Todays form with juliet schor with her book after the gig. She is doing today conversation by vina. Julia sure is a professor of sociology at boston college. She is also a member of the Macarthur Foundation connected learning research network. She has written and edited many books on the economy and sustainability including sustainable life sales and a quest for platitudes. She is a fellow meant former guggenheim fellow and has won multiple awards for her work and research. She is joined today by vina, who is a professor of law at the university of california hastings. Her work has been cited by the California Supreme Court in her writing has been published in the los angeles times. The sharing economy what it is what it couldve been what it could still be. I will leave you with this quote from bill himself, juliet schor and her team have done something extraordinary. Extensive research has let them understand what the economy feels like to its participants and their storytelling ability. It lets the rest of us makes complete sense of the data. In addition, they provide a workable plan, perhaps to fulfill the promise of gig work as part of a supportive useful they are economy. This book will redefine the fields and on that note of praise, i will turn things over to our speaker, juliet, the virtual stage is now yours. Thank you so much for having me. We are deeply honored to be in conversation we just heard julies introduction but will he is not just on a behemoth in this particular field also thinking about work more broadl broadly. Incredible scholar for people across discipline. For a very long time. Shes an amazing thinker so any one of your students or Young Mentees this is an honor, and amazing, it will change the conversation im delighted to be here to talk to about im thrilled you were willing to come. I think we are in a mutual admiration society. Talk about the book the findings for them are going to have a conversation. To start with the origins of the gig economy or the sharing economy. In those origins i think we can see a direction for where we might go to reorient this sector which is really gotten off trac track. Uber and lift were founded in 2008 and nine. At the height of the Great Recession on this sector and idealist discourse. Promised economic social and environmental benefits and a slightly plausible when one discourse. Been on the economic side it promised efficiency using assets that were idle a lot of the time were intensively. And that was thought to lead to environmental benefits. So if you could use p rooms instead of hotels, you would not have to build as many hotels. If people could share cars, a lot of people would think they would not need to buy cars. So those were the sort of twin ideas of efficiency and omissions really reduced emissions. Also promised opportunity for people. The platforms were places could easily hop onto, to earn extra money to maybe be able to stay in their house, pay down the student debt. These are the kind of things we found them interviewed people. Then there is a social promise about connection. That because these platforms were hosting what i call strangers sharing for persontoperson interactions, it was thought that they were going to make durable ties. You host someone on airbnb couch surfing in your home, you become friends. So all of those things were promised. And one thing that has not been recognized enough is the extent to which the idealists discourse threat of longer standing traditions within Silicon Valley. Emily look at those traditions we can see the two possible paths that the shared economy might have taken. One is what has been cyber utopianism. Online communities lead to outcomes. The flat spaces they bypass the established structures of power. In Silicon Valley in its early days. But it has continued through, there is a thread line that gets us to sharing economy platforms. Sort of more prominently obviously to the nonprofit platforms that were also founded at this time. And those are important. Couch surfing started as a nonprofit, you dont pay money, repair cafes, tool i braced make or spaces. But also some of the forprofits use the same sort of cyber utopian discourse. But there was a another strand within Silicon Valley which is what we might think of free market text which is the idea that the government is bad, the corporations are good, corporations are going to get us all this good stuff. Unfettered corporations bring freedom, prosperity, liberty. And that of course is the uber alessa fee. So there is a sort of right wing Silicon Valley discourse and a more leftwing one. And you could see both of them socalled sharing economy. I just mention the nonprofits import in the founding of the sector europe especially. Theyre part of the earlier community. That is actually where my Research Team started. Because in 2008 921st started thinking about these issues, there was a lot of hope for things like maker spaces and timebased food swaps and repair cafes. Kind of true sharing initiatives at the Community Level that are really going to help people who were in economic distress. Or were going to build different kinds of economy. We began. I assembled a team and i just want to shout out. I dont know if any of the team members are here, i wrote this book with 18 of people who were all phd students in sociology of the time. They involve premuch now all graduated. We did 13 case studies of different sharing initiatives. Both the nonprofits which is the kinds of nonprofits that i just mentioned. And then we turned our attention to the forprofits like air bmp, past rabbits, a lot of work with past graphic touro which airbnb for cars, delivery platforms, uber lift of course, and we ended with a platform cooperative owned by the worker workers. I am still working on these issues. That came for almost ten years. I am still working on these issues with a