Schneider Nathan - Ours to hack and to own: the rise of platform cooperativism, a new vision for the future of work and a fairer internet

Anthology selection 2016 Trebor Scholz and Nathan Schneider.

The following authors have placed their contributions under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license: Michel Bauwens and Vasilis Kostakis, Yochai Benkler, Francesca Bria, Miriam A. Cherry, Ra Criscitiello, Max Dana, Joshua Danielson, Joel Dietz, John Duda, Enric Duran, Matan Field, Noemi Giszpenc, Mayo Fuster Morell, Marina Gorbis, Jessica Gordon Nembhard, Seda Grses, Peter Harris, Steven Hill, Pedro Jardim, Francis Jervis, Mary Jo Kaplan, Dmytri Kleiner, Brendan Martin, Rachel ODwyer, Rory Ridley-Duff, Carmen Rojas, Douglas Rushkoff, Nathan Schneider, Trebor Scholz, Juliet B. Schor, Kati Sipp, Tom Slee, Christoph Spehr, Danny Spitzberg, Armin Steuernagel, Arun Sundararajan, Ashley Taylor, Astra Taylor, Cameron Tonkinwise, Akseli Virtanen, McKenzie Wark, Felix Weth, Brianna Wettlaufer, Chad Whitacre, Aaron Wolf, and Caroline Woolard.

All individual contributions to this anthology the respective author of the contribution.

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First printing 2016

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ISBN 978-1-68219-062-3 paperback

ISBN 978-1-68219-063-0 e-book

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Table of Contents

Trebor Scholz and Nathan Schneider - What This Is and Isnt About

Nathan Schneider - The Meanings of Words

Trebor Scholz - How Platform Cooperativism Can Unleash the Network

Susie Cagle - The Seven Cooperative Principles

Jessica Gordon Nembhard - Eight Facts about Cooperative Enterprise

Douglas Rushkoff - Renaissance Now

Juliet B. Schor - Old Exclusion in Emergent Spaces

McKenzie Wark - Worse Than Capitalism

Steven Hill - How the Un-Sharing Economy Threatens Workers

Christoph Spehr - SpongeBob, Why Dont You Work Harder?

Kati Sipp - Portable Reputation in the On-Demand Economy

Dmytri Kleiner - Counterantidisintermediation

David Bollier - From Open Access to Digital Commons

Stocksy United

Fairmondo

Coopify

Gratipay

FairCoop

Members Media, Ltd. Cooperative

TimesFree

Snowdrift.coop

Resonate

Loconomics Cooperative

NYC Real Estate Investment Cooperative

Robin Hood Collective

Seed.Coop

Yochai Benkler - The Realism of Cooperativism

Janelle Orsi - Three Essential Building Blocks for Your Platform Cooperative

Caroline Woolard - So You Want to Start a Platform Cooperative...

Melissa Hoover - What We Mean When We Say Cooperative

David Carroll - A Different Kind of Startup Is Possible

Marina Gorbis - Designing Positive Platforms

Cameron Tonkinwise - Convenient Solidarity: Designing for Platform Cooperativism

Seda Grses - Designing for Privacy

Danny Spitzberg - How Crowdfunding Becomes Stewardship

Arun Sundararajan - Economic Barriers and Enablers of Distributed Ownership

Ra Criscitiello - There Is Platform-Power in a Union

Saskia Sassen - Making Apps for Low-Wage Workers and Their Neighborhoods

Kristy Milland - The Crowd: Naturally Cooperative, Unnaturally Silenced

Tom Slee - Platforms and Trust: Beyond Reputation Systems

Michel Bauwens and Vasilis Kostakis - Why Platform Co-ops Should Be Open Co-ops

Loomio Cooperative Ltd.

The FairShares Model

Swarm Alliance

Ms., The Madeline System

Purpose Fund

rCredits

External Revenue Service

Data Commons Cooperative

Coliga

CommunityOS: Callicoon Project

Backfeed

My User Agreement

John Duda - Beyond Luxury Cooperativism

Brendan Martin - Money Is the Root of All Platforms

Carmen Rojas - From People-Centered Ideas to People-Powered Capital

Karen Gregory - Can Code Schools Go Cooperative?

Palak Shah - A Code for Good Work

Micky Metts - Meet Your Friendly Neighborhood Tech Co-op

Michael Peck - Building the Peoples Ownership Economy through Union Co-ops

Mayo Fuster Morell - Toward a Theory of Value for Platform Cooperatives

Francesca Bria - Public Policies for Digital Sovereignty

Miriam A. Cherry - Legal and Governance Structures Built to Share

Rachel ODwyer - Blockchains and Their Pitfalls

Astra Taylor - Non-Cooperativism

1. What This Is And Isnt About

Trebor Scholz and Nathan Schneider

This is a guidebook for a fairer kind of Internet. While we intend to foster something new in the online economy, we do so by turning to something old: the long tradition of cooperative enterprise. The problems of labor abuse and surveillance that have arisen with the sharing economy, also, are not entirely new; they have much in common with struggles on nineteenth-century factory floors. By considering the emerging platforms in light of well-hewn cooperative principles and practices, we find an optimistic vision for the future of work and life.

Already, this strategy is catching on. Workers, organizers, developers, and social entrepreneurs around the world are experimenting with cooperative platforms and forming conversations about platform cooperativism. This book, therefore, is an effort to serve a movement in the making, to add to the momentum we and our fellow contributors already feel.

We each came to platform cooperativism by somewhat separate paths. Trebor had been convening the Digital Labor conferences at The New School since 2009, from which arose an earlier book, The Internet as Playground and Factory . In publications like The Nation and Vice , Nathan was reporting on the protest movements of 2011 and efforts among young people to create ethical livelihoods, online and off, once the protests receded. We met at OuiShare Fest in Paris in 2014, and, at Trebors Sweatshops, Picket Lines, and Barricades conference later the same year, we both sensed it was time to think about constructive alternatives to the dominant Silicon Valley model.

That December, Trebor published Platform Cooperativism vs. the Sharing Economy, framing this concept that would come to be this movements moniker. The same month, Shareable published Nathans article Owning Is the New Sharing, which mapped out some of the efforts to build cooperative platforms already underway. Realizing our common interest, we discussed these ideas with interested platform-workers, labor advocates, techies, and ludditesmany of whom, we found, were venturing into various forms of platform cooperativism already. We agreed it was time that they should meet each other.

In November 2015, we held a two-day event called Platform Cooperativism: The Internet, Ownership, Democracy at The New School. More than a thousand people came, including New York City Council members, CEOs, investors, platform creators, and leading scholars. The Washington Post deemed the event a huge success. Shortly after, the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation published Trebors primer on platform cooperativism, which has been translated into at least seven languages. Follow-up events have taken place in Barcelona, Berlin, Bologna, Boulder, London, Melbourne, Paris, Rome, Milan, Vancouver, and elsewhere.