“Enter Amazon and you have exited capitalism. Despite all the buying and the selling that goes on there, you have entered a realm that can’t be thought of as a market, not even a digital one.” When I say this to people, which I frequently do in lectures and debates, they look at me as they would a madman. But once I start explaining what I mean, their fear for my sanity soon turns into fear for us all.
Imagine the following scene, straight out of the science-fiction storybook. You are beamed into a town full of people going about their business, trading in gadgets, clothes, shoes, books, songs, games and movies. At first, everything looks normal. Then you begin to notice something odd. It turns out that all the shops, indeed every building, belong to a chap called Jeff. He may not own the factories that produce the stuff sold in his shops, but he owns an algorithm that takes a cut for each sale and he gets to decide what can be sold and what cannot.
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