Uber and the Unmaking and Remaking of Taxi Capitalisms: Technology, Law and Resistance in Historical Perspective

Abstract

From a neoliberal economic perspective, the emergence of new digital technologies portends the possibility of an economic revolution, in which there will be greater human freedom and a democratization of economic opportunity. Digitally enabled workers will transform themselves into micro-entrepreneurs, able to work for themselves “whenever they want from any location and at whatever level of intensity needed to achieve their desired standard of living.” Of course, there is also recognition that this bright future will not be decided by technology alone. Even for the most technological utopian, human liberation is not merely an app away, and there is recognition that other institutional and policy changes are required for the emancipatory potential of the platform economy to be unlocked. But it is seen as possible within what Arun Sundararajan, a leading sharing economy optimist, calls “crowd-based capitalism.”