Monopoly practices protect data supply routes rather than raising prices

Evidence

Traditionally, monopolies on goods and services disfigure markets by unfairly eliminating competition in order to raise prices at will. Under surveillance capitalism, however, many of the practices defined as monopolistic actually function as means of cornering user-derived raw-material supplies. There is no monetary price for the user to pay, only an opportunity for the company to extract data. Cornering practices are not designed to protect product niches but rather to protect critical supply routes for the unregulated commodity that is behavioral surplus. In another time, rogue market actors might corner markets in copper or magnesium, but in our time it is behavioral surplus. The corporation unfairly impedes competitors in Search in order to protect the dominance of its most important supply route, not primarily to fix prices. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 419

Categorization

• DEFINE: Reinterprets monopoly economics by relabeling anticompetitive practices as ‘cornering’ raw-material supplies—an essential reframing for understanding big tech competition.
• XREF: Echoes Milgrom’s analysis of law-merchant institutions and Cornan’s cartel monitoring—predation reframed through a different economic lens. — connects to: Platform monopolies are also monopsonies over the data users produce — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 174; Platform competition shifts from price to data as the competitive criterion — Nick Srnicek, Platform Capitalism, 81; Falling manufacturing profits drove capitalism toward data extraction via platform monopolies — Nick Srnicek, Platform Capitalism, 17 (+3 more)
• ADDENDUM: Provides a clear economic mechanism framing for why trees-as-infrastructure-style thinking (assets viewed as supply routes rather than goods) applies—parallel analytical move to reclassifying an apparent product as infra.

Broader Connections

• Platform competition shifts from price to data as the competitive criterion #expands (0.85) — Nick Srnicek, Platform Capitalism, 81
• Antitrust regulators misjudged that data flows would remain separate #expands (0.82) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 329
• Market monopolizability depends on the concentration of supply channels #exemplifies (0.80)
• Falling manufacturing profits drove capitalism toward data extraction via platform monopolies #expands (0.78) — Nick Srnicek, Platform Capitalism, 17