Sharing is not always caring

The ‘Sharing economy’ is widely discussed term used to describe new forms of economic and social activity that rely on online transactions. These exchanges occur on platforms that leverage the power of Web 2.0 technologies. Even though the term has become popular, there is no agreement on what the sharing economy is precisely. The notion encompasses heterogeneous practices, and sectors and covers a broad spectrum of organizational forms, ranging from for-profit to non-profit initiatives. While they all use information and communication technology (ICT) to allow individuals to leverage their excess capacity and underused resources, they emerge from different logics that define them. This distinction is necessary not only from an academic and conceptual perspective, but to also contribute towards clearer and more accurate classifications for the purposes of regulation and public policy. In the hospitality industry, for example, initiatives such as Airbnb (online rental marketplace), Couch Surfing (free home sharing), Guest to Guest (home exchange), and Fairbnb (fair and non-extractive vacation-rental movement) have all been included under this umbrella concept. Though it initially referred to peer-to-peer sharing of access to goods and services, it has now been criticized as misleading, due to the commoditized nature of the phenomenon.

What’s in a name? That which we call sharing,
By any other name would smell as foul

While the sharing economy experiences fast growth and has a pervasive impact on society, it is presently replete with paradoxes and tensions about its boundaries, effects, and logics. Some view the sharing economy as an alternative to market capitalism, yet it might bolster capitalism instead. And, even if the sharing economy promotes more sustainable consumption and production practices, it also reinforces the current unsustainable economic paradigm. The sharing economy has become a catchall term with strong normative underpinnings. To add to the confusion, many neighboring concepts have been proposed including platform capitalism, on-demand or gig economy, collaborative consumption, gift economy, peer-to-peer economy, and access economy. To overcome these tensions, scholars have created distinctions between ‘pseudo’ and ‘true’ sharing, based on the level of reciprocity inherent in the exchange. Some suggest re-conceptualizing the term around a more comprehensive concept of mutualism, while others denounce the sharing economy's rhetoric, and criticize the misleading discourse around trust, sharing, and community.

The scholars studying the sharing economy also note the failure to realize the promised environmental, social and economic benefits. The environmental promise refers to the sustainable use of capital by having more people use less resources. However, research suggests that usually, environmental motivations are of secondary importance. The social promise, promotes the view of the sharing economy as offering affordable access to goods and services, as providing tools to generate non-reciprocal exchange, or as new forms of solidarity, sharing, and social bonding among individuals . However, researchers suggest that sharing platforms may instead recreate inequalities inherent in capitalist markets. Finally, is the economic promise of providing opportunities to overcome the limitations of the established economic and political institutions that are controlled by professions and bureaucracies, through fostering trust, decentralizing peer-to-peer networks and distributed modes of production. Though it was originally seen as an ideal emancipatory tool for individuals and communities, the sharing economy has in fact produced social closure and inequalities.

a neoliberal dystopia

Labor relations in the sharing economy have been of particular importance in this reimagined form of capitalism. Differences arise between scholars in whether these new arrangements improve the efficiency of transactions, and how it affects conditions for workers. On one side are economists, such who describe an “emerging networked society of micro-entrepreneurs” while others emphasize the precarious and exploitative conditions for workers, and the emergence of a neoliberal dystopia featuring increasingly powerful platforms that disempower and disenfranchise workers. These platforms not only unilaterally enforce policies and procedures, but also contribute to the lack of benefited employment, wage stagnation, and the rise of precarious, contingent, and temporary labor. A recent and comprehensive economic study has found that all employment growth between the years of 2005 and 2015 was in alternative and nonstandard work arrangements, including online intermediaries who now employ three million people in the United States. By leveraging the relative weakness of labor post-recession, platforms can now attract high-quality workers even under exploitative and extractive conditions.

Currently, there is ambiguity in the legislative and regulatory frameworks regarding new and emerging forms of work. On-demand service platforms use this as an opportunity to increase control over the workforce, while externalizing their risks onto customers and independent contractors. This dynamic is particularly apparent in the ridehailing industry, which has been specifically criticized for its labor control practices and its violation of antitrust laws. Many critics view this latest iteration of capitalism as simply enabling the erosion of worker protections under the semblance of technological innovation, thus ushering in a competitive and divided workforce that relies on allotted microwork. In the paradigm of platform capitalism, workers are made to believe that they have seized the means of production, but only discover their lack of control over the relations of production such as the structure of the network, or the ownership of data. These relations and networks have been algorithmically determined and abstracted, thus making it difficult for consumers, workers and regulators to comprehend the workings of the platforms, and to hold them accountable for the labor outcomes.

