airb&b

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MERRI OK

EXTRACTION DISASTER CAPITALISM

GIG ECONOMY MASSIVE LOBBYING

1/21 helping find insurrectionists?

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Joe Gebbia, 43

permalink

Connected to: Office of Personnel Management

Musk link: Tesla board member

Gebbia is the co-founder of Airbnb, a Musk friend and board member at Tesla. He recently revealed he was working as a volunteer for DOGE, focusing on how to improve the federal retirement process through software. Gebbia, who has contributed to both main political parties, said publicly he voted for Trump and supports Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

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AN 5 26

A small disclaimer on a website just exposed a secret project with no reporting, oversight, transparency or accountability under the thumb of President Donald Trump's office.

Audrey Henson, who researches and writes about the intersection of technology and power, found the disclaimer in the footer of a page on the TrumpRx website, which claims to offer access to drugs the government is trying to renegotiate prices for.

"In the footer of the page, beneath all of it, I found something I have never seen on a federal government website in my life. A byline. The government does not do this," explained Henson. "The IRS does not sign its work. The FBI does not. Social Security does not. No federal agency that has ever built a website has felt the need to take credit for it. In plain bold text, sitting directly above the privacy policy, it said: Designed and Engineered in D.C. by National Design Studio. So I clicked through."

What she said she found was "The National Design Studio," an "office" created by one of Trump's executive orders in Aug. 2025.

According to Joe Gebbia, co-founder of Airbnb, the goal was to redesign how Americans experience their government online. He reports directly to Trump's chief of staff, Susie Wiles.

"His position requires no Senate confirmation, which means he files no financial disclosures, which means the office he runs does not appear in any federal procurement database, which means, as far as the official record is concerned, it barely exists," wrote Henson. That, she said, is the point.

Staff is hired under Section 3161, which allows for temporary advisory bodies meant to be part-time advisors and volunteers. Their salary isn't public, and there is no inspector general to keep an eye on ethics. Henson called it essentially what DOGE was meant to be, the "department" that was promised would save $2 trillion by cutting "waste, fraud and abuse" in government. Gebbia was previously working for DOGE.

So, Henson compared the names from DOGE with those of the National Design Studio and found them remarkably similar. " The National Design Studio is not a successor to DOGE. It is DOGE with a better logo and a design philosophy," she said.

What she found in the code of the pages on TrumpRx is that each page is "making phone calls to servers all over the internet with dozens per second." One of those is "PostHog," a Silicon Valley analytics company that records what users do on a website and reports it back to those who own it. It's everything from following mouse movements to scrolls and clicks.

"I had not clicked anything. I had just opened the page, and it was already on the phone with PostHog telling them about me," Henson said. It includes your IP address and any other identifying information it can obtain. Henson said it's not something she expected to see on a government website.

So, she checked other government sites. Real Food, Trump Accounts and others are all part of the PostHog tracking and data collection.

"And on ndstudio.gov alone, running alongside PostHog, was something someone had built entirely by hand. Five hundred and forty lines of custom JavaScript with a name embedded directly in the code: AutoMonitor. What it appears to do is rewire the part of the browser that handles how a page talks to the outside world, so that every conversation the page has with any server gets copied and forwarded to a private backend with no public presence. The studio has the structural ability to keep a copy of every recording as it passes through their infrastructure. I cannot prove they are keeping one. The pipe is built that way on purpose, and that is the part that matters," Hensen explained.

The problem is that the government requires a number of things for websites, which include privacy disclosures, notices in the Federal Register and published contracts with outside vendors, she said. None of those exist on the 12 National Design Studio programs. Those laws were enacted after Watergate to protect Americans from secret government surveillance programs. Each missing piece at those 12 sites is a crime, resulting in 36 breaches of federal law. There is a privacy disclosure on the Trump Rx page, but Hensen said that some paragraphs contradict each other.

"A federal health website is lying to the people using it and cannot even keep the lie consistent," Hensen warned.

Then she went searching for more, finding at least 40 on top of the first 12. Some of the sites haven't been announced.

"I started reading the names. Sites that looked like they belonged to the State Department. To NASA. To the Department of Homeland Security. And then two that stopped me cold: a working preview of vote.gov, and something called fbi-kirk-tipline. I checked the public ownership records for every subdomain, and every single one traced back to the same place, the Executive Office of the President," she said.

The sites were built by the National Design Studio. Everything was built by the White House using the same Cloudflare account, which isn't normal for a federal agency either.

