Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-lnqnp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T08:04:45.509Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Shape of Things to Come

The On-Demand Economy and the Normative Stakes of Regulating 21st-century Capitalism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

K. Sabeel Rahman
K. Sabeel Rahman*
Affiliation:
Brooklyn Law School, New America, and Roosevelt Institute
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The “sharing economy” represents a growing challenge to regulatory policy. In this article, I argue that these debates about the sharing economy are better understood as a broader normative and policy problem of updating our regulatory tools for the new dynamics of 21st century capitalism. The new “on-demand” economy reflects more widespread trends in the structure of business organization, driven by new developments in finance and technology. I argue that we should analyze these changes through the normative lens of the balance of economic power: what is especially troubling about the on-demand economy is the way in which it outstrips the modes of accountability and countervailing power enabled by 20th century labor, safety net, and economic regulations. The article then suggests key frontiers for regulatory innovation, in particular: (1) expanding regulatory oversight of concentrated market and economic power among on-demand platforms; (2) expanding the relative power of workers to counteract the concentrated power of platforms in the on-demand economy (for example by expanding safety net protections and the ability to organize collectively); and (3) by reinventing systems of collective urban planning processes in the face of the on-demand economy. All three of these focus areas for regulation would entail a variety of specific interventions, but share a common premise of rebalancing economic power in this new economy. The payoffs of these shifts would be more than an expansion of welfare or efficiency, but rather the creation of a policy regime that enables a richer form of economic freedom that achieves more genuine economic independence from domination of various kinds.

Type
Special Issue on the Risks and Opportunities of the Sharing Economy
Information
European Journal of Risk Regulation , Volume 7 , Issue 4 , December 2016 , pp. 652 - 663
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1- Picker, Leslie and Isaac, Mike, “Uber Said to Plan Another $1 Billion in Fund-Raising,” New York Times, Dealbook, October 23, 2015 (available online at: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/24/business/dealbook/uber-said-to-plan-another-1-billion-in-fundraising.html?_r=0)Google Scholar.

2- See coverage at TechCrunch, e.g.: “Uber is Quietly Testing a Massive Merchant Delivery Program,” April 28, 2015 (online at http://techcrunch.com/2015/04/28/uber-is-quietly-testing-a-massive-merchant-delivery-program/)Google Scholar; “Uber Takes on Postmates with UberRUSH, an On-Demand Delivery Service,” October 14, 2015 (online at http://techcrunch.com/2015/10/14/uber-takes-on-postmates-with-uberrush-to-deliver-all-the-retail-things-to-you/#.mzzkwd:X0k7); “Uber’s New Update Gives Food Delivery As Much Attention As Transportation,” August 17, 2015 (online at http://techcrunch.com/2015/08/17/ubers-new-update-gives-food-delivery-as-much-attention-as-transportation/#.mzzkwd:abIH).

3- See e.g. “Freelancing in America: 2015,” Report by Freelancers’ Union and Upwork, available at https://www.upwork.com/press/2015/10/01/freelancers-union-and-upwork-release-new-study-revealing-insights-into-the-almost-54-million-people-freelancing-in-america/

4 See Rogers, Brishen, “The Social Costs of Uber” (2015) University of Chicago Law Review Dialogue 82, 88–90 Google Scholar.

5- See e.g. Rogers, Brishen, “The Social Costs of Uber” (2015) University of Chicago Law Review Dialogue 82, 93 Google Scholar.

6- Miller, Claire Cain, “Where Uber and Airbnb Meet in the Real World,” New York Times, Dealbook, October 17, 2014 (online at http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/19/upshot/when-uber-lyft-and-airbnb-meet-the-real-world.html?smid=pl-share)Google Scholar

7 See e.g. Sundararajan, Arun, The Sharing Economy: The End of Employment and the Rise of Crowd-Based Capitalism (MIT Press, 2016)Google Scholar; Kassan, Jenny and Orsi, Janelle, “The Legal Landscape of the Sharing Economy” (2012) 27(1) Journal of Environmental Law and Litigation 2–20 Google Scholar; de Stefano, Valerio, “Crowd-Sourcing, the Gig Economy, and the Law” (2016) 37 Comparative Labor Law and Policy Journal 461–470 Google Scholar; Ranchordas, Sofia, “Does Sharing Mean Caring? Regulating Innovation in the Sharing Economy” (2015) 16(1) Minnesota Journal of Law, Science, & Technology 413–475 Google Scholar.

8- Weil, David, The Fissured Workplace: Why Work Became So Bad For So Many and What Can Be Done to Improve It (Harvard University Press, 2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9- See Coase, Ronald, “The Nature of the Firm” (1937) 4(16) Economica 386 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10- Hansmann, Henry and Kraakman, Reiner, “The End of History for Corporate Law” (2001) 84 Georgetown Law Journal 439 Google Scholar.

