How The Internet Has Transformed Capitalism

How the Internet Has Transformed Capitalism
This post was published on the now-closed HuffPost Contributor platform. Contributors control their own work and posted freely to our site. If you need to flag this entry as abusive, send us an email.
Author and USC scholar Jonathan Taplin. (Courtesy of Taplin)

Jonathan Taplin, the founding director of the USC Annenberg Innovation Lab, doesn’t believe in the “internet revolution.” In this week’s episode of KCRW’s “Scheer Intelligence,” Taplin sits down with host Robert Scheer to explain how the internet is a “winner-take-all” system that has culminated in uncontrollable and irresponsible monopolies.

“Today, the largest companies in the world are Apple, Google, Amazon, Facebook and Microsoft. [There has] been an astonishingly fast transformation of the whole nature of capitalism,” Taplin says.

Taplin’s latest book, “Move Fast and Break Things: How Facebook, Google and Amazon Cornered Culture and Undermined Democracy,” delves into the unrestrained power of technology companies.

Taplin goes on to argue that politicians are beholden to tech companies and notes that under contemporary capitalism these monopolies are able to thrive.

“At this point, Facebook and Google have 90 percent of the internet advertising business,” Taplin says. “We need real anti-trust enforcement. Maybe there’s a certain place where these companies should not get any bigger than they are, and maybe they should be broken up.”

Listen to the full conversation and to past episodes of “Scheer Intelligence” at KCRW.com

Popular in the Community

Close

What's Hot