"The login screen for the gated preview sites read: loveisaskill.cloudflareaccess.com. Love is a skill is a phrase Gebbia has used publicly to describe Airbnb’s design philosophy," said Henson. To her, this indicates Gebbia owns these personally, not the government.

Akash Bobba, one of the people on DOGE, now controls one of the sites for an agency as well as emails and security configurations. It "means a White House staffer has full visibility into who applies for grants, who gets approved and who inside that agency is talking to whom," said Henson.

Henson also remembered an Oct. 2025 conference call in which Bobba was recorded saying that the group was building a federal voter registration system on vote.gov.

"Voters would register through a federal portal, their identities verified through Login.gov, their citizenship verified through DHS’s SAVE database, their registrations transmitted to the states," Henson continued. "A state election director asked him what data the federal government would retain. He said, on a recording, in an election year: I don’t know what they retain and what they are logging. The person presenting a federal voter registration system to state election directors did not know what data his own system kept on American voters."

She noted that there is a previous law that blocks the White House from overseeing voter registration, so it violates that law too.

A few weeks before Trump signed the executive order, essentially forcing small parts of the SAVE Act on the public, the security certificate appeared. The order mandates that within 90 days of the signing, they must have a federally created "list" of citizen-verified voters. That 90 days is up in a few weeks. The Justice Department told the judge overseeing lawsuits against the order that it was in the deliberation phase. The websites show that the claim doesn't match up with reality.

"The certificate is dated April 10. DOJ told a federal court the infrastructure does not exist. Both of those cannot be true," Henson said. "Either DOJ lied to a federal judge, or the studio is building a replacement for the country’s voter registration site without telling the agencies whose work it would replace. There is no third option."

She then went to the State Department website for passports. The White House owns that website now, too. On May 5, the first security certificate was issued. The new website has no official seal on it or a privacy notice. She said that, based on the staging environment, it looks to her like the government wants to require Americans "to upload their passport photo through a White House-controlled website, on the same Cloudflare account, by the same people, with no privacy notice on file. A passport photo is biometric quality. Linked to your identity through Login.gov. Collected through infrastructure the White House owns, sealed from public view."

She cautioned that it appears the site is being built this week.

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12 24 ymail fs4ppl

2024 was another record-shattering year for campaign spending, with $16 billion spent on federal races. According to OpenSecrets, nearly $4.5 billion came from independent expenditure groups such as super PACs, and $1.1 billion came from dark money groups.

Citizens United created a massive loophole for foreign interests to acquire stakes in U.S. corporations and then use that leverage to influence or control the corporation’s political activity, including campaign contributions, contributions to super PACs, and independent expenditures. Companies like Amazon and Airbnb, which have significant foreign ownership, have circumvented direct bans on foreign influence enshrined in federal law and used their money to impact the outcome of elections and to advance political agendas in their favor.

WATCH: Re-Introducing the “Get Foreign Money Out of U.S. Elections Act”

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Congressman Jamie Raskin and Senator Sheldon Whitehouse have reintroduced the “Get Foreign Money Out of U.S. Elections Act,” a bill to ban foreign-influenced corporations from contributing to candidates, parties, or committees (including super PACs) or from engaging in their direct election spending. Free Speech For People was instrumental in drafting and helping to pass this model legislation in Minnesota, San Jose, California, and Seattle, Washington, and we have worked closely with the offices of Congressman Raskin and Senator Whitehouse to reintroduce this federal bill.

Now more than ever, we must do all we can to restore faith and confidence in our democracy. By banning multinational corporations from pouring unlimited sums of money into our elections, we are upholding the letter of the law and getting us one step closer to a democracy that is truly by and for the people.

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/biden-transition-team/

Among the many challenges Joe Biden's administration will have to confront after Donald Trump ends his temper tantrum is deciding what posture to take toward big business.

There will be a battle for the soul of the new president as corporate Democrats vie with progressives to influence policy in areas such as regulation and antitrust.

Initial signs are encouraging.

The Biden transition just released a list of some 500 individuals who will be staffing the Agency Review Teams charged with preparing the way for a transfer of power in all parts of the executive branch.

Most of the people are from academia, state government, law firms, non-profits, unions, think tanks and foundations.

Surveying the list of affiliations,I found only about 20 for large corporations. Most of the people are from academia, state government, law firms, non-profits, unions, think tanks and foundations.

