Move Fast and Break Things

Move Fast and Break Things Plot Summary

Introduction

Since the beginning of the 21st century, the relationship between technology and culture has undergone a radical transformation. What began as a utopian vision of democratized access to information has evolved into a system where massive digital monopolies capture the vast majority of economic value. The tech giants - Google, Facebook, and Amazon - have restructured our economy and culture in profound ways, often undermining traditional creative industries and reallocating revenue streams away from content creators. The technological revolution we are experiencing represents more than just business disruption; it embodies a profound philosophical shift championed by Silicon Valley's libertarian elites. This ideology, which views government regulation as inherently harmful and places the free market on a pedestal, has allowed these companies to operate largely outside traditional regulatory frameworks. Through meticulous examination of monopoly formation, regulatory capture, and the commodification of culture, we can uncover how these tech behemoths have fundamentally altered our economic landscape, cultural values, and democratic institutions—and begin to chart a path toward a more equitable digital future.

Chapter 1: The Rise of Digital Monopolies: Google, Facebook, and Amazon

The growth of digital monopolies represents one of the most significant economic transformations since the Industrial Revolution. Google now controls 88 percent of search advertising, Facebook dominates 77 percent of mobile social media, and Amazon commands 70 percent of the ebook market. These aren't merely successful businesses; they represent an unprecedented concentration of market power in the digital realm. Unlike previous technological revolutions that created millions of middle-class jobs, these digital monopolies employ relatively few people while capturing enormous market value. Google can generate $74.5 billion in revenue with far fewer employees than traditional companies of similar market capitalization. The efficiency of these platforms allows them to scale globally with minimal marginal costs, creating winner-take-all markets that naturally tend toward monopolization. The economic model underpinning these monopolies differs fundamentally from traditional businesses. Rather than charging users directly, they extract value through surveillance capitalism—monitoring user behavior to generate data that can be monetized through advertising or leveraged for market control. This data extraction happens largely without meaningful user consent or compensation to those generating the valuable data. For creators and cultural industries, the impact has been devastating. Since 2000, recorded music revenues have fallen from $19.8 billion to $7.2 billion per year. Newspaper advertising revenue collapsed from $65.8 billion to $23.6 billion. Yet during this same period, Google's revenue grew from $1.5 billion to $74.5 billion. This massive reallocation of revenue—approximately $50 billion annually—has moved from content creators to platform owners. These monopolies weren't inevitable technological outcomes but resulted from specific business strategies and regulatory failures. The companies employed what Peter Thiel proudly calls the "monopoly strategy": build proprietary technology with network effects that benefits from scale economies, and establish a strong brand that can dominate a market category. Once established, these monopolies become nearly impossible to dislodge through normal market competition. The rise of these digital monopolies coincides with growing economic inequality. Rather than democratizing opportunity as promised, the digital economy has concentrated wealth in unprecedented ways. Six of the ten richest people in America now come from the tech sector. This concentration of economic power inevitably translates into political power, creating a self-reinforcing cycle that further entrenches these giants' dominance.

