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> It's a rental agreement, there's nothing fancy or new about it. The novelty is increased utilization through sharing of what used to be exclusive. Private p

by avz 12y ago

> It's a rental agreement, there's nothing fancy or new about it. The novelty is increased utilization through sharing of what used to be exclusive. Private property has a downside: it generally stands unused or underused when owner isn't using it or is only using it partially or temporarily. Sharing economy fixes this problem and allows society to extract value from the underutilized resources we already have. This increases availability and reduces prices of the services included in the sharing economy.

Xylakant 12y ago
> The novelty is increased utilization through sharing of what used to be exclusive. Sublet agreements existed for centuries before AirBNB came along. I have lived in sublets before people took the internet for something serious. The novelty is that AirBNB managed to provide a streamlined user experience and achieved a critical mass. The novelty about Uber is that is managed to create a second taxi market in the US. That's a feat in itself, but that's not a "sharing economy". It's certainly an efficiency gain, but hey - efficiency gains are abundant in all parts of the economy, that's nothing new.
- avz 12y ago
  You do have a point here. What I wrote ("The novelty is increased utilization through sharing of what used to be exclusive.") is actually not the core innovation but its consequence for society. The core innovation of sharing economy is scaling up trust networks people traditionally relied on to mitigate risk involved in sharing transactions. Since the risk of this type of business is high, it used to be done only on a longer term basis, among friends and family and by people who really needed the money and so just had to put up with the risk. This meant that in the old economy sharing transactions were few and far between. Scaling up the trust networks means that they can now become commonplace.

by avz 12y ago

Xylakant 12y ago

> The novelty is increased utilization through sharing of what used to be exclusive. Sublet agreements existed for centuries before AirBNB came along. I have lived in sublets before people took the internet for something serious. The novelty is that AirBNB managed to provide a streamlined user experience and achieved a critical mass. The novelty about Uber is that is managed to create a second taxi market in the US. That's a feat in itself, but that's not a "sharing economy". It's certainly an efficiency gain, but hey - efficiency gains are abundant in all parts of the economy, that's nothing new.

avz 12y ago
You do have a point here. What I wrote ("The novelty is increased utilization through sharing of what used to be exclusive.") is actually not the core innovation but its consequence for society. The core innovation of sharing economy is scaling up trust networks people traditionally relied on to mitigate risk involved in sharing transactions. Since the risk of this type of business is high, it used to be done only on a longer term basis, among friends and family and by people who really needed the money and so just had to put up with the risk. This meant that in the old economy sharing transactions were few and far between. Scaling up the trust networks means that they can now become commonplace.