It is likely some of the law firms are there to represent specific corporate interests, but the numerous representatives from progressive public interest, environmental and labor groups should serve as an effective counterweight.

Unions in Labor Department

In the Labor Department list there are no law firms or corporations; in their place are representatives from five different unions along with people from the National Employment Law Project and other progressive groups.

What is particularly significant is the near absence of people affiliated with Wall Street banks.

The Defense Department list has someone from JPMorgan Chase; Homeland Security has a representative from Capital One; and the International Development group includes someone from U.S. Bank. There is no one from Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Wells Fargo or Morgan Stanley.

The Treasury Department group is led by someone from Keybank, which is based in Cleveland and ranks about 29th among U.S. banks. Fortunately, the Treasury group also includes representatives from places such as the Center for American Progress, the American Economic Liberties Project and the AFL-CIO.

Environmentalists at EPA

Other balancing acts include the list for the Environmental Protection Agency, which includes a representative from Dell Technologies but also from Earthjustice (the lead person) and The Sierra Club.

Some of the corporations show up in surprising places. Walt Disney is represented on the Intelligence Community list. The cosmetics firm Estee Lauder has someone on the State Department list. Someone fromAirbnb is in the National Security Council group.

Tech Companies at OMB

Looking at current corporate villains, the one that stands out is Amazon.com. It shows up on two lists—the one for the State Department and the one for the Office of Management and Budget.

Lyft and Airbnb are also on the OMB list, along with some academics, a consultant, state officials and someone from Meow Wolf, a Santa Fe-based non-profit that produces immersive art experiences.

Given that OMB oversees regulatory policy, the absence of public interest, union and environmental people raises a concern. Otherwise, it appears that the Biden team is limiting corporate influence in the emerging administration.

Let's hope it stays that way.

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https://movetoamend.org/corporate-rule-examples-10

Most of us are drawn to the "shared economy" aspect of the Airbnb Corporation, the chance it offers to meet ordinary people living in ordinary places and to support the economic security of households in countries around the world.

But in a culture in which "more is better," even good things have a way of getting out-of-hand. In the last two years this corporation tripled its value to $30 billion. In New York State there are a total of 46,000 hosts with New York City being the company's largest market in the U.S. The only way to continue that growth is to expand the number of hosts.

Today Airbnb stands accused, in U.S. cities and abroad, of violating state and municipal laws, skirting taxation policy, evicting tenants, eliminating affordable housing, and "disrupting neighborhoods with streams of transient visitors."

New York City is the latest metropolitan area to rise-up against what it sees as Airbnb's assault on its law and communities. San Francisco, Santa Monica and Anaheim in California, along with the European cities of Barcelona, Berlin and Amsterdam are legally wrestling with Airbnb's corporate practices.

Recent New York State (NYS) legislation expands a 2010 law that made it illegal to rent more than one dwelling unit for less than 30 days if the owner is not a resident in the building. The expanded law makes it illegal to advertise a unit that's in violation of that restriction.

"The San Francisco-based company's money doesn't come from people living in their own homes renting out a room or a bed while they're there, which is legal," said the legislation's sponsor, NY Assemblywoman Linda Rosenthal. Instead, it's "people who have figured out they can take groups of apartments off of the market and turn them into their own private hotels," she said.

Airbnb Corporation immediately sued the NYS Attorney General and the City of New York claiming that the law violates its constitutional rights of free speech (First Amendment) and due process (14th Amendment).

The company's lawsuit maintains that the NYS law "is a content-based restriction on advertisements--in the form of rental listings--which are protected under the First Amendment." It also cites protections of the Communications Decency Act, a federal law holding websites not responsible for content posted by its users. The NY law had this federal statute in mind when it held hosts responsible with fines up to $7500 if found listing a barred rental on an internet platform such as Airbnb.

Airbnb Corporation makes the same constitutional claim in its lawsuit against the city of San Francisco. It is clear the corporation values its "right" to profit from these rentals more than it appreciates a community's right to protect its residents.

As these cases are battled in the courts, there are fundamental questions to be raised by us "self-governing" people:

1. Is a community not legally entitled to define and design its jurisdiction in keeping with the protection of all its residents and local economy?

2. Are the people not functioning legally when they pass laws through democratic process that define and limit corporate actions in their midst?

3. Why ought a corporation--simply a thing, a legal entity created by the people--be allowed to override such publicly-written, protective law?

