11 ms·

The Sharing Economy Was Dead on Arrival

64 points by mrxd 8y ago

kevin_b_er 8y ago
The "Sharing Economy" was always a lie. It was always about illegal acts rebranded. Illegal rebranded taxis. Illegal rebranded hotels. etc
- mkirklions 8y ago
  The only reason these were illegal was cronyism. And before you get excited about the safety we get with regulation. Capitalism has proven with billion dollar companies, we don't want regulated taxis.
  - pragmacoders 8y ago
    If I'm lucky, I'll never see the term "Capitalism has proven..." again, in my lifetime
  - matchbok 8y ago
    Eh, the only people who like unregulated mini-hotels (airbnb) in residential areas are the ones making money.
    - repsilat 8y ago
      And, to be fair, the ones paying money to stay in those mini-hotels. (And, to be clear, "the ones making money" includes local businesses benefiting from increased tourism, and their employees.)
      - gamblor956 8y ago
        And to be clear, the local businesses would benefit from tourists staying in real hotels just as much, if not more, than the ones staying in AirBnBs, because such tourists are more likely to dine out and do things around town. But restaurants dislike tourists because most tourists tip less than Americans, so a high concentration of these "mini-hotels" is detrimental to restaurants and their staff.
        rickycook 8y ago
        tipping culture and minimum wage in the US is detrimental to restaurants; not the tourists buying the food!
    - AckSyn 8y ago
      Are you kidding? I love the $29-$39/night rooms I have when traveling. It's a boon.
  - dbt00 8y ago
    Taxi licensing was not cronyism, it was simple economics. Taxicabs can either have x drivers all at a subsistence level, or 0.5x drivers with a reasonable standard of living. Licensing with a cap and fixed rates becomes a policy decision driven by the public interest.
    - chrisco255 8y ago
      That's ridiculous. $140K taxi medallions are simple economics? Each $140K a company had to pay for some stupid medallion could have employed two people for a year. Medallions and protectionism just created localized monopolies that had few incentives to improve service, innovate on tech, and even provide clean vehicles. There's no other industry that needs this artificial cap, as if demand and supply can be accurately controlled for by government policy officials. What a joke.
    - ryanwaggoner 8y ago
      Why is this not true for every type of market? Taco stands, barbershops, web designers, attorneys, parking lots, dog walkers, etc? Couldn't you just replace "taxicabs" and "drivers" with any kind of business or industry? Isn't the collective end goal of the competitive marketplace supposed to be razor thin margins due to competition? I live in NYC and prior to Uber, 1) taxi medallions were valued at high six figures, 2) service was terrible, 3) prices were too high, and 4) actual drivers still made shit money. I think Uber and Lyft and others have improved all of that, to be honest. Competition is a beautiful thing.
- shittyadmin 8y ago
  I mean, you get more than that, no one looked at Uber and went "ooh, illegal taxis". They looked at it and went "ooh I can use it from my phone with the push of a button and it's cheaper". The whole point of the "sharing economy" is to compete on efficiency, ease of use and price. Ridiculous, anti-competitive laws were in place in these systems, I applaud their death.
  - notacoward 8y ago
    > no one looked at Uber and went "ooh, illegal taxis" I can disprove that all by myself, since that's exactly how I reacted when I first heard of Uber.
    - russh 8y ago
      Same here, I truly don't understand how they got away with it.
  - dbt00 8y ago
    I mean, Uber Black was allowing existing private car services to float their services on an on-demand market and soak up excess capacity. Sidecar/UberX/Lyft etc have always just been wildcat taxis, except at least a real wildcat taxicab probably has some experience. In my experience, most uberx/lyft drivers have been doing it less than a year, the good ones all leave as soon as they see how bad the pay is, and nobody knows what the fuck they're doing. It's amazing they haven't killed more people, tbh.
  - rchaud 8y ago
    > no one looked at Uber and went "ooh, illegal taxis" That's because it was falsely framed as "ride sharing" to begin with, when it was obviously a taxi service. It should also go without saying that millions in VC cash can prettify anything and buy enough positive PR and lobbying to give the service an air of legitimacy.
  - oliwarner 8y ago
    > The whole point of the "sharing economy" is to ... Rebrand existing services with unregulated, zero-hours contractors, using their own unregulated assets, with a layer of brokering software. It's marketing wank, for both consumers and workers.
- Torgo 8y ago
  "Family planning" was always a lie. It was always about illegal acts rebranded. Illegal birth control. Illegal abortions. etc
SolarNet 8y ago
> Why didn’t we see it coming? How did sharing economy companies manage to evade scrutiny for so long? Plenty of people saw it coming. As much as fellow members of my generation enthusiastically embraced the sharing/gig economy for survival, most of them acknowledged that the companies were in the end going to be worse. They were just less worse than having no income. Those that thought this were the future were just deluding themselves because of how fucking terrible the job market is.
