will not steal in the first place. These measures, voted for in ever-increasing numbers by lords from all parties – and notable grandees from the government’s own backbenches – were voted down by a government wielding its significant, if reluctant, majority."

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/may/24/ai-britain-creative-industries-government-data-bill

#UK #RentSeeking #AI #GenerativeAI #MoneyGrabbing #Feudalism #Monopolies #IP #Copyright #AITraining

#CoryDoctorow at his fiery best, telling us how we got to here and why and then topping it off with ways to undo all the shitty #TechBro malignancy to bring about a better, fairer internet (as well as a better society).

Replete with real world examples of how we’ve all been ‘captured’ by ruthless individuals and what has been done so far to address the raping of our privacy and curtailment of our choices.

If you can spare a hour to watch Cory’s address at the Python Conference on ‘enshitification’ and the solutions to it, you will come away hopeful of a better tomorrow. It might also spurr you to action when you have the opportunity to make a difference

#Enshitification #TechBros #Monopolies #DigitalAge

https://youtu.be/ydVmzg_SJLw

"UnitedHealth Group, the nation’s largest healthcare conglomerate, has secretly paid nursing homes thousands in bonuses to help slash hospital transfers for ailing residents – part of a series of cost-cutting tactics that has saved the company millions, but at times risked residents’ health, a Guardian investigation has found.

Those secret bonuses have been paid out as part of a UnitedHealth program that stations the company’s own medical teams in nursing homes and pushes them to cut care expenses for residents covered by the insurance giant.

In several cases identified by the Guardian, nursing home residents who needed immediate hospital care under the program failed to receive it, after interventions from UnitedHealth staffers. At least one lived with permanent brain damage following his delayed transfer, according to a confidential nursing home incident log, recordings and photo evidence.

“No one is truly investigating when a patient suffers harm. Absolutely no one,” said one current UnitedHealth nurse practitioner who recently filed a congressional complaint about the nursing home program. “These incidents are hidden, downplayed and minimized. The sense is: ‘Well, they’re medically frail, and no one lives for ever.’”"

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/21/unitedhealth-nursing-homes-payments-hospital-transfers

#USA #Healthcare #UnitedHealthcare #HealthInsurance #Monopolies #Oligopolies

"In the 1960s and 1970s, a group of Chicago School economists conceived of an absurd new way to interpret competition law, which they called "the consumer welfare standard." Under this standard, the job of competition policy was to encourage monopolies to form, on the grounds that monopolies were "efficient" and would lower prices for "consumers."

The chief proponent of this standard was Robert Bork, a virulent racist whose most significant claim to fame was that he was the only government lawyer willing to help Richard Nixon illegally fire officials who wouldn't turn a blind eye to his crimes. Bork's long record of unethical behavior and scorching bigotry came back to bite him in the ass when Ronald Reagan tried to seat him on the Supreme Court, during a confirmation hearing that Bork screwed up so badly that even today, we use "borked" as a synonym for anything that is utterly fucked.

But Bork's real legacy was as a pro-monopoly propagandist, whose work helped shift how judges, government enforcers, and economists viewed antitrust law. Bork approached the text of America's antitrust laws, like the Sherman Act and the Clayton Act, with the same techniques as a Qanon follower addressing a Q "drop," applying gnostic techniques to find in these laws mystical coded language that – he asserted – meant that Congress had intended for America's anti-monopoly laws to actually support monopolies.

In episode three, we explore Bork's legacy, and how it led to what Tom Eastman calls the internet of "five giant websites, each filled with screenshots of the other four." We got great interviews and old tape for this one, including Michael Wiesel, a Canadian soap-maker who created a bestselling line of nontoxic lip-balm kits for kids, only to have Amazon shaft him by underselling him with his own product."

https://pluralistic.net/2025/05/19/khan-thought/#they-were-warned

#Enshittification #IP #Copyright #OpenWeb #Monopolies #Oligopolies #Competition #Antitrust

"Meta did have more work to do on “child grooming,” as we saw in a June 2019 deck titled, “Inappropriate Interactions with Children on Instagram.” An early page called out that “IG recommended a minor through top suggested to an account engaged in groomer-esque behavior.” Grooming refers generally to the tactics a child predator might use to gain trust with potential victims to sexually abuse them. Subsequent pages gave some broader data: “27% of all follow recommendations to groomers were minors.” There’s a lot we don’t know about this statement: how did Meta track accounts that were “groomers” or “engaged in groomer-esque behavior”? And why were those accounts allowed at all? How did they generate that statistic? And it’s important to caveat as well that perhaps Meta didn’t know that any potential groomers were actual criminals. But by any measure, the headline is troubling.

There was more data than that. 33% of Instagram comments reported to Meta as inappropriate were reported by minors, the deck said of a three-month period. Of the comments reported by minors, more than half were left by an adult. “Overall IG: 7% of all follow recommendations to adults were minors,” the deck concluded.

The presentation also noted that during a “3-month period”—presumably in 2019—2 million minors were recommended by Instagram’s algorithm for groomers to follow. 22% of those recommendations resulted in a follow request from a groomer to a minor. Doing some back of the envelope math, that’s approximately 440,000 minors over just a three-month period who received a follow request from someone Meta labeled as a “groomer.” That number is shocking even before being annualized."

https://www.bigtechontrial.com/p/instagrams-algorithm-recommended

#SocialMedia #USA #Meta #Facebook #Instagram #CyberSecurity #WhatsApp #Antitrust #Monopolies #Oligopolies #Competition