The Constitution's rights apply to real people and not their inanimate corporate creations. We, as sovereign people, should deny the Airbnb Corporation's illegitimate rights in our communities and join the democratic work of taking away from all corporations those constitutional rights.

UPDATE: On Friday December 2, Airbnb Corporation withdrew its lawsuit against New York City. The city's law was written to hold hosts liable for advertising illegal apartments, not the corporation, itself.

"The city will now get down to the important business of enforcing the law against the serious lawbreakers on the site who turn affordable housing into illegal hotels. This is a win for everyone," said NYS Assemblywoman Rosenthal.

Airbnb has had a less precipitous ramp-up in lobbying, but has still seen a steady increase over the last few years. In 2012, Airbnb spent $195,000 on federal lobbying efforts, in 2016 that number had climbed to just under $500,000. But Airbnb isn’t trailing some of the largest hotel chains in the U.S. by much. For example, Marriott International, by many accounts the largest hotel company in the world, spent $670,000 on federal lobbying in 2016.

These numbers only provide a snapshot into the lobbying activity of these companies. For a full look at the numbers, check out CRP’s info on Uber and Airbnb. But here’s the important takeaway: Uber and Airbnb, despite being relatively young companies, are making significant moves to influence members of Congress, as well as federal agencies.

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KNOCKING ON DOORS: AIRBNB’S LOBBYING EFFORTS

What about Airbnb’s lobbying efforts–where do those end up concentrated? Like Uber, Airbnb has largely focused on building a presence and relationships with lawmakers–not any big moves. Early in 2016, Airbnb hired former Republican Congressman Vin Weber, of Minnesota, to up its federal advocacy presence. Weber explained to The Hill: “The good news is, they are smart enough to get involved in this town before they really need anything. They’re trying to introduce themselves before there’s any problem to be dealt with on the federal level.” But Airbnb has been cagey, in its lobbying reports, about revealing its interests in Washington: it often fills in the space for “Specific lobbying issues” with vague phrases like “programs and policies affecting the sharing economy” or “regulatory issues.”

Some of Airbnb’s energy has been concentrated on fighting the hotel industry. For example, the American Hotel and Lodging Association has been lobbying for more intense regulations for short term rentals like Airbnb; Airbnb has pushed back, publicly claiming the organization is anti-union and against minimum wage increases.

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CONCLUSION

Uber and Airbnb have become such ubiquitous parts of our lives, despite the fact that they only sprung up a few years ago. But their moves in Washington, while recent, have been growing and are important to track. Because Uber, Airbnb, and other mainstays of the sharing economy like Lyft, Rover, and TaskRabbit, serve to disrupt their markets and provide existing services in new ways, they are particularly concerned about the effects certain federal regulations could have on their companies.

These companies have also started to increasingly make their political engagement known, especially in the wake of Trump’s presidential win. Right after Trump’s controversial executive order regarding travel from seven Muslim-majority countries, both Uber and Lyft fell into the political conversation. Uber came under fire after continuing to offer rides to JFK Airport despite a traffic strike, and #DeleteUber began trending as a result. In response, Lyft pledged to donate $1 million to the ACLU over the next four years. While federal lobbying matters, Uber, Lyft, and other sharing economy companies have shown that they’re willing to up their political engagement in other ways too.

Clearly there are many reasons that both companies have begun spending more heavily on federal lobbying. As Uber and Airbnb become more visible on the lobbying circuit, it’s worth watching how they spend their influence investments.

airbnb buys sf election

someone argues that airbnb uber gig economy is extractive: "contractors' don't have rights as employees (pioneered by Amway?)

maybe from http://democracycollaborative.org/content/robert-mcchesney-and-john-nichols-present-people-get-ready-fight-against-jobless-economy-and

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/33720-the-sharing-economy-is-the-problem

The "sharing economy" sure has a nice ring to it, doesn't it? As the saying goes, "sharing is caring."

Through Uber, the sharing economy's poster-child, thousands of drivers have turned their personal cars into money-making vehicles. Homeowners internationally have earned extra cash by using another popular sharing service, AirBnB. These companies' ads are filled wit. The idea of the sharing economy also comes at the perfect time. Since the Great Recession, more and more people have been looking for economic alternatives, ones that build off of mutual aid, rather than greed and the "it's everyone for themselves" philosophy. Likewise, the recession pushed significantly more segments of the American workforce into positions where they must string together part-time gigs and find alternative ways to bring in revenue. So a sharing economy, where people can use what they already have to help others, while making some bonus money for themselves, sounds like a perfect solution.