- chrisco255 8y ago
  The job market might have been terrible 5 years ago, but this is not the case today. 3.7% unemployment in the U.S. Lowest since 1969.
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    It's kind of funny that most of the people that recognized that the headline unemployment number wasn't a complete picture of the job market when Obama was President have somehow forgotten that since late January of 2017.
    - api 8y ago
      Every time the ruling party switches, followers of both parties warp into parallel universes with entirely different realities. Same thing happens for Democrats and their opinions of foreign military adventures. It's an unnecessary war when a Republican is in office, but it's a "peacekeeping mission" or a "humanitarian mission" when a Democrat is in office.
      - themacguffinman 8y ago
        Opinion polling doesn't support your neat "both sides do it" narrative: > In 2013, when Barack Obama was president, a Washington Post-ABC News poll found that only 22 percent of Republicans supported the U.S. launching missile strikes against Syria in response to Bashar al-Assad using chemical weapons against civilians. > A new Post-ABC poll finds that 86 percent of Republicans support Donald Trump’s decision to launch strikes on Syria for the same reason. Only 11 percent are opposed. > The Post-ABC poll indicates somewhat greater consistency on the part of Democrats. Some 37 percent of them back Trump’s strike, compared to a statistically indistinguishable 38 percent who backed a strike in 2013. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2017/04/13/48229/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.3da21cd50a74 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/201...
drawkbox 8y ago
The movie Sorry to Bother You has a satirical look at the sharing economy gone awry. In the movie a controversial company called WorryFree exists that promises lifelong security where people willingly become slaves to live in dorms and survive without worry but for free. The movie is excellent.
- dguo 8y ago
  Sounds interesting. The description of WorryFree reminds me of Brave New World.
- savanaly 8y ago
  How is it a look at the sharing economy in particular? It was a satirical take on modern capitalism, sure, but I didn't see how WorryFree was supposed to remind you of a person working a contracting job such as an Uber driver. Quite the opposite in fact, the employees of WorryFree seemed to be signing up for lifelong, permanent and inflexible employment terms. Uber drivers may get a raw deal but surely one would acknowledge at least that they have more flexibility w.r.t. when and where they work than the other typical jobs in a capitalist economy.
  - drawkbox 8y ago
    It is more about modern sharecropper capitalism I agree but WorryFree is the endgame of the sharing/gig economy, basically people fed up with hustling in the gig economy or sharecropper systems can become slaves and have their worries handled for them (dorm, food etc) almost like a mix of prison mixed with dorms at work like Foxconn. In the movie Cassius "Cash" Green, the main character, works as a telemarketer and all the telemarketers are looking to unionize but there is little control or solace in any work in their look at modern society. Throughout the movie, when the work is a complete hustle, WorryFree draws these people in by marketing that they don't have to worry about the hustle anymore, just become a slave to make the hustle easier. In the future of Sorry to Bother You, you can either be a sharecropper/hustler/sales or slave. Here's a look at all the elements in the movie regarding modern economies and their drive for cheap labor and ultimately pliant slaves [1] Boots Riley, who created the movie and was previously a rapper, made one hell of a movie director/screenwriter debut, it is already a cult classic. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffewing/2018/07/13/could-sorry-to-bother-you-really-happen-partial-spoilers/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffewing/2018/07/13/could-sorr...
yalogin 8y ago
I am more bothered by the fact that these companies establish a permanent record of your behavior across a large swathe of “businesses”. So things cannot be forgotten. There is a legitimate need for that in some cases but in most cases is unnecessary. This is the capitalist equivalent of the coduct based credit imposed by China. Somehow feels too drastic and draconian to me.
squozzer 8y ago
The basic premise of the article seems sound, that money corrupted an arrangement that might otherwise be innocent. Uber / Lyft were upgrades to Craiglist ads for rides / carpools - more convenient for riders, and drivers make a few bucks taking someone somewhere they were going anyway. AirBnB was a way for travelers to access a more "charming" experience, maybe a little more conveniently than booking a hotel/BnB or scanning CL ads for rooms for rent. Where they went wrong was professionalization, i.e. people driving full-time or renting for the income. That's when it became obvious that Uber/Lyft was actually a taxi company and AirBnB a rental broker. In fairness, if in certain cities (NYC) taxis weren't intentionally managed to scarcity, Uber/Lyft probably would have had more difficulty gaining traction. Nor would I begrudge a homeowner making a little money boarding guests. But of course the economic opportunity proved too much for too many to resist, which is why we have the problems mentioned in the article.
