Oligopoly

Oligopoly

An oligopoly is a market dominated with a small number of large groups.

Corruption

Various laws exist, with varying degrees of effectiveness, to try to prevent oligopolous markets form developing, and to stem the inherent potential for corrupt business practices within such markets.

Control

Oligopolies are almost as easy to control as monopolies, and offer a degree of diversity and consumer choice. This combination allows for relatively easy clandestine control. In many businesses, dominance of the financial system is sufficient, if technology is subject to rapid change, the legal system may be at least as important. As deep state groups generally have tight control over both systems, most oligopolies can be easily subverted as required, for example, by suppressing innovation which could threaten the established business models/tactics of social control.

Information media

In the 20th century the old media of newspapers and television dominated the information landscape. Particularly at the start of the century, technological factors imposed large barriers to entry, limiting the number of information providers. With the advent of computers, publishing and broadacsting required less investment, so a multiplicity of providers became possible.

Consolidation of Corporate media

Full article: Corporate media/consolidation

In the 1990s, laws to restrict media ownership were relaxed by a neoconservative project to promote a few, huge corporations. As a result, corporate media experienced a consolidation. This oligopolous situation was a sharp contrast with the emerging World Wide Web, initially a preserve not of big business but of academics and independent computer enthusiasts.

Search engines

Full article: Search engine

The supranational deep state has long had a goal of universal surveillance, but this does not give control of what information is provided. A separate project is to try to prevent the rise of independent, especially decentralised, search engines. Now most people's primary means of access to information, a lot of effort is devoted to oligopoly narrowing this choice.

Social media

Full article: Social media

Facebook emerged at Harvard University in 2004, just as DARPA was closing its LifeLog project, which had very similar aims. As of 2019, a small number of companies with a large userbase (Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, Reddit etc.) still dominated social media, but decentralised and/or independent alternatives were starting to gain in popularity after a sharp rise in censorship.

 

Related Quotations

Page	Quote	Author	Date
Big Tech	“So one of the things that these five companies have done kind of masterfully is create these platforms that startups have to use to get to customers. So they all own these cloud-storage services. So Amazon is an example. If you want to store your media online - so, for example, all the movies that you watch on Netflix are actually stored on Amazon servers - so every time you use Netflix, Netflix is kind of paying Amazon for that kind of storage. Yeah. It's surprising, first of all, because they're such different companies. You wouldn't really know - you wouldn't really think that they would have that kind of connection. And then they're also competitors. Netflix makes original TV shows and so does Amazon. And so, you know, in this way, Netflix has this dependence on one of its competitors. There are lots of different examples of this though. There - you know, all app makers have to put their apps in the Apple app store or the Google app store. And when they sell in those apps, 30 percent of that money goes to Apple or Google. They all have to advertise on Facebook or Google to get customers because that's become the way to advertise on digital platforms. And so any new app - Uber, Airbnb, Netflix, all the other sort of smaller companies online - have to go through these five to get to their customers. And what ends up happening is that other companies succeed, but always these five benefit off of that success.”	Farhad Manjoo	26 October 2017
George Carlin	“The things that matter in this country have been reduced in choice, there are two political parties, there are a handful insurance companies, there are six or seven information centers...but if you want a bagel there are 23 flavors. Because you have the illusion of choice!”	George Carlin
Platformization	“So one of the things that these five companies have done kind of masterfully is create these platforms that startups have to use to get to customers. So they all own these cloud-storage services. So Amazon is an example. If you want to store your media online - so, for example, all the movies that you watch on Netflix are actually stored on Amazon servers - so every time you use Netflix, Netflix is kind of paying Amazon for that kind of storage. Yeah. It's surprising, first of all, because they're such different companies. You wouldn't really know - you wouldn't really think that they would have that kind of connection. And then they're also competitors. Netflix makes original TV shows and so does Amazon. And so, you know, in this way, Netflix has this dependence on one of its competitors. There are lots of different examples of this though. There - you know, all app makers have to put their apps in the Apple app store or the Google app store. And when they sell in those apps, 30 percent of that money goes to Apple or Google. They all have to advertise on Facebook or Google to get customers because that's become the way to advertise on digital platforms. And so any new app - Uber, Airbnb, Netflix, all the other sort of smaller companies online - have to go through these five to get to their customers. And what ends up happening is that other companies succeed, but always these five benefit off of that success.”	Farhad Manjoo	26 October 2017

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