It's unfortunate then that these companies and the misnamed "sharing economy" are really just fronts for millionaires and billionaires to opportunistically ride off the backs of everyday people, while also exacerbating many economic inequalities.Avi Asher-Schapiro explains the truth in Jacobin:

The premise is seductive in its simplicity: people have skills, and customers want services. Silicon Valley plays matchmaker, churning out apps that pair workers with work. Now, anyone can rent out an apartment with AirBnB, become a cabbie through Uber, or clean houses using Homejoy.

But under the guise of innovation and progress, companies are stripping away worker protections, pushing down wages, and flouting government regulations. At its core, the sharing economy is a scheme to shift risk from companies to workers, discourage labor organizing, and ensure that capitalists can reap huge profits with low fixed costs.

There's nothing innovative or new about this business model. Uber is just capitalism, in its most naked form.

It's Anything but Sharing

Since when has paying for something ever been the definition of sharing? In The Nation,Mike Konczal and Bryce Covert make the case that selling a service through an app comes nowhere close to qualifying:

Cutting through the marketing BS of Silicon Valley is a good goal for everyone, but the left in particular should debunk its definition of a "sharing economy." Sharing, in this case, doesn't mean "lending someone the use of something for free." It also doesn't match the Silicon Valley description of creating a large number of small-scale entrepreneurs or independent business owners.

Instead, what we see is the creation of a low-wage workforce under the ownership of tech companies. At Uber, this arrangement means that drivers have to pay for their own cars, maintenance and gas, while management sets the rates and terms of their labor, taking a hefty cut in the process. A crucial first step for reform is to get these drivers recognized as actual workers, with proper rights and proper insurance.

Uber has actually become so dominant that it is valued as a more than$40 billion company. And you don't become worth $40 billion by sharing and caring. You become worth $40 billion by ripping off the people who work for you.

To extrapolate, in return for putting their own vehicles to work,Uber's drivers can receive as little as $1.21 per mile. As the IRS figures, operating a car is a 56¢ per mile expense, on top of which Uber collects 20% of the fare. By the time all these expenses are accounted for, Uber drivers can be making much less than minimum wage. Uber drivers often complain that they have to be on the roadconstantly in order to make anything resembling a reasonable income. If it sounds unfair, it's because it is - but drivers can't do anything about it. And as Mary Hansen explainsin YES! Magazine, "Taxi and Uber drivers are independent contractors, not employees. As such, they are not guaranteed a minimum wage or other labor protections, nor can they unionize."

This isn't just a problem for drivers, though. By being a multi-billion dollar industry, these sharing economy corporations are pushing our already exploitative economy in a worse direction.Jeff Spross explains it in The Weekly:

Another complaint is more subtle, but more frightening: that these technologies areexacerbating inequality and driving us towards a "servant" economy, where large pools of poorly paid and economically insecure workers will spend their lives providing all manner of petty services for the well-heeled elite.

Pascal-Emmanuel Gobrylaid out the grim logic succinctly: The efficiency gains of connecting workers to customers via the internet applications will drive down prices and thus incomes, while the new profits created will all get sucked up by the small group of Silicon Valley companies that created the platforms, along with their shareholders.

There's a simple phrase for this: extracting wealth. And that's exactly what these sharing economy corporations are so good at doing. They belong with the old, extractive economy but they're trying to pass as part of the new, generative economy

It's no wonder, then, that Uber drivers in LA, San Francisco, Seattle, New York, and elsewherehave protested. Their complaints join a chorus of voices already upset about their industry being disrupted (a term the tech world loves) by a company offering low wages, stripping away worker protections, and bypassing regulations - all while stuffing the wallets of Silicon Valley executives.

It's Only Getting Worse

It's important to note that this article's authors have used Uber and AirBnB - on more than one occasion, in fact. And we will probably use them again.

We admit our hypocrisy to bring up this point: articles criticizing Uber, AirBnB, and the sharing economy at large often seem to regularly miss that the traditional companies they compete against can be quite awful in their own right. Cab companies can be one of the most exploitative industries out there. Hotels and motels are also extremely abusive to their workers. You can't just take a cab instead of an Uber and feel good about your decision, or vice versa.