group of colleagues from northeastern. And also some bc phd students. Were looking into crime shoppers and delivery apps. You are from the team here let us on the q a. So, things have not turned out as expected. So the title of the book is how the shared economy got hijacked. I guess the question i want to address is why . What happened . Let me just say a word about the nonprofits. And, i was not planning on talking too much about them today, happy to go into it into the q a there. I think they are really in the boston area folks are interested in these studied makers space in a time bank easiest way to talk about what happened with these nonprofits would be the term failure to thrive. One of them actually failed during the time we were studying it. One of them thrived in a lot of ways but not in others. That really undermined intention of the founders participants and so forth those trying to build alternative economies and put myself in that camp what about the forprofits theyve got a lot of attention. So we begin studying these pretty much in the early days. And i would say in the early days things were pretty good on a lot of these platforms. The earners were generally happy. Although, then, as now. Of course is gotten much worse. Making a fulltime living on these platforms was hard to do, even in the early days. And that was true for a couple of reasons. Either the wages were too low, so in the very earliest days, wages were good on all these platforms. They were a lot more than minimum wage, there a lot more than people could get for many of the kinds of skills they were engaged in on the platforms. But, even on the really high reach plastic jim platforms, its a general kind of errand and work platform, both in the home and out. Some of the big tasks on task rabbit where ikea furniture, delivery of cleaning is a big one. Tests have high wages far above the wages. In a highly educated workforce. Its called dependent earners, people were dependent on the platform to pay the basic expenses for the rents, the foo food, people were dependent workers generally earned up to or below the poverty line. It was very, very hard to get out of poverty. Of course some people could. But in general, that was what we found. Whereas we found supplemental workers, people who are adding on this gig work to other sources of income. In most cases a fulltime job. Maybe they are students so they dont need to earn a full incom income. Or possibly espousal income or so forth. Those folks higher wages because they can discriminate more in the path they took. Have a lot more flexibility in the schedule mary market demand is very variable they also had a lot more time to me much less worried about the reputation one person said to us who have that the rating went down the platform message another orientation they were like no way, they just wouldnt do it anymore. It was interesting, the extent to which the supplementary workers did things in the way they wanted. Rather than the way the platform wanted. So one of the big issues in the scholarship and also in the public discussion about platforms is sort of how much autonomy do workers really have . How much algorithmic controls are they exercising . We found big differences between the dependent workers and what you might think is a fulltime worker, which is not exactly the same thing and the supplemental. One of the important things is over time, more and more workers on these platforms. Especially lowwage platforms. Were dependent workers. It came to be more and more dependent workforce. That is why things had gone south on the forprofits to think of it in that way. So, why did they go south . So in some ways, the model never made a lot of sense for some platforms. So if you take over, the biggest of all of the platforms has the most workers. Uber prices rise far below cost. What that meant as they were always losing money, were always pressuring the drivers. They were only going to be able to have a viable model if they can absolutely dominate the market, wipe out all of the competition and raise the prices high enough so they can make a profit on each ride. That turned out to be a lot more difficult than expected. And the hype about hoover said the low prices are big part of what drove consumers to the services. But they are not sustainable on a lot of these apps. Certainly not on ride, to a certain extent i think also not sustainable printable concurrent level. These platforms are depending on the exploitation of the workers in the failure to obey employment laws, or going to talk without my finisher in a minute. But, that sort of bad model to begin with meant was eventually a lot of pressure from investor investors. Because there is a point at which they want to see profitability. And that is been important in the jeep downward trajectory of wages, which is seen on ride hail, and on deliveries. If you look at a hall platform you see the opposite which is the wages are high that restricts the demand. That is the basic contradiction there for basic sign of economic conflict there. Its a very simple obvious thin thing. The lower the prices you get more customers. But you have to squeeze the workers. He raised the prices have a smaller market. And with hoover be profitable at a small fraction of its size . I mean that is the question. They dont find out they want to wipe out Public Transportation and a wipeout lift, the wife everybody out of dominate the market and they can exploit not just the workers with customers two. Okay a lot more to say on that. Let me just end with the questions of what possible, what could we do, can we get this economy back on track . Do we even want to . Plenty of people say gauges are terrible. We want to move to a fulltime secure employment systems. This whole experiment of the gig economy should be stopped. So one of the things to recognize about the platform