The Sharing Economy

“You don’t need to have a car, or book a hotel when you go on vacation, oh by the way this mixer is a gift.”

What's?

Brhmie Balaram

and Maira Sutton

on the sharing economy

Uber

case study

Couchsurfing

case study

Craiglist

case study

Brhmie Balaram is a Senior Researcher in the RSA’s Economy, Enterprise and Manufacturing team. She leads the RSA’s research on the sharing economy. Her most recent report explores the emergence of blockchain-based platforms in the sharing economy as a counter to recent heavyweights such as Uber. She is also the author of Fair share - reclaiming power in the sharing economy. Maira Sutton is the Community Engagement Manager at Shareable, focused on designing online advocacy initiatives to create democratic, sustainable economies. She was formerly at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) for over four years as their Global Policy Analyst, where she monitored and advocated for digital rights around emerging tech policy and their impact on access to knowledge, privacy, and free expression.
Brhmie Balaram and Maira Sutton
On the sharing economy
Brhmie Balaram click for bio
Maira Sutton click for bio

In your opinion, will the sharing economy be the leading tendency in the future?

The sharing economy is very promising – ultimately, we should be moving towards a society grounded in the commons, and that prefers shared access and ownership to assets rather than individual ownership. This would better serve us both socially and environmentally, especially in a future that is likely to be scarce of resources. However, the sharing economy is currently being co-opted by capitalist platforms, which in some ways is undermining the social and environmental potential of the sector. We need to address the challenges that these platforms pose as we move towards greater adoption of sharing economy practices.

It depends on what you mean by the "sharing economy" — the term has been largely used by industries and policymakers who label anything related to people sharing goods with each other under this term. In my opinion, mega-corporations that take advantage of the sharing ethos to ultimately extract cheap labor and capital from people (such as Uber and Airbnb) without treating them fairly in return, do not represent the kind of sharing that I think will lead us to a more resilient or sustainable society. This kind of "sharing economy" will not last long, because more and more people will realize that having such companies serve as a digital intermediary to sharing will not only be unnecessary, they undermine the well-being of those who use their service.

How do you respond to people who say that "the sharing economy does not help creating occupation or paying the taxes”?

The sharing economy, whether cooperative or capitalist in nature, is generating more jobs than it is destroying. That is because it is driving up overall demand for services through cutting costs and removing barriers to entry. This may change in future as there is a possibility that platforms will begin to eat into the profit share of incumbents through appealing to their customer base. Some platforms are working with governments to ensure that taxes are being paid or implementing new fees. For example, Airbnb applies a tourist tax in some cities. Governments should continue to explore what more can be done to ensure that platforms and their users pay their fair share of taxes.

In some ways they would be right, because the kinds of occupation that many of these sharing services create are not long-term and they are not stable sources of income for the people who are employed by them. Uber for instance, may be employing millions of drivers around the world, but they are seeking to make those jobs disappear as soon as they can by automating their cars. Even on a more short-term scale, these "sharing" platforms do everything in their power to hold the least legal liability over their customers and even individual service providers. At the same time they do everything in their power to avoid paying taxes because they are "tech" companies. Together, extractive capitalism and the sharing economy, have led to these monopolistic platforms that are disrupting the design of how goods and services are exchanged between people, but are not disrupting the overarching economic operating system in which people continue to get exploited for their capital at every turn.

Do you expect to see the government taking a more active role in regulating these services over the next few years, or will this continue to be a largely local issue?

It requires both local and national oversight in terms of regulation. We are starting to see signs of government taking more proactive steps to regulate the sharing economy. For example, in the UK the government has commissioned a review into modern working practices to address concerns about Uber drivers and Deliveroo couriers.

It is hard to say at this point. What is clear is that these major sharing economy platforms are catching up the public policy lobbying game and may able to get what they want from higher levels of government. The reason why local government might have been able to push back harder against them (such as Austin, TX in the US) is because local government is more directly accountable to their constituents. I expect to see cities taking a more active role in defending their communities overall, and doing more to regulate these sharing services for the public good might be one of the ways this is manifested. Another way they may do this is by creating and overseeing the management of municipal resources for use by the public, as Amsterdam is planning to do with city-owned properties.

What other developments would you like to see in the future of the sharing economy space?

I would like to see the platform co-op movement gain strength in the UK and rest of Europe.

I'd like to see the further blossoming of the platform cooperativism movement. There is no reason why the people who use and rely on these sharing platforms need to relegate the operation of the software to some third party. The platform co-op movement is about having the people own and control the digital platforms themselves — I think this will not only lead to better treatment of workers and users, it will lead to better products that do not need to sacrifice quality for the sake of profit.

With the increasing advance of technologies, how do you think will the sharing economy evolve?

Technology can be used to advance co-operative aims as well as capitalist aims. If there are concerns about capitalist platforms, more can be done to realize alternative ambitions using similar technology.

As I said above, there may be more platform cooperatives and hopefully more software available that make it easier for people to share their goods, skills and time with each other directly.

In the future do you think the interactions between users will occur with ever closer distances, returning almost to a barter economy?

Possibly!

How the sharing economy will evolve in the next 100 years?

If the sharing economy incorporates the ethos of *real sharing* — where governance and ownership of the platform and company itself is shared — then that has the potential to change society on a massive scale. Individuals and families would not need to own barely any property at all.

