The post Stop chasing unicorns: the power of zebras, herds and Platform Coops appeared first on P2P Foundation.
]]>Lieza Dessein and Chiara Faini: There is a fundamental flaw in the narrative of the startup culture: everyone is chasing Unicorns i.e. private companies valued at one billion dollars or more. Instead of aspiring to this elusive goal, should we not pause and wonder if it is really worth it? Rather, we should ask ourselves: is it really worth it? How much does society benefit from these companies when one does not merely consider their financial value? This focus on monetary valorization results in forgiving much of the negative impact they may have on their environment: the working conditions they provide, their general social impact and the redistribution of their value.
Collectively, we got lost in the rush for innovation. In the era of digitalization where solutions are only a few clicks away, we are looking for instant gratification. We subcontract daily tasks, decision-making and management to softwares that indicate the most efficient solutions. This process creates an ultra-competitive society where it is difficult to find space for human involvement nature, its diversity, its inherent complexities and our well-being. Instead, we trust simplistic binary solutions provided by digital platforms that often help us solve minor inconveniences, whilst creating ethical loopholes.
Entrepreneurship within specific social territories is a complex matter. In order to create a company that truly makes a positive impact, there is a need for a complex balance between all stakeholders and their environment. Businesses driven by values rather than mere profit do exist. These social enterprises have proven to be sustainable, even if they do not always seek global dominance. Legally, they are often constituted under the cooperative entity or coops.
What if digital platforms were also structured as coops? What would happen if platforms allowed members to vote on the use of their personal data? Or how the value that the platform generates is redistributed? What if users had their say in the strategies implemented to ensure a sustainable development?
Luckily, these questions are not just hypothetical. Numerous companies are attempting ethical digital ventures. Trebor Scholz and Nathan Schneider have developed an impressive corpus of publications over the past three years. Their work provides the framework for a strong narrative that highlights the existence of this sector under the label Platform Cooperativism.
The term gained rapid traction as existing companies recognize their values in this specific narrative. Ethical digital start ups flocked to this specific labeling because it embodies what they are trying to achieve.
. Zebras have two advantages: they are real and, since they strongly believe in cooperation, they move in herds.
The strength of the PlatformCoop Movement is that it creates an alternative narrative for digital entrepreneurship by highlighting existing initiatives as well as the challenges ahead. The diversity of the actors involved in the movement creates a slow but consistent progress in the growth of this sector of the digital economy.
The way our current business models are structured and financed is intimately linked to the dominant neoliberal narrative. It is structurally more difficult for a platform co-op to emerge as there still is too little formalized know-how available. Moreover, the existing financing models are not always adequate. While new Zebras are struggling to emerge, they are also fighting an unfair battle with wannabe Unicorns. These opponents are able to move faster due to suitable financing models, and the lack of regulation and ethics. A shift in this economic paradigm will require time and patience.
There is still a long way to go to make a structural change. If we want to succeed we will need to continue to organize the movement by strengthening our emerging networks and its narrative. Additionally, we will need to embrace patience and appreciate the complexity of what we are trying to achieve.
Shifting the economic paradigm is not an easy task and sometimes it is good to take the time to appreciate the progress that has been made.
The Platform Co-op Movement is colliding with existing and emerging initiatives.
These include but are not limited to groups such as “Open Co-op”: an organization in the UK “building a world-wide community of individuals and organizations committed to the creation of a collaborative, sustainable economy”. The “Zebras Unite Movement” was started in Portland, and calls for a more ethical and inclusive movement to counter existing start-up and venture capital culture. In Paris, “Plateformes en Communs” is organizing recurrent meet-ups for Zebra startups. “Supermarkt” a platform for digital culture, collaborative economies and new forms of work in Berlin is also trying to structure the local PlatformCoop Movement. Another relevant?example relates to the sale of Twitter in 2016, Nathan Schneider suggested to transform it into a co-op. This idea got enough attention to be seriously discussed during the annual stakeholder meeting in May 2017.
Trebor Scholz got an important grant from the Google Foundation to support the economic development of cooperatives in the digital economy. Professor and author Jack Linchuan Qiu is strongly invested in gathering the existing PlatformCoop network in Hong Kong for their annual meet-up in an effort to get the asian coop sector and digital entrepreneurs on board.
