Disenshittification

Having just read and critiqued Cory Doctorow’s Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It (2025), an epistemic trap presented itself. It became apparent that some Libertarian readers would fall into the snare of instinctively defending digital and electronic industrialists from governmental intervention on the grounds that government should exert no influence over someone’s disposal or use of his property. Stated differently, Libertarians may reflexively defend the “free market,” without grasping that the market they rush to defend is itself a governmentally created behemoth.

The terms “instinctively” and “reflexively” are intentional. This response by many Libertarians is carefully conditioned from years of the consumer welfare theory’s inculcation in our constituency. This is the proposition that markets always evolve towards efficiency. By this theory, market consolidation and cartelization merely achieve higher efficiencies from which consumers benefit. Libertarians already incline to oppose governmental market interventions since government generally has no legitimate role in restricting how people do business with one another, yet the consumer welfare theory reinforces that inclination by assuring Libertarians that their laissez faire approach behooves all market participants.

The problem in this instance is that the consumer welfare theory disintegrates in the case of the modern digital/electronic market (this article uses the term “digital” to encompass both, as will be explained below). This is a market undeniably unique in all human history, with a pervasiveness unrivaled by any other current industry. What has been true in the past, and what may prove correct in other industries, does not align against the reality of what the digital industry has become.

That said, there is ample opportunity for Libertarians to espouse practical remedies for the digital market, remedies more properly grounded in capitalism. In some respects, this may be a chance to outshine ideological competitors whose ossified statist solutions have only tightened the digital market’s stranglehold on society.

Lay of the Land

Upfront our nomenclature should be calibrated. The term “digital market” encompasses all software whether operating within wired networks, on the internet, through apps and in mobile (wireless/cellular) networks, or embedded within mobile and electronic devices of any type. For this reason, the digital market includes those consumer electronics running on proprietary software or coding.

As recommended in my critique of Enshittification, one should first read Cory Doctorow’s book for a fuller grasp of the modern digital market. The work thoroughly disabuses the lay observer of any notion that this market’s major downsides are accidental. The critique’s crux was that the progressivist author misidentifies enshittification’s cause as capitalism when in fact it is more a product of corporatism, an arrangement whereby private corporations in league with government resort to protectionism and regulations to rig the market against competition.

Two salient examples of the digital market – to whose industrialists we refer by the catchall of Big Tech – operating in corporatist league with government are furnished by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) § 1201 and the Communications Decency Act § 230. As referenced in my critique of Enshittification, the DMCA § 1201 was promulgated on the worthy pretext of preventing reverse engineering whereby hackers could decode digital and electronic intellectual property (IP) to produce their own counterfeits, Temu™-style. What the DMCA wound up doing in fact was imposing a lock on digital and electronic IP. This has allowed some Big Tech firms remotely to change the functionalities of their apps and devices (hereinafter “products”) after acquisition. Big Tech euphemizes this practice as “updating” its Terms & Conditions. The result is a product which functions differently to what the firm had induced the customer reasonably to expect at acquisition.

The statute makes it a felony for the customer to access a product’s coding, much less modify it, such as to restore a functionality which the manufacturer artificially changed or disabled. Doctorow cites a poignant instance of the DMCA § 1201’s consequences when the company Second Sight went bankrupt in 2022. Second Sight had manufactured optical devices implanted into customers’ retinas which allowed the customers to see despite natural blindness. Rather than surrender its IP to modification so that a successor company (if not the customer himself) could utilize the surgically implanted hardware, Second Sight simply dispatched a code to these smart devices which rendered them permanently useless (what the industry calls “bricking”). Customers – some in hazardous public places -- were thus left completely sightless with no prior notice!

The Communications Decency Act § 230 is the statute which immunizes online platforms against liability for hosting speech which may prove harmful. This legislation exempted a host platform from harmful speech’s adverse consequences, such as a user who publishes defamation about another on the host platform’s chat-board. Whereas the law was intended as a shield to encourage free speech, Big Tech platforms like Facebook, X (formerly Twitter) and YouTube now wield Section 230 as a cudgel proactively to censor speech which goes against the public interest, in the platforms’ unappealable judgment. Big Tech platforms frequently resorted to such censorship during the C0vidian regime, citing concerns about “disinformation” in regards to healthcare (some of the disseminators’ claims were later proved correct).

