Radical Flexibility: Rideshare and the future of work in the platform economy

Driving for Lyft and the future of work in the platform economy

Distinktion: Journal of social theory. 

The ‘unicorn’ rideshare company Lyft’s brand narrative has capitalized on and exploited the desire for flexibility in historically specific political contexts. In light of these sticky financialized appropriations of flexibility, this essay imagines radical flexibility as a willful re-appropriation. It explores ways that Lyft’s rhetoric might be redirected and resisted. In light of existing demands for collective or cooperative platforms, radical flexibility could be a galvanizing justification for a cooperative response to the Uberization of work, part of a broader horizon that reclaims flexibility, play, creativity, and convenience as affects and practices outside of the wage relation.