The interest for the co-op model is also visible in the interest of academic institutions for the field. The VUB (Free University of Brussels) has started to study the benefits of the co-op model. The idea of platform cooperativism received enough traction to catch the attention of the Region of Brussels. The Region is currently funding a consortium of local experts in order to facilitate and encourage the emergence of platform co-ops. The consortium is composed of 3 organisations combining theoretical and practical skills; “Febecoop” is promoting and developing the cooperative model; “SAW B” a non profit enterprise is advocating for social entrepreneurship and “SMart” a shared enterprise of freelancers operating in 9 european countries that managed to scale its business model by developing a digital platform. The consortium is working hand in hand with “Coopcity” an incubator for social and cooperative entrepreneurship in an effort to create an appropriate environment to start a platform coop. Looking beyond the ambition of the Region of Brussels, the consortium will gather data on best practices from Berlin and Barcelona in an effort to strengthen and broaden existing networks.
The process initiated by Trebor Scholz and Nathan Schneider will be slow but as long as we collectively continue to engage we will make change happen. It is important to encourage and nurture the existing mobilisation of policy makers, unions, entrepreneurs, academics, investors and consumers.
The challenges we are facing today are thrilling. We have at hand incredible technologies, brilliant thinkers and entrepreneurs which could enable us to shift our current world dynamic. This shift would contribute greatly to solving crucial global issues such as the urgent need to reverse the growth of social injustices. Collectively, we have an exceptional opportunity to work towards cultural change. We could move from an individualistic system that aims for personal profit, to a state of mind of solidarity.
To make these things happen, we hold an abounding ecosystem of social enterprises which can give insight on their know-how. Cooperatives have years of experience in managing distributed governance and social impact. We can also tremendously benefit from the unfortunate misconceptions of the current platform-economy as a handbook, which logs a full set of guidelines explaining what not to do and why.
Incorporating these positive and negative experiences can ensure that the tools we develop ensure the well-being of all the actors of the networks we create and bring about a positive impact on the environment in which they operate. In this way, we will be able to create the tools of tomorrow which central values will be social justice and genuine sharing.
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]]>The post Fragmented Evolution in Post-Polanyan Times appeared first on P2P Foundation.
]]>Michel Bauwens: Karl Polanyi, in his landmark book, ‘The Great Transformation’, famously posited the ‘double movement’ of industrial civilisations, characterized by periodic swings between liberal and more labour oriented periods, such as the welfare state model vs the neoliberal period. Yet, though the latter is in deep crisis, it is not very clear that there are workable alternatives at the nation-state level, that won’t be derailed by transnational capital movements and strikes. Perhaps this means that social movements need to radically re-orient themselves to translocal and trans-national solutions and create adequate counter-power at the appropriate level to counter the increasing corporate sovereignty of ‘netarchical capital’? Just as capitalism is moving from the commodity-labor form to commons-extraction, perhaps now is the time for commoners to practice reverse cooptation? As a case study, we will look at the situation of the thousands of cognitive workers living and working in the global capital of digital nomadic workers, Chiang Mai in northern Thailand, but also about the new solidarity mechanisms being developed by a new wave of labour mutuals (such as SMart) in old Europe, who are organizing solidarity mechanisms for autonomous workers. Reviewing the emergence of new trans-local and trans-national organized networks, including how the token economy is used by sectors of cognitive labor to reclaim surplus value from capital investors, we will inquire into potential alternatives at different scales of governance (urban, bio-regional, nation-state, and beyond).
Our review of the emerging answers will lead to the concept of the Partner State, i.e. a community-state form that enables and scales commons-based cooperation at all levels.
The annual conference of the European Artistic Research Network (EARN) will be hosted in 2018 by the Graduate School of Creative Arts and Media (GradCAM) and Dublin School of Creative Arts & Media (DSCA) at the Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT).
Key-note speakers include:
Michel Bauwens (P2P Foundation); Conflict Kitchen – Dawn Weleski & Jon Rublin (artists); Bernard Stiegler (philosopher)
This two-day conference seeks to address the impact of contributory economies on tradi- tional understandings of the nation and state. Since the 2008 financial crisis, alterna- tive economies have been increasingly explored through digitally networked communities, artistic practice and activist strategies that endeavour to transgress traditional links between nation and economy. Developed at a crucial time on the island of Ireland when Brexit is set to redefine centre/margin relations the conference seeks to engage with a number of themes within this context: nation and inter-nation; the nation and aesthet- ics; art and economy; P2P networks; digital economies; modes of exchange and modes of production; alternative economies; network aesthetics; populism and counter populism; aesthetics and the imagination; activist practices; geo-politics; island, archipelago and continent; centre and margin.
