“Right now, the way to capture value in the modern capitalist economy is to get control of an asset and put up high barriers to entry, and then make everybody pay user fees.”

That’s what’s wrong with our current system according to Mark Blyth, a political economist and co-author of the book Angrynomics, who was recently interviewed by GEN. Blyth says that it’s a mistake to blame technology for this problem — what we need to do is put guardrails and regulations in place. He goes on to say that Uber’s technology, for example, could very easily be replicated by municipalities and turned into a profit-sharing system with drivers.

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That’s not unlike the suggestion offered by Juliet Schor, the sociologist and author of After the Gig we interviewed last month, who argues that gig-worker cooperatives could be a viable alternative to the exploitative aspects of gig platforms like Uber.

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But when companies like Uber and Lyft can spend nearly $200 million in a campaign to overturn labor regulations placed on them, do guardrails or cooperatives stand a chance?