Chapter 2: The Libertarian Ideology Driving Silicon Valley's Power Grab

Silicon Valley's dominant philosophy emerged not from the original countercultural vision of the early internet pioneers but from a radical libertarian ideology championed by figures like Peter Thiel. This worldview, heavily influenced by Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman, rejects government regulation as inherently inefficient and celebrates unfettered markets as the highest expression of human freedom. The libertarian roots of today's tech giants can be traced to the Stanford campus of the early 1990s, where Thiel established the Stanford Review specifically to fight what he viewed as the scourge of "political correctness" and feminism. His philosophical orientation was clear: government represents constraint, while technological entrepreneurship represents liberation. In his 2009 essay for the Cato Institute, Thiel explicitly stated, "I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible," revealing the fundamentally antidemocratic nature of this strain of tech libertarianism. This ideology manifested in business through what became known as the "Don't ask permission" approach. Google's founders never asked permission to copy the entire World Wide Web onto their servers. Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg didn't ask permission to reshape privacy norms. YouTube built its initial user base largely through unauthorized copyrighted content. When challenged, these companies typically responded with a philosophy captured in Ayn Rand's famous line from The Fountainhead: "The point is, who will stop me?" The companies' libertarian philosophy extends to their approach to taxation. Through elaborate international tax structures, tech giants have avoided billions in taxes that might otherwise fund public services. Amazon explicitly built its business model around avoiding state sales taxes, giving it a significant competitive advantage over brick-and-mortar retailers. Google and Facebook engage in "transfer pricing" schemes that shift profits to low-tax jurisdictions, costing the U.S. government an estimated $60 billion annually in lost revenue. Labor practices within these companies further reflect libertarian values. Amazon's warehouse workers face intensive algorithmic monitoring and productivity targets that have led to documented health and safety concerns. The "gig economy" platforms classify workers as independent contractors rather than employees, shifting economic risk from companies to individuals while avoiding obligations like minimum wage protections or benefits. Perhaps most revealing is how tech leaders envision their endgame. Many, including Thiel and Google's Larry Page, have invested millions in projects aimed at extending human lifespans indefinitely—but only for those who can afford it. The ultimate expression of libertarian individualism is not just freedom from government but freedom from mortality itself, available exclusively to the techno-elite.

Chapter 3: How Content Commodification Destroys Creative Industries

The digital revolution has fundamentally transformed how cultural works are valued and monetized, with devastating consequences for creators. When Google, YouTube, and Facebook treat all content as undifferentiated commodities—mere vehicles for advertising and data collection—they strip away the economic foundation that previously sustained creative work. The music industry provides the starkest example of this transformation. Since Napster's launch in 1999, recorded music revenue plummeted from $20 billion to $7.5 billion annually. But this wasn't simply about piracy; it reflected a systematic devaluation of creative work by digital platforms. YouTube has become the world's largest music streaming service, yet pays a fraction of what subscription services like Spotify provide to artists. For every dollar of music streaming revenue, YouTube contributes just 13 cents despite commanding 52 percent of streaming volume. This commodification extends beyond music to all forms of media. News organizations that once supported robust reporting through advertising now find those revenues captured by Google and Facebook, which aggregate their content without bearing the costs of producing it. The result has been a catastrophic decline in local news coverage and investigative journalism. As one publisher noted, Facebook alone "sucked up $27 million" of a single newspaper's projected digital advertising revenue in a year. For individual creators, the consequences are deeply personal. Musicians like Levon Helm, who once earned a decent living from album royalties, found themselves unable to support themselves in their later years. Helm continued touring even while battling throat cancer, not from artistic passion but financial necessity. His plight exemplifies the human cost of content commodification—artists forced into poverty despite creating work that continues to be consumed by millions. The platforms defend this system by claiming they democratize access and create new opportunities. But the data tells a different story. Rather than empowering a broader range of creators, the digital economy has created an extreme winner-takes-all dynamic. In the music industry, 80 percent of revenue now flows to just 1 percent of artists—a far more concentrated distribution than even during the CD era, when 80 percent went to the top 20 percent. Beyond its economic impact, content commodification fundamentally changes what gets created. Data-driven decision making favors content that performs well according to algorithmic metrics rather than artistic merit or cultural significance. Artists feel pressure to create work that aligns with platform incentives—shorter, more provocative, optimized for "engagement"—rather than following their creative vision. As the writer Kurt Andersen observed, "Even as technological leaps have revolutionized life, popular style has been stuck on repeat, consuming the past instead of creating the new." The ultimate tragedy of content commodification is the loss of cultural inheritance. Sustainable creative industries aren't just about individual creators but about nurturing traditions and knowledge across generations. When we devalue creative work to the point where it cannot sustain livelihoods, we risk losing the cultural diversity and artistic innovation that enriches society.