The guiding concept of the conference ‘Inter-Nation’ comes from the work of anthro- pologist Marcel Mauss, who in ‘A Different Approach to Nationhood’ (1920) proposed an original understanding of both concepts that opposes traditional definitions of state and nationalism. More recently, Bernard Stiegler has revisited Mauss’s definition of In- ter-Nation as a broader concept in support of contributory economies emerging in digital culture. Contributory economies are those exchange networks and peer-to-peer communities that seek to challenge the dominant value system inherent to the nation-state. Such dig- ital networks have the potential to challenge traditional concepts of sovereignty and geo-politics through complex technological platforms. Central to these platforms are a broad understanding of technology beyond technical devices to include praxis-oriented processes and applied knowledges inherent to artistic forms of research. Similarly, due to the aesthetic function of the nation, artistic researchers are critically placed to engage with the multiple registers at play within this conference, and to address these issues through multiple forms as they play out live on this island.
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]]>The post I-Wire: Surveying Autonomous Workers appeared first on P2P Foundation.
]]>Our colleague Sarah de Heusch, a project officer and advocate at SMart has recently forwarded us this survey for autonomous workers. If you’re a freelancer working in Europe, please take the survey here. We also encourage everyone to share the links in their networks.
Sarah de Heusch: The i-wire project is currently disseminating a survey addressed to freelancers and broadly autonomous workers (that is self-employed or salaried through coops or other) that are skilled and that work in the service sector, in traditional professions governed by professional orders and rolls, but also for those active in new professions that lack such established structures.
The project analyses trends on new autonomous workers and prospects best practices of Unions, Quasi-unions and Labour Market Intermediaries regarding representation of autonomous workers across Europe. More info here: http://www.i-wire.eu/.
I-wire stands for “Independent Workers and Industrial relations in Europe” it is an European-wide project, co-financed by the European Commission and lead by Università degli Studi di Milano & Université de Liège (LENTIC lab), together with partner universities (check here to see them all), and in partnership with ACTA, SMart and UPTA.
Link to the questionnaire is here http://www.i-wire.eu/survey/. There is one questionnaire per country, make sure you pick the right one.
Thank you for supporting the project by answering the questionnaire!
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]]>The post In Brussels, Online Food Couriers Launch Their Own Platform Co-Op appeared first on P2P Foundation.
]]>Matthieu Lietaert: The sector of online food delivery is booming in many cities in the economically developed world. It’s a promising market and many corporations like Deliveroo or UberEATS are pedaling fast to move in and win the race. The recent strikes of couriers’ have shown that despite all the millions of dollars in venture capital, the human factor is often forgotten. The recent bankruptcy of Take Eat Easy in Europe, for example, turned into a real opportunity for couriers to start their own co-op.
About 3 years ago, a new rising star entered the landscape of upstarts in Belgium. The media called it “a revolutionary app” for online food delivery, operated by bicycle couriers. Take Eat Easy went from an idea – connecting couriers with restaurants and hungry clients – to 6 million Euros in funding in April 2015 and 10 million more by August of the same year. In some cities, the company even became a challenger to Deliveroo.
One year later, an all-too-familiar story unfolded. On July 26, 2016, the company announced by email that they would cease their activities. The startup would not pay its 4500 couriers and more than 3000 restaurants for the entire month of July. Adrien Roose, CEO of Take Eat Easy, wrote an article on Medium thanking all who worked for them and who “made this adventure possible.” The bankruptcy was not especially surprising for Sacha, one of the couriers who is now actively setting up a new couriers co-op: “Working conditions had changed suddenly. Relations with the management of the company became more tense and we could feel that bankruptcy was in the air.”
When Adrien Roose talked about an adventure, he must have referred to the artificial funding that boosted his enterprise for some 15 months. It was an expensive game that he lost. The story of Take Eat Easy was simply picture-book Silicon Valley:
(1) sketch up a business idea and make it shine,
(2) raise as much capital as possible,
(3) heavily invest in marketing,
(4) be there first and dominate the national or even international market, and then
(5) lobby governments to change the rules of the game.
