Own This!

How Platform Cooperatives Help Workers Build a Democratic Internet

R. Trebor Scholz

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Hardback

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English

Verso Books
03 January 2024

Social forecasting, future studies; Sociology: work & labour; Employee-ownership & co-operatives

What if taxi drivers were in charge of their own digital platform? At a time when there are so few concrete, near-term solutions to the power of large technology companies, the crisis in the care sector, and threats to democracy, Platform Cooperatives offer an urgent and practical solution to change how businesses are owned and controlled.

In Own This!, researcher and activist Trebor Scholz provides valuable insights into this global digital uprising, powered by democratic ownership and shared decision-making. Scholz will take you to the south of India, where a digital cooperative of farmers brings their harvest directly to market; to New York City, where a worker-owned and operated alternative to Uber is transforming piece-rate gig economy precarity into good jobs with stable hourly wages; to Belgium, where artists benefit from the payroll and tax services of a platform cooperative; and to Italy, where a short-term rental platform shares half of its profits with the communities in which it operates.

By: R. Trebor Scholz
Imprint: Verso Books
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 210mm, Width: 140mm, Spine: 19mm
Weight: 330g
ISBN: 9781839764554
ISBN 10: 1839764554
Pages: 240
Publication Date: 03 January 2024
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

1. Alternative Paths 2. Worker Ownership for the Digital Economy 3. Solidarity at Scale 4. Redefining Value 5. Roots of Resilience: Unions and Platform Cooperatives 6. The Coming Data Democracy 7. Letter from 2035: A Social Vision Realized Epilogue: How to Start a Platform Co-op

R. Trebor Scholz is a scholar-activist and founding director of the Platform Cooperativism Consortium (PCC) and the Institute for the Cooperative Digital Economy at The New School in New York City. In 2014, he introduced the concept of “platform cooperativism” as a way of bringing the co-op model into the digital economy. Scholz’s articles and ideas have appeared in The Nation, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Washington Post, Le Monde, and The New York Times, among many other publications.

Reviews for Own This!: How Platform Cooperatives Help Workers Build a Democratic Internet

Praise for Uberworked and Underpaid -- : Bringing together the rich and long tradition of cooperativism and worker self-management with the digital economy of the 21st century, Scholz's timely and groundbreaking new book provides both in-depth analysis and practical steps to make the Internet economy truly work for all who most rely on it -- Zeynep Tufecki, author of Twitter and tear Gas A unsparing and bracing critique of platform capitalism. Moreover, he's developed a blueprint for transcending it: a tough-minded platform cooperativism that eschews the utopianism of sharing economy bromides. Anyone concerned about the future of work should read this book. -- Frank Pasquale, author of The Black Box Society Passionately and sharply tracks down the dark side of the sharing economy, that is the reduction of labor to a cheap and disposable commodity, without protections or benefits. Scholz's book is an invaluable contribution to a much needed reinvention of a socialism for the 21st century. -- Tiziana Terranova, author of Network Culture: Politics for the Information Age