Cooperativism in the Digital Era, or How to Form a Global Counter-Economy – Shareable

Summary

“What if this is not capitalism, but something worse?” McKenzie Wark’s question eloquently summarizes the growing criticism of profit-maximizing business models within the so-called collaborative sharing economy.

That “something worse,” appears to take the form of a new kind of feudalism, as in the case of Facebook. If feudalism was based on the ownership of land by an elite, the resource now controlled by a small minority is networked data. Or, as in the case of Uber, AirBnB, and TaskRabbit, it takes the form of a kind of on-demand labour system, where individuals-freelancers contribute their infrastructure and labour.