is that they are very different than conventional businesses. They generally operate with open access for earners and obviously for consumers to. What that means almost anybody can join the platforms. There are a few qualifications around background checks and so forth. For the most part these are really apps to get on and try to turn on. One of the things he gets chronic excess supply. Particularly when theres a bad labor market, that is what were seeing right now and the post covid environment is tons of people streaming onto these apps getting harder and harder for people to make money. So a labor market is doing bad , more people on the aspirate you see that in the data as a general unemployment moves participation moves you can also see lots of entry and exit on the apps over the year. Very, very flexible. You can see the rising number of dependent workers on ride home and delivery. The thinnest of the apps, the flexibility of the apps also attract a lot of people for who that flexibility is essential. They may be people who have other responsibilities. They had to leave fulltime jobs because woman got a divorce and had to take care of her Children Hours it conform to the school day. She started working on the platforms has a way of doing that. Catherine hill is on really interesting work on disabled workers used of the apps. Technology app obviates or eliminates a lot of management function. So hr, quality control, matching consumers with earners, many of these things are done by algorithms. So you probably, if you looked at the sector at all you know these companies particularly in the early days did not hire many people at their corporate headquarters. They are very, very lean that way. Complaint of delivery workers and drivers especially. The point is, a lot of the functions of management are now automated. The w algorithm management. That means that workers dont really mean that much managerial supervision. They dont need managers nearly as much as they did. This becomes an argument for why the cooperative structure which is owned by the workers so much more efficient. These kinds of platforms. They also scale really rapidly build an efficient way to organize platforms for thats our last case with the cooperative was a photographers cooperative. Very, very successful case in which the photographer owned and govern the platform. They got much more of the money back from the photographs they sold and were really happy about the whole enterprise. And so i think that is one possible future for the gig economy all a lot of problems of the corporate owned platforms could really make it work for workers that does take advantage of what this technology has to offer. Sony stuff there. Im going to turn it over. Scenic thank you so much julius. Again, this book is really fascinating. I read it, read the first draft and then i read the finished product is incredibly insightfu insightful. We do not get a chance to reflect on and a short time. I want to hear talk more about me think the audience was to hear you talk more about it. In many ways this Research Project walks the walk. It is a collaborative Research Project with many students this book was collaboratively written. At looked at not just the prototypical platform capitalis capitalist, youre not just talking to hoover drivers you were talking to people in, you know, the postrecession shadows of the Great Recession were really trying to reimagine their world. And so i want you to talk a little bit more about those folks and what their trajectory was. And then i want to talk about the current moment and how we can use the current recession that we are in maybe differently than those folks did. And how to learn through the mistakes of that moment . Yeah, let me start the Research Process and the team process which you raised, was a privilege and a wonderful experience. I dont think the Macarthur Foundation and the research. Most wonderful way to write a grant youre gonna do this and you do it he says. They gave us money and pretty much allowed us to go where the research took us. So we were constantly evolving. And that was wonderful. You gave me a comment on the easterly version book. Which was something i kind of hadnt realized. That basically, what were able to do because we started sector was just beginning, we were kind of able to take a trip through kind of moved with the sector. And that was really a privilege. Because it meant as things started happening could just follow that. We were not stuck with something that we had designs in your one that really was not as interesting in your three or four. We were also an idealist team in the sense that we had hoped, we had high hopes for many of these things that we were beginning in the beginning. Were really interested in because we thought they could make meaningful change things and crash at that time. We could easily end up being was not a dissolution but her research let us things going in Different Directions that we would not have hoped they would. And the second part of your questions you guys was really interesting about the people. The people we talked to at the beginning. One thing that was interesting was in the early days, on both the forprofits and the nonprofits, people were really believing in that idea of discourse. People were going on to work of the airbnb for cars in order to rent out environmentally efficient cars like hybrids. They wanted to teach other people about hybrids. They were making friends on airbnb. They were trying to create a different kind of economy. Some people believe that these platforms would create a persontoperson economy that was substantially different from what the dehumanizing, depersonalized or impersonal corporate economy. So weathers the economic benefits, the social or the environmental, there were a lot of true believers in those early days across the whole range of