In some instances, the censorship has taken the form of cancelling user accounts – both personal and corporate – without prior notice nor subsequent explanation, and disregarding any user equity invested in such accounts, like contact lists, account balances and digital merchandise (such as an account’s streamable content). Another duplicitous iteration of such cancellations is shadow-banning, whereby a social media platform leads a user to believe that his contacts can view his publications on the platform, when in truth the platform filters out his speech from them… and all based on the platform’s unfounded claim to represent the “public interest.”

In case anyone is left in doubt about whether the digital market is a free, capitalist market, imagine the following scenarios. You purchase a motorized bassinet for your first-born baby. It gently rocks the baby to sleep whilst playing white noise like sounds from the womb. Its smart software detects your baby’s growth by its gain in weight. When the bassinet detects a much lighter load, it reasons that you have had a second baby. Now the bassinet requires you to pay an annual subscription of $288 to “unlock” the white noise.

Yes, you read that right. The manufacturer’s software post-market disables a built-in feature to charge you repeatedly for it. Normally the Universal Commercial Code (UCC) and contractual law allow the consumer to sue and recover from such perfidy, but since this involves “software,” the DCMA prevents interference in this theft (Doctorow recounts this case about Happiest Baby’s SNOO bassinet, each unit of which cost $1,695).

In another scenario, you have an account on one of Big Tech’s social media platforms. A topic which particularly animates you (just to pick something innocuous) is replacing traditional lawns with moss. You yearn to tell others about this replacement’s benefits, such as less maintenance, more quietude (from no mowing), fewer bugs, etc. You begin to post exhortations to your connected neighbors about moss over traditional lawns. No user flags your speech as offensive or disruptive, but the platform anticipates that your speech may harm the local landscaping economy, so the platform shadow-bans you. It lets you post whatever you want, though surreptitiously it prevents others from reading your posts. You even pay the platform for an advertising boost to spread your message further. The platform happily accepts your money… yet the platform ensures that virtually no one sees your message.

Were this platform any other entity – like a billboard advertiser – you may have a civil case for contractual repudiation or even a criminal one for Theft of Services. Yet the Communications Decency Act § 230 allows the platform tenuously to cite “public interest” and avoid repercussions.

All this demonstrates that the digital market as it currently exists is anything but free. Government has been co-opted as enforcer of a racket against consumers and this trend is steadily worsening.

Obviously the digital market has also benefitted consumers considerably compared to previous mediums of commerce and communication, but that only makes the downsides all the more disappointing. There is plenty of money to be made in the digital market by delivering fairly and ethically the products and services which consumers desire, such that there is no need for Big Tech to ravage our wallets and silence our speech.

Inculcation

Cory Doctorow blames the consumer welfare theory for the digital market’s enshittification. Pro-business interests over the years have propagated this approach in legislators and regulators, such that government’s response to corporate trusts has been largely blunted as markets consolidate and corporations steadily absorb weaker firms to become dominant cartels.

There is some truth to Doctorow’s claim, but the consumer welfare theory’s inculcation in government is not wholly responsible for this industrial trend. Markets are now more globalized than they have ever been, which requires massive concentrations of capital to compete effectively. Survivalism is driving much of the consolidation currently witnessed in industry.

That said, we Libertarians have often been vocal fanboys for the consumer welfare theory. This stems from our ideological opposition to governmental interference in voluntary exchanges, but also thanks to the Mises Institute’s scholarship, on which many Libertarians have relied, myself included. Drs. Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard, on whose scholarship the Institute is based, imprecated against governmental meddling in business and viewed industrial consolidations as conducive to greater market efficiency, which corroborates the consumer welfare theory.

Dr. Thomas DiLorenzo, an inveterate associate and former president of the Mises Institute, surveyed the economic scholarship on antitrust cases. One of the rationalizations behind antitrust legislation was a practice called “predatory pricing.” Trustbusters in Congress worried that a powerful firm could lower its prices below cost in order to force competitors to fold, after which it would raise prices in the absence of competition. Dr. DiLorenzo’s survey found “no evidence of any monopoly having been established by predatory pricing between 1890 and 1970.”

Yet Dr. DiLorenzo must not have heard about Diapers.com. In 2009 this startup was thriving in its niche, which came to Amazon’s attention. Amazon saw great profit potential in the sale of diapers, so it offered to buy the company. The New Jersey-based company, called Quidsi, politely declined, so Amazon tapped its own credit line to borrow $200 million, which it used to offer diapers well below cost in direct competition with Diapers.com. Quidsi’s losses were precipitous, such that its skittish investors urged Quidsi to consider selling. Quidsi pitched its sale to Walmart, but Amazon sweetened the deal, and Diapers.com folded. Immediately afterwards, Amazon raised diapers’ prices to levels above what Diapers.com had charged.

