Platforms curtail freedoms even pure monopolies preserve, like buyer association

Evidence

This is no market town. It is not even some form of hyper-capitalist digital market. Even the ugliest of markets are meeting places where people can interact and exchange information reasonably freely. In fact, it’s even worse than a totally monopolised market – there, at least, the buyers can talk to each other, form associations, perhaps organise a consumer boycott to force the monopolist to reduce a price or to improve a quality. Not so in Jeff’s realm, where everything and everyone is intermediated not by the disinterested invisible hand of the market but by an algorithm that works for Jeff’s bottom line and dances exclusively to his tune. — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 344

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that a platform is categorically worse than a totally monopolised market — because it suppresses the residual consumer freedoms even monopoly preserves — reframes standard antitrust critique and resists easy summary.
• SEED: Possible essay angle: why antitrust responses to platforms fail — they treat platforms as monopolies when the harm is not concentration but the elimination of market-like space itself.
• XREF: connects to: Platform mediation is worse than monopoly because it blocks buyer coordination entirely — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 344

Broader Connections

• Platform mediation is worse than monopoly because it blocks buyer coordination entirely #corroborates (0.92) — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 344