francisofascii 8y ago
The sharing economy works because of the American tendency to own/buy way more capacity that is usually required. People own cars but don't use them all the time or people buy extra rooms for their homes for the two times a year they have visitors. People saw this untapped capacity and exploited it. We should encourage better utilization of resources assuming the proper regulations are in place to do so.
pessimizer 8y ago
It's weird to spend so many words arguing against a word used as branding. There was never a sharing economy, because it is people paying money for things. What was created was a piecework economy, which was obviously going to be successful if it could figure out a way to skirt the laws that made piecework jobs illegal. Investors could see that, and added so much cash in anticipation of a monopoly (and with the understanding that it would take quick growth and a bunch of expensive legislative and marketing work to take this monopoly) that these companies could afford to sell dollars for $0.90. I'm going to start a business utilizing children as hospital, hospice, and old age home laborers and call it "the childcare industry" just to see it debunked 10 years and 100 billion dollars later: "Revealed: The Childcare Industry Was Never About Caring For Children." I'll then press release that it was shameful that slate dot com chose to diminish the experiences and character growth of millions of children, dismiss the importance of our elders and their health, shill for the interests of big healthcare, and denigrate the millions of relationships formed between the oldest generations and the youngest.
- marnett 8y ago
  remarkable last sentence. love the parallels.
- rolleiflex 8y ago
  You have a gift for PR-speak.
digitaltrees 8y ago
It does seem that many of the business models were really just regulatory arbitrage, but were presented as some fundamental innovation. It also seems that they fooled some investors into believing hyper growth that was fueled with negative unit economics would eventually lead to a monopoly market position, maybe some will...but I doubt it as the barrier of entry is to low an the "network effect" that was believed make the monopoly quasi-permanent doesn't seem to exist for most industries.
whoeveryouwant 8y ago
Is the article really about the sharing economy, or rather about discrediting Lessig and the people who believe publicly funded research should be public? Seems a little odd the way it relates Uber and AirBnB with Lessig.
- 8bitsrule 8y ago
  Exactly. To me 'sharing' means barter and what happens in villages and Creative Commons. Not LSC dressed-up in 'sharing' clothes. You can fool some of the people ...
vkou 8y ago
I don't understand how people can be tricked by the branding of the 'sharing economy.' The average seven year old is capable of understanding the difference between actual sharing (A friend giving you a lift), and 'sharing' (An unmarked taxi.) They could also probably grasp the difference between CouchSurfing[1], and AirBnB. [1] Couchsurfing was the actual sharing economy, but as it turns out, you can't make billions of dollars from people letting out their couches to strangers, for the cost of company, and a home-cooked meal.
- Nasrudith 8y ago
  Well there are some grey areas in sharing - would a neighbor agreeing to drive you to the airport for gas money be sharing still? What about a friend? Probably a deliberate fuzzy borders exploitation. The set rates are the real breaker of sharingin my opinion - a tip and rating system would be truer sharing but would certainly exist on a smaller scale. It would be an interesting sociological experiment but it would probably end in disaster.
- pesmhey 8y ago
  I've found myself drinking someone's branding kool-aid before, and this is how it happened. You think to yourself what you've just laid out, that this is so obvious a seven year old should know better. So obvious, in fact, that it can't be real. "This is just an unmarked taxi." "No, we're way different." You think to yourself how no one could be that blatant, and you notice other people are buying into it, so you start to question you own worldview. Then it reaches a critical mass, where there's enough self-perpetuation to make you throw skepticism to the wind. And after some time, after seeing a few cracks in the brand, you think to yourself, god damn it, should have stuck to my guns.
  - jandrese 8y ago
    Or: "This is just an unmarked taxi." "Except hailing/billing isn't stuck in the past so you don't have to get lucky to find an empty one on the street or call a surly dispatcher and wait 45 minutes. You also get the bill up front so you know how much it will cost before you even say yes. You can always pay by credit card too, you'll never arrive at the destination and then only be informed that the credit card reader is 'broken' and the cabbie can only accept cash. Added bonus: it's about half the price of a regular taxi." "Cool"
xamuel 8y ago
>Lessig’s paradigmatic example of a hybrid is Red Hat, Inc. Well, so much for that! Which I guess just further proves the article's point.
- Apocryphon 8y ago
  25 years doesn't seem like a bad lifespan for an independent organization.