Yet almost every time we've taken an Uber, we have asked the drivers how they like driving for the service. Over time, we've noticed that the pendulum has swung increasingly in the direction of people expressing that they are simply not happy. One driver in particular that we spoke to was incredibly open about the reasons for his dissatisfaction. Let's call him George. George explained that he had been driving for Uber for around a year. But throughout that year, Uber had cut how much it cost for passengers to ride with the service. The company framed this as a pro for the drivers: it would get more people to use the service, which would result in more rides, which would result in more money. Lower costs equals higher volume, that sort of thing. Which sounds nice, but George said Uber also started taking a higher cut of the drivers' pay while simultaneously no longer waiving fees they'd originally waived to entice new drivers into their service. Worst of all, Uber did this with absolutely no warning - one day drivers were making a certain amount, the next day they were making way less. So Uber was cutting the costs of their service but placing the entire burden of that cut entirely on the drivers.

This one example points towards a larger trend: as these sharing economy companies become greater juggernauts, they care less about the people who are actually doing the work and who actually own the assets that their businesses depend on.

What we need to do is stop the shift towards a world where more and more people must rent out their own resources simply to make a living, and we must work towards a system where it's not about choosing one type of exploitation over the other.

The good news is that this paradigm shift is already underway.

The Alternative: The Cooperative Economy

Let's take a minute to clarify that we do not put any blame or ill-will at the feet of most of the people who drive for Uber, do odd jobs off of TaskRabbit, rent out their homes on AirBnB, and so on. People largely are doing this because they need to make more money, and these services help them do just that. The problem is that the users are the people creating all of the wealth, have all of the assets and resources, are taking on most of the burden, and do pretty much all of the actual work. Yet a significant portion of the capital that they create is flowing out of their hands and their communities and to investors, stockholders, and Silicon Valley executives. At the same time, these executives have inordinate power over everyone who uses their "sharing economy" services, making it easy to exploit the laborers and the producers, who in turn have almost no recourse of their own.

These extractive and unfair practicesare a far cry from the actual kinds of sharing that generates community and connection. Sharing itself, of course, is a good thing. In fact, even flexible labor arrangements can have a place in a vision for a new economy. As sharing activist Mira Lunaputs it, "If greed was a major characteristic of the dying economy, sharing is a key element of the blueprint or DNA for the new economy."

So people should be able to use a service like AirBnB or Uber. But they should also own them cooperatively.

A cooperative is a business or organization that is democratically owned and governed by its membership.This membership can be comprised of workers, consumers, producers, and a combination thereof. (For a greater in-depth explanation and stories of people who have started cooperatives, watch thisshort, free, online documentary that the authors of this article helped create.)

Cooperatives exist all around world, as well as in almost every sector. In the bad times, members of cooperatives collectively share the burden. In the good times, members of cooperatives collectively share the benefits. They also democratically govern the organization - one member, one share, one vote. In short, cooperatives are means to voluntarily redistribute the wealth amongst the laborers and the producers. Every dollar possible isn't squeezed out for the benefit of outside investors; instead the profit produced is viewed as a way to benefit the overall membership and their communities. Cooperative ownership also allows people to pool together their money and resources, to help them collectively start businesses they may not otherwise be able to on their own.

Already, cooperatives are breaking into the domain of the sharing economy - in theory and in practice - and many of the people leading the charge are those dissatisfied with what both the traditional economy and the sharing economy had to offer them. Here's Hansen again, tellingthe story of Wolde Gebremariam in YES! Magazine:

After [Gebremariam] moved to Denver from Ethiopia in 2006, he worked minimum-wage jobs at the baggage claim in the Denver International Airport, and then at a nursing home. Though he enjoyed working with seniors, he wanted to go back to school and study pharmacy. The flexibility of driving a cab seemed like the right way to go. "I could work Friday, Saturday, and Sunday driving," he says. "Then, I [could] go to school full time."

That's how he thought it would work, anyway. But the reality turned out to be more difficult. In 2012, he spent six months driving for a company called Metro Taxi, with a lease that required him to pay $800 per week for the use of the vehicle, dispatch, and other services. The need to earn that much every week, in addition to what he needed to live, pushed him to drive 10- or 12-hour days, seven days a week.

Gebremariam wasn't finding the flexibility he was looking for, and turned to Uber instead. But, after driving for the company for a few months, Gebremariam says it was more of the same. "They are taking like 20 percent of our income," he says. "We have to be on the road all the time."

