Digital Co-op Fractals – Iterations, Patterns, Questions (Q&A) as Part of Who Owns the World? PCC Conference at The New School 2019

Summary

Digital Co-op Fractals – Iterations, Patterns, Questions (Q&A) at Who Owns the World Conference, convened by the Platform Cooperativism Consortium at The New School in November 2019. This Q&A between audience members and speakers is facilitated by Luciana Bruno & Amelia Evans

For this session: we are tracing emerging patterns within the cooperative digital ecosystem. We asked Juliet Schor, Joseph Blasi, Gar Alperovitz, Jack Qiu, and Melissa Hoover to each pose a question, which they’ll then answer for 10 minutes. Then, we will open it up to everybody for a People’s Q&A. Here are the questions that will guide our discussion:

How best can platform cooperatives contribute to fundamental community-based system-wide political-economic transformation? What are the particular challenges that platform cooperatives face? How will the quality of the jobs for the workers you expect to work in the cooperative you are designing be better than similar jobs in non-worker-owned firms? What are the essential elements of platforms that aggregate the power and resources of workers rather than atomizing them? How to start a platform co-op while minimizing the dangers of an authoritarian crackdown?