Platform Cooperativism

" Worker–owned cooperatives could design their own apps-based platforms, fostering truly peer-to-peer ways of providing services and things "

Concept and practice suggested by Trebor Scholz, in the article: "Platform Cooperativism vs. the Sharing Economy" [1]

Description

Trebor Scholz:

“It’s a call to workers, designers, and developers. It’s up to you: the blue pill or, well, you know the Matrix story — the red.

There has been backlash against unethical labor practices in the “collaborative sharing economy” because of an utter lack of concern for the workers. Take, for example, Uber’s app, with all its geo-location and ride ordering capabilities. Corporate owners and shareholders do not have to be the main benefactors of such platform-based labor brokerage. How to dodge Uber and put a worker-owned cooperative or unionized labor pool in their place?

Imagine, just for one moment, that the algorithmic heart of the citadels of anti-unionism could be cloned and brought back to life under a different ownership model, with fair working conditions, as a humane alternative to the free market model.

Apps-based, worker-owned labor brokerages that allow workers to exchange their labor without the manipulation of the middleman are possible. They are possible for transportation and they are feasible for micro work, specifically on Mechanical Turk and CrowdFlower, as well as other sectors.

Entities like Uber, Ola, TaxiForSure, or Lyft are vulnerable because their technology can be duplicated.

Every Uber has an Unter; every above has a below.

Taxi drivers and technologists can coalesce to build an open source app that equals or outperforms their corporate equivalent. It could offer workers dignity, financial stability, and higher social standards. This is, no doubt, a challenge of a high order.

Developers, in collaboration with local, worker-owner cooperatives can design such a self-contained program for mobile phones, cross-platform of course — Android and iPhone.

I’m suggesting the marriage of badge technology with the marketing of FairTrade coffee. Here, it would not be skills that are certified, but ethical labor conditions. Online, badges could advise consumers that a given platform operates based on ethical labor standards.

Despite its meteoric rise, $300 million in venture capital backing (and its $41 billion evaluation bubble), as well as massive international reach, there is nothing inevitable about Uber becoming the unchallenged winner in that market, on a local level. It’s time intensive and by no means simple, but hey — there is no magic when it comes to software development. Technology is only one part, arguably the smaller part, of the equation. I’m not willing to give an inch to techno-determinism here; platform cooperativism is about apps, yes, but it is mostly about workers organizing in cooperatives, ideally worker-owned. It’s about “apps-workers” — the 21st century solo workers, associating with unions or associations; it’s about innovative forms of worker solidarity that also include design interventions like Turkopticon and Dynamo.

Worker-owned cooperatives could design their own apps-based platforms, fostering truly peer-to-peer ways of providing services and things, and speak alternatives to the new platform capitalists. Cooperative might then be able to use regulatory templates, created by companies like Uber, created at the frontiers of regulation.

Startup hotshots suggest that there is a logical step from the sharing of content through social media to the rental of goods, space, and the provision of transport through de facto labor companies like Feastly, Carpooling, Handy, Kozaza, EatWith, Kitchensurfing, TaskRabbit, and Uber.

The narrative of the sharing economy is incredibly smooth: the aesthetics, design, and algorithms. Neighbors can sell the fruit from the trees in their gardens, you can rent an apartment in Rome, a boat, or tree house or yurt in Redwood Forest. In Berkeley and Oakland, you can pay your neighbor to cook you a wholesome dinner, and now you can even listen to your own Spotify account in an Uber taxi.

Consumers, raised with an appreciation of low prices above all else, welcome many of these market incumbents. And, of course, all of these developments play out against the background of deliberate shockwaves of austerity that followed the 2008 financial crash. The sharing economy is portrayed as harbinger for the post-work society and path to ecologically sustainable capitalism, Google will conquer death itself, and this brave new “disruptive” economy will rid us of Jurassic forms of labor, which might well include what David Graeber refers to as “bullshit jobs.”

But by now, only few people still fall for the solidarity theater of the “disruptive sharing economy,” its deceptive “peer” rhetoric when referring to individual workers and consumers, and its underhanded talk of changing the world (HBO’s Silicon Valley, anyone?).

Occupations that cannot be off-shored, the pet walkers or home cleaners, are now subsumed under platform capitalism. Baby boomers are losing sectors of the economy like transportation, food, and various other services, to millennials who fiercely rush to control demand, supply, and profit by adding a thick icing of business onto apps-based user interactions. Companies like Uber and airbnb are enjoying their Andy Warhol moment, their $15 billion of fame, in the absence of any physical infrastructure of their own. They didn’t build that, not unlike Facebook — they are running on your car, apartment, labor, and importantly, time. They are logistics companies where all participants pay up the middleman: the Financialization of the Everyday v.3.0.

Legacy taxi companies have undoubtedly seen better days. Ride ordering apps are making transportation easier and also bit more accountable as passengers can give dreadful drivers devastating reviews. Some taxi drivers report that they appreciate not having to commit to a company full-time. They enjoy the flexible hours that they cannot get with legacy taxi companies. Ecological concerns about single driver occupancy are also real when thinking about these labor companies. It’s a no-brainer, the medallion system could use an update and at far over $800,000 for a single medallion in New York City, the system is completely impenetrable for taxi associations trying to build a small fleet of their own.

The medallion cartel prevents such worker-owned organizations from taking hold. With innovative ride rental software, organizing the taxi business is easier for the various types of worker cooperatives.” (http://www.publicseminar.org/2015/04/think-outside-the-boss/)

More Information

• a lot of related project material has been collated by Dante Monson, see Platform Cooperativism Projects