Gebremariam isn't just complaining about it. Instead, he and 644 other drivers are on a mission to form a new taxi company that will be both worker-owned and unionized. The new co-op, Green Taxi, will have a fleet of hybrid or high-efficiency vehicles, and will offer a ride-hailing app.

As Jay Cassanomakes clear in Co.Exist, this is part of a larger movement. Green Taxi was actually inspired by another cab co-op in Denver.

Rather than pay for expensive leases from traditional taxi companies or give up a portion of their earnings to startups like Uber and Lyft, many taxi drivers are banding together to form their own taxi cooperatives.

In these co-ops, each driver is an equal owner of the business, with a share of the profits and a voice in how the business is run. Denver, Colorado has one taxi co-op,Union Taxi, founded in 2009 with about 250 driver-owners. Now cab drivers in the city are already talking about setting up a second taxi co-op.

"We're actually seeing a mini-explosion of interest in taxicab co-ops," says Melissa Hoover, executive director of the Democracy at Work Institute. "These groups are responding to the same weaknesses in the industry that Uber is, but from a perspective centered around bettering workplace conditions, worker control, and compensation rather than 'disrupting' the model to benefit investors at the expense of workers."

Drivers in a cooperative get to collaboratively establish their pay, the hours they work, and their working conditions - no small matters in an industry that employs many recent immigrants.

Of course, while the explosion of worker-owned cab companies are new, their existence is not.The Union Cab of Madison Cooperative, a worker-owned co-op of more than two-hundred members, has been around since 1979 - proving that these co-ops can be in it for the long haul while also revolutionizing traditionally exploitative industries. Union Cab was actually born out of a strike, when cabbies decided to fight for better pay and working conditions. But rather than negotiate with the aggrieved drivers, their employer chose to simply shut down the business. Shortly thereafter, several of the now out of work drivers decided that they could run the business better together - and also for the benefit of all the workers (dispatchers included!).

The cab industry has actually regressed in some ways since 1979; drivers are often no longer considered employees but rather independent contractors (like with Uber). Generally speaking, at a normal cab agency, the company earns their income by renting the car out to the drivers. But what this means is that if a cab driver has a bad day, they may not earn enough fare to pay back their lease and so they may end up owing the company money.

For the worker-owners at Union Cab, the differences couldn't be more significant. The co-op owns all of the assets and drivers earn a commission off their fares - so if they give a ride, they make money. Also, because the drivers own the company, they split a share of its profit at the end of every year. What's more is that Union Cab provides health insurance to all of its drivers, which is virtually unheard of in the industry. Finally, no one worker is allowed to make more than 2.5 times the amount of any other worker. (You can read more about the Union Cab difference, here.) Why is this the case? Well, it's because the workers, who are also the owners, voted to make it happen.

This is a complete contrast to the way typical cab companies and the executives of ride-sharing services run their businesses.

In addition, the argument has been made that Uber itself can and should be turned into a worker-owned cooperative. Again, Konczal and Covert in The Nation:

But... what exactly are the capitalists at Uber contributing to the company? Almost all of the actual capital is already owned by the workers, in the form of cars that they pay for and maintain themselves. And these workers labor individually, doing the same tasks, so there's no need for a management class to control their daily operations. The capital owners maintain the phone app, but app technology isn't the major cost, and it's getting cheaper and easier by the day. [...]

But a transition to workers' owning their firms is necessary, economically smart, and one way for workers to gain power in the digital age. Because you know what worker-run firms do? Share.

The transition of an online company into a cooperative isn't unfounded, either.As Janelle Orsi argues in Three Ways to Put Tech Platforms into the Commons, it's happened before. Here she imagines how AirBnB could function as a cooperative while also explaining how another tech company already made the transition:

Co-bnb, as I'm calling it, could be an online marketplace owned and democratically controlled by the people who rent space to travelers. You can call it a "freelancer-owned cooperative," a term possibly coined by Josh Danielson, founder of Loconomics.com. Loconomics just bought out its shareholders and became a cooperative corporation to be controlled by the freelancers who use the platform to offer services such as babysitting, home cleaning, and dog walking. The mission of Loconomics is to enhance the viability of freelance work, a task most reliably led by freelancers, themselves.

Soon, 40 percent of the US workforce will consist of freelancers, many of whom will cobble together income from multiple sources. We can't allow companies like Airbnb, Uber, and TaskRabbit to take 5 percent to 20 percent of freelancer earnings. If those companies remain the gatekeepers of critical work opportunities, they'll continually adjust search algorithms, fee structures, and terms of service to extract more out of workers.