11- Stout, op.cit., 1178.

12- See e.g., Macey, John, Corporate governance: Promises kept, promises broken (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2010)Google Scholar; Bebchuk, Lucian, ‘The Case for Increasing Shareholder Power” (2005) 118 Harvard Law Review 833 Google Scholar.

13- Bebchuk, Lucian, “The Case for Increasing Shareholder Power” (2005) 118 Harvard Law Review 833 Google Scholar.

14- See e.g. Krippner, Greeta, Capitalizing on Crisis (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2011)Google Scholar; Davis, Gerald and Kim, Suntae, “Financialization of the Economy” (2015) 41 Annual Review of Sociology 203 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Foroohar, Rana, Makers and Takers: The Rise of Finance and the Fall of American Business (Crown Business, 2016)Google Scholar.

15- Davis, Gerald, “What Might Replace the Modern Corporation? Uberization and the Web Page Enterprise” (2016) 39 Seattle University Law Review 501 Google Scholar.

16- See Rahman, K. Sabeel, “Curbing the New Corporate Power,” Boston Review (May 4, 2015)Google Scholar; Morozov, Evgeny, To Save Everything Click Here; Morozov, “Where Uber and Amazon rule: Welcome to the world of the platform,” The Guardian, June 6, 2015 (online at: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jun/07/facebook-uber-amazon-platform-economy)Google Scholar; Pasquale, Frank, The Black Box Society (Harvard University Press, 2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17- See e.g. O’Neil, Cathy, Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy (Crown, 2016)Google Scholar.

18- On the ways in which modern financing empowers managers and reduces the scope for meaningful stakeholder empowerment via corporate governance, see e.g. Stout, Lynn, “On the Rise of Shareholder Primacy, Signs of Its Fall, and the Return of Managerialism (in the Closet)” (2013) 36 Seattle University Law Review 1169 Google Scholar ; Greenfield, Kent, “The Stakeholder Strategy” (2012) Democracy: A Journal of Ideas 47 Google Scholar.

19- See e.g. Benkler, Yochai, Wealth of Networks (Yale University Press, 2006)Google Scholar.

20- See e.g. Pasquale, Frank, Black Box Society (Harvard University Press, 2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rahman, K. Sabeel, “Curbing the New Corporate Power,” Boston Review, May/June 2015 Google Scholar; O’Neil, Cathy, Weapons of Math Destruction (Crown, 2016)Google Scholar.

21- See Rahman, K. Sabeel, Democracy Against Domination (Oxford University Press, 2017)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Novak, William, “Law and the Social Control of American Capitalism” (2010) 60 Emory Law Journal 377 Google Scholar; Boyd, William, “Public Utility and the Low-Carbon Future” (2014) 61 UCLA Law Review 1614 Google Scholar; Radford, Gail, The Rise of the Public Authority: Statebuilding and Economic Development in Twentieth-Century America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Pasquale, Frank, “Internet Nondiscrimination Principles: Commercial Ethics for Carriers and Search Engines,” 2008 Univ. Chi. L. Forum 263 Google Scholar.

22- Rahman, K. Sabeel, Democracy Against Domination (Oxford University Press, 2017)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Radford, Gail, The Rise of the Public Authority: Statebuilding and Economic Development in Twentieth-Century America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23- See e.g. Langevoort, Donald and Thompson, Robert, “Publicness in Contemporary Securities Regulation after the JOBS Act” (2012) 101 Georgetown Law Journal 342 Google Scholar.

24- See e.g. Greenfield, Kent, “Reclaiming Corporate Law in a New Gilded Age” (2008) 2 Harvard Law. & Policy Review 1 Google Scholar.

25- “Freelancing in America: 2015”, supra note 2.

26- See Asher-Schapiro, Avi, “Against Sharing,” Jacobin, September 9, 2014 (online at https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/09/against-sharing/)Google Scholar; Mirani, Leo, “The secret to the Uber economy is wealth inequality,” Quartz, December 16, 2014 (online at: http://qz.com/312537/the-secret-to-the-uber-economy-is-wealth-inequality/)Google Scholar; van Slyke, Brian and Morgan, David, “The ‘Sharing Economy’ is the Problem,” Grassroots Economic Organizing, July 3, 2015 (online at: http://www.geo.coop/story/sharing-economy-problem)Google Scholar.

27- See e.g. Katzelson, Ira. Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Origins of Our Time (WW Norton & Company, 2013)Google Scholar.

28- See e.g., Rolf, David, The Fight for Fifteen (New Press, 2015)Google Scholar.

