Platform Cooperativism: Difference between revisions
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=Discussion= | =Discussion= | ||
==[[Multi-Stakeholder Cooperatives]] as the key structure for Platform Cooperatives== | |||
Maurie J. Cohen: | |||
"In moving toward platform cooperativism, the availability of open-source software like Sharetribe, which enables social entrepreneurs to easily create new sharing networks is likely to be an important new development. | |||
While this idea is unquestionably laudable, there is opportunity to push it a little further. Why limit cooperation only to producers while implicitly treating consumers as little more than a mass of aggregate demand? Why elevate workers over their customers when the distinction is artificial and rarely static? A more creative and ambitious application of platform cooperativism would embrace consumers as co-equals and seek to formulate novel business models that span production and consumption. The uniting of these two domains would dissolve predispositions that treat buyers and sellers as rivals rather than allies, prioritize return on investment rather than solidarity, and emphasize value appropriation rather than community improvement. | |||
In the non-digital world, so-called multi-stakeholder cooperatives that combine producers and consumers are starting to emerge, especially in conjunction with local food movements. A prominent example is Eroski, a subsidiary of the venerable Mondragon Corporation, which operates more than 1,000 supermarkets in Spain. The Weaver Street Market is a worker- and consumer-owned cooperative based in North Carolina that runs three stores specializing in organic produce and fair trade products, as well as a restaurant. Applying this hybrid approach to a revivified sharing economy would involve the payment of an annual subscription fee by consumer-owners who would then be entitled to a predetermined number of, say, taxi trips or overnight stays provided by their producer-owner colleagues. Since few people are exclusively producers or consumers, affiliation with a multi-stakeholder cooperative would facilitate seamless shifts between roles. On some days, a particular member would find herself working as a producer and on others she would be consuming goods or services provided by the mutual association. | |||
A sharing economy that apportioned control to both producers and consumers instead of platform investors could also help to move us toward a more socially equitable and ecologically sustainable future. Let me first make an obvious point. Consumerist lifestyles in affluent countries are driven more by a quest for social distinction than by a desire to satisfy biophysical needs. (This does not discount the existence of perverse inequalities due to political circumstances.) An emergent body of research suggests that involvement in more solidaristic modes of production suppresses status competition by orienting people toward less individualistic aspirations. If correct, participation in a producer-consumer cooperative could be a useful way to reduce outsized consumption that is impelled largely by cultural imperatives. | |||
Moreover, the antagonism between producers and consumers that is inherent in predominant systems of exchange frequently results in consumption in excess of genuine needs -- often through the use of tempting volume discounts and the manufacture of goods that become prematurely obsolete. By stressing their continuously shifting -- and oftentimes reciprocal -- relationships, producer-consumer cooperatives could bring the intentions of production and consumption into closer alignment. | |||
It also merits noting that to be successful, producer-consumer cooperatives would need to resist powerful impulses to expand their scale by pushing down the retail cost of the goods and services on offer. While lower prices are attractive from the standpoint of consumption, they undermine the livelihoods of producers. In the business-as-usual economy, workers at the lower rungs of the economic ladder are more vulnerable to continual pressure to cut prices. There is also the problem of perverse rebound effects as lower expenditures in one product category almost always increase demand for other items (unless one also proportionately works less, deposits the difference in a non-lending financial institution, or sets fire to the surplus cash). A cooperative ownership model where producers and consumers are equally empowered and, ideally, difficult to differentiate because they are regularly swapping responsibilities, should help to discourage these untoward outcomes. | |||
As we consider options to overhaul the sharing economy so that it enhances rather than weakens social cohesion, it is important not to set producers against consumers as, after all, the distinction is predicated on pretense. Normal routines require continuous rotation of roles and we should not fall back on outmoded commitments that privilege the sphere of production as the only reliable driver of social change." | |||
(http://www.shareable.net/blog/how-platform-cooperativism-can-accelerate-sustainable-consumption) | |||
==What might a driver-owned Uber look like?== | ==What might a driver-owned Uber look like?== | ||
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All that I’ve read and my thinking for most of the summer seems to move between these two models?—?either a large centralised coop that verifies individuals who join up but that risks being undemocratic, or a more decentralised, federated system that only works with companies who in turn take responsibility for driver management and verification.” | All that I’ve read and my thinking for most of the summer seems to move between these two models?—?either a large centralised coop that verifies individuals who join up but that risks being undemocratic, or a more decentralised, federated system that only works with companies who in turn take responsibility for driver management and verification.” | ||
(https://medium.com/@netribution/db6ce8ba3fdb) | (https://medium.com/@netribution/db6ce8ba3fdb) | ||
=More Information= | =More Information= | ||
Revision as of 03:59, 2 November 2015
" 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]
Also an event: see http://platformcoop.net/
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/)
Discussion
Multi-Stakeholder Cooperatives as the key structure for Platform Cooperatives
Maurie J. Cohen:
"In moving toward platform cooperativism, the availability of open-source software like Sharetribe, which enables social entrepreneurs to easily create new sharing networks is likely to be an important new development.