Through Misesian scholarship’s perspective, Amazon absorbed diapers’ expense in order to offer them temporarily below cost to consumers, only afterwards to revert prices permanently to profitable levels. This means that consumers in the market for diapers circa 2009 may have thanked Amazon for this indulgence… but everyone afterwards was harmed by having less competition in this market.

Thankfully someone in the market for diapers (typically parents) is only in it for 2-5 years. This may be extended if the person has multiple children, but it is a parenthesized time in a consumer’s life. In contrast, participation in the digital market is lifelong; smartphones, smart television, smart boards at school and the office, tablets, onboard navigation in automobiles, e-mail, automated home security, cardnets at checkout, smart thermostats, geothermal, video games, etc. Unless you are Amish, you consume and/or interact with the digital market sometime somewhere in your life. Not only will that never change, but it will increase in the near future, which raises apprehension about Big Tech’s handful of corporations’ unchecked influence over all humanity.

As a general principle, von Mises and Rothbard were correct that undisturbed markets tend towards equilibrium and efficiency. By contrast, Doctorow laments the consolidation which has occurred in optometry, such that EssilorLuxottica is the sole firm standing after having merged with or absorbed competitors like Armani Exchange, Brooks Brothers and Bulgari, to name a few recognizable brands. EssilorLuxottica now stands as the largest manufacturer and retailer of eyeglasses and corrective lenses, for which it has raised prices by 1000% over the last decade. Whilst that is unfortunate, it is difficult to imagine that this industry’s barrier to entry is insurmountable for a new firm committed to designing and locally distributing unpatented lenses and frames, maybe from new polymers.

This same situation, however, does not apply to Big Tech. Big Tech circa 2026 is a behemoth quite unlike anything which has existed to date, a statement made in full awareness of the hyperbolic overtones. History has seen its share of capital concentrations, but Big Tech is much more than mere capital. Big Tech enjoys a pervasiveness, and thereby an influence, beyond anything which could ever have been exercised by the Rothschilds, the Medicis, Mansa Musa or Cecil Rhodes.

The Multi-Headed Hydra Poised to Byte

A fuller grasp of the modern digital market requires clarification about Big Tech’s scale and scope, so here is some quantification and qualification. In terms of scale, Big Tech is unfathomably vast. Though most of Big Tech is headquartered in Silicon Valley, Big Tech’s conglomerates are global, with assets and personnel distributed around the world.

Capitalization is often the easiest measure of size, so here are the figures as of 2026. The corporation Nvidia leads the pack with capitalization reported at $4.6 trillion. Google’s parent company Alphabet reports $3.89 trillion, which Apple closely follows at $3.81 trillion. Finally, Microsoft reports $2.85 trillion, and Facebook’s company, Meta, $1.54 trillion. This limited sample alone represents nearly $17 trillion in capitalization, which is half the USA’s gross domestic product as of this year. This capitalization is a daunting amount of influence to exert in markets and government.

Capitalization is only one dimension of Big Tech’s vastness, however. Another important metric to understand is the sheer quantity of data which Big Tech stores on Americans. Big Tech’s stored data is astronomical to such extent that it defies calculation. You may be familiar with gigabytes and even terabytes (for example, my desktop’s NVMe solid state drive has a capacity of two terabytes, of which all my files and programs consume only a small fraction), but Big Tech’s stored data on Americans would be counted by the zettabyte, which is one trillion times larger than a terabyte.

Big Tech’s stored data’s scope is even more concerning. It is potentially every message ever exchanged through e-mail servers like Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook, AOL, and every file uploaded to cloud servers (spreadsheets, videos, PowerPoints, etc.). It is footage from your Ring cam, recordings from your Alexa, your vehicle’s geofenced routes plotted from its onboard navigation, the history from your smart thermostat and geothermal, your smart refrigerator’s contents and how often you stock them, down to your very heartbeat from your wearables (e.g., Fitbit, Apple watch). Big Tech at any given time has incalculable data on the populace, and of the most sensitive kind.