the sharing economy, sharing economy apps. See what we have an interesting question from the audience curtails into one of my questions. When your last chapter you talk about how scholars really think about where we go from here in three ways. There is either the platform capitalist way, we sort of enshrine their model into law and regulation. There is the state regulation way, and then there is the democratic sharing way. You know, the true cooperative way. In some ways we are in all of these places at the same time right now. Though i think we are in a particular moment where things are shifting. And John Marshall asked, whether you could comment on public municipal ownership of platforms and businesses like rideshare. And maybe also talk to us a little bit more about what that might look like in comparison to coop models. What are sort of the possibilities in this realm . And what are the things we need to do to make one or either of those things possible . Guest that is a great question. That is one that is not been talked about enough. Let me say a word or two about the three that i talked about in the last chapter you raise. The first one which is sort of the corporate, dominant platforms. One of my coauthors and friends a dutch scholar named kuhn franken wrote a really interesting peace in which he made a point its obvious now we can see it, we can sit with whats happening with hoover. The likely trajectory we just kind of let the platform do with they want, the big corporate one as there would be a couple of super platforms that have all the different services. They will come to dominate, coke and pepsi, hoover lift, that sort of model in which so Many Industries he basically have two or three dominant firms. So that is one direction. The second is regulation which you mentioned. And of course venus works so much with the misclassification of the gig economy. And we have seen real change in this. What i argue in the book is beginning in 2018, you start to see the tide turning on regulation. Until that point it is been very, very hard to get any regulation through. In fact, most of the regulation that was happening was in the direction of more leeway and freedom for the company. Airbnb regulation, airbnb was still legal in many places worse operating really high levels. In the company got legislators and regulators to change those laws to make it legal. For starting in 2018, regulators and some of the biggest city start to clamp down and write hail, little bit less and delivery and on shortterm rentals, airbnb and a few other smaller competitors. Seated new york were drivers get a minimum wage you get a vehicle cap, San Francisco really crackdown on airbnb, l. A. , boston, seattle now considering serious write hail administration. I now have one of the collaboratives from the book when i a database of airbnb regulations and the ten biggest cities. It has just been a term mendez change. Momentum going into the regulatory dimension since 2018. Well talk about california what is going on there now. Whether or not, whether that momentum is going to be stopped in november . Or what is going to happen. That is one way. I think it is essential. There is no question that these platforms need to obey the laws that we have. And we need to create some new laws and regulations of the new kinds of problems they have created. But the question is do we stop there . Especially in the United States but can we do enough with regulation that we have a state that is so captured by industry . And that gets us to the third path which is we talked about the workers coops. What is called platform cooperative is in. And the questioners, possibility which is municipally owned platform. So municipally owned platform i think do provide some really interesting opportunities. So there are pros and cons for the worker model versus the owned. With the worker coop i think the democratic control is a little bit easier for you have it municipally owned coop you get in theory you can have the democratic control be always have to make to make the point you have the state in its own interest coming in there. Will really be run in the interest of the workers . Or the citizens, consumers, within municipal coop you will get a multi ideally would have a multi stakeholder. You might probably set it up as a more independent kind of entity. So it does not just get used for political reasons. So it has a sort of integrity, governance integrity, the worker coop model, you are a little bit more subject to the market were particularly with that municipal model the city these are probably be run at a city level. We studied these Consumer Services most of which are facetoface. What tends to be local markets. There are other types of platforms are global. Abb is global. Digital labor for example, and so forth we are going on a global labor force. Those present some other things. We focus on the Consumer Services, where you have a municipal entity, it can do more to shape the market. And then you have the question of is it going to be the only actor in the market . Is it going to be competing against private and so forth . I will soften this in a minute. I will mention one thing that happened was doing the research. I was approached by someone who was a municipal labor market in a city in britain at a time of high unemployment. Whos going to be a General Services labor market. Consumers could go wherever they needed, they posted and anyone could come on to try and get those jobs. And it failed almost instantly because theyre such an imbalance of supply and demand. Many, many more people needed the work and there was work available. This is also with the worker coop, they have an easier time. Because on like most of the platforms, they tend to not be open access so they are membership models. They restrict the number of workers could be on the platform at any one time. Try