4 ms·

This kind of app existed before (keyword "sharing economy") and it never really took off. I don’t know exactly why, but one obvious drawback is that I have to s

by WA 8y ago

This kind of app existed before (keyword "sharing economy") and it never really took off. I don’t know exactly why, but one obvious drawback is that I have to signup for a service (that none of my friends or neighbors use yet), post my list of 3-5 tools I’m willing to share and then never look in the app for 6 months, because I don’t need anything. An all like that is basically the same as sending an email to my friends and putting a piece of paper on my door for my neighbors to let them know what stuff they can borrow from me. It’s not exactly something you use everyday. My guess is: yes, people would share their tools, but an app might not be the solution for this problem.

muzani 8y ago
We've done it as a community for a while. The downside is sometimes someone borrows a ladder but doesn't return it. Apps would help. I'm not sure if people would want to rent their tools though. It seems like the benefit of being neighborly exceeds the $3 you'd get from renting out a ladder.
- shoo 8y ago
  > Freuchen tells how one day, after coming home > hungry from an unsuccessful walrus-hunting > expedition, he found one of the successful > hunters dropping off several hundred pounds > of meat. He thanked him profusely. The man > objected indignantly: > "Up in our country we are human!" said the > hunter. "And since we are human we help > each other. We don't like to hear anybody > say thanks for that. What I get today you > may get tomorrow. Up here we say that by > gifts one makes slaves and by whips one > makes dogs. > The refusal to calculate credits and debits > can be found throughout the anthropological > literature on egalitarian hunting societies. > Rather than seeing himself as human because he > could make economic calculations, the hunter > insisted that being truly human meant refusing > to make such calculations, refusing to measure > or remember who had given what to whom -- Graeber , Debt: The First 5,000 Years

by WA 8y ago

muzani 8y ago

We've done it as a community for a while. The downside is sometimes someone borrows a ladder but doesn't return it. Apps would help. I'm not sure if people would want to rent their tools though. It seems like the benefit of being neighborly exceeds the $3 you'd get from renting out a ladder.

shoo 8y ago
> Freuchen tells how one day, after coming home > hungry from an unsuccessful walrus-hunting > expedition, he found one of the successful > hunters dropping off several hundred pounds > of meat. He thanked him profusely. The man > objected indignantly: > "Up in our country we are human!" said the > hunter. "And since we are human we help > each other. We don't like to hear anybody > say thanks for that. What I get today you > may get tomorrow. Up here we say that by > gifts one makes slaves and by whips one > makes dogs. > The refusal to calculate credits and debits > can be found throughout the anthropological > literature on egalitarian hunting societies. > Rather than seeing himself as human because he > could make economic calculations, the hunter > insisted that being truly human meant refusing > to make such calculations, refusing to measure > or remember who had given what to whom -- Graeber , Debt: The First 5,000 Years