Platform Capitalism, Platform Cooperativism and Their Effects On Workers’ Satisfaction

Summary

Platform cooperatives bring the existing cooperative model – joint ownership and democratic control for the service of employee and community wellbeing – into the digital economy, whereas platform capitalism increases social and economic inequality by distorting local economies and neglecting workers’ rights. The case studies of TaskRabbit and Loconomics demonstrate that these differences cause workers to be more satisfied in platform cooperatives, yet platform cooperatives’ concern about their own long-term scalability and replicability needs to be further tested and investigated. Nevertheless, platform cooperatives’ growing place in the future of work makes them deserving of study by anyone interested in building more human-centered organizations and better labor protections even as technology advances.