64 points by mrxd 8y ago

The "Sharing Economy" was always a lie. It was always about illegal acts rebranded. Illegal rebranded taxis. Illegal rebranded hotels. etc

mkirklions 8y ago
The only reason these were illegal was cronyism. And before you get excited about the safety we get with regulation. Capitalism has proven with billion dollar companies, we don't want regulated taxis.
- pragmacoders 8y ago
  If I'm lucky, I'll never see the term "Capitalism has proven..." again, in my lifetime
- matchbok 8y ago
  Eh, the only people who like unregulated mini-hotels (airbnb) in residential areas are the ones making money.
  - repsilat 8y ago
    And, to be fair, the ones paying money to stay in those mini-hotels. (And, to be clear, "the ones making money" includes local businesses benefiting from increased tourism, and their employees.)
    - gamblor956 8y ago
      And to be clear, the local businesses would benefit from tourists staying in real hotels just as much, if not more, than the ones staying in AirBnBs, because such tourists are more likely to dine out and do things around town. But restaurants dislike tourists because most tourists tip less than Americans, so a high concentration of these "mini-hotels" is detrimental to restaurants and their staff.
      - rickycook 8y ago
        tipping culture and minimum wage in the US is detrimental to restaurants; not the tourists buying the food!
  - AckSyn 8y ago
    Are you kidding? I love the $29-$39/night rooms I have when traveling. It's a boon.
- dbt00 8y ago
  Taxi licensing was not cronyism, it was simple economics. Taxicabs can either have x drivers all at a subsistence level, or 0.5x drivers with a reasonable standard of living. Licensing with a cap and fixed rates becomes a policy decision driven by the public interest.
  - chrisco255 8y ago
    That's ridiculous. $140K taxi medallions are simple economics? Each $140K a company had to pay for some stupid medallion could have employed two people for a year. Medallions and protectionism just created localized monopolies that had few incentives to improve service, innovate on tech, and even provide clean vehicles. There's no other industry that needs this artificial cap, as if demand and supply can be accurately controlled for by government policy officials. What a joke.
  - ryanwaggoner 8y ago
    Why is this not true for every type of market? Taco stands, barbershops, web designers, attorneys, parking lots, dog walkers, etc? Couldn't you just replace "taxicabs" and "drivers" with any kind of business or industry? Isn't the collective end goal of the competitive marketplace supposed to be razor thin margins due to competition? I live in NYC and prior to Uber, 1) taxi medallions were valued at high six figures, 2) service was terrible, 3) prices were too high, and 4) actual drivers still made shit money. I think Uber and Lyft and others have improved all of that, to be honest. Competition is a beautiful thing.
shittyadmin 8y ago
I mean, you get more than that, no one looked at Uber and went "ooh, illegal taxis". They looked at it and went "ooh I can use it from my phone with the push of a button and it's cheaper". The whole point of the "sharing economy" is to compete on efficiency, ease of use and price. Ridiculous, anti-competitive laws were in place in these systems, I applaud their death.
- notacoward 8y ago
  > no one looked at Uber and went "ooh, illegal taxis" I can disprove that all by myself, since that's exactly how I reacted when I first heard of Uber.
  - russh 8y ago
