CoopCycle is a federation of bike delivery co-ops, currently in 44 cities.
I’m intrigued about this space because I’ve been thinking about last-mile delivery: e-commerce is great, but it has a tendency to (a) centralise, and (b) squash delivery workers.
So by breaking “delivery” out as a separate layer in the stack, maybe it would be possible for my neighbourhood shops and restaurants to plug in to a system of e-commerce that favours localism and community (rather than have to go via singular food and retail apps that capture the audience, and then replace the local spots with dark kitchens and commodity merchants). That’s the hypothesis anyway.
But I’m particularly attracted by the CoopCycle model.
CoopCycle is software:
It includes maps and fleet management, for dispatch to receive tasks and manage couriers. It takes platforms. It has API integrations to accept delivery tasks from e-commerce software.
Each city is a separate co-operative of bike couriers, who together decide to use an instance of the software.
I was going on about self-driving corporations recently and this is exactly what I meant: usually companies have human managers and business people, and the actual labour (the operations) are employees – or, increasingly, outsourced and treated as replaceable component parts. The idea of the self-driving corporation is to flip that model on its head: a company can be a collective of the people who contribute the skilled work, and the business management is the layer that is automated away.
Here’s another way of thinking about it, going back to the enormously useful formulation by Peter Reinhardt (Segment CEO) of “Below the API” jobs in his 2015 article Replacing Middle Management with APIs.
Reinhardt starts by showing that Uber drivers are dispatched by a call in the code, and asks, What does that make the drivers? Cogs in a giant automated dispatching machine, controlled through clever programming optimizations like surge pricing?
Then he points out the inevitable: economic incentives will push Above the API engineers to automate the jobs Below the API: self-driving cars and drone delivery are certainly on the way.
A more succinct way of putting it, from Tom Preston-Warner (GitHub founder):
“In the future there’s potentially two types of jobs: where you tell a machine what to do, programming a computer, or a machine is going to tell you what to do,” he says. “You’re either the one that creates the automation or you’re getting automated.”
The question is, does CoopCycle provide a clue in how to subvert the inevitability of the “Below the API” logic? I think it does. Here’s where I would start.
Food delivery apps keep up the pretence that their delivery drivers and couriers are “independent contractors.”
What if, by regulation, we said that it’s fine to have these below the API jobs – but you must open up the API to other bidders.
So, yes, they can dispatch a job to random local bike courier… but they must also offer that job to whoever else might take it, such as the local software-enabled courier co-operative. Using the same APIs, of course, but open and documented.
Insisting on higher wages, and unencumbered by the margin usually extracted by management (which has been automated), the co-op would snap up all the local independent couriers, effectively unionising neighbourhood delivery services. As a collective, they’re able to push back on the downward pressure on wages when the couriers are atomised.
The food delivery app would have no choice but to operate through them, bike couriers who are still independent yet have leverage to retain strong rights and benefits. It’s not quite mutualism (where the couriers would share in the success of the delivery company), but perhaps this would still represent a new class of worker.
Some questions to finish up.
Is the regulatory intervention I describe above even possible? Can the concept of “Below the API” jobs be flipped against itself, the companies above the API forced to open up? That is, can the pressure to automate jobs into non-existence be reversed?
A counterpoint: the risk of keeping delivery costs high is that it accelerates the adoption of automated delivery solutions, putting people out of work even faster! But I regard that as a separate problem. Let’s solve for the downward pressure on wages/rights first, and then look at how humans and automation compete.
Final question. What other types of organisation are tractable to CoopCycle’s approach of self-driving software co-operatives?
