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

by R. Trebor Scholz

What if taxi drivers in New York City or rickshaw operators in Bangalore could start a worker-owned and-operated alternative to Uber with stable hourly wages?

Platform cooperatives reimagine a world where domestic workers can double their income by establishing their own platform—an internet where platforms such as Twitch, Twitter, and Roblox were owned by their streamers, users, and creators. What if small fishing communities in Mexico or farmers in Kerala had the power to determine what data they collected about their work and how they utilized that data?

Platform cooperatives are not a figment of the utopian imagination, but rather a reality that is transforming industries today. Collectives that leverage technology offer an urgent and practical solution to shift how businesses are owned and controlled, allowing workers to make decisions together. In this book, researcher and activist Trebor Scholz explores how these new forms of business, powered by peer principles, are paving the way for a more equitable economy that benefits everyone.

Own This! sets out a program that could change the ways we live, work, and organize.

Genres: Nonfiction, Technology

240 pages, Hardcover

Published September 19, 2023

Reviews

[Raul La Rosa · Rating 2 out of 5]

Regurgitated examples across the chapters made this book feel redundant and felt like a missed opportunity to dive into the practicality. It spends too much time on trying to “convince” you about co-ops and being idealistic instead of showing you its practicality or benefits to the people themselves.

[Vxxin X · Rating 3 out of 5]

In fact, cooperatives are a very old and traditional form of organization—human societies have had them since ancient times. But I don’t agree with the author’s vision. To me, the digital era is inherently anti-cooperative. Cooperatives work best in offline societies where trust levels are high, members share similar cultural backgrounds, small communities are strong, mobility is low, and local economies are made up of many small producers. Classic examples include local agriculture, community finance, local retail, handicrafts, creative industries, and certain public services.

Although the author presents various possibilities, I think the anonymity, hyper-mobility, and openness of the digital age naturally amplify capitalism’s tendencies to break down small communities and create winner-takes-all dynamics. The platform economy is the result: it expands the competitive field of many industries, and that expansion puts cooperatives—naturally weak in capital and in competitive capacity—into marginal positions.

Take the example of Uber: there are groups of drivers who have left the platform to form their own cooperatives. It’s doable, but they simply can’t compete with Uber. It’s hard to scale across regions, and the larger they grow, the harder they become to manage—eventually they just start resembling ordinary companies. This is all written into the DNA of cooperatives: they are mutual-aid organizations built for small, tightly knit communities.