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Article

14 Oct 2013

Author:
Evgeny Morozov, Financial Times (UK)

The ‘sharing economy’ undermines workers’ rights (USA)

The “sharing economy” has many fans but Eric Schneiderman, New York State’s attorney-general, is not one of them. He has demanded that Airbnb, a company that allows anyone to rent their property to strangers, hand over records of its 15,000 hosts in New York City to verify that they pay taxes levied on hotels. But the company, a pioneer of the sharing economy, is fighting the order...[W]e...must inquire into the structural effects of the sharing economy on equality and basic working conditions...[F]or all their rhetoric, many of these start-ups pursue rather un-revolutionary agendas...[T]he erosion of full-time employment, the disappearance of healthcare and insurance benefits, the assault on unions and the transformation of workers into always-on self-employed entrepreneurs who must think like brands. The sharing economy amplifies the worst excesses of the dominant economic model: it is neoliberalism on steroids. [refers to Amazon, Uber, TaskRabbit]