    Same here, I truly don't understand how they got away with it.
- dbt00 8y ago
  I mean, Uber Black was allowing existing private car services to float their services on an on-demand market and soak up excess capacity. Sidecar/UberX/Lyft etc have always just been wildcat taxis, except at least a real wildcat taxicab probably has some experience. In my experience, most uberx/lyft drivers have been doing it less than a year, the good ones all leave as soon as they see how bad the pay is, and nobody knows what the fuck they're doing. It's amazing they haven't killed more people, tbh.
- rchaud 8y ago
  > no one looked at Uber and went "ooh, illegal taxis" That's because it was falsely framed as "ride sharing" to begin with, when it was obviously a taxi service. It should also go without saying that millions in VC cash can prettify anything and buy enough positive PR and lobbying to give the service an air of legitimacy.
- oliwarner 8y ago
  > The whole point of the "sharing economy" is to ... Rebrand existing services with unregulated, zero-hours contractors, using their own unregulated assets, with a layer of brokering software. It's marketing wank, for both consumers and workers.
Torgo 8y ago
"Family planning" was always a lie. It was always about illegal acts rebranded. Illegal birth control. Illegal abortions. etc

SolarNet 8y ago

> Why didn’t we see it coming? How did sharing economy companies manage to evade scrutiny for so long? Plenty of people saw it coming. As much as fellow members of my generation enthusiastically embraced the sharing/gig economy for survival, most of them acknowledged that the companies were in the end going to be worse. They were just less worse than having no income. Those that thought this were the future were just deluding themselves because of how fucking terrible the job market is.

chrisco255 8y ago
The job market might have been terrible 5 years ago, but this is not the case today. 3.7% unemployment in the U.S. Lowest since 1969.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  It's kind of funny that most of the people that recognized that the headline unemployment number wasn't a complete picture of the job market when Obama was President have somehow forgotten that since late January of 2017.
  - api 8y ago
    Every time the ruling party switches, followers of both parties warp into parallel universes with entirely different realities. Same thing happens for Democrats and their opinions of foreign military adventures. It's an unnecessary war when a Republican is in office, but it's a "peacekeeping mission" or a "humanitarian mission" when a Democrat is in office.
    - themacguffinman 8y ago
      Opinion polling doesn't support your neat "both sides do it" narrative: > In 2013, when Barack Obama was president, a Washington Post-ABC News poll found that only 22 percent of Republicans supported the U.S. launching missile strikes against Syria in response to Bashar al-Assad using chemical weapons against civilians. > A new Post-ABC poll finds that 86 percent of Republicans support Donald Trump’s decision to launch strikes on Syria for the same reason. Only 11 percent are opposed. > The Post-ABC poll indicates somewhat greater consistency on the part of Democrats. Some 37 percent of them back Trump’s strike, compared to a statistically indistinguishable 38 percent who backed a strike in 2013. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2017/04/13/48229/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.3da21cd50a74 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/201...