more equal than others

Within the various ridehailing companies, Uber particularly stands out due to various false claims made by the company, their attempts at rate cutting in various locations, claims of rampant sexism within the company, and their clumsy public relations attempts. In January 2017, Uber settled a case with the Federal Trade Commission, where the company was accused of making deceptive claims about drivers' incomes. As a response, they released a company-sponsored paper arguing that Uber drivers were well compensated, claiming that UberX drivers earned between $16.89 and $18.31 per hour. However, this study failed to take into consideration the considerable expenses drivers are responsible for, including vehicle operation and maintenance, insurance, licensing, and sometimes paying Uber for leasing a vehicle. An analysis made in 2015 found that most drivers were making only an average of $13.25 an hour after expenses, and even then under conditions of extended and demanding work. While other ridehailing companies claim to treat their drivers better, they are still suspect to using the same types of labor control and worker disenfranchisement. Thus, there is a tension between the rhetoric of labor platforms, which promise efficient, accessible, and affordable services, while extracting value out of labor rather than from technological advancements.

technology is the cause of, solution to, and scapegoat of our problems

There are different modes of control exerted by ridehailing companies on the drivers who make up their primary service delivery workforce. Control is exerted through the affordance of the platform, and by motivating passengers to adopt a managerial role. Utilizing the rhetoric of algorithmic management, ridehailing companies claim objectivity in how they spatio-temporally structure the work of the drivers. Ridehailing firms claim not to control the workers despite having undue influence on where and when they work. They also influence the delivery of service and interaction design through a rating system that promotes constant monitoring and surveillance of workers, and shaping the service delivery through reiterative design. By gamifying behavior through engagement tools, and outsourcing key functions to users, ridehailing firms are able to distance themselves from claims of managerial control. This impacts how on-demand work is regulated, primarily at the federal level, where workers are classified as independent contractors instead of employees.

throw your body against the machine

Recent developments in ICT and organizational practices that have led to rise of a new form of temporary employment characterized by algorithmic management, information asymmetry, power-imbalances, worker misclassification, and the constant threat of being replaced by automated systems. While traditional workers and alternative workers such as crowdworkers, platform workers and freelancers also face these forms of marginalization, the economic exploitation, lack of autonomy, and dehumanization is particularly salient in drivers who make up the on-demand labor force of ridehailing services. As a response to these forms of marginalization, ridehailing drivers engage in individual strategies to empower themselves. These strategies include gaming the ridehailing system, turning cars into flexible workspaces, and providing supporting services to other drivers. This demonstrates an acceptance and understanding of the current employment system, and working around it to empower themselves by reclaiming space and time. They also engage in collective strategies including social sensemaking, online activism, localized organizing, unionization, and the creation of competing ridehailing services. These strategies demonstrate an attempt to change or replace the current system of employment. Together, these individual and collective strategies point towards effective empowerment strategies for distributed workers, and better design practices for decentralized services.

This can be attributed to growing field of algorithmic management, which is the study of how work practice and organizing efforts are affected by the automatic decision making processes that replace human decision makers. The consequential aspects of implementing learning algorithms in the workplace deserve critical investigation. Opaque, inaccessible, and unmodifiable learning algorithms can black-box performance by creating decisions that cannot be easily explained, redressed, or adjusted. It could also lead to the increased digitization of human interactions, leading to constant tracking, monitoring, and evaluation. It also leads to enforced quantification, where human actors have to anticipate algorithmic decision making, leading them change their cognition and action to work with, against, and around algorithms. Finally, being imbued with the beliefs, values, and assumptions of the designers, algorithms carry implicit bias, while being represented as objective and impartial arbiters of truth. This has many implications for work and organizing, with expertise being transformed by replacing both skilled and unskilled labor. It also reshapes occupational work and boundaries by changing the nature of professions, and shifting identities and roles. Finally, while they could augment human coordination, they also run the risk of increasing the level of control of workers, or providing new ways to shape their work.

Human workers often are monitored, tracked, evaluated, and controlled by the algorithms, sometimes evidencing levels of controls that indicate an employer-employee relationship rather than that of an independent contractor. Despite being promised flexible and independent work arrangements, workers instead have lesser choice in when, where and how they can work. Further, these precarious forms of employment leads to economic exploitation, loss of autonomy and dehumanization of workers. Since they are disenfranchised, disempowered and distributed these workers cannot pursue traditional means such as collective organizing and bargaining to empower themselves. Instead, they rely on an assortment of individual strategies to regain power, reclaim their time and space, and leverage their positions to create economic benefit and occupational identities in their work. They also use online communities to perform social sensemaking, create support networks, and engage in activism. Democratized organizational forms such as platform co-operatives, and the use of emerging blockchain technology can empower distributed workers who would otherwise have to rely on traditional unionization and alternative labor rights groups.