Taming Platform Capitalism to Meet Human Needs

We are witnessing the emergence of an information and communication technology (ICT)-enabled platform capitalism in which traditional corporations are being displaced. Railing against traditional firms to rescue capitalism would, under these circumstances, seem like misdirected effort. The “working anarchies” (e.g. Uber, Wikipedia) and “pop-up firms” (e.g. Vizio) of this new world use “labor on demand.” Here too there is risk that platform owners exploit their power and become rapacious. Yet, ICT can enable platform capitalism to create community-based, locally controlled alternatives to corporations and states. Cooperatives and democratic software platforms (e.g. Linux) must be important business forms in the future.

Business · Capitalism · Computer security · Democracy · Economic system · Economics · Exploit · Information and Communications Technology · Market economy · Political science · Power (physics) · World Wide Web · Computer Science · Digital Economy and Work Transformation