‘Yes, we’ll see them together some Saturday afternoon then,’ she said. ‘I won’t have any hand in your not going to Cathedral on Sunday morning. I suppose we must be getting back. What time was it when you looked at your watch just now?’ "In China and some other countries it is not considered necessary to give the girls any education; but in Japan it is not so. The girls are educated here, though not so much as the boys; and of late years they have established schools where they receive what we call the higher branches of instruction. Every year new schools for girls are opened; and a great many of the Japanese who formerly would not be seen in public with their wives have adopted the Western idea, and bring their wives into society. The marriage laws have been arranged so as to allow the different classes to marry among[Pg 258] each other, and the government is doing all it can to improve the condition of the women. They were better off before than the women of any other Eastern country; and if things go on as they are now going, they will be still better in a few years. The world moves. "Frank and Fred." She whispered something to herself in horrified dismay; but then she looked at me with her eyes very blue and said "You'll see him about it, won't you? You must help unravel this tangle, Richard; and if you do I'll--I'll dance at your wedding; yours and--somebody's we know!" Her eyes began forewith. Lawrence laughed silently. He seemed to be intensely amused about something. He took a flat brown paper parcel from his pocket. making a notable addition to American literature. I did truly. "Surely," said the minister, "surely." There might have been men who would have remembered that Mrs. Lawton was a tough woman, even for a mining town, and who would in the names of their own wives have refused to let her cross the threshold of their homes. But he saw that she was ill, and he did not so much as hesitate. "I feel awful sorry for you sir," said the Lieutenant, much moved. "And if I had it in my power you should go. But I have got my orders, and I must obey them. I musn't allow anybody not actually be longing to the army to pass on across the river on the train." "Throw a piece o' that fat pine on the fire. Shorty," said the Deacon, "and let's see what I've got." "Further admonitions," continued the Lieutenant, "had the same result, and I was about to call a guard to put him under arrest, when I happened to notice a pair of field-glasses that the prisoner had picked up, and was evidently intending to appropriate to his own use, and not account for them. This was confirmed by his approaching me in a menacing manner, insolently demanding their return, and threatening me in a loud voice if I did not give them up, which I properly refused to do, and ordered a Sergeant who had come up to seize and buck-and-gag him. The Sergeant, against whom I shall appear later, did not obey my orders, but seemed to abet his companion's gross insubordination. The scene finally culminated, in the presence of a number of enlisted men, in the prisoner's wrenching the field-glasses away from me by main force, and would have struck me had not the Sergeant prevented this. It was such an act as in any other army in the world would have subjected the offender to instant execution. It was only possible in—" "Don't soft-soap me," the old woman snapped. "I'm too old for it and I'm too tough for it. I want to look at some facts, and I want you to look at them, too." She paused, and nobody said a word. "I want to start with a simple statement. We're in trouble." RE: Fruyling's World "MACDONALD'S GATE" "Read me some of it." "Well, I want something better than that." HoME大香蕉第一时间
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CoopCycle is currently in 44 cities.
I’m intrigued about this space because I’ve been thinking about last-mile delivery: e-commerce is great, but it has a tendency to (a) centralise, and (b) squash delivery workers.
So by breaking “delivery” out as a separate layer in the stack, maybe it would be possible for my neighbourhood shops and restaurants to plug in to a system of e-commerce that favours localism and community (rather than have to go via singular food and retail apps that capture the audience, and then replace the local spots with dark kitchens and commodity merchants). That’s the hypothesis anyway.
But I’m particularly attracted by the CoopCycle model.
CoopCycle is software:
It includes maps and fleet management, for dispatch to receive tasks and manage couriers. It takes platforms. It has API integrations to accept delivery tasks from e-commerce software.
Each city is a separate co-operative of bike couriers, who together decide to use an instance of the software.
I was going on about self-driving corporations recently and this is exactly what I meant: usually companies have human managers and business people, and the actual labour (the operations) are employees – or, increasingly, outsourced and treated as replaceable component parts. The idea of the self-driving corporation is to flip that model on its head: a company can be a collective of the people who contribute the skilled work, and the business management is the layer that is automated away.
Here’s another way of thinking about it, going back to the enormously useful formulation by Peter Reinhardt (Segment CEO) of “Below the API” jobs in his 2015 article Replacing Middle Management with APIs.
Reinhardt starts by showing that Uber drivers are dispatched by a call in the code, and asks,
Then he points out the inevitable:
A more succinct way of putting it, from Tom Preston-Warner (GitHub founder):
The question is, does CoopCycle provide a clue in how to subvert the inevitability of the “Below the API” logic? I think it does. Here’s where I would start.
Food delivery apps keep up the pretence that their delivery drivers and couriers are “independent contractors.”
What if, by regulation, we said that it’s fine to have these below the API jobs – but you must open up the API to other bidders.
So, yes, they can dispatch a job to random local bike courier… but they must also offer that job to whoever else might take it, such as the local software-enabled courier co-operative. Using the same APIs, of course, but open and documented.
Insisting on higher wages, and unencumbered by the margin usually extracted by management (which has been automated), the co-op would snap up all the local independent couriers, effectively unionising neighbourhood delivery services. As a collective, they’re able to push back on the downward pressure on wages when the couriers are atomised.
The food delivery app would have no choice but to operate through them, bike couriers who are still independent yet have leverage to retain strong rights and benefits. It’s not quite mutualism (where the couriers would share in the success of the delivery company), but perhaps this would still represent a new class of worker.
Some questions to finish up.
Is the regulatory intervention I describe above even possible? Can the concept of “Below the API” jobs be flipped against itself, the companies above the API forced to open up? That is, can the pressure to automate jobs into non-existence be reversed?
A counterpoint: the risk of keeping delivery costs high is that it accelerates the adoption of automated delivery solutions, putting people out of work even faster! But I regard that as a separate problem. Let’s solve for the downward pressure on wages/rights first, and then look at how humans and automation compete.
Final question. What other types of organisation are tractable to CoopCycle’s approach of self-driving software co-operatives?