Ireland, intellectual property and the political economy of information monopolies

Abstract

Ireland's policies towards US-owned global digital intermediaries (Big Tech) have emerged as an international political issue and received global media attention. So far, political and media focus has been on the impact of Ireland's tax policies on the revenue-raising ability of other European states and perceptions of light touch regulation of those corporations based in the Republic. The current paper will focus on how Ireland's switch to a focus on capital allowances for the sizeable American tech corporations has enabled the latter to sustain their dominance in the digital transition through incentivizing and subsidizing their switch to assetization as a means of deriving investment. Assetization enables investment and profits based on present and future rents from intellectual property. We argue here that the assets and intellectual property of the tech giants are emblematic of a broader process of political–economic restructuring and information monopoly building. The evidence for this resides in Ireland's bumper rise in corporate tax from 2015. Ireland's facilitation of assetization is the end process of some broader institutional transformations that structure economic power.