While this idea is unquestionably laudable, there is opportunity to push it a little further. Why limit cooperation only to producers while implicitly treating consumers as little more than a mass of aggregate demand? Why elevate workers over their customers when the distinction is artificial and rarely static? A more creative and ambitious application of platform cooperativism would embrace consumers as co-equals and seek to formulate novel business models that span production and consumption. The uniting of these two domains would dissolve predispositions that treat buyers and sellers as rivals rather than allies, prioritize return on investment rather than solidarity, and emphasize value appropriation rather than community improvement.
In the non-digital world, so-called multi-stakeholder cooperatives that combine producers and consumers are starting to emerge, especially in conjunction with local food movements. A prominent example is Eroski, a subsidiary of the venerable Mondragon Corporation, which operates more than 1,000 supermarkets in Spain. The Weaver Street Market is a worker- and consumer-owned cooperative based in North Carolina that runs three stores specializing in organic produce and fair trade products, as well as a restaurant. Applying this hybrid approach to a revivified sharing economy would involve the payment of an annual subscription fee by consumer-owners who would then be entitled to a predetermined number of, say, taxi trips or overnight stays provided by their producer-owner colleagues. Since few people are exclusively producers or consumers, affiliation with a multi-stakeholder cooperative would facilitate seamless shifts between roles. On some days, a particular member would find herself working as a producer and on others she would be consuming goods or services provided by the mutual association.
A sharing economy that apportioned control to both producers and consumers instead of platform investors could also help to move us toward a more socially equitable and ecologically sustainable future. Let me first make an obvious point. Consumerist lifestyles in affluent countries are driven more by a quest for social distinction than by a desire to satisfy biophysical needs. (This does not discount the existence of perverse inequalities due to political circumstances.) An emergent body of research suggests that involvement in more solidaristic modes of production suppresses status competition by orienting people toward less individualistic aspirations. If correct, participation in a producer-consumer cooperative could be a useful way to reduce outsized consumption that is impelled largely by cultural imperatives.
Moreover, the antagonism between producers and consumers that is inherent in predominant systems of exchange frequently results in consumption in excess of genuine needs -- often through the use of tempting volume discounts and the manufacture of goods that become prematurely obsolete. By stressing their continuously shifting -- and oftentimes reciprocal -- relationships, producer-consumer cooperatives could bring the intentions of production and consumption into closer alignment.
It also merits noting that to be successful, producer-consumer cooperatives would need to resist powerful impulses to expand their scale by pushing down the retail cost of the goods and services on offer. While lower prices are attractive from the standpoint of consumption, they undermine the livelihoods of producers. In the business-as-usual economy, workers at the lower rungs of the economic ladder are more vulnerable to continual pressure to cut prices. There is also the problem of perverse rebound effects as lower expenditures in one product category almost always increase demand for other items (unless one also proportionately works less, deposits the difference in a non-lending financial institution, or sets fire to the surplus cash). A cooperative ownership model where producers and consumers are equally empowered and, ideally, difficult to differentiate because they are regularly swapping responsibilities, should help to discourage these untoward outcomes.
As we consider options to overhaul the sharing economy so that it enhances rather than weakens social cohesion, it is important not to set producers against consumers as, after all, the distinction is predicated on pretense. Normal routines require continuous rotation of roles and we should not fall back on outmoded commitments that privilege the sphere of production as the only reliable driver of social change." (http://www.shareable.net/blog/how-platform-cooperativism-can-accelerate-sustainable-consumption)
What might a driver-owned Uber look like?
Excerpted from Nic Wistreich:
“There’s at least three options…
1. Like Uber/Lyft/etc, but a giant Coop.
A logical starting point would be simply to recreate Uber/Lyft/etc, with their global network of offices, drivers, marketing and technical infrastructure, as a driver-owned coop, operating either non-profit or with its profits distributed amongst drivers. It would need to be a large, well financed (Uber has raised $7bn over 12 rounds https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/uber), dynamic organisation with a legal and customer service team in every country it operated in.
A single-coop competitor is appealing at first because it would be easier to manage, brand and offer users quality assurance. It would however require a commonly agreed-upon set of regulations and pricing, which every taxi would have to follow, so would have considerable power to set pricing and behaviour amongst its members. This inevitably would run against national and regional differences between taxi services. Internal voting and localised rules could mitigate some of this, but given there are no successful giant democratic coops working on an Uber scale of 160,000+ drivers to hold as an example, there’s a reasonable risk it would become as unaccountable and top-down as any large business. It would still create a monopoly with the potential to be restrictive for users and drivers in demanding a one-size-fits all set of rules. Given how much money it would require to get started it would also have a number of investors doubtless wishing to influence direction.
This isn’t to say such a structure couldn’t work, but by centring so much potential power, it seems to miss many of the advantages of networked systems, including greater competition and opportunities for innovation.
