How Platform Cooperativism Can Unleash the Network
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Transcript: English(auto-generated)
00:20
So, in 1998, I moved to San Francisco,
00:25
and I moved into a small Buddhist temple. And in that temple, the first thing I did is I took all my savings, and I bought a small IBM laptop. And my spiritual comrades in that community said,
00:41
why, why would you possibly do that? Why would you buy a computer if the community owns one already? So for me, even though working about the internet, I had never really thought about computers beyond individual use and in terms of collective ownership. So for me, that was a first encounter
01:03
to that genuine sharing economy. So over the past five years, now jumping a little bit to the more recent past, we saw the technological ingenuity of the sharing economy deeply resonating with the zeitgeist.
01:22
So, sure, initially, there were projects like couchsurfing and blah, blah, car, which were really about genuine human connection. They were really about underutilized resources, and they were really about open data. So just like my Buddhist friends back then,
01:41
the pioneers of this economy proposed to split their use of lawn mowers, cars, and other belongings, right? Drills. So for them, this was really about a challenge to income inequality and corporate power.
02:00
But at the same time, we also saw a renaissance of the solidarity economy and social movements. You might remember Occupy. You remember the community land trusts that emerged over the last few years, the credit unions, farmers markets, artists co-ops, tech cooperatives. There's a real renaissance of that over the last few years
02:22
but soon, the non-commercial values that were behind platforms, behind these platforms, were rewritten in the boardrooms of Silicon Valley, turning the sharing economy really into a misnomer. So sharers were being shared, and sharing really turned into shearing.
02:44
Today, facing various imaginaries about the future of work, we really need to remind ourselves that there's no unstoppable evolution of this Uberization of society, right? So there's nothing logical or innate about that evolution. So alternatives are absolutely possible,
03:02
and an internet of people is absolutely feasible. So what are some of these competing visions? So in his book, Average is Over, Tyler Cohen, the conservative economist that you may have read in the New York Times, or books like Average is Over,
03:21
foresees a future where a tiny hyper-meritocracy would make millions while the rest of us struggle to survive on anywhere between 10 and $15,000 a year. And so this is applied by free internet and canned beans. He imagines to work quite well, and he points to Mexico,
03:41
where supposedly all of that is working quite nicely already. He grants us that the weather is nicer there, so, you know, sleeping outdoors and stuff is kind of easier. But then there's also Carl Frey and Michael Osborn, who predict that 40% of all jobs are at risk of being automated over the next 20 years.
04:06
And third, there's the sharing economy, which I have no doubt, when thinking about platform owners like Travis Kralinek or Jeff Bezos, Lucas Biewald of Uber, Amazon, and CrowdFlower,
04:22
that in the absence of government regulation and resistance from workers will simply exploit their undervalued workers. So I'm referring to this as crowd fleecing. So it's really like what you can see here, it's like a trickle-down effect, right?
04:41
It's a trickle-down effect of the sharing economy where the profits are trickling down to the platform owners. So I am all on board with Paul Mason and Kathy Weeks's visions for a post-capitalist, post-capitalist, post-work future,
05:01
where universal basic income will rule the way we think about life opportunities. Their final aim is less work, right? The end universal basic income. But in the meantime, let's find better work and a bed to sleep in. In the United States, however, unlike in Finland,
05:21
universal basic income is highly unlikely to become a reality over the next few years. So the question then really becomes, what can we do right now with and for that contingent part of the American workforce? This is one-third of the American workforce.
05:42
53 million Americans are freelancers and contingent workers, which are all unlikely to see a return of the traditional safety net, the 40-hour work week, and a steady paycheck. So what can we do for them right now? Today's internet bears little resemblance to the ARPA-designed, non-commercial,
06:03
decentralised, post-Spatnik network. Today, we are finding that the sources of entertainment, so when we go switch on the computer in the morning to find entertainment, or to go to work, or to play, to talk, to enter these feedback loops of social networking sites,
06:21
we find that they are all owned by a handful of people and maybe 50 stockholders in Silicon Valley, and I think that is unacceptable. So we are talking about privacy, we're talking about big data, we're talking about net neutrality, we're talking about access for all,
06:41
and these are all incredibly important topics, but there is never any talk about ownership. So, and it's for this reason that I proposed a theory of platform cooperativism in 2014. So workers in the on-demand economy are called upon to live like lions, to be, you know, to unchannel the inner entrepreneur,
07:03
and to lift the flexibility and autonomy that is promised to them, but with slightly more flexibility, also come more risk and harsher taskmasters. The average on-demand economy worker earns $7,900 a year
07:21
through labour platforms, so that shows you also that most of them are part-time. So the question is also, who are really the most vulnerable participants in this economy? Often disregarded are the workers that are actually pushed out by the current on-demand workers. So if you think about the Uber drivers,
07:41
we talk about the workers on Mechanical Turk that are underpaid, but we are very rarely focusing on the people that are pushed out of the market by them. Uber drivers are 40% college-educated and far more white than traditional legacy taxi businesses, the drivers in those taxi businesses.
