Profitina · Idea · COMING SOON
The Idea Series
What if we…? Concrete proposals for a fairer world of work, with a story at the heart of each.
11 episodes~60 min read eachBahasa Indonesia edition available
Trailer
The The Idea Series is on its way: 11 concrete proposals — a seed fund, a federation, an open co-op — each argued with a story at its heart and a realistic path to doing it. Each is about an hour, each in English and Bahasa Indonesia. The first episode lands here soon. Until then, here is the reel of what is coming.
IDEA · 001 SOON
Face the River
What a Birmingham canal, a Seoul stream and a Surabaya rope ferry could teach every Indonesian city
There are seventy crossings on the lower reaches of the Brantas, in and around Surabaya, where, for two thousand rupiah, a man will pull you across the water by hand, on a flat wooden boat, along a…
IDEA · 002 SOON
The Tail Walker
A free, weekly, timed five kilometres for everyone in every Indonesian city, where one volunteer's only job is to finish last
At 06:58 on a Saturday in November, on a path laid over thirty years of Surabaya's rubbish, a fifty-two-year-old delivery rider who has never run a kilometre in his life is walking as slowly as he…
IDEA · 003 SOON
The Footrest
The Stranger Who Pushes With Your Foot
On the roads of Indonesia there is a small, unwritten law, and it is this: if a stranger's motorbike stalls, and you are on a motorbike behind them, you do not pass them. You put your foot out, you…
IDEA · 004 SOON
A Bike of Your Own
Turning the Setoran Into a Receipt
A delivery rider who rents his motorbike pays, every morning, a *setoran* — a fixed daily sum, roughly thirty thousand rupiah, owed before the first order of the day. That is more than nine hundred…
IDEA · 005 SOON
A Warung of One's Own
Turning Sixty Million Isolated Stalls Into One Bargaining Bloc
A warung — a food stall the size of a wardrobe, run by one woman, selling rice for fifteen thousand rupiah a plate — cannot say no to a platform. It cannot refuse the twenty per cent commission…
IDEA · 006 SOON
The Score You Own
A proposal for a reputation that belongs to the worker, not the platform
Every rider in the gig economy carries two things into work: a motorbike, and a number. The motorbike is his. The number is not. The number — the five-star score that decides whether he works…
IDEA · 007 SOON
The Rest Fund
A proposal for making rest a right, not a risk, in the gig economy
Every gig worker is, on paper, free to take a day off. The app says so. *Work when you want.* And then the day comes, and the day off costs a day's pay, and a colder score, and a quieter week after…
IDEA · 008 SOON
The Enough Button
A proposal to put the word "enough" back into the platform, where a rider can reach it
Every platform a delivery rider touches has a button for *go online*. Not one of them has a button for *I'm done.* The rider can switch himself on in a single tap, whenever he likes, from wherever he…
IDEA · 009 SOON
The Seed Fund
A proposal to turn a rider's small surplus into the first share of a shop he owns
The rider's problem has never been the size of his surplus; it has been that no mechanism exists to turn a small surplus into a share of anything. The platform turns his work into its own capital…
IDEA · 010 SOON
The Federation
a proposal to turn a hundred rider seed funds into one rider-owned cooperative — and, one day, into the platform itself
What if a hundred seed funds, each born at a warung table the way Darsono's was, stopped being a hundred separate notebooks and became one thing — a federation of riders, owned by its members, that…
IDEA · 011 SOON
The Quiet Co-op
a proposal for the rider cooperative that bakes rest into its constitution — and why a calm organisation is the only one the machine cannot outbid
The federation, as the last idea proposed it, was an answer to the machine's ownership. This idea completes it with the thing the last three articles have been circling: the mind. The machine does…
First episode lands here. Stay tuned. · Profitina