drawkbox 8y ago

The movie Sorry to Bother You has a satirical look at the sharing economy gone awry. In the movie a controversial company called WorryFree exists that promises lifelong security where people willingly become slaves to live in dorms and survive without worry but for free. The movie is excellent.

dguo 8y ago
Sounds interesting. The description of WorryFree reminds me of Brave New World.
savanaly 8y ago
How is it a look at the sharing economy in particular? It was a satirical take on modern capitalism, sure, but I didn't see how WorryFree was supposed to remind you of a person working a contracting job such as an Uber driver. Quite the opposite in fact, the employees of WorryFree seemed to be signing up for lifelong, permanent and inflexible employment terms. Uber drivers may get a raw deal but surely one would acknowledge at least that they have more flexibility w.r.t. when and where they work than the other typical jobs in a capitalist economy.
- drawkbox 8y ago
  It is more about modern sharecropper capitalism I agree but WorryFree is the endgame of the sharing/gig economy, basically people fed up with hustling in the gig economy or sharecropper systems can become slaves and have their worries handled for them (dorm, food etc) almost like a mix of prison mixed with dorms at work like Foxconn. In the movie Cassius "Cash" Green, the main character, works as a telemarketer and all the telemarketers are looking to unionize but there is little control or solace in any work in their look at modern society. Throughout the movie, when the work is a complete hustle, WorryFree draws these people in by marketing that they don't have to worry about the hustle anymore, just become a slave to make the hustle easier. In the future of Sorry to Bother You, you can either be a sharecropper/hustler/sales or slave. Here's a look at all the elements in the movie regarding modern economies and their drive for cheap labor and ultimately pliant slaves [1] Boots Riley, who created the movie and was previously a rapper, made one hell of a movie director/screenwriter debut, it is already a cult classic. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffewing/2018/07/13/could-sorry-to-bother-you-really-happen-partial-spoilers/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffewing/2018/07/13/could-sorr...

yalogin 8y ago

I am more bothered by the fact that these companies establish a permanent record of your behavior across a large swathe of “businesses”. So things cannot be forgotten. There is a legitimate need for that in some cases but in most cases is unnecessary. This is the capitalist equivalent of the coduct based credit imposed by China. Somehow feels too drastic and draconian to me.

squozzer 8y ago

The basic premise of the article seems sound, that money corrupted an arrangement that might otherwise be innocent. Uber / Lyft were upgrades to Craiglist ads for rides / carpools - more convenient for riders, and drivers make a few bucks taking someone somewhere they were going anyway. AirBnB was a way for travelers to access a more "charming" experience, maybe a little more conveniently than booking a hotel/BnB or scanning CL ads for rooms for rent. Where they went wrong was professionalization, i.e. people driving full-time or renting for the income. That's when it became obvious that Uber/Lyft was actually a taxi company and AirBnB a rental broker. In fairness, if in certain cities (NYC) taxis weren't intentionally managed to scarcity, Uber/Lyft probably would have had more difficulty gaining traction. Nor would I begrudge a homeowner making a little money boarding guests. But of course the economic opportunity proved too much for too many to resist, which is why we have the problems mentioned in the article.

francisofascii 8y ago

The sharing economy works because of the American tendency to own/buy way more capacity that is usually required. People own cars but don't use them all the time or people buy extra rooms for their homes for the two times a year they have visitors. People saw this untapped capacity and exploited it. We should encourage better utilization of resources assuming the proper regulations are in place to do so.