- 2. A federation of existing taxi companies all funding and using the same software
Another approach would be to build on existing taxi companies who already have relationships with drivers?—?and often leasing agreements and insurance schemes around their fleet of cars. This would both distribute more control out beyond the central coop, responsible for creating software, and work to build upon an existing networks, brands and services, rather than trying to throw them all out of business.
The coop in this instance would produce ‘white label’ software to manage drivers and payments for each of the companies, and also a single app which the user downloads. At this point either all the companies in each city and region would need to agree on and use the same prices, or the app would need to indicate that different cars were from different companies and had different prices. By letting each taxi company set their own prices this would create greater potential for competition and variation?—?car company X with the older cars is 20% cheaper than taxi firm Y which only has recent Sedans, while company Z has 100% electric fleet of Tesla cars.
As well as offering more choice and competition, it also removes from the main coop the burden of verifying and approving new driver’s identifies or providing customer service. It is more closer to an infrastructure, software-as-service company, serving it’s members, who are all established companies. On a simple level, this already exists?—?a company like Mowares offers an Uber clone from $400 http://venturebeat.com/2014/09/11/yes-a-build-your-own-uber-for-x-kit-costs-only-400/. What a coop?—?owned by all the local taxi companies paying for installs?—?could further do, is ensure that each install could communicate with each other and produce a single app for users to download that connected them to all of their local taxi companies.
However this fails to liberate drivers from the middle-man, the taxi company, an extra cost which Uber has removed. Part of Uber’s success is replacing the expense of taxi offices, switchboards and phone receptions with software, and thus reducing the cost of journeys. So this coop model may always end up more expensive than Uber or Lift as it needs to pay both driver, the coop producing the software/service and the taxi companies representing the driver. While some companies, such as executive car services, with account management, may offer sufficient value to justify the added cost, it’s hard to imagine the cost-conscious end of the market acting in the same way. It also doesn’t help the driver who, for whatever reason, doesn’t want to join the local taxi-company, which may be an issue in areas where there is only one taxi service?—?nor does it help the end user discriminate between a taxi company with a great reputation and one with far worse service.
However, a service which lets drivers register directly has a greater administrative burden, and legal liability, around verifying drivers and their licensed vehicles. To do this job well it ends up becoming much closer to the first option above.
All that I’ve read and my thinking for most of the summer seems to move between these two models?—?either a large centralised coop that verifies individuals who join up but that risks being undemocratic, or a more decentralised, federated system that only works with companies who in turn take responsibility for driver management and verification.” (https://medium.com/@netribution/db6ce8ba3fdb)
More Information
- a lot of related project material has been collated by Dante Monson, see Platform Cooperativism Projects
- conference: http://platformcoop.net/
Further reading:
- Trebor Scholz, “Platform Cooperativism vs. the Sharing Economy” (December 5, 2014)
- Nathan Schneider, “Owning Is the New Sharing,” Shareable (December 21, 2014)
- Janelle Orsi, Frank Pasquale, Nathan Schneider, Pia Mancini, Trebor Scholz, “5 Ways to Take Back Tech,” The Nation (May 27, 2015)
Replacing Uber with Cooperative Ridesharing and Taxi Platforms
Compiled by Nathan Schneider [2]:
- Ackerman, Seth. “How to Socialize Uber.” Jacobin. April 7, 2015. [3]
- Alexandria Union Cab Cooperative [4]
- Cassano, Jay. “Taxis Unite: Denver Taxi Drivers Are Forming Their Own Cooperatives.” FastCoExist. February 4, 2015. [6]
- DePillis, Lydia. “Can taxi unions build an app to take on Uber?.” The Washington Post. January 19, 2015.
- Flywheel, an app for traditional taxi companies [7]
- Hansen, Mary. “What If Uber Were a Unionized, Worker-Owned Co-Op? These Denver Cabbies Are Making It Happen.” YES! Magazine. April 10, 2015. [8]
- Harris, Kyle. “Cabby-owned Taxi Cooperatives on the Rise.” Shareable. January 5, 2015. [9]
- “Montgomery County Council Approves Bills to Improve Taxi Service, Compete With Companies Like Uber.” NBC Washington. July 21, 2015. [10]
- RideWith: Teig, Amir. “Google's Waze to launch worldwide carpooling pilot in Israel.” Haaretz. July 6, 2015. [11]
- Shu, Catherine. “Korea’s Daum Kakao Prepares To Launch Kakao Taxi As Uber Faces Legal Woes.” TechCrunch. January 13, 2015. [12]
- Transunion Car Service - app-based in Newark, NJ [13]:
- Delli Santi, Angela. “From Organizing to Mobilizing: United Transportation Alliance Launches App-Based Taxi Service.” AFL-CIO Now. March 25, 2015.
- Nix, Naomi. “Union-backed taxi service starts in Newark, amid regulatory debate about Uber.” NJ.com. March 20, 2015.