Own This!

How Platform Cooperatives Change the World

eBook, 240 pages

English language

Published Sept. 13, 2023 by Verso Books.

ISBN:
9781839764554

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Describes a few cases of more or less "platform" cooperatives.

1 edition

Experiments in Collective Ownership

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This book lays out both the theory and practice of platform collectives, platforms that are cooperatively owned. As we continue to seek something other than the feed driven by ads, the dopamine hit that never actually satisfies anything, Scholz offers a way to actually experiment:

"Experiments with Collective ownership are one way forward. What if digital platforms were cooperatively owned? What if communities, including users and workers, had ownership and governance over the algorithms and servers of digital platforms as well as Upstream services?” (5)

He has a complex view of scale or "scaling up" that is useful:

“Any discussion of scaling must begin with a clear statement of what scaling is not. It is not the thing we are working against; that is, it is not a mirror of venture capital logic, which prioritizes growth for its own sake as a source of increased investment and profit, and maximizes …