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Wander around Port Sunlight, Bournville, or Saltaire, and the genuine concern of their founders for the wellbeing of the workers is manifest in the fabric of these British model towns developed by enlightened entrepreneurs, even if it is at times oppressively paternalistic. Other company towns, like those depicted in Depression-era novels, were simply exploitative, paying workers meagre amounts in company money that could only be spent at costly company stores.
在陽光港、伯恩維爾或薩爾泰爾漫步，這些由開明企業家開發的英國模範城鎮的構造都能體現出奠基人對工人福祉的真正關切，即使有時候過於父權主義。其他公司城鎮，如大蕭條時期小說中所描繪的那樣，純粹是剝削性的，只支付微薄的工資，而這些工資只能在昂貴的公司商店消費。
This was the comparison that came to my mind when reading Markets and Power in Digital Capitalism by Philipp Staab. The book explores what is distinctive about today’s digital capitalist economies, focusing on the extensive reach and power of the Big Tech companies, and looks back in time to find apt comparisons. Yet, rather than look to the 19th century luminaries — the Lever brothers, the Cadbury family or the mill baron Titus Salt — who developed those model towns, Staab, professor of sociology at Berlin’s Humboldt University, offers a different, earlier parallel, namely the colonising businesses of the age of empire, such as the East India Company.
當我閱讀菲利普•斯塔布(Philipp Staab)的《數字資本主義中的市場與權力》(Markets and Power in Digital Capitalism)時，我腦海中浮現出這個比較。這本書探討了當今數字資本主義經濟的獨特之處，着重於科技巨擘的廣泛影響力和權力，並在歷史中尋找合適的比較對象。然而，斯塔布並沒有將目光投向19世紀的傑出人物——利弗(Lever)兄弟、卡德伯裏(Cadbury)家族或者磨坊巨擘泰特斯•索爾特(Titus Salt)——他們開發了那些模範城鎮。相反，這位柏林洪堡大學(Humboldt University)的社會學教授提供了一個不同的、更早的類比，即帝國時代的殖民企業，比如東印度公司(East India Company)。
Big Tech firms operate a corporate monopoly with government blessing, a “privatised mercantilism” operating through “proprietary markets”. This comparison suggests the digital capitalist economy is inherently exploitative. But the book is more nuanced — and therefore more interesting: it is not just another anti-capitalist rant.
科技巨擘在政府的祝福下運作著企業壟斷，透過「專有市場」進行「私有化的重商主義」。這種比較暗示數字資本主義經濟本質上是剝削性的。但這本書更加細緻，因此也更有趣：它不僅僅是又一個反資本主義的咆哮。
For, as Staab admits, and as the evidence indicates, the billions of users of digital technologies greatly value the (often free) services they get. Few people would disagree about the negative aspects of Big Tech, including their immense power, but it undermines the credibility of some of the critics to ignore the positive aspects entirely. The combination of valued amenities with the exercise of control is what makes Big Tech’s walled gardens — such as the provision by the likes of Google or Apple of a world of operating systems, internet search, email, payment services, maps and so on — as reminiscent of company towns as of the East India Company. Apple’s locking in consumers and locking out other providers is at the heart of the new Department of Justice anti-trust case against the tech giant.
正如斯塔布承認、證據表明的那樣，數字技術的數十億用戶非常重視他們獲得的（通常是免費的）服務。關於科技巨擘的負面影響，包括它們的巨大權力，很少有人會有異議，但是一些批評者完全忽視了其中的積極方面，這削弱了他們的可信度。科技巨擘的「圍牆花園」——例如谷歌(Google)或蘋果(Apple)等公司提供的操作系統、網路搜尋、電子郵件、支付服務、地圖等——既像公司城鎮，又像東印度公司，它們提供了受人們青睞的便利設施，同時行使著控制。蘋果鎖住消費者，排斥其他供應商，這是美國司法部(DoJ)對這家科技巨擘提起反壟斷訴訟的核心問題。
Given this mix of good and bad, Staab makes several interesting observations. One of the main weapons being deployed against Big Tech is competition policy, intended to limit or roll back their market power. But as Staab says, these are not like normal markets: “They are not primarily producers operating in markets but markets in which producers operate.”
