Group items tagged

reliance on horizontal networks and distributed power within communities

opposed to the competition between hierarchical organisations

inequality

contradictions

Empowerment in an era of growing inequalities

the exact opposite of capitalism

the exact opposite of homo economicus’ iconic egotism

Two main groups of criticism have emerged: one on ownership structures and the other on employment.

Growing economic inequalities

fueled both by patrimonial inequalities

income inequalities

If we want to assess whether it should be seen as the first part of a new economic paradigm or as capitalism’s latest trick to survive at all costs, we have to analyze its likely effects on inequality.

From a collective standpoint, it might well be better to have access to a resource rather than owning it.

But if someone asks you to free yourself from all earthly possessions, you should always ask: if it’s not mine, then who owns it?

Sometimes, owning is a way not to be owned!

sharing economy: after all, it mostly consists of venture capitalist-backed startups

Employees and customers are but a mean to an end, and in general, a good way to maximize return on investment is to get your customers to pay as much as possible (non-price competitiveness) and on the other side to pay your employees as little as possible (price competitiveness).

shareholders are not peers (from Latin par, “equal”), but overlords

your business model is based on your ability to sustain a community

This point is the most controversial of all. Sharing economy services could accelerate the phenomenon of job destruction.

Despite all those nice speeches about empowerment and entrepreneurship, people in the sharing economy are nothing but an extreme precariat

Real wages started stagnating while productivity per capita continued to increase.

a new deal had to be made: people would no longer be paid according to the value they actually produced, but they would get — seemingly — unlimited access to credit.

computers and robots will soon replace most human labor anyway. Wage labor cannot be saved, and rather than fighting long-lost battles, people should start thinking seriously about solutions such as Universal Basic Income.

neo-liberal revolution has left the basic structures of welfare

relatively untouched

If you cannot predict something with a reasonable amount of certainty, stop arguing endlessly about it and start acting towards the outcome you would like to see

What happens next, no one can tell. Are Silicon Valley venture capitalistss currently being fooled into creating the embryo of a P2P economic paradigm, in which they will lose most of their influence? Or are the enthusiasts talking about empowerment being tricked into creating a new kind of serfdom?

ancient Skeptic philosophers

epoché

remarks

I will make two

First, we should avoid using the concept of a “sharing economy”

Men are both altruistic and egoistic, and that’s perfectly fine.

Will big companies be able to face new competition from startups and win over new customers? If that is your main concern, you should probably stop talking about communities and peers. If the collaborative economy cannot help you solve our growing inequality problem, it should be of no interest to you.

the long term replacement of capitalism--an economy which socializes costs and privatizes benefits--with an economy of democratic cooperation

n economy is an ecosystem, a cyclical whole that includes processes of creation (the "original production" of natural resources by geological, biological, and energetic forces), production (human transformation of resources into goods and services), exchange, consumption (perhaps more appropriately called "use"), the processing of waste, and the recycling of surplus (sometimes called "investment").

The worker coop movement must work to build broader alliances, holistic economic and social visions, and contribute to the creation of not only more worker coops, but a transformative social movement capable of changing the culture and economy--the "social ecosystem"--in which worker coops struggle to exist.

Operating successfully in a capitalist market, worker coops can support movements for social and economic transformation

a cooperative solidarity economy

Worker cooperatives are a particular--and effective--structure for democratically organizing the production of goods and the provision of services.

link these interventions together--at every point of the economic cycle

But even a solidarity economy movement cannot succeed without being intimately linked to broader social change work. It is our connections with the work of anti-racism, feminism, queer liberation, environmental justice, ecological sustainablility, immigrant's rights, counter-recruitment and peace advocacy, labor organizing, grassroots community development, and other movements for cultural and insitutional change that will generate the collective power and momentum needed to effect long-term transformation and generate widespread, committed support for worker cooperatives as economic and social-change insitutions.

Indeed, to create conditions under which their success is increasingly possible, worker cooperatives must work to generate, sustain and support institutions at all other points of the economic cycle.

constructing reliable markets

for goods and services produced by worker cooperatives.

from a passive place of "entering markets" to an active place of constructing them

What does this "movement building" look like?

the creation of a shared story and through this, the development of long-term solidarity between worker cooperatives and other groups working for democratic, community-based economies such as local currencies, consumer cooperatives, housing coops and intentional communities, economic justice advocacy groups, neighborhood associations, local food system projects and more

solidarity economy

Further examples from the solidarity economy movement outside of the U.S. abound. I delve into some of these more deeply in GEO's recent collaborative issue with Dollars and Sense (see Ethan Miller, "Other Economies Are Possible".)

We must, instead, work to transform the very terms of the economic game.

Green Worker Cooperatives

Red Emma's

Wooden Shoe Books

Electric Embers

Riseup

Gaiahost Collective

Brattleboro Tech Collective

pioneers of cross-sector movement-building

it is the work that we as cooperators must embrace if we choose to believe that another economy, and another world, is possible