Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
New entities are creating toolkits and models for start-up platform cooperatives to more easily tackle the existing legal, financial and technical barriers to entry in the digital economy.
Resonate is a music streaming co-op and a great example of a platform co-op which is changing the way business works. In the run up to the OPEN 2018 Platform Co-op conference we interviewed Peter Harris, Resonate Founder and CEO.
Platform cooperatives that are member owned and democratically controlled – allowing everyone that is affected by the business, be they customers, suppliers, workers or investors, a say in how the business is run and managed.
For the majority of people on the earth, the ever-present question of survival is becoming increasingly de-linked from work and wages, as traditional sources of employment and industry collapse, downsize and automate. The class struggle has become not just the struggle for fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work, but for freedom to define oneself apart from work, as the holder of multiple, creative, active networked identities and idle pursuits.
The platform co-op movement is only two years old. Slowly but surely the movement has grown and it is now looking into ways to get organized. Trebor Scholz and Nathan Schneider did a tremendous job inventorying existing coops and advocating their actions throughout the world. They are connecting people with one another in an effort to ease knowledge exchange.
Governments should recognize that cooperative platforms will mean more wealth staying in their communities and serving their constituents. Rather than trying (and failing) to say “no” to the likes of Uber, platform co-ops are something public institutions can say “yes” to.
AnyShare has bold plans to help the world. By creating a multi-stakeholder platform cooperative, the Arizona-based organization wants to support local exchange groups and sharing communities.
Last Thursday Mark Zuckerberg published a long piece called ‘Building a Global Community’. In it he explained that his company could help ‘develop the social infrastructure to give people the power to build a global community that works for all of us.’ The effect was unnerving.
If you’ve ever wondered about how a new, collaborative, sustainable, democratic economy might work the new book ‘Ours to Hack and Own – The rise of platform cooperativism, a new vision for the future of work and a fairer internet‘, is for you.
This article analyses how platform businesses disrupt industries and suggests how emerging technologies and ownership models are ushering in a fundamentally new, truly democratic economy.
High-tech tools of exploitation are being repurposed to build a fairer economy.