If you can share everything, there would be no need to own your own tools, cars, or even a home. People could respect these commonly owned goods much more, leading to a more circular economy of less waste and less consumerism.

Our idea of social status could be radically changed. Maybe a sign of status would not be tied to wealth and would not be how much expensive things you own, but instead, be based on how much you have been able to contribute your value, labor and creativity to the wealth of the community and the commons.

Of course, this is a very utopian view, but is generally what Shareable strives for in our work:)
What’s?

Information and communications technologies (ICTs) have enabled the rise of so-called “Collaborative Consumption” (CC):the peer-to-peer-based activity of obtaining, giving, or sharing the access to goods and services, coordinated through community-based online services.

When?

‟The phrase “shared economy” emerged in the mid-2000s and grew in popularity between 2008 and 2010.”

Why?

‟In response to the financial crisis and global recession, several companies noticed consumers’ emerging desire to earn money on the side through shared profit models.”

Who?

‟One of the early leaders and pioneering companies of the shared economy was AirBnB, a technology company with an online platform matching room seekers to homeowners.”

Uber Case study Uber was first launched in San Francisco, a city notorious for a highly regulated taxi industry with steep prices and insufficient services. The idea, however, originated in Paris was based on the possibility of a reliable and quickly accessible black car service.

With over 500 employees and growing, Uber is a technology company that offers a free software- platform available on a mobile device for those wishing to request a ride. At its core, Uber seeks to match passengers to drivers. The platform is able to track a user’s GPS coordinates, even if the user does not know where she is, and within minutes, an Uber driver will arrive. The user is able to track the arrival of her ride.

No cash is exchanged when using Uber since signing up for an account requires providing credit card information. After the ride, the user is charged electronically and a receipt is immediately emailed, providing details of the trip.

The user can then rate the driver (and the driver can also rate the user) and check a map of the route taken.

Uber’s growth over the past five years is an example of a major success in the greater “shared economy.” Largely a technology-enabled movement, the general business model enables companies to help consumers find ways to rent rather than own an expensive asset—the “sharing economy” feeds on the preferences for “experiences” over “ownership.”
Visit Uber
Click for sources The Sharing Economy: The End of Employment and the Rise of Crowd-Based Capitalism by Arun Sundararajan is published by MIT Press, May 2016

Online Platforms for exchanging and sharing goods by Anders Fremstad is published - by The Future Economy Initiative, a project of Ecotrust and the E3 Network, February 2015

Uber: Driving Change in Transportation by Jianwei Dong, Christina Filipovic, Julia Leis, Edward Petersen, Anjali Shrikhande, Rohit Sudarshan is published by Tufts University, April 2014
Couchsurfing Case study Couchsurfing promises would-be members that “You have friends all over the world, you just haven’t met them yet. ” Couchsurfing was originally founded as a non-profit, but the platform was incorporated as a B corporation in 2011.
Unlike Craigslist, Couchsurfing requires users to create an online profile to use its service. Hosts describe the sleeping arrangements and whether they can accept children or pets.
Members are also encouraged to share their personal mission, experience, philosophy, interests, past travels, future travel plans, and opinion on the Couchsurfing project. The sheer quantity of information included in these online profiles reflects the fact that Couchsurfing is a much more social platform than Craigslist, and this information probably helps members engage in a much more intimate form of cooperation. After perusing the profiles of potential hosts, surfers send a couch request to members who might be a good match. If a host agrees, the two arrange for the stay. Afterwards, both the host and the guest are asked to publicly rate and comment on their counterpart. This reputation system helps build trust between Couchsurfing participants.
Visit Couchsurfing
Click for sources The Sharing Economy: The End of Employment and the Rise of Crowd-Based Capitalism by Arun Sundararajan is published by MIT Press, May 2016

Online Platforms for exchanging and sharing goods by Anders Fremstad is published - by The Future Economy Initiative, a project of Ecotrust and the E3 Network, February 2015

Uber: Driving Change in Transportation by Jianwei Dong, Christina Filipovic, Julia Leis, Edward Petersen, Anjali Shrikhande, Rohit Sudarshan is published by Tufts University, April 2014
Craiglist Case study The largest section on Craigslist is devoted to items for sale, and it has changed how many people consume durable goods. Craigslist provides an easy way for people to search for the types of goods they need.

The site also allows sellers to provide detailed descriptions and pictures of the good. Craigslist’s market for secondhand goods has been an enormous success. Americans created about half a billion posts in the for-sale section of Craigslist in 2013, which represents a huge flow of secondhand goods from sellers to buyers.

Use is widespread, with over half of all Americans reportedly using “used merchandise websites, such as Craigslist” in the last year (Center for a New American Dream 2014). The case of Craigslist provides a useful comparison for more recent platforms associated with the sharing economy, including Couchsurfing and NeighborGoods, because it demonstrates how a website can become fully integrated into everyday life.
Visit Craiglist
Click for sources The Sharing Economy: The End of Employment and the Rise of Crowd-Based Capitalism by Arun Sundararajan is published by MIT Press, May 2016

Online Platforms for exchanging and sharing goods by Anders Fremstad is published - by The Future Economy Initiative, a project of Ecotrust and the E3 Network, February 2015

Uber: Driving Change in Transportation by Jianwei Dong, Christina Filipovic, Julia Leis, Edward Petersen, Anjali Shrikhande, Rohit Sudarshan is published by Tufts University, April 2014