Surveillance capitalists parallel Gilded Age industrialists in exploiting law to escape constraints

Evidence

The Gilded Age millionaires, like today’s surveillance capitalists, stood on the frontier of a vast discontinuity in the means of production with nothing but blank territory in which to invent a new industrial capitalism free from constraints on the use of labor, the nature of working conditions, the extent of environmental destruction, the sourcing of raw materials, or even the quality of their own products. And like their twenty-first-century counterparts, they did not hesitate to exploit the very law that they despised, flying the banner of “private property” and “freedom of contract,” much as surveillance capitalists march under the flag of freedom of speech as the justification for unobstructed technological “progress,” a topic to which we shall return. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 341

Categorization

• XREF: Connects directly to the reader’s broader interest in surveillance capitalism as a new form of capitalism, and to historical treatment of the Gilded Age elsewhere in their knowledge base. — connects to: Digital growth coincided with inequality levels unseen since the Gilded Age — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 133; US law’s surveillance-capitalist allegiance may not be permanent — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 190; Surveillance capitalism’s lawlessness echoes the Gilded Age robber barons — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 339 (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Surveillance capitalism advanced through corporate control, lawless space, and cultural fortification against scrutiny #corroborates (0.82) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 321
• Surveillance capitalism conquered through unilateral declarations, not permission seeking #corroborates (0.80) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 564
• Surveillance capitalism deliberately exploits its historical conditions rather than arising accidentally #expands (0.75) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 65