and basically match supply to demand. Theres good arguments for why youd want to do that. Otherwise it can become really hard for people to make money on the platforms. So, think both models are interesting. I like to see some municipal experimentation with the municipal models now that we have a decade of experience of platforms. I know San Francisco is actually thinking about one in the delivery sector. In a pretty serious way i think, you may know more about that. We would not write much actually. But you mentioned the north in Great Britain where they were considering a publicly owned ar arm, katie wells is in the audience, high katie. She is a really great question that i think you do such a good job of thinking about. Because you have been so prolific in meeting and speaking to and really understanding how the platform economy has rolled out in different places. She is wondering, if you could talk a little bit about how what you found in the u. S. That is alongside the platform economy and other countries . And whether they connect or diverge the studies elsewhere . Yes there is tremendous variation in how the platforms go across the country. In europe many are highly regulated super came into sweden and basically had operators like a basic taxi service, pay minimum wages and taxes and so forth. In the countries of europe were the labor unions and labor is stronger, the platforms have to do more to treat workers better. On the other hand there is wonderful work being done to collect name of jackson mit is setting write hail in many Global Cities and finding levels of exploitation and abuse through subcontracting, group predatory loans, kind of all of the familiar tactics of labor exploitation we are seeing there. It is very contextual. And, hoover has been banned in a number of European Countries for example because it will not follow the rules. Can i ask you question mark. [laughter] which relates i really want to make sure we have enough time to talk about what is going on in california and this classification. And vanessa asks, says im a freelance professional. Many of my colleagues are concerned about regulations go to fark forcing coming centuries as employees. Penises in pioneering work on what has led so many drivers to support the California Law that classifies or make sure theyre classified as employees. Yeah we think . We think about that . Guest it is a really hard question. Some have become a target of harassment with the result of misinformation about what is going on in california and my relationship to it. Facing some of hoover pr people in our attendee list. Theyre curious, listening and want to know what we have to sa say. I think part of the reason, then asked this question, why is there so much attention being paid to worker classification here . So in the United States as you all know the main pathway to security because we do not have another kind of social safety net and the way that they do in Northern Europe in particular, is through employment. So the only way you get healthcare, mr. Think for yourself, the only way get access to Unemployment InsuranceWorkers Compensation for injured on the job, all of the safety nets that we all really need is through employee status. That makes employment really expensive. And so the reason these Platform Companies came in and just really capitalize off of these and try to widen them, tried to make it seem like there workers were actually independent contractors was because it was so much cheaper for them. It was easier for them to scale and easier for them to keep labor costs down. Like like true independent contractors like people who are working cooperatives were really determining their affairs of their own prices, really Building Client list who are hustling to the Small Business owners, workers in these economies are highly controlled Business Model and through algorithms. This is not true across the platform, it is particularly true in the u. S. For the Platform Companies that get the most attention and employ the most workers. So, i think been to answer your question, i think that is why theres so much attention being placed with the issue of worker classification we think about regulating the platform economy more broadly. In my sense is that regulators see this as the most the biggest Pressure Point for these companies. That what they are hearing from their constituents as people are not earning minimum wage. For their sleeping in their car cars. California the economic inequalities being exacerbated by this work. There is a sense that we still have the United States it if you worked attended or 12 hours a day you should be able to put food on the table and pay your rent. So theres a real conflict between innovation and promise that julie talks about her book. And talked about today that was promised at the beginning the shadows of occupied want real freedom, real flexibility real hope for true ownership of their labor, of their work, other everyday lives and then what . These platforms end up offering realtime. So in my work i see a trajectory and how people doing this work for these companies tell about the work itself. So one of things ive written a lot about is how taxi workers actually cross the border pretty happy independent contractors for much of the 90s an early 2000s. Part of the reason that was they were arguably independent contractors they could build their own client list and in many cases they could sort of stop and start when they wanted to. They could work when they wanted to. But also because they were working in a highly regulated environment in which affairs are regulated. Safety issues are regulated. They were in many places getting workers comp and Unemployment Insurance. Theyre getting the best of both worlds. They had the safety net and because of regulations and they were also able to feel like they were independent