The Cloud Cartel Has Created a Global Rentier Economy

Who are the rulers of modern capitalism? Cecilia Rikap’s answer couldn’t be clearer or more precise: Amazon, Google, and Microsoft are the rulers. In her book , an exhaustive and highly original examination of how just three companies dominate “global knowledge production,” Rikap finds that almost all other firms — tech companies or not, American or not — are caught in their web, forced to pay “intellectual rents” to the “cloud hegemons” to be able to compete in the modern digital economy.The…