Given Big Tech’s scale and scope, the stakes involved become very worrisome. Admittedly recognition of Big Tech’s unparalleled capability to do us dirty does not mean that Big Tech will. Yet Big Tech’s overall record for incorruptibility is considerably blotted.

In 2010, the U.S. Justice Department uncovered collusion between the putative competitors of Google, Adobe, Apple, Intel, Intuit and Pixar whereby they illegally agreed to suppress labor costs by conspiring not to head-hunt their employees, which coincidentally stagnated highly skilled technicians’ careers. In 2018, the supposed rivals Alphabet and Meta conspired to rig the digital advertising market in a collusion which was code-named Jedi Blue. This conspiracy was a quid-pro-quo whereby Meta would refrain from development of an alternative platform for digital ads (which account for 70% of advertising worldwide in a market valued in the hundreds of billions of dollars), in exchange for Alphabet prioritizing Meta’s advertising, regardless of how much Meta bid in online advertising auctions. Jedi Blue allowed Meta and Alphabet (the ironic motto of which was “don’t be evil”!) to rig these auctions, which defrauded advertisers for untold billions of dollars.

In 2024, it emerged that the Google Chrome web browser’s Incognito Mode – whereby Google led users to believe that Google was not tracking their browsing history – was in fact tracking and storing all their browsing. In settlement of the class action of Brown v. Google LLC (4:20-cv-03664, N.D.Cal. 2024), Alphabet forked over $5 billion and consented to deletion of the troves of data which it had accumulated from netizens deceived into using Chrome’s Incognito Mode.

All this suggests an industry which is willing to victimize anyone if the price is right, and we are just getting warmed up here. These instances represent recent and infamous examples of collusion between supposed competitors, which justifies the conglomerates’ collectivization as “Big Tech.” However divergent the conglomerates’ typical interests, if the industry spots an angle for advancement at outsiders’ expense, you can be sure that the industry’s wagons will circle to the lay citizenry’s exclusion.

More than illegal labor collusion, auction rigging or user deception, Alphabet’s greatest uncurbed influence comes from its flagship product, Google Search. This is a monopoly which has proceeded largely unperceived by the lay citizenry. Every search engine you use, whether DuckDuckGo, Microsoft’s Bing or Apple’s search bar, goes through Google (curiously enough, competing search engine Ask [Geeves] voluntarily dissolved after 30 years during this article’s research). This means that Alphabet curates the information which every netizen consumes through searches. Had Google Search remained as it had started – neutrally indexing information based on relative weighing (what the industry calls “citation analysis”) – that would be one thing. But Google long ago abandoned the apolitical façade. Now Alphabet’s CEO Sundararajan “Sundar” Pichai’s open fly dangles his agenda for all the world to see, producing results which reveal Google’s true preferences.

Chief amongst these is lucre, which is why Google’s search results have become observably and frustratingly misdirected in recent years. For any given search – no matter how specific your query – Google is displaying those entries which have bribed Google the most to be seen first, irrespective of these entries’ relevance to your query. It takes little imagination to conceive of a scenario in which Google’s ideological preferences coincide with targeted ad bribes, such that casual searches for “home maintenance” yield “home re-financing,” and little by little society is stampeded towards the next macroeconomic bubble.

Big Tech’s lust for gelt becomes universally alarming when it comes to collusion with government, since government has virtually inexhaustible funds from coerced taxes. Big Tech has been a gleeful partner in some of government’s worst excesses. Between 2021 and 2023, government requested that Twitter, Alphabet and Meta censor what it deemed “disinformation.” Big Tech censored and/or deplatformed over 250,000 users for posts relating to C0vid, which in many cases were subsequently proven correct. Big Tech purged over 70,000 users for posts related to J/6, even if only tangentially. By way of deputizing Big Tech, government was able in effect to circumvent the U.S. Constitution in order to curtail free speech.

Yet getting banned from talking smack to trolls on Facebook and X pales in comparison to getting debanked. That is what tech brah Peter Thiel’s PayPal did to journalist organizations Mint Press and the Consortium in 2022, presumably for their skepticism about American involvement in the Russo-Ukrainian war then underway. PayPal offered no explanation whatsoever (initially freezing $9300 in Consortium’s account and threatening to seize it in toto). In that same year, PayPal debanked parent advocate Molly Kingsley for her “C0vid vaccine hesitancy,” since government favored unquestioned vaccination in all cases.