29- Department of Labor, Wage and Hours Division, “Defining and Delimiting the Exemptions for Executive, Administrative, Professional, Outside Sales and Computer Employees,” 80 F.R. 38515 (July 6, 2015).

30- Hanauer, Nick and Rolf, David, “Shared Security, Shared Growth,” Democracy: A Journal of Ideas (Summer 2015), 6–20 Google Scholar; Strom, Shayna and Schmitt, Mark, “Protecting Workers in a Patchwork Economy,” The Century Foundation, 7 April 2016, available at https://tcf.org/content/report/protecting-workers-patchwork-economy/ Google Scholar.

31- Good Work Code, online at http://www.goodworkcode.org/.

32- See Berwick, Uber v., California Labor Commission, Case # CGC-15-546378 (June 16, 2015). Available online at: https://www.scribd.com/doc/268911290/Uber-vs-Berwick Google Scholar. See also Isaac, Mike and Singer, Natasha, “California Says Uber Driver Is Employee, Not Contractor,” New York Times, June 17, 2015 (online at: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/18/business/uber-contests-california-labor-ruling-that-says-drivers-should-be-employees.html)Google Scholar.

33- Rogers, Brishen, “Employment Rights in the Platform Economy: Getting Back to Basics” (2016) Harvard Law & Policy Review 480 Google Scholar.

34- See e.g. Miller, Michelle, “The Union of the Future,” The Next American Economy Project, Roosevelt Institute, July 2015 Google Scholar; Rogers, Brishen, “Libertarian Corporatism Is not an Oxymoron” (2016) 94 Texas Law Review 94 Google Scholar.

35- Andrias, Kate, “New Labor Law” (2017) Yale Law Journal (forthcoming), preliminary version available at https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2853485 Google Scholar.

36- See Judd, Dennis and Fainstein, Susan (eds.), The Tourist City (Yale University Press, 1999)Google Scholar; Smith, Melanie (ed.), Tourism, Culture and Regeneration (Cabi, 2007)Google Scholar.

37- See Frug, Gerald and Barron, David, City-Bound: How States Stifle Urban Innovation (Cornell University Press, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

38- Foster, Sheila and Iaione, Christian, “City as Commons” (2016) 34 Yale Law & Policy Review 281 Google Scholar.

39- Samaan, Roy, “Short-Term Rentals and L.A.’s Lost Housing,” LAANE, August 2015 Google Scholar.

40- See Hill, Steven, “The Unsavory Side of Airbnb,” The American Prospect, Fall 2015 (online at http://prospect.org/article/evictions-and-conversions-dark-side-airbnb)Google Scholar.

41- See e.g., McLaren, Duncan and Agyeman, Julian, Sharing Cities: A Case Study For Truly Smart and Sustainable Cities (MIT Press, 2015)Google Scholar; Agyeman, Julian, McLaren, Duncan, and Schaefer-Borrego, Adrianne, “Sharing Cities,” Friends of the Earth briefing (September 2013)Google Scholar; Finck, Michèle and Ranchordas, Sofia, “Sharing and the City” (2016) Vanderbilt journal of Transnational Law (forthcoming)Google Scholar

42- See e.g. de Barbieri, Edward, “Do Community Benefits Agreements Benefit Communities?” (2016) 37 Cardozo Law Review 1773 Google Scholar; Noveck, Beth, Smart Citizens, Smarter State: The Technologies of Expertise and the Future of Governing (Harvard University Press, 2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gilman, Hollie Russon, “Transformative Deliberations: Participatory Budgeting in the United States” (2012) 8(2) Journal of Public Deliberation Article 11Google Scholar; Fung, Archon, “Recipes for Public Spheres: Eight Institutional Design Choices and their Consequences” (2003) 11(3) Journal of Political Philosophy 338 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

43- See Peers.org (online at http://www.peers.org/about/).

44- See e.g. Kessler, Sarah, “Pixel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in the Gig Economy,” Fast Company (May 2014)Google Scholar; Cagle, Susie, “The Case Against Sharing,” Medium, May 2014 Google Scholar.

45- See e.g. Tomasi, John, Free Market Fairness (Princeton University Press, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

46- For a deeper discussion of this tripartite understanding of freedom in its dyadic, structural, and political forms, see e.g. Rahman, K. Sabeel, Democracy Against Domination (Oxford University Press, 2017), chapter 4CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Rahman, K. Sabeel, “Democracy Against Domination: Contesting Economic Power in Progressive and Neorepublican Thought,” Contemporary Political Theory (April 2016)Google Scholar.

47- See Gourevitch, Alex, From Slavery to the Cooperative Commonwealth: Labor and Republican Liberty in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge University Press, 2015)Google Scholar.