Does this traditional approach benefit the greater good? If the answer is at least a partial “no,” then the question to ask is: what can we do about it? Well, the story of the former Take Eat Easy couriers in Brussels can inspire couriers in other cities.
It all started with an article by the Hackistan collective in August 2016. Next, a few messages circulated on the Facebook group of the couriers. 50 cyclists were curious about the idea of a cooperative. Here, they could be both workers and owners!!! Two weeks later, in the headquarters of the SMart co-op, 15 of the couriers met to draft their business model.
“It became to us that we were not natural-born-entrepreneurs”, says Arnaud, one of the co-op’s spokespersons, smiling. “Initially,” Arnaud quipped, “we met to build an innovative delivery service taking into account a green environment, urban congestion, sustainable mobility, and fair working conditions. … Now, we are no longer just atomized individual couriers working for a company that considered us not much more than ‘legs-on-bikes-without-brains.’ We are convinced that with sufficient human investment, there is space for such co-op of couriers in Brussels.”
The couriers have created working groups focusing on their business model, web development, and a legal structure. Most of the couriers are specialized in one or sometimes even two of these areas. They sent a proposal to enter the CoopCity incubator for social entrepreneurs, a new program funded by the Region of Brussels and the European Union. The CoopCity incubator for social entrepreneurs is a first in Belgium; it’s an 8 month-long program, led by professional coaches from the best business schools and co-ops in the city.
As another courier, Sacha, puts it: “at Take Eat Easy, we only had to resign ourselves to hierarchy … The ultimate grievance was the introduction of an internal competition among couriers … We definitely want to avoid these kinds of management glitches with our co-op. We want a kind of governance that improves collective well-being.”
There are many obstacles: from web development to the survival on small profit margins. “We are ready to face these tough questions,” Sacha insists. But the couriers already learned one thing: if they work together, they can build their own platform co-op.
Arnaud stresses that “thanks to this experience, we see already immediate positive results: we’ve built stronger partnerships and bonds in our local community, and we’ve strengthened our identity as a group of couriers.” It’s also encouraging to see that similar groups are now also emerging in Paris and London. Couriers of the world, (keep pedaling but), and unite!
Matthieu Lietaert, author of the book Homo Cooperans 2.0., is an investigative journalist. He is also director of the film The Brussels Business about corporate lobbying in the EU. He holds a Ph.D. from the European University Institute.
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]]>The post “A Gathering of Commoners” Full program for the European Commons Assembly appeared first on P2P Foundation.
]]>Last updated: November 11, 2016.
All activities are still open except the Visitor Tour and Session in the European Parliament, which have
reached maximum capacity. If you are not participating in Parliament but plan to attend other events of the
ECA, please fill out this form in advance: https://goo.gl/forms/WnZqivZEHKCXK4xz1
*Those arriving before 14:00 are welcome to meet the coordinators at SMART.be, Rue Emile Feron 70, 1060
Bruxelles. After 14:00 the meeting point is Zinneke, address below.
An evening to get acquainted, exchange on different instances of European commoning, and build solidarity
going into the following sessions. http://www.zinneke.org/?lang=en
Those who do not participate in the Visitor Group Tour of Parliament can gather at the SMART headquarters in
Saint Gilles and continue working. http://smartbe.be/en/
This workshop involves a visit and walk through the commune of Forest (in Brussels), a specific urban water
management supported by hydrological communities. Proposed by Les Etats Généraux de l’Eau à Bruxelles
http://www.egeb-sgwb.be/Home It is limited to 15 people, you must contact Dominique Nalpas at
[email protected] to confirm your spot.
Gathering for security verification for those going on the tour of Parliament. Please arrive for 10am with the
travel document that you specified in your registration. This is mandatory for reimbursement.
An open break to leave the Parliament for lunch (not provided). It is recommended to stay in the area.
Arrive at 1:45pm to re-enter security with the group – you must be accompanied by a representative of the
EP, who will be waiting at Esplanade Solidarnosc. If you do not take the Visitor Tour, you should get
accredited for entry at this time (also with an EP representative and according to prior arrangements).
With a diverse coalition of commoners from around Europe, we enter the European Parliament together for a
facilitated and co-constructed session. We highlight how the commons can inform EU policy, in both content –
with policy proposals – and form, through a participatory methodology. Interpretation ENG, FR, and ITL.
Directly after the session, we walk together to Mundo-b for a reception to celebrate and reflect on our work
together. Food and drinks will be available for purchase at the in-house Kamilou Café.