So we don't need to shut down platforms like Uber and AirBnB. We just need to either out-cooperate them, or, better yet, turn them into cooperatives. Because in the sharing economy, people rent out their labor and resources for the overall benefit of billionaires. But in the cooperative economy, people pool their labor and resources for the overall benefit of each other.

It's time to forget the sharing economy. The cooperative economy is the one challenging the tech industry and changing people's lives for the better.

This piece was reprinted by Truthout with permission or license. It may not be reproduced in any form without permission or license from the source.

DAVID MORGAN

David Morgan is a worker-owner at the Toolbox for Education and Social Action, a worker-owned cooperative created to democratize education and the economy while furthering the cooperative movement. The Toolbox designs curriculum and next-generation resources for learning, such as Co-opoly: The Game of Cooperatives."

BRIAN VAN SLYKE

Brian Van Slyke works at the TESA Collective, a worker cooperative that develops resources for social and economic change, such as Co-opoly: The Game of Cooperatives. Follow TESA on Twitter @toolboxfored.

Ron Conway - Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Conway

Ronald Crawford "Ron" Conway (born March 9, 1951) is an American angel investor and ... In 2014 Conway, along with fellow Airbnb investor Reid Hoffman, donated a total of ... In 2012 Conway founded the San Francisco Citizens Initiative for .... San Francisco · San Jose State University alumni · California Republicans ...

Ron Conway, Big Tech drop thousands into sleepy SF election - by ...

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May 31, 2016 - It's raining Bitcoin on San Francisco Democrats. ... Class (funded by Airbnb) contributed $20,000; and billionaire tech investor (and big-time ... Conway also directly donated $19,500 to Mark Farrell's DCCC campaign, $5,000 ...

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Oct 6, 2016 - Wiener supports Airbnb and has not been good on controlling and ..... are even remotely Republicans; on social issues, almost everyone in SF politics ... The mayor's pal Ron Conway and his wife poured about $100,000 into ...

In San Francisco, tech investor leads a political makeover | Reuters

www.reuters.com/article/us-sanfrancisco-conway-idUSBRE89S05F20121029

Oct 29, 2012 - One morning in April, Ron Conway, the billionaire technology investor, sat in a ... Conway, until recently a registered Republican, counts Tiger Woods and ... from Twitter to Zynga to Airbnb; Lee persuades Conway to rally tech ...

Ron Conway: S.F. mover and shaker - SFGate

www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Ron-Conway-S-F-mover-and-shaker-3815771.php

Aug 27, 2012 - Conway, a lifelong Republican who switched to decline to state in ... to discuss the matter, though for now Airbnb is on the hook for the tax.

Slick, Misleading TV Ads Paid Off | San Francisco Public Press

sfpublicpress.org/news/costofvotes/2016-08/slick-misleading-tv-ads-paid-off

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Airbnb in Disputes With New York and San Francisco - The New York ...

www.nytimes.com/2016/.../airbnb-sues-san-francisco-over-a-law-it-had-helped-pass.htm...

Jun 28, 2016 - But two cities, Airbnb's hometown, San Francisco, and New York, the ... broad anti-Airbnb coalition of Democrats and Republicans, landlords and ... In response, Mr. Conway said in an email that New York City “won't even ...

Ron Conway - Anti-Eviction Mapping Project

www.antievictionmappingproject.net/conway.html

Ron Conway Owns San Francisco ... the business tax rates for tech companies that he invested in such as Airbnb, Twitter, Digg, and Zynga, amongst others.

Missing: gop

The Agenda, 2017: How SF can really fight Trumpism - 48 hills

48hills.org › News + Politics

Dec 18, 2016 - That would make Airbnb listings in SF a bit more expensive; since Airbnb ... and the GOP is going to cut from SF, and would allow the city to prosper, .... but his supporters (i.e. Ron Conway, San Francisco's personal Donald ...

How SF's bill to “legalize Airbnb” became a political grudge match ...

arstechnica.com/.../how-sfs-bill-to-legalize-airbnb-became-a-political-grudge-match/

Nov 4, 2014 - Why have Airbnb investors poured $750k into a California Assembly race? ... big Airbnb investors, LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman and Ron Conway. ... Campos has tried to portray Chiu as a Republican-lite, a sellout to big ...