I use public transportation to travel between New York, where I live and work; and New Rochelle and Connecticut, where two of my daughters are in school and I support their sporting events and other milestones. The frequent travel made me consider buying a car.
“But Daddy, 65% of the time you’re not going to use a car,” one of my kids said.
“And what about the amount of tickets you get?” she said. “Daddy, zip car exists. You can just use the car and drop it off.”
While I was reluctant to admit my daughter was right, I started to think about it and where her generation was going in terms of a different idea about ownership. That was my first real lightbulb moment around the notion of a sharing economy.
Also known as the gig economy, platform economy, or collaborative consumption, I am drawn to the promise that this growing sector introduces and believe that by harnessing its potential, we can foster more equitable models in marginalized communities like the ones that I represent in Bed-Stuy and northern Crown Heights, Brooklyn.
While addressing the tremendous potential of the sharing economy, I also acknowledge that under the current arrangements, it, too, has the potential to be quite exploitive. Ride-sharing companies, for instance, are not generating significant wealth for drivers themselves, but firms with shared ownership and decision-making arrangements, do generate wealth.
As a legislator, I confront a constant contradiction: I harbor promising theories and ideas and vision-based ways of doing and then have to reconcile them with the everyday practical reality of being a lawmaker. Sometimes these two things are in conflict, which is frustrating. The practical trajectory that’s presented to me on a daily basis doesn’t include innovation or leadership. It’s management. But vision and practicality, particularly when seeking to address the complex challenges of poverty and disinvestment, should not be mutually exclusive.
There is a great need in neighborhoods like the ones I represent in Brooklyn and around the city, to create an ecosystem that fosters greater economic independence and democracy. Economic democracy posits a society that promotes economic equality and sustainability. People share ownership over the resources and decide together how they’re used.
How does it work? By democratizing ownership, labor and decision making within companies so they’re serving workers. Capital is distributed so more people can participate. What I’m getting at is what many of us in government and public and private sectors want to create—more opportunities, especially in; and, for underserved minority communities.
Successfully establishing an economic model that truly serves and benefits all will require dramatic and innovative ways of doing business and therefore could face many obstacles in New York from the real estate, finance, healthcare and other powerful New York industries. We can’t afford the luxury of not focusing on these hurdles if we ever want truly to address poverty and all of the challenges that come with it.
We’re supposed to be the most progressive city in the world in New York and we’re not contemplating how the shared economy could create so much more shared wealth, jobs and opportunity. We ought to be doing more forward thinking rather than reacting.
I recently had the privilege of participating in MIT CoLab’s Mel King Community Fellows Program, where I got a unique look at the cooperative economic model in Mondragon, Spain and experienced first-hand the power of economic democracy. Having a chance to meet and speak with people there made me want to replicate that here in Central Brooklyn. They built their economic model up from almost nothing with worker-owned cooperatives.
If they can do it, we can too. There is a way to new ideas and innovation even in government.
Despite all that’s changing in our neighborhoods as the G-word (gentrification) rears its ugly head, black communities such as my home in Central Brooklyn are still the epicenter of black political leadership, homeownership, and business ownership. All of these assets reside soundly in our communities. We have a strong African American power base politically, socially, and economically. Bed-Stuy has more equity in homes per capita than anywhere else in the country. In a fair system of finance, those homeowners should be able to get capital. But the market is not fair. Banks aren’t lending to them. That’s why I’m fighting to make sure lending is fair through the Community Reinvestment Act. The foundational thinking around this particular cause—that people should be able to access and leverage their own wealth—should extend to all facets of how we operate in our communities.
What’s obvious to my daughter and so many of her generation has yet to be truly digested by those in power. We must capitalize on this new emerging economy and business model and harness its capabilities to drive equitable economic growth and local ownership with community members in the driver’s seat.
Robert E. Cornegy, Jr. is a New York City Council Member for the 36th District, representing Bedford-Stuyvesant and northern Crown Heights in Brooklyn, MIT CoLab Mel King Fellows Alumni, and Guinness World Records holder for World’s Tallest Politician