and Small Business people. And workers in this economy do not feel that way. And it has really shifted. Shifted over the past eight years as commissions have dropped. As workers realize theyre being controlled by the algorithms working much longer hours to make the same amount of money. That is the existing Pressure Points that we have in the laws to Employment Status to address these issues. In california, that led to the California Supreme Court looking at an offline Delivery Company to adopt this abc test which essentially says for those of you who are not familiar, there is a presumption of employment in the hiring entity wants to treat their workers like independent contractors have to fulfill a threepart test. If the hiring entity is doing the exact same work as the workers themselves, hoover is a Transportation Company and the workers are transportation workers. Those cannot be employees under state law. There is while this test tends to capture the issues that industry has caused, all of this, you know, massive misclassification of people who are very clearly employees because we live in a national, International Economy it is meant that some more unscrupulous businesses have been able to take particularly in Certain Industries take their work put that work elsewhere. And so, one of the ways to address this is of course to nationalize abc test so you cant just move if you want to use a writer in california because whos too expensive move to nevada worries cheaper. But i think the other way, think this is very important and brings us back to julias work is to start thinking about how we make platform cooperatives for cooperatives more block on term broadly real part of our economy. What are the necessary regulations that need to be passed . What are the barriers to creating cooperatives. What kind of real innovation or technological push ourselves to enable ourselves. Julie studied stocks platform cooperative. In the possibilities and failures and i wonder, turning back to you if you could talk more about that . What do we need to do to make this possible to recapture the gig. To give them back the freedom they want, the feeling of being the boss, the feeling of self ownership, and simultaneously offering them, creating ways to have real safety protection . Guest yeah. Host solve all their problems worse the next seven minutes. Three to know. Theres one thing i want to say about the employment classification. But let me just finish, will finish that conversation and then well talk about that for a minute. I have the privilege of being able to study a company that switched all of its California Workers, its a Platform Company switched all of its California Workers to employees in anticipation. In this new project im doing, we talked about the workers weve also talked to managers. And what is been really interesting is, in this very much validates the point thats been made several times, these workers retain a lot of flexibility under Employment Status. The company says they will necessarily lose flexibility. Theres nothing in the law that says that has to happen. This companies able to maintain maybe not absolutely as much but a really high level, number one the managers we talked to have basically said they prefer this model. There are fewer problems efficiencies higher productivities higher, the rub on it is it expensive. This is the biggest reason the Company Still want to do it. I think we can say from that is we dont want businesses that can only exist by exploiting people or basically doing predatory pricing. Pricing below really what the service should cost so consumers may not love it, because the right hill will become more expensive. But the idea that you should have a really cheap private cars at your disposal at any time, not only ecologically a disaster but it really undermines the Public Transportation system, which is what we need is Public Transportation system that basically meets peoples needs. Going in those private cars is something more of an occasional occurrence rather than every day i can get to wherever i need to go by having a private driver. Okay, platform coop. I think that, one of the things about the cooperative model in these kinds of contexts, is that they are these are almost all individual contribution kinds of activities. So a driver, a housecleaner, a freelancer, wonderful coop called smart operates in over 40 countries its all kinds of freelancers weather graphics design, copyediting, you name, coding. So those are individual contributions. People get paid for what they do unlike an auto factor that goes cooperative people are making a common product. One of the things this means is that the distribution is going to be very different than those in the coop, we cited a small number of people earn a high fraction. They also invest a lot more and what they are doing. On they are like the dependent workers. They are really the full timers. You have a lot of people who pop in and out and have a much more tenuous relationship. So, that is one of the things is different about a platform cooperative that is sort of the oldfashioned workers cooperatives. I wonder, julie, if you could assessment i dont know if you have thought about, i know you thought about this. I can review talk about the senior book. You know, platform context retirement the u. S. , unless those workers are considered ploys of the platform. Theyre going to have the same precarious problems with regard to injury on the job or Unemployment Insurance, and so i wonder the extent to which you think Employment Status and platforms are sort of mutually beneficial . Or possible simultaneously . Or, the other sort of option of the conversation we never have in the u. S. For at least not in policy circles where we are actually making policy is how to be disentangled the employment from the safety net . And we make it possible