08:02
Firms are also activated, so we see, in addition to all that, a nullification of the law. So the companies knowingly violate city regulations and labour laws, which allows them then to create a consumer base to which they can point and say, see, this is what we created,
08:21
and all these people just love our service, so probably your laws are arcane and you might want to change them. So firms are also activating their apps-based consumers as a grassroots movement. So we saw this in San Francisco, we saw this in Barcelona and in New York City,
08:40
where the mayor tried to curb the number of Uber taxis, and they put in a feature in the app that would basically allow them to lobby to City Hall, thereby almost removing the mayor, creating so much pressure. So, for every Uber, there's an unter,
09:01
and privacy should also be a concern for workers and customers. Uber is analysing their routines from their one-night stands and through their daily commute, to then impose such pricing when they most rely on the service. Think about that next time. You're going on one of those.
09:22
So there's a navigation of the legal grey zones, these deregulated commerce hubs sometimes misclassify workers, misclassify employees as independent contract workers. They are calling them Turkers, driver partners, rabbits, but never workers.
09:42
So hidden behind the internet, the curtain of the internet, are these companies that are really trying to pretend that they are tech companies when in fact they are labour companies. So think about that and all of that in this context. In the decade between 2000 and 2010,
10:01
the median income in the United States declined by 7%. So, when adjusted for inflation. In 2014, 51% of all Americans made less than $30,000 a year. 76% of them had no savings at all. Since the 70s, we see a concerted effort
10:22
to move people out of direct employment, which has led to a steady growth of the number of independent contractors and freelancers. So you can really think of digital labour as a child of the low-wage crisis. It's part of this process that took unraveled over the last 40 years,
10:42
as part of which basically signalled the end of employment. So the past could really easily be our future if you just think about the fact that employment isn't really that old an idea in itself. So, I ask, what has the sharing economy
11:02
really gotten us, collectively? Beyond the consumer convenience, of course it's much easier to spend money, right? And if there's also a lot of efficiency in creating short-term profits for a few platform owners, it has demonstrated in terms of social wellbeing
11:20
and environmental sustainability capitalism turns out to be amazingly ineffective in watching out for people. So seemingly overnight, the gains of more than 100 years of labour struggles, so from the Haymarket riots in 1886 to the short-waste factory in 1911, have been stalled.
11:41
Seemingly, the Fair Labour Standards Act of 1938 has no pull at all anymore, or very little, because there are far fewer employees. So, among all these problems, related to 21st century labour,
12:00
I think the biggest problem really is that there are so few alternatives, that so few people actually propose alternatives, but there are, and I will identify a few approaches. So, the first approach is based on the belief of negotiation with corporate owners and with government.
12:20
The Domestic Workers Alliance in hopes that basically created the Good Work Code, which allows them to define certain guidelines for digital work, which they then hope platform owners would adapt. So, Obama endorsed this, so now they can go to Amazon and say, well, you see Obama liked that, so maybe you would like it too.
12:42
And you can of course hope for regulation. There was this interesting case in the United States right now where a major yogurt producer called Joe Barney decided to turn to worker ownership by giving a large part of his business to his employees, to the workers, in stocks. Seattle imposed a tax on Uber,
13:02
and the teamsters are now representing the Uber drivers in that city. Mayor de Blasio in New York City made attempts to curb the number of Uber taxis in the street, and the city of San Francisco tried to regulate Airbnb. A third pathway is to take your production out of the market altogether, right?
13:22
So to remove yourself from the market just like Wikipedia did. Yochai Benkler talked about this, and obviously wrote the Wells of Networks about this topic. And finally, for the compensated labor market, there's a fourth approach, which is platform cooperativism
13:42
to try to say that three times fast, right? Which is a model really of social organization based on the understanding that it is hard to substantially change what you don't own, right? So my thinking about platform cooperativism owes much to the digital labor conferences
14:00
at the New School. They started in 2009, so I've worked on this topic since 2008 at least, and this started in 2009, and there were various other conferences, and this continued up to 2015, where I co-convened platform cooperativism with Nathan Schneider, which drew some 1,500 people.