Ratcheting up the consequences of Big Tech’s collusion with government, a memorable example arose when the Chinese government suddenly arrested dissidents Shi Tao and Wang Xiaoning for advocating democratic reforms in China. At their secretive trial, Yahoo furnished personally identifying materials to the prosecution, definitively proving that Shi and Wang were the persons who had sent the e-mails and posted messages about organizing protests. Yahoo claimed that it was only following the law and that its compliance had nothing to do with ingratiating Yahoo into the lucrative Chinese internet market by cozying up to government. What is certain is that the dissidents were imprisoned and brutally tortured. This came to light only because Shi and Wang sued Yahoo under the Alien Tort Statue (28 U.S.C. § 1350), giving rise to the case of Wang Xiaoning v. Yahoo!, which Yahoo settled for an undisclosed amount in 2007.

Too long ago… couldn’t happen here, you say. But of course, deep down you know how this ends.

Only five years ago purportedly private tech companies were betraying their customers to the government in relation to January 6th, even when those customers’ involvement was merely tangential. Social media companies and cellular carriers furnished information to government which personally identified customers as having been in or around the Capitol during that day’s events, which some commentators have described as an “insurrection.” Whatever your feelings about J/6, honest reflection will see parallels with Shi and Wang’s dissidence in China. Further honest reflection will discern that the same digital dragnet imposed on J/6’s attendees based on instances of selective lawlessness at the Capitol, were not imposed on attendees of Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, some of which descended into lawlessness. This is not to say that some perpetrators of lawlessness during BLM events faced no consequences, only that government – even when its agencies were directly targeted by such perpetrations – did not regularly resort to such exceptional digital sleuthing of potential suspects as government did for J/6.

This same train of thought invites examination into Artificial Intelligence’s trawling of Big Tech’s supposedly proprietary data on the citizenry and how government is weaponizing AI against us with little to no safeguards, but that discussion will have to wait for another day since it exceeds this article’s scope. The present article is just concerned about Big Tech’s role vis-à-vis the citizenry as its customers.

Bytes into Bits

Thus far, we have detailed the corporatism which privileges Big Tech above analogously situated market actors to determine that the digital market is anything but free. We have examined Big Tech’s scale and scope to determine that the digital market is historically unique in its pervasiveness and influence, such that the consumer welfare theory’s laissez faire approach disintegrates when applied to Big Tech. What remains is a study of solutions grounded in free market principles. It is thus hoped that with some regulatory groundwork, meaningful competition can be restored to the digital market, improving quality, lowering costs and – dare we say it – yielding results which are fairer for all market participants.

That said, candor requires acknowledgment of the irony in this exercise. You read this article through a smartphone, tablet or desktop which Big Tech produced. Substack hosts this article on servers which Big Tech produced. This article was written between a desktop and iPad, using Alphabet’s search engine for the research, all resources which Big Tech produced. It is undeniable that Big Tech has revolutionized our world, mostly for the better, by crafting the tools whereby we exchange information and automate rote tasks.

It is with sincere appreciation that we embark on this quest for solutions. That which is right with Big Tech can rectify that which is woefully wrong with it. The major downsides can be appropriately minimized. In cruder terms, the digital market can be disenshittified, since there is plenty of money, power and influence for Big Tech to earn, operating subject to the same limitations as any regular market actor.

What will best level the digital market is the instrumentality on which it is built, which is the computer. The technological term is a “Turing-complete, universal von Neumann machine.” This is a mouthful to denote a device which operates by alternatively charging and uncharging internal circuits. From the older mainframe macrocomputers which required a gymnasium’s worth of space, to the newest and sleekest smartphone, the underlying processes remain the same, which means that the programs and apps can technically run on any such device. This is what is called interoperability, and it is a rudiment which will help to restore competition to the digital market.

As things now stand, laws like the DMCA impair interoperability by preventing a certain device from working with a certain app, and vice-versa. This may manifest as a Microsoft app (like Excel) which functions suboptimally on an iMac, or an Apple app (like Keynote) which functions suboptimally on a Personal Computer (PC). Of course, it is not the app which works suboptimally, but the device which runs it so, being that the device detects a competing brand’s software.

Yet at their core the PC and the iMac are both Turing-complete universal von Neumann machines, which means that both are capable of running any program (app) as intended. If the DMCA were to be enforced more according to its spirit (anti-counterfeiting) than its letter (anti-competition), then consumers whom one brand may alienate (such as by remotely paywalling functionalities intrinsic to a device) can migrate to a competitor with little attrition in productivity and equity.