Everyone, regardless of participation on the 16th, is invited to participate in this facilitated group discussion of
the future direction of ECA. We also take advantage of the time to plan follow up actions, before saying our
goodbyes.
For inquiries: [email protected]
For more info on the network: http://europeancommonsassembly.eu/
Twitter: @CommonsAssembly
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]]>The post First Meeting of the European Commons Assembly, November 15 to 17, 2016 in Brussels appeared first on P2P Foundation.
]]>The coordination team will be working out of SMART’s main offices in St. Gilles. This is a chance to visit their space and meet other participants in the ECA network. http://smartbe.be/en/
A social evening to get acquainted and warm up in an informal reception setting. This is an important get together to build solidarity going in to the main session the following day. http://www.zinneke.org/?lang=en
Local commoners from Brussels will also propose different activities (more information soon).
For those who do not participate in the Visitor Group Tour of Parliament, we will gather at the SMART headquarters and continue the work with local Brussels groups.
Gathering for security verification for those going on the tour of Parliament. The exact location will be given in the second version of the program.
*Required for reimbursement, maximum 100 participants.
An open break to leave the Parliament for lunch (not provided). It is recommended to stay in the area.
Arrive early to go through security, and get accredited if you didn’t take the AM tour.
**Max. 130 participants
With a 140-person strong coalition of commoners from around Europe, we enter the European Parliament together for a co-organized, facilitated session. We highlight how the commons can inform EU policy, in both content – with policy proposals – and form, through a participatory methodology.
Directly after the session, we walk together to Mundo-b for a reception to celebrate and reflect on our work together. Food and drinks will be available for purchase at the in-house Kamilou Café.
Everyone is welcome to attend the Assembly for a co-organized and facilitated session dedicated to stand in solidarity around our diverse struggles for the commons and discuss the future direction of the network of European commoners. We also take advantage of the time to plan follow up actions, before saying our goodbyes.
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]]>The post Interview with Douglas Rushkoff and Michel Bauwens appeared first on P2P Foundation.
]]>An interview between these two thinkers where they discuss finance, value, business and the Commons including a historical perspective. What follows is a list of items covered during the discussion.
00:00 Douglas Rushkoff
1:52 Michel Bauwens
3:13 Michel asks Doug about the evolution of society and guilds.
4:09 Guilds: “the wheels of commerce”, Fernand Braudel’s books on capitalism and civilization.
4:50 After the Crusades, late middle age, trade guilds emerged, economy, work
7:30 Aristocracy got crushed by p2p economy so broke up guilds and local currencies – chartered monopolies
8:20 Michel talks about what might be contemporary versions of guilds – Enspiral, Sensorica,
10:34 How can we create value sovereignty? Open value accounting
11:50 Open Coops, Cap return,
14:47 Douglas: How to get buy in to these new kinds of company form – freelance union
16:10 Michel: Smart – Belgian payment service – http://smartbe.be/ – mutualizing – alternatives
18:30 Douglas: Mutualism.
23:00 Developing sustainable businesses: example : Acre – Open farm toolkits –http://www.poc21.cc/aker-2/ one of 12 projects at POC innovation camp http://www.poc21.cc/
24:57 Netarchical capitalism http://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Netarchical_Capitalism , Platform cooperativism – http://platformcoop.net/ , Can existing companies change?
26:30 Borrowing instead of buying
27:50 Flexible versus brittle in highly financialized landscape.
29:40 Open Accounting – Sensorica – transvestment – http://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Transvestment
30:30 Derivative markets led to amplification of capital, local currencies will end up more stable then central currencies
31:42 Madison mapping summit – mutual aid network –
34:13 Asking Doug how he applies P2P to government and governance? (direct democracy, Loomio)
35:50 P2P form of democracy – cities, city states and nation states
37:00 We live in the spectacle of a democracy, trans-nationality, trans-local, guilds to counter global corporations
40:28 Currency + nationality. National economies, federal banks, fiscal policy.
42:10 Crypto and LETS, critique on using blockchain
44:27 DAO – we need ethical, sustainable forms not more rent extraction schemes, legacy advantage
46:46 Platform Cooperitivism – {Doug}
50:00 Distributed ownership
51:30 Open Coops {Michel} – coop as distributed capitalism not good enough, actively creating common goods, Fairshare
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