Chapter 4: Surveillance Capitalism: The Business Model of Data Extraction

At the heart of the digital economy lies a revolutionary business model that Harvard professor Shoshana Zuberman has termed "surveillance capitalism." This system transforms human experience into behavioral data that is analyzed, packaged, and sold to advertisers with unprecedented precision and scale. What distinguishes this from traditional advertising is both its comprehensiveness and its asymmetry—platforms know nearly everything about users while users understand little about what is being collected or how it's used. Google pioneered this model by tracking search queries, website visits, and eventually, through Android and other services, physical location, communications, and even health data. Facebook perfected it by convincing users to voluntarily document their identities, relationships, preferences, and daily activities. The value proposition to advertisers is simple: unprecedented targeting capabilities based on intimate knowledge of each user's psychology and behavior patterns. This surveillance extends far beyond what most users comprehend. Google's Eric Schmidt stated bluntly, "We don't need you to type at all. We know where you are. We know where you've been. We can more or less know what you're thinking about." When Gmail launched, the company initially refused to include a delete button, preferring to permanently preserve all communications for data mining. Even when users are not actively using these platforms, tracking technologies follow them across the web and into physical spaces through mobile devices. The economic value of this surveillance is staggering. In the first quarter of 2016, eighty-five cents of every new dollar spent on online advertising went to either Google or Facebook. This duopoly can command premium prices because they offer what traditional advertising cannot: microtargeting based on detailed psychological profiles. Facebook allows advertisers to target women between specific ages in precise zip codes who like country music and drink bourbon—a level of specificity previously unimaginable. The social costs of surveillance capitalism extend beyond privacy concerns. The attention economy it creates rewards content that maximizes "engagement"—often content that provokes outrage, fear, or tribal identification. This creates feedback loops that amplify divisive content, contributing to political polarization and undermining democratic discourse. Former Facebook executives have publicly acknowledged these harms, with one stating the platform "is ripping apart the social fabric." Perhaps most troubling is how this commercial surveillance infrastructure has merged with government surveillance. As Edward Snowden revealed, tech companies have cooperated extensively with intelligence agencies, giving the NSA access to user data through programs like PRISM. The line between private and state surveillance has blurred, creating what former NSA analyst Kevin Cahill called "the largest hack in human history—so far." The power imbalance inherent in surveillance capitalism represents a fundamental challenge to human autonomy and dignity. Users cannot meaningfully consent to surveillance they don't understand, conducted by algorithms they cannot access, for purposes that remain largely opaque. The result is what philosopher Shoshana Zuboff calls "instrumentarian power"—the ability to modify behavior at scale through prediction, nudging, and manipulation.

Chapter 5: Regulatory Failure: How Tech Giants Captured Washington

The extraordinary growth and market dominance of tech monopolies reflects not just business innovation but profound regulatory failure. Traditional antitrust enforcement, designed to prevent exactly this type of market concentration, has been systematically undermined through decades of libertarian influence on legal theory and regulatory practice. The intellectual foundation for this regulatory retreat was laid by Robert Bork's influential 1978 book "The Antitrust Paradox." Bork revolutionized antitrust thinking by arguing that the sole purpose of competition law should be "consumer welfare," narrowly defined as lower prices. This framework, adopted by courts and regulators since the Reagan administration, made it nearly impossible to challenge monopolies that offer free or low-cost services while extracting value in other ways—precisely the model of today's tech giants. Google exemplifies the strategy of regulatory capture. The company has built an unprecedented influence operation in Washington, spending more on lobbying than traditional powers like Boeing. More subtly, Google has placed former employees in key government positions across agencies responsible for overseeing the company. A 2016 investigation found 53 revolving-door moves between Google and the White House, 28 involving national security agencies, and 23 with the State Department. When the Federal Trade Commission staff recommended prosecuting Google for antitrust violations in 2012, the full commission overruled them—a decision many attribute to Google's political influence. Facebook's strategy has focused on leveraging its platform's reach to mobilize users against regulation. When threatened by legislation like the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), which would have held platforms more accountable for copyright infringement, Facebook and Google activated their user bases with misleading warnings about "censorship." The resulting flood of communications to Congress effectively killed the legislation. As former labor secretary Robert Reich observed, "My sense is that political power trumps any ideology such as consumer welfare economics." Amazon's approach has centered on leveraging its economic impact to extract concessions from state and local governments. The company's highly publicized search for a second headquarters exemplified this approach, pitting cities against each other in a competition to offer the most generous tax incentives and subsidies. Meanwhile, Amazon aggressively fought state efforts to collect sales taxes for years, giving it a significant pricing advantage over brick-and-mortar retailers. The regulatory challenges posed by tech monopolies extend beyond traditional antitrust concerns. Privacy regulation in the United States remains minimal compared to regimes like the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act shields platforms from liability for user-generated content, while the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's "safe harbor" provisions protect them from copyright infringement claims. These laws, written in the internet's infancy, have been weaponized by platforms to avoid responsibility for harms occurring on their services. The consequences of this regulatory failure extend beyond economic distortion to democracy itself. As political scientists Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page found in a comprehensive study, "The preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy," while economic elites and organized business interests wield substantial influence. The capture of regulatory apparatus by the regulated industries represents a fundamental challenge to democratic governance.

