What does it mean to be precarious, and who self-identifies as part of the precariat? Is it a political position? And if so, how can precariats start to organize themselves? In this first episode of the Zero Infinite podcast we discuss precarity, anti-austerity and work through interviews with Alex Foti, Baruch Gottlieb and Henry Warwick. How did the precariat arise, and who exactly is part of the precariat? The second half of the episode is a homage to the work of the late Mark Fisher. We listen to audio clips from his talk at the INC event MyCreativity in 2014, in which he analyzed the nature of neoliberalism and its consequences for individual wellbeing. What influence does a social system have on mental health, and how can this responsibility become clear?
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The circular economy (CE) is heralded as reducing material use and emissions while providing more jobs and growth. We explored this narrative in a series of expert workshops, basing ourselves on theories, methods and findings from science fields such as global environmental input-output analysis, business modelling, industrial organisation, innovation sciences and transition studies. Our findings indicate that this dominant narrative suffers from at least three inconvenient truths. First, CE can lead to loss of GDP. Each doubling of product lifetimes will halve the related industrial production, while the required design changes may cost little. Second, the same mechanism can create losses of production jobs. This may not be compensated by extra maintenance, repair or refurbishing activities. Finally, ‘Product-as-a-Service’ business models supported by platform technologies are crucial for a CE transition. But by transforming consumers from owners to users, they lose independence and do not share in any value enhancement of assets (e.g., houses). As shown by Uber and AirBNB, platforms tend to concentrate power and value with providers, dramatically affecting the distribution of wealth. The real win-win potential of circularity is that the same societal welfare may be achieved with less production and fewer working hours, resulting in more leisure time. But it is perfectly possible that powerful platform providers capture most added value and channel that to their elite owners, at the expense of the purchasing power of ordinary people working fewer hours. Similar undesirable distributional effects may occur at the global scale: the service economies in the Global North may benefit from the additional repair and refurbishment activities, while economies in the Global South that are more oriented towards primary production will see these activities shrink. It is essential that CE research comes to grips with such effects. Furthermore, governance approaches mitigating unfair distribution of power and value are hence essential for a successful circularity transition.
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We get into an Uber car, and the driver passes by the Kremlin walls, guided by GPS. At the end of the ride, the bill turns out to be three times as expensive than usual. What is the matter? We check the route, and the screen shows that we travelled to an airport outside of Moscow. Impossible. We look again: the moment we approached the Kremlin, our location automatically jumped to Vnukovo. As we learned later, this was caused by a GPS fence set up to confuse and disorient aerial sensors, preventing unwanted drone flyovers.
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This chapter discusses the sharing economy in the Netherlands, focussing on shared mobility and gig work platforms. The Netherlands has been known as one of the pioneers in the sharing economy. Local initiatives emerged at the beginning of the 2010s. International players such as Uber, UberPop, and Airbnb followed soon after. Initially, the sharing economy was greeted with a sense of optimism, as it was thought to contribute to social cohesion and sustainability. Over the last few years, the debate has shifted to the question of how public values can be safeguarded or stimulated. In this regard, shared mobility is hoped to contribute to more sustainable transport. In the gig economy, scholars and labour representatives fear a further flexibilisation of labour; others see opportunities for economic growth.
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Introduction: The Netherlands has been known as one of the pioneers in the sharing economy. At the beginning of the 2010s, many local initiatives such as Peerby (borrow tools and other things from your neighbours), SnappCar (p2p car-sharing), and Thuisafgehaald (cook for your neighbours) launched that enabled consumers to share underused resources or provide services to each other. This was accompanied by a wide interest from the Dutch media, zooming in on the perceived social and environmental benefits of these platforms. Commercial platforms such as Uber, UberPop and Airbnb followed soon after. After their entrance to the market, the societal debate about the impact of these platforms also started to include the negative consequences. Early on, universities and national research and policy institutes took part in these discussions by providing definitions, frameworks, and analyses. In the last few years, the attention has shifted from the sharing economy to the much broader defined platform economy.
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