Similarly, a user could disable that software in his home office printer which prevents its operation if generic ink is used, or refusing to print in monochrome only because the user has not yet configured a colored cartridge’s periodic shipments. This would confer the Right to Repair to owners of electronic devices.

A corollary of the DMCA being reinterpreted is recognition of a consumer’s ownership interest in purchased electronic devices. This means manufacturers may not remotely or in person “update” a device’s underlying software without consideration from the owner. Consideration here is used in its contractual sense, meaning that if a manufacturer wants to downgrade a device’s performance (e.g., a tablet’s wireless antenna streams data too quickly), then he must offer something of value to the owner for this post-market change (e.g., a partial refund, a component’s free repair or replacement) or maybe improving another functionality. Manufacturers may not simply surprise device owners by changing post-market the underlying software in such a way that the owner would never have purchased the device in the first place.

Likewise purchasable software applications. Cyberlink owns the software of PowerDirector, but if someone purchases this application, then his version of PowerDirector must operate exactly as Cyberlink gave him to expect at purchase. There may be no subsequent tweaking of the software which markedly changes or worsens performance without the purchaser’s consent achieved by offering something valuable in return.

Social media networks will also be levelled. At their core, social media networks are lists; Albert is connected to Billy who in turn is connected to Carol (A > B > C), and Billy, Eddie and Francesca are Rammstein fans (Rammstein > B, E & F). Maybe there is an inbox for direct messages, and possibly an album for users’ uploaded/downloaded photos and videos. All these functionalities are relatively easy to port across platforms. In fact, you get a sense of that if you ever attempt a migration (that is, you sign up for a new platform) using your smartphone. Often the new platform’s app will ask whether you want to use your smartphone’s directory to search for contacts who may already be members on the new platform.

This practice demonstrates these accounts’ potential portability, such that a given platform’s exiting user should be able to transfer connections established within the platform to a new platform. Those individual contacts, in turn, will have to consent either to establish new profiles on the platform to which their friend migrates, or if they already have profiles on the new platform, to re-accept the friend as a contact thereon. Greater portability will condition social media platforms to value a user since he can always port his equity over to a competitor if dissatisfied.

Finally, there must be some adult in the room when it comes to industry-upending mergers. There used to be four major wireless telecoms (AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile). As of 2020 we are down to three, which may soon be two. At some point, someone will get the idea to merge the remaining two, such that there will be only one corporation which owns all the USA’s wireless infrastructure.

Consumer welfare theorists may speculate that this monopolization will bring greater efficiency to the market since the last corporation standing can re-invest the millions saved from competitive advertising into cellular service’s improvement. Just as likely is the outcome of the new corporation’s board receiving astronomical bonuses. Either way, if consumer welfare theory adherents like the Mises Institute condemn the state-owned monopoly of Soviet telecom for having no profit incentive towards expansion and innovation, then the Institute should condemn a private monopoly which produces the same stagnation.

A Chance to Shine

Progressivists like Doctorow are very comfortable proposing taxes and fines on corporations to nudge them towards more sociable conduct. In comparison, Libertarians understand that such measures strengthen government at private expense, and in the corporate context, taxes and fines are always transferred to consumers in the form of higher prices. Therefore, the more sociable corporate conduct which will disenshittify the modern digital market must come from deregulating the market in ways which make digital products more interoperable and their customers more interchangeable. This will in effect pit corporation against corporation, requiring them to offer the best products and services to attract and keep the necessary customers.

Finally and importantly, there must be a helmsman in government, who appreciates private industry making a good living by honest competition in service to consumers, and treating labor fairly (no time for this digression in this article but see the previous critique for a brief discussion of digital labor’s struggles). This helmsman must deny and obstruct proposed mergers and consolidations in the digital market if they would leave consumers with no practical option for similar service on comparable terms of price and quality.

In cases of corporate malfeasance, ideally penalties should be assessed against the individual board members who vote to approve such malfeasance. Punishment should not come as corporate fines which are passed onto customers as higher prices, and baked into a corporation’s cost-benefit analysis about whether the malfeasance under deliberation will yield more profit than it loses in fines.

This is the middle ground which remains between the (traditionally) pro-business Republicans and the (traditionally though not always) pro-consumer Democrats who dominate modern government. Instead of simping for rampant corporatism misidentified as free market capitalism, this is the common sense on which Libertarians can and should firmly stand.