Chapter 6: Cultural Costs: The Devaluation of Art in the Digital Age

Beyond its economic impact, the digital revolution has profoundly transformed cultural values in ways that threaten artistic diversity, depth, and sustainability. As media becomes commodified for data extraction, the cultural experiences that shape our understanding of ourselves and our world have been fundamentally altered. The economics of attention in the digital age reward content that generates immediate engagement rather than lasting value. This has produced what media scholar Neil Postman predicted decades ago: a "trivial culture" drowning in information but starved for meaning. When success is measured in clicks, views, and shares, cultural works that require contemplation or challenge prevailing assumptions struggle to find an audience. Algorithms that optimize for "engagement" naturally promote content that provokes immediate emotional reactions—outrage, sentimentality, or titillation—rather than deeper reflection. For individual artists, this environment creates perverse incentives. Musicians feel pressure to release shorter songs optimized for playlist inclusion rather than artistic expression. Authors face the "pivot to video" phenomenon, where thoughtful long-form writing is abandoned for more immediately engaging formats. Filmmakers struggle to finance projects that don't fit established franchise formulas. The result is a growing homogeneity in commercial culture, where data-driven decision making reinforces existing patterns rather than encouraging innovation. This devaluation manifests in how cultural work is consumed. When all content is available instantly and often freely, each work becomes less valued in itself and more valued as part of an endless stream of entertainment options. The average YouTube video receives less than 150 views, while streaming music services pay artists fractions of a penny per play. This environment treats art as disposable rather than essential, undermining the social status of artists and cultural workers. Perhaps most concerning is how digital platforms have severed the connection between cultural consumption and cultural compensation. When billions of people enjoy music, films, and writing without any economic relationship to their creators, the social contract that previously sustained cultural production breaks down. Creative professions become untenable for all but the most commercially successful or independently wealthy, reducing cultural diversity and reinforcing existing privilege. The decline of traditional cultural gatekeepers—record labels, publishers, film studios—has not democratized culture as promised but rather shifted gatekeeping power to digital platforms with different priorities. Rather than investing in artist development or taking risks on innovative work, platforms optimize for predictability and scale. This shift has particularly impacted regional and niche cultural expressions that previously found support through dedicated cultural institutions. Digital culture also undermines the communal experience that traditionally gave art much of its power. When cultural consumption becomes individualized and algorithmic, we lose the shared references and experiences that build social cohesion. A music performance experienced through a smartphone screen while simultaneously checking email fundamentally differs from one experienced collectively in a physical space with undivided attention. This atomization contributes to broader social fragmentation and the erosion of common cultural touchstones.

