Ferretti, Thomas (2020) A liberal egalitarian perspective on the platform economy: mitigating its distributive effects or changing the organizations running it? Journal of Social Philosophy, 51 (1). pp. 54-79. ISSN 0047-2786 (Print), 1467-9833 (Online) (doi:https://doi.org/10.1111/josp.12330)

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Abstract

I argue that a just regulation of new clubs and online platforms might require both changing the kind of organizations running them and implementing mitigating policies to compensate the negative effects of market disruptions. The first contribution consists in explaining how theories of organizations can help to understand two important economic processes facilitated by information technologies like online platforms. This subsequently allows me to untangle various ways in which these processes create unjust inequalities. The second contribution consists in distinguishing two distributive strategies to tackle resulting unjust inequalities. According to the mitigating strategy, public institutions should tolerate all kinds of organizations running clubs and platforms and limit their intervention to mitigating policies such as redistributive taxation and adapted social protections. The organizational strategy goes further. In addition to previous mitigating policies, public institutions should also change the kind of organizations running clubs and platforms. They should promote cooperatives of contractors and users, for instance, to compete with current investor-owned firms and to ultimately run the platform economy in their stead. The third contribution consists in discussing the pros and cons of each strategy. In particular, I raise a challenge to the organizational strategy and I outline the kind of arguments needed to respond to it. This suggests that the organizational strategy could be justified but demonstrating this requires more research.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	liberal egalitarianism; clubs, platforms; inequality; organisations
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > H Social Sciences (General) H Social Sciences > HB Economic Theory
Faculty / School / Research Centre / Research Group:	Faculty of Business
Last Modified:	15 Sep 2023 13:15
URI:	http://gala.gre.ac.uk/id/eprint/44115

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