pessimizer 8y ago

It's weird to spend so many words arguing against a word used as branding. There was never a sharing economy, because it is people paying money for things. What was created was a piecework economy, which was obviously going to be successful if it could figure out a way to skirt the laws that made piecework jobs illegal. Investors could see that, and added so much cash in anticipation of a monopoly (and with the understanding that it would take quick growth and a bunch of expensive legislative and marketing work to take this monopoly) that these companies could afford to sell dollars for $0.90. I'm going to start a business utilizing children as hospital, hospice, and old age home laborers and call it "the childcare industry" just to see it debunked 10 years and 100 billion dollars later: "Revealed: The Childcare Industry Was Never About Caring For Children." I'll then press release that it was shameful that slate dot com chose to diminish the experiences and character growth of millions of children, dismiss the importance of our elders and their health, shill for the interests of big healthcare, and denigrate the millions of relationships formed between the oldest generations and the youngest.

marnett 8y ago
remarkable last sentence. love the parallels.
rolleiflex 8y ago
You have a gift for PR-speak.

digitaltrees 8y ago

It does seem that many of the business models were really just regulatory arbitrage, but were presented as some fundamental innovation. It also seems that they fooled some investors into believing hyper growth that was fueled with negative unit economics would eventually lead to a monopoly market position, maybe some will...but I doubt it as the barrier of entry is to low an the "network effect" that was believed make the monopoly quasi-permanent doesn't seem to exist for most industries.

whoeveryouwant 8y ago

Is the article really about the sharing economy, or rather about discrediting Lessig and the people who believe publicly funded research should be public? Seems a little odd the way it relates Uber and AirBnB with Lessig.

8bitsrule 8y ago
Exactly. To me 'sharing' means barter and what happens in villages and Creative Commons. Not LSC dressed-up in 'sharing' clothes. You can fool some of the people ...

vkou 8y ago

I don't understand how people can be tricked by the branding of the 'sharing economy.' The average seven year old is capable of understanding the difference between actual sharing (A friend giving you a lift), and 'sharing' (An unmarked taxi.) They could also probably grasp the difference between CouchSurfing[1], and AirBnB. [1] Couchsurfing was the actual sharing economy, but as it turns out, you can't make billions of dollars from people letting out their couches to strangers, for the cost of company, and a home-cooked meal.

Nasrudith 8y ago
Well there are some grey areas in sharing - would a neighbor agreeing to drive you to the airport for gas money be sharing still? What about a friend? Probably a deliberate fuzzy borders exploitation. The set rates are the real breaker of sharingin my opinion - a tip and rating system would be truer sharing but would certainly exist on a smaller scale. It would be an interesting sociological experiment but it would probably end in disaster.
pesmhey 8y ago
I've found myself drinking someone's branding kool-aid before, and this is how it happened. You think to yourself what you've just laid out, that this is so obvious a seven year old should know better. So obvious, in fact, that it can't be real. "This is just an unmarked taxi." "No, we're way different." You think to yourself how no one could be that blatant, and you notice other people are buying into it, so you start to question you own worldview. Then it reaches a critical mass, where there's enough self-perpetuation to make you throw skepticism to the wind. And after some time, after seeing a few cracks in the brand, you think to yourself, god damn it, should have stuck to my guns.
- jandrese 8y ago
  Or: "This is just an unmarked taxi." "Except hailing/billing isn't stuck in the past so you don't have to get lucky to find an empty one on the street or call a surly dispatcher and wait 45 minutes. You also get the bill up front so you know how much it will cost before you even say yes. You can always pay by credit card too, you'll never arrive at the destination and then only be informed that the credit card reader is 'broken' and the cabbie can only accept cash. Added bonus: it's about half the price of a regular taxi." "Cool"

xamuel 8y ago

>Lessig’s paradigmatic example of a hybrid is Red Hat, Inc. Well, so much for that! Which I guess just further proves the article's point.

Apocryphon 8y ago
25 years doesn't seem like a bad lifespan for an independent organization.