Chapter 7: Resisting Techno-Determinism: Toward a Digital Renaissance

The concentrated power of tech monopolies is not inevitable but the result of specific policy choices, business strategies, and cultural assumptions. Rejecting technological determinism—the belief that current arrangements are the necessary outcome of technological development—opens space to imagine and create alternative digital futures that better serve human flourishing and democratic values. The path toward a more equitable digital economy begins with robust antitrust enforcement. The monopoly status of Google, Facebook, and Amazon enables their most harmful practices and stifles innovation. Breaking up these monopolies or regulating them as public utilities could create space for competitors with different business models. Historical precedents like the 1956 consent decree with AT&T, which required the company to license its patents to all comers at reasonable rates, demonstrate how monopoly power can be channeled toward broader public benefit. Privacy legislation represents another essential reform. The European Union's General Data Protection Regulation offers a model for comprehensive privacy protection, including meaningful consent requirements, data portability, and the right to be forgotten. Such frameworks limit surveillance capitalism by giving individuals greater control over their personal information and restricting how companies monetize user data. Rather than treating privacy as an individual responsibility, these approaches recognize it as a structural issue requiring collective action. Copyright reform must address the fundamental imbalance in bargaining power between creators and platforms. The "safe harbor" provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act have enabled platforms to profit from unauthorized content while placing the burden of enforcement on individual creators. A "take down, stay down" approach would require platforms to prevent reappearance of content already identified as infringing, rather than engaging in the current whack-a-mole system that exhausts creators' resources. Beyond policy reforms, alternative business models offer promising paths forward. Platform cooperatives—digital platforms owned and governed by their users rather than outside investors—demonstrate that different ownership structures can deliver similar services while distributing benefits more equitably. Artist-owned distribution platforms like Bandcamp and Magnum Photos show how creators can maintain control over their work while reaching audiences. These models suggest a digital economy built on cooperation rather than extraction is possible. Public media represents another vital counterweight to commercial platform dominance. Rather than competing directly with tech giants, public service media can prioritize quality, diversity, and democratic values over engagement metrics and advertising revenue. Fully funding public media systems and expanding their digital presence would create space for cultural expression outside market constraints. Most fundamentally, resisting techno-determinism requires reclaiming human agency in technological development. Technology itself is neither good nor bad, but it is never neutral—it always embodies particular values and serves particular interests. By democratizing decisions about technological design and deployment, we can create digital systems that reflect broader human values beyond profit maximization and efficiency. The digital renaissance this approach could unleash would not reject technology but reclaim it for human purposes. It would recognize that meaningful artistic expression, fair compensation for creative work, privacy, and democratic governance are not obstacles to progress but essential components of genuine innovation that serves human flourishing.

Summary

The transformation of our digital landscape from a decentralized, democratic vision to one dominated by surveillance-based monopolies represents one of the most significant power shifts in modern history. Through strategic application of libertarian ideology, regulatory capture, and the commodification of creative work, companies like Google, Facebook, and Amazon have accumulated unprecedented control over our information ecosystem, economic opportunities, and cultural expression. The future, however, is not predetermined by technology but by the choices we make collectively about how technology should be governed and whose interests it should serve. By challenging the inevitability of current arrangements and implementing thoughtful reforms—from antitrust enforcement to privacy protection to support for public alternatives—we can reclaim the original promise of the internet as a tool for human empowerment rather than exploitation. This requires rejecting both uncritical techno-utopianism and reactionary technophobia in favor of a pragmatic approach that harnesses technological innovation for genuine human flourishing and democratic values.

About Author

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Jonathan Taplin

Jonathan Taplin BioJonathan Taplin’s extraordinary journey has put him at the crest of every major cultural wave in the past half century: he was tour manager for Bob Dylan and the Band in the ’60s, producer of The Concert For Bangladesh and major films in the ’70s for Martin Scorsese, Wim Wenders and Gus Van Sant, an executive at Merrill Lynch’s Media Mergers and Acquisition Group in the ’80s, creator of the Internet’s first video-on-demand service in the ’90s, and a cultural critic and author writing about technology in the new millennium. He is the author of Move Fast and Break Things: How Facebook, Google and Amazon Cornered Culture and Undermined Democracy, The Magic Years: Scenes From a Rock and Roll Life and the forthcoming The End of Reality: How 4 Billionaires Are Selling a Fantasy Future of the Metaverse, Mars and Crypto. His commentary has appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post, Time Magazine, The Huffington Post, The Guardian, Medium, The Washington Monthly and the Wall Street Journal. He is the Director Emeritus of the Annenberg Innovation Lab at the University of Southern California and the Chairman of the Americana Music Foundation.

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