鑑於這種好壞參半的情況，斯塔布提出了幾個有趣的觀察。其中一個主要的武器是競爭政策，旨在限制或削弱這些公司的市場力量。但正如斯塔布所說，這並不是普通市場：「它們本質上不是在市場中經營的生產者，而是讓生產者經營的市場。」
In other words, the digital platforms have become the field on which many producers in the economy themselves innovate and compete. Big Tech firms have expanded their areas of operation from an initial offer (bookselling for Amazon, making computers for Apple, and so on) to provide an ever-increasing range of services. They are increasingly building their own infrastructure of data centres and undersea cables. Their ambition is that both sides of the market, producers and consumers, find everything they might need as an economic agent within the walls — the information, the means of payment, the fulfilment. The individual’s chosen Big Tech can provide their income, while filling their leisure and consumption time too — and making it ever-harder to leave.
換句話說，數字平臺已經成爲許多經濟生產者創新和競爭的場域。科技巨擘已經擴大了他們的業務範圍，從最初的供應產品——如亞馬遜(Amazon)的圖書銷售，蘋果的電腦製造等——到提供越來越多的服務。他們越來越多地建設自己的數據中心和海底電纜基礎設施。他們的雄心是讓市場的雙方——生產者和消費者——在花園牆內找到他們作爲經濟主體可能需要的一切資訊、支付手段和滿足感。個人選擇的科技巨擘可以向他們提供收入，同時填滿他們的休閒和消費時間——並使他們越來越難離開。
As Staab notes, this all-embracing approach has also brought the digital economy’s potential for innovation and entrepreneurship inside the walled gardens as the only way a start-up can grow is by being acquired by Big Tech. One little-noticed implication is that competition policy might in fact torpedo this dynamic, as the US, EU and UK authorities have all recently prevented acquisitions that might previously have been nodded through.
正如斯塔布所指出的，這種全面的方式也將數字經濟的創新和創業潛力帶入了圍牆花園，因爲新創企業實現成長的唯一方式就是被科技巨擘收購。一個不太被注意的影響是，競爭政策實際上可能會破壞這種動態，因爲美國、歐盟和英國的當局最近都阻止了以前可能會被默許的收購。
An example is Amazon’s recent decision to drop its bid for iRobot, maker of the Roomba vacuum cleaner, in the face of likely EU and US vetoes. Old-style competition thinking would not have seen domestic cleaning robots as being in the same market as online retail and cloud computing. New-style competition policy sees that this has allowed digital companies to build massive market power and aims to stop such acquisitions. If extended, this tougher enforcement could end the get-rich quick exit strategy of the start-ups.
一個例子是，亞馬遜最近決定放棄對Roomba吸塵器製造商iRobot的收購，因爲很可能會被歐盟和美國否決。傳統的競爭思維不會認爲家用清潔機器人與線上零售和雲端計算處於同一市場。新型競爭政策認爲這使得數字公司能夠建立龐大的市場力量，並傾向於阻止此類收購。如果擴大實施，這種更嚴格的執法可能會終結新創公司的快速致富退出策略。
Other concepts in the book seem less useful. In particular, Staab argues that the economy is characterised by “superabundance” and saturated demand, so that the platforms need to profit by making it too hard for users to switch. He seems to believe everybody had everything they could need by the 1970s, which is not how I remember that decade. The fact that “sales suffered” in the early 1970s is surely more easily explained by macroeconomic events than the senescence of the previous capitalist system of accumulation. Still, for all that the book is mainly in conversation with other critics of capitalism, it is jargon-free, well-argued, and thought-provoking.
書中的其他概念似乎不太有用。特別是，斯塔布認爲經濟「大量過剩」、需求已經飽和，因此平臺需要透過讓用戶很難切換平臺來獲利。他似乎相信，在1970年代人們就已經擁有了他們所需的一切，但我對那個十年的記憶並非如此。事實上，1970年代初「銷售艱難」更容易用宏觀經濟事件來解釋，而不是用先前資本主義體系累積的衰老期來解釋。儘管如此，雖然這本書主要與其他批判資本主義的人進行對話，但它沒有使用術語，論證充分，發人深省。
Markets and Power in Digital Capitalism By Philipp Staab Manchester University Press, £20, 184 pages
《數字資本主義中的市場與權力》菲利普•斯塔布著，曼徹斯特大學出版社(Manchester University Press)，20英鎊，184頁
Diane Coyle is professor of public policy at the University of Cambridge
黛安娜•科伊爾(Diane Coyle)是劍橋大學(University of Cambridge)公共政策教授
