Lean platforms outsource non-tradable jobs globally and shift capital costs onto workers

Evidence

While the other platform types have all developed novel elements, is there anything new about lean platforms? Given the broader context just outlined, we can see that they are simply extending earlier trends into new areas. Whereas outsourcing once primarily took place in manufacturing, administration, and hospitality, today it is extending to a range of new jobs: cabs, haircuts, stylists, cleaning, plumbing, painting, moving, content moderation, and so on. It is even pushing into white-collar jobs – copy-editing, programming and management, for instance. And, in terms of the labour market, lean platforms have turned what was once non-tradable services into tradable services, effectively expanding the labour supply to a near-global level. … These companies have also offloaded costs from their balance sheets and shifted them to their workers: things like investment costs (accommodations for Airbnb, vehicles for Uber and Lyft), maintenance costs, insurance costs, and depreciation costs. — Nick Srnicek, Platform Capitalism, 72

Categorization

• XREF: The claim that lean platforms shifted capital costs onto workers parallels the gig-economy literature and Zuboff’s account of Uber’s surveillance — a direct point of contrast to Zuboff’s surveillance-capitalism framing. — connects to: Financial engineering is promoted as outsourcing social problems to entrepreneurs — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 963; Platforms divide into asset-owning product platforms and asset-outsourcing lean platforms — Nick Srnicek, Platform Capitalism, 64; Efficiency displaces friction onto hidden labor and environmental costs throughout supply chains — Naomi Klein, Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror…, 777 (+2 more)

Related

• Lean platforms only profit from frequent, low-skill, non-trainable tasks (similarity 0.84)
• Platforms divide into asset-owning product platforms and asset-outsourcing lean platforms (similarity 0.84)
• Lean platforms are unprofitable ventures sustained mainly by venture capital welfare (similarity 0.84)
• Lean platform economies are an outlet for surplus capital, not capitalism’s revival (similarity 0.84)
• Lean platform workers are highly educated yet forced by unemployment into gig work (similarity 0.81)
• Platforms extract surplus value produced elsewhere without producing any themselves (similarity 0.80)
• Platforms extract value from each transaction without absorbing employment obligations (similarity 0.80)
• The shift to platforms concentrates ownership rather than ending it (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Platforms extract value from each transaction without absorbing employment obligations #expands (0.80) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 220
• Efficiency displaces friction onto hidden labor and environmental costs throughout supply chains #expands (0.75) — Naomi Klein, Doppelganger, 777
• Platforms extract surplus value produced elsewhere without producing any themselves #corroborates (0.72) — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 872