for people to really be freelancers. For Business People or be members of a cooperative and lead secure lives . This is so important. I think that tying everything to Employment Status historically has been very prevalent. I mean it did a lot of wonderful things. It also had a lot of unintended impacts. For example people understand jobs for Health Insurance. The connection between Health Insurance and employment i think is a disaster. It is really important to an issue that i studied for most of my career which is why working hours are so far in this country. Because an employer gives Health Insurance to someone i want them to work long hours. They dont to hire many more people and pay their benefits. So the more we can delink safety net issues and safety net dimensions were employment the better. Thats one of the great things about universal basic income. So the vision i had with my previous book and this one sort of thinking about ways that make it possible for people to live without that dependence on the employer to get their basic needs. And so whether it is providing more of the municipal level, providing it up the federal level, i mean there are many ways to do this. But i do think, especially in a world were employment is becoming less and less secure. Were ai is going to eliminate a lot of jobs. Or we need to power down our economy, not kind of rivet up, for ecological regions and people working less is a lot better kind of deescalation. All of those things suggest the more we can do outside of employment the better. And that then opens up a lot more space for people to be active in these flexible way on the gig platforms in which we meet their needs and are not sort of oppressive and they have to do it otherwise if they get sick they dont have a ways to be taken care of or so forth. So yes. Soon julie we have two more minutes. I want to say one more thing about your book. And then i want to give me the floor to end. I want to encourage all of those of you in the audience who have not already purchased a book to purchase it or get it from your library. Provide for your library or buy for your school. Because what i think of as is a very accessible way it talks to a very in audience about how we got this conversation and why we are so fixated on it. Why does platform economy despite the fact that such a small percentage of the economy in the United States at least, why we talk so much about it, why has touched so many different peoples lives. What the promises were in why those promises have more or less for the most part not been met. And how from the voices of people who have experienced it, how and many ways a reproduce the same inequalities they were attempting to solve or to move past. In effect, this is very rare for a social science that you have answers for us. You have examples envision. It is so incredibly hopeful and promising. So not just for academics, not just for policymakers but for everyday people who are living their lives, this book has a lot to offer. And i thank you so much for your decade of research, leadership, collaboration, culmination of all that is this really very wise Ground Breaking and important. Guest thank you so much. I want to spend my last minute answering the question about what should a dsa chapter in a blue state due to emulate californias 85, get in touch with legislative and union they will help that. Already havent effort here in massachusetts from our attorney general. Make your watching book tv on cspan2, television for serious readers. Here are some programs to watch out for, tonight is the 2h annual National Book festival. Our coverage kicks off at 7 00 p. M. Eastern you will have the chance to talk with authors gail collins and jon meacham as well as author discussions with melinda gates, harold holzer, tethered, richardson and many others. But before that at 6 00 p. M. Eastern, its her Author Interview program, after words for this evening former fbi Deputy Assistant director of counterintelligence peter strzok discusses his career in the work he did on the russia investigation. Find more Schedule Information about tv. Org consult your program guide. Your silica some Publishing Industry news. Corporate vice rocco bob will have his memoirs the book time they Promised Land will cover his first term in office. John sargent has announced he will step down as head of dick millan publishing, one of the countrys largest Book Publishers at the end of the year over quote disagreements regarding the erection of mcmullen. He is been the ceo and publisher for the past eight years. In other news author and critic Stanley Crouch died last week at the age of 74. A longtime columnist for new yorks daily news, he wrote about a myriad of topics but was best known for his writings on jazz. Author Winston Groom also died last week at the age of 77, he wrote several books include 1986 novel, forest gump that was adapted into the oscarwinning movie starring tom hanks. Mr. Cox and mr. Groom both appear in a book tv several times. You can watch those programs on her website. Also in the news, bookscan reports print book sales rose just over 7 for the week ending september 12. Adult nonfiction sales saw a slight dip and were led by Michael Cohens book on his relationship with president trump. In the National Book released the long list of nominees for this years National Book award paid the ten finalists in the category of nonfiction fiction and poetry in young adults and translated literature will be whittled down to five next month. And then the winners will be announcing a Virtual Program on november 18. Book tv will continue to bring you new programs and publishing news. You can also watch all of archive programs anytime booktv. Org. Every your book tv asks member of congress about the books they are reading. Joining us now on book tv is representative tom cole a republican from oklahoma