There’s a new book out by Chris Dixon, an investor at the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. I haven’t read it. (And after reading Molly White’s excellent review, I probably won’t.) But! Yesterday, Anil Dash mentioned something about the book that caught my eye:

Fun fact: in his promo for this book, Chris repeatedly describes smart contracts on the blockchain as being equivalent to collective bargaining, presenting this as an obviously meritorious thing.

To put it mildly, this piqued my interest.

As you may know, my latest book is called You Deserve a Tech Union. In it, I cover the last few years of tech worker-led organizing, talk about why unions are key to the future of the tech industry, and cover how you and your coworkers can form a union of your very own.

What’s “collective bargaining”, you ask? To put it simply, it’s a negotiation process, one in which a union of workers…well, collectively define the terms of their employment. It’s one of the main benefits — if not the benefit — to forming a union of your very own. Here’s a quick excerpt from You Deserve a Tech Union about why it matters:

The result of that [negotiation] process is a contract, formally known as a collective bargaining agreement (CBA). A CBA documents everything your union and your employer have agreed to during your negotiations. It could define pay levels for different jobs at your company, limit the use of monitoring or surveillance software at your job, or outline the health benefits that must be provided to all employees. It could define provisions to protect workers in case of layoffs, such as mandating the amount of severance pay and benefits you’ll receive if you lose your job. In short, your contract should represent gains on the issues your union collectively cares most deeply about.

This is all to say: when I hear a prominent Silicon Valley investor’s talking about collective bargaining, I got curious. After I poked around a bit, I came across this podcast interview with Dixon about his book. Around the 35-minute mark, he starts talking about how blockchain technologies can empower individual artists and content creators by — you guessed it — a kind of collective bargaining:

So if I’m one artist and I decide to opt out [of] AI training, you can opt out, but you have no leverage [over content distributors]. If there’s 10 million of you, you need a way to get together and collectively bargain. A blockchain is literally a machine, like a software machine, for this device to collectively bargain. Like, that’s one way to look at them. And so they can come together in a system and say, “hey, us 10,000 artists are going to get together, and we’re going to put our art here, and you can train on it, or you can copy it, or you can use it, but you’ve got to follow all of these terms, and pay us this much money.” As an example. And so it’s a way to design new economic covenants between different participants in the network.

I am very excited to hear a well-known venture capitalist supports collective bargaining. Here’s why.

First, Molly White notes that Dixon’s book frequently describes blockchains as “collective bargaining machines.” And that metaphor’s fascinating to me. I don’t think it’s accurate, mind you. Because as it happens, workers and freelancers are building collective power right now, today — and they’ve been doing so for literal decades, long before “blockchain” entered the lexicon. In fact, suggesting a blockchain enables or enhances collective bargaining feels more than a little arbitrary. It’s a bit like saying you need a bicycle to properly enjoy this swimming pool.

(A bicycle with a frankly terrifying impact on the climate, I guess.)

In other words, if you think you deserve a union — and I absolutely believe you do — there’s nothing you need to install. There’s no software you have to buy. Collective bargaining doesn’t require a blockchain. In fact, it doesn’t require any code — outside of your country’s legal code, that is, and the labor laws and regulations it contains. You can start talking with your coworkers today about the issues you’re facing in your workplace, and how a union contract could help you address them.

Just to underline this point: the biggest obstacle to collective bargaining isn’t an absence of blockchain technologies. Rather, the biggest obstacles to collective bargaining are company leaders who decide to fight their employees’ union drives. And they wage those fights with high-paid “union-busting” consultants, misinformation about unions, delays, threats, forced return-to-office policies, and retaliatory firings.

And that’s why I said I’m excited to hear a well-known venture capitalist supports collective bargaining. Because if Dixon wants to improve access to the collective bargaining process, he’s in a unique position to do so.

Here’s a hypothetical: let’s say a prominent Silicon Valley investor worked at a prominent Silicon Valley investment firm. Let’s say that investor pushed his company to include pro-worker language in their contracts with the companies they invest in — say, requiring that any unions formed at those companies would have to be voluntarily recognized, and that management would have to bargain with those unions promptly, and in good faith. By using the force of their contracts — and with them, the capital they wield — that prominent investment firm could do a remarkable amount of good for tech workers, and provide them with an easier, clearer path to a union contract. And it wouldn’t even require a single blockchain.

Of course, all of this is predicated on the assumption that they really are interested in helping people build collective power, and that they’re not just trying to throw bicycles into perfectly good swimming pools.

Random idea: I’ve got a few spare copies of You Deserve a Tech Union kicking around. If you work at a tech company where Chris Dixon sits on your board, drop me an email. I’d be happy to send you a copy of the book to share with your coworkers. I think it could be useful to you — I know a union definitely would be.