14:25
So initially these events were really about labor, commercial surveillance, and artists like Borak Arikan, Alex Rivera, Dimitri Kleiner, Stephanie Rothenberg, theorists like Tiziana Terra Nova, Lisa Nakamura, they all drew public's attention to this digital work, right?
14:42
But later, the discussion became more concerned with crowd-fleecing, the exploitations of thousands of invisible workers in systems like Amazon Mechanical Turk. But at one point, I asked myself, do I really want to shine the banister of the sinking Titanic of employment,
15:02
or do I want to look for alternatives? And so I decided to dedicate myself more to looking for alternatives. So the theory of platform cooperativism then has two main tenets, which is communal ownership and democratic governance. It is bringing together 135 years of worker self-management
15:21
with 170 years of the cooperative movement. So, and as well, it's bringing the common space peer production together with those into this digital economy. So the term platform, just to sort of clarify that for what are the four people among the audience
15:40
who are not geeks, these are basically, I'm thinking about places where we hang out and work, tinker, and generate value when we switch on our phones or computers. And the cooperativism bit is about ownership models for labor and logistics platforms or online marketplaces that can replace
16:01
the likes of Uber with cooperatives. So in a nutshell, this slide means to take this technology that Uber and the sharing economy offers, embrace the technology, rip out the corporate heart of it, and fuel it with cooperatives, and embed the values in the code
16:21
that those cooperatives would represent. That's the key value. So seriously, because ask yourself, why would a village in Denmark or a town like Marfa in rural Texas generate profits for the 50 people in Silicon Valley who run Airbnb, right? So this is exactly what's happening.
16:41
Why, I mean Berlin just changed that with the recent ruling on Airbnb, but why would cities all over the world generate profit for a few people in Silicon Valley instead of creating community value, community wealth through a website that is run by their own city
17:01
that basically mandates short-term rentals to go through their platform and then have the profits go into their community instead of the beautiful Bay Area. So this is not just a pipe dream. I'm not just walking in Jesus' sandals, as you would say in German. So platform co-ops already exists, right?
17:23
So this internet of people is already in the making. There is the cooperatively-owned online labour brokerage marketplace, Fermando, a global, decentralized online marketplace owned by its local users, and they are having a pledge right now. If you want to become a shareholder, you can go to their website and do that.
17:43
Or imagine a video streaming site that is owned by filmmakers and their fans. Or imagine an Uber that is owned by its drivers like the French VTC cab or Arcade City, which is another project. Or imagine a global crowd-funded media co-op like Positive News.
18:03
Or imagine a stock photography site owned by the photographers who sell their works on it, Stocksee. So now, after giving you these sort of really brief examples, let me go a little bit more into detail. So in Brooklyn, where I live, go Brooklyn, we have, in Sunset Park,
18:23
there's the Sunset Park Family Centre, which basically represents nine co-operative of low-income immigrants. And here you see one of them in action. So this is Beyond Care. This is a work of Beyond Care, which is one of these cooperatives. And so they are offering childcare services.
18:43
Under the same umbrella is CC Poerder, which is a cooperative that does home cleaning. And then there's also pet care in the same network. So, financed by the Robin Hood Foundation in New York City, they created a platform that would help them
19:01
to compete in the digital market. So the platform is called Coopify, and it will be launched in the fall. So here you have various problems are solved. So they are looking at how to pay workers who are sometimes undocumented, which means they cannot be paid through credit cards.
19:21
So they found a way of paying them in cash, even though the site is operated through this app, et cetera, et cetera. So you see workers already talking about how their concrete situation can be improved by this project. So basically when the platform will launch,
19:40
it will let users select the service they need, house cleaning, childcare, or pet care, and workers can basically be empowered through this. So let me talk a little bit about a few reactions to this idea. So in liberation, Bernard Stigler identified
20:01
public platform cooperativism as one alternative to the urbanization of society, and there were really countless articles from Wired magazine to Le Monde, The Washington Post, The Nation, Shareable, Yes Magazine, and Fast Company, and now there are also events really in very many cities focusing on this topic,
20:22
from Berlin to London, Bologna, Bremen, Adelaide, Melbourne, Vancouver, Budapest, many other cities. I wrote an introduction to platform cooperativism, and I would have really hoped to have this in German for you. It will be translated and available through the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation at the end of May. So for now, you have an English version
20:43
which will also be translated in all these other languages here. In the summer, I'm launching this book, Uber Worked and Underpaid, How Workers Are Taking Back the Digital Economy, and a second book that I edited with Nathan Schneider, where we asked 60 authors to say, so you want to start an online platform
21:01
that is cooperative, what do people need to know if they want to do this? So this book is also coming out, both of them in the early fall. So, also very importantly, my friend and colleague Nathan Schneider created a directory of platform co-ops so that we can track this emerging ecosystem.
