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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.
在阳光港、伯恩维尔或萨尔泰尔漫步，这些由开明企业家开发的英国模范城镇的构造都能体现出奠基人对工人福祉的真正关切，即使有时候过于父权主义。其他公司城镇，如大萧条时期小说中所描绘的那样，纯粹是剥削性的，只支付微薄的工资，而这些工资只能在昂贵的公司商店消费。
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.
当我阅读菲利普•斯塔布(Philipp Staab)的《数字资本主义中的市场与权力》(Markets and Power in Digital Capitalism)时，我脑海中浮现出这个比较。这本书探讨了当今数字资本主义经济的独特之处，着重于科技巨头的广泛影响力和权力，并在历史中寻找合适的比较对象。然而，斯塔布并没有将目光投向19世纪的杰出人物——利弗(Lever)兄弟、卡德伯里(Cadbury)家族或者磨坊巨头泰特斯•索尔特(Titus Salt)——他们开发了那些模范城镇。相反，这位柏林洪堡大学(Humboldt University)的社会学教授提供了一个不同的、更早的类比，即帝国时代的殖民企业，比如东印度公司(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.
科技巨头在政府的祝福下运作着企业垄断，通过“专有市场”进行“私有化的重商主义”。这种比较暗示数字资本主义经济本质上是剥削性的。但这本书更加细致，因此也更有趣：它不仅仅是又一个反资本主义的咆哮。
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.
正如斯塔布承认、证据表明的那样，数字技术的数十亿用户非常重视他们获得的（通常是免费的）服务。关于科技巨头的负面影响，包括它们的巨大权力，很少有人会有异议，但是一些批评者完全忽视了其中的积极方面，这削弱了他们的可信度。科技巨头的“围墙花园”——例如谷歌(Google)或苹果(Apple)等公司提供的操作系统、互联网搜索、电子邮件、支付服务、地图等——既像公司城镇，又像东印度公司，它们提供了受人们青睐的便利设施，同时行使着控制。苹果锁住消费者，排斥其他供应商，这是美国司法部(DoJ)对这家科技巨头提起反垄断诉讼的核心问题。
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.”
鉴于这种好坏参半的情况，斯塔布提出了几个有趣的观察。其中一个主要的武器是竞争政策，旨在限制或削弱这些公司的市场力量。但正如斯塔布所说，这并不是普通市场：“它们本质上不是在市场中经营的生产者，而是让生产者经营的市场。”
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.
换句话说，数字平台已经成为许多经济生产者创新和竞争的场域。科技巨头已经扩大了他们的业务范围，从最初的供应产品——如亚马逊(Amazon)的图书销售，苹果的计算机制造等——到提供越来越多的服务。他们越来越多地建设自己的数据中心和海底电缆基础设施。他们的雄心是让市场的双方——生产者和消费者——在花园墙内找到他们作为经济主体可能需要的一切信息、支付手段和满足感。个人选择的科技巨头可以向他们提供收入，同时填满他们的休闲和消费时间——并使他们越来越难离开。
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，这种全面的方式也将数字经济的创新和创业潜力带入了围墙花园，因为初创企业实现增长的唯一方式就是被科技巨头收购。一个不太被注意的影响是，竞争政策实际上可能会破坏这种动态，因为美国、欧盟和英国的当局最近都阻止了以前可能会被默许的收购。
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.
一个例子是，亚马逊最近决定放弃对Roomba吸尘器制造商iRobot的收购，因为很可能会被欧盟和美国否决。传统的竞争思维不会认为家用清洁机器人与线上零售和云计算处于同一市场。新型竞争政策认为这使得数字公司能够建立庞大的市场力量，并倾向于阻止此类收购。如果扩大实施，这种更严格的执法可能会终结初创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.
书中的其他概念似乎不太有用。特别是，斯塔布认为经济“大量过剩”、需求已经饱和，因此平台需要通过让用户很难切换平台来获利。他似乎相信，在1970年代人们就已经拥有了他们所需的一切，但我对那个十年的记忆并非如此。事实上，1970年代初“销售艰难”更容易用宏观经济事件来解释，而不是用此前资本主义体系累积的衰老期来解释。尽管如此，虽然这本书主要与其他批判资本主义的人进行对话，但它没有使用术语，论证充分，发人深省。
Markets and Power in Digital Capitalism By Philipp Staab Manchester University Press, £20, 184 pages
《数字资本主义中的市场与权力》菲利普•斯塔布著，曼彻斯特大学出版社(Manchester University Press)，20英镑，184页
Diane Coyle is professor of public policy at the University of Cambridge
黛安娜•科伊尔(Diane Coyle)是剑桥大学(University of Cambridge)公共政策教授