21:22
He calls it the internet of ownership. So that's also a URL that you can go to. So what is next? Platform co-ops could be attractive options for home healthcare professionals or pensioners who need extra cash. In the United States, there are 650,000 people
21:42
who are released from prison every year who have a very hard time to find well-paid and dignified work. It could be a place for them. It could also be an attractive option for refugees, who in countries like Sweden sometimes take up to eight years
22:00
to find their first job in that new country. So, with this model, workers can become collective owners. They no longer have to subscribe to this pathology of this old system that trained them to be followers and internet users, you know? So, few people will feel drawn to any of these kind of abstractions.
22:22
They are not really convinced by any sort of abstract guidelines or rules. But I think once people are committed, there really have to be some values that people agree upon and guidelines as well. So, Elinor Ostrom, the political scientist, reminded us that aspiring to create alternatives
22:42
without rigorous study is a pipe dream, right? So being realistic about cooperative culture is essential. From the history of cooperatives in the United States, we see that we learned that they basically can offer a stable income and a dignified workplace. So these two things, you can say from history
23:01
and from studying this. But we also learned that from this necessary enthusiasm of makers who would do a lot of arm-waving, you also have to find with these really begrudgingly looking scholars who are really skeptical of all of this, and these two groups really have to talk, right? Because they really can learn from each other.
23:21
But education and study and research is really an essential cornerstone of platform cooperativism. So, first of all, I talked about communal ownership. Second, platform co-ops have to be able to offer income security. In Emilia-Romagna, this area of Italy where there are many cooperative businesses,
23:42
we see far less unemployment than in other areas of Italy. In, of course, Mondragon is always given as a successful example in Spain with over 74,000 members as a cooperative. In the United States, cooperative businesses have been very successful in areas like orange juice production,
24:02
but are also faced with many challenges, right? Competition for multinational giants, public awareness if you have an app, self-exploitation, the network effect, et cetera. So we need to really also show a transparency of the algorithms, right?
24:20
This is where they have to distinguish themselves as well. They have to show where the data about customers and workers are stored, to whom they are sold, and for what purpose. So work on platform cooperatives also needs to be co-determined. So from the very first day, the designers have to work with the people for whom they are designing
24:40
and who they would like to work for that platform. There has to be a protective legal framework and much else. So, at its heart, platform cooperativism is really not about any particular technology. It's not about an app, right? It's not about techno-solutionism. It's not about, you know, to change the world,
25:02
click here, as Yevgeny Morozov would say. But it is really about the marriage of cooperativism and the internet, right? The online economy. In the absence of rigorous democratic debates, online labour giants really are producing
25:22
a version of the future right in front of us. They are producing that right now. And so, for us, we really have to move quickly, right? So this is not something where you can say, oh, this, I was on this panel at three o'clock. Let's put this into our schedule, and maybe two years from now, we are working on this. No, you know, like this has to be worked on right now.
25:41
And I think this is also where the urgency we feel in North America, at least, to produce this kind of work comes in. So we need an alliance of cities like Berlin, Barcelona, Paris, Rio de Janeiro, who are all pushing back against the sharing economy, right? We need a consortium for platform cooperativism.
26:00
So you can follow up, because there will be very little time for questions, you can follow up and get involved at stage T at 6.45 where Thomas Denebring will head up a workshop on platform cooperativism. There's already a group in Berlin that is dedicated
26:20
to that, and so you can join us, 6.45 stage T. So to wrap up, what we really need is a genuine sharing culture, a genuine sharing culture, just like the one that I experienced in that Buddhist center all this time ago, right? We need incubators, small experiments with these kinds of technologies,
26:41
step-by-step walkthroughs, legal templates for online co-ops, developers need to write a wordpress of platform cooperativism that can be used to build this free software platform so that not everybody has to reinvent the wheel over and over. And at last, this isn't merely about
27:02
countering destructive visions of the future, this is really about, like I said, bringing together technology and cooperativism and then to learn and see what it can do for our children, for our children's children, and for their children into the future. Thank you.
27:25
Travis Scholz, thank you very much. We have a very short break, about two or three minutes just to set up the computer, and then we'll back.