Sharing economy
These systems take a variety of forms, often leveraging information technology and the Internet, particularly digital platforms, to facilitate the distribution, sharing and reuse of excess capacity in goods and services.
[6] Dariusz Jemielniak and Aleksandra Przegalinska credit Marcus Felson and Joe L. Spaeth's academic article "Community Structure and Collaborative Consumption" published in 1978[7] with coining the term economy of sharing.
[8]: 6 The term "sharing economy" began to appear around the time of the Great Recession, enabling social technologies, and an increasing sense of urgency around global population growth and resource depletion.
A definition published in the Journal of Consumer Behavior in 2015 emphasizes these synergies: “Collaborative consumption takes place in organized systems or networks, in which participants conduct sharing activities in the form of renting, lending, trading, bartering, and swapping of goods, services, transportation solutions, space, or money.”[16]
[20] One definition of the sharing economy, developed to integrate existing understandings and definitions, based on a systematic review is: "the sharing economy is an IT-facilitated peer-to-peer model for commercial or non-commercial sharing of underutilized goods and service capacity through an intermediary without transfer of ownership"[15]The phenomenon has been defined from a legal perspective as "a for-profit, triangular legal structure where two parties (Providers and Users) enter into binding contracts for the provision of goods (partial transfer of the property bundle of rights) or services (ad hoc or casual services) in exchange for monetary payment through an online platform operated by a third party (Platform Operator) with an active role in the definition and development of the legal conditions upon which the goods and services are provided.
[8]: 38 Yochai Benkler, one of the earliest proponents of open source software, who studied the tragedy of the commons, which refers to the idea that when people all act solely in our self-interest, they deplete the shared resources they need for their own quality of life, posited that network technology could mitigate this issue through what he called "commons-based peer production", a concept first articulated in 2002.
According to a report by the United States Department of Commerce in June 2016, quantitative research on the size and growth of the sharing economy remains sparse.
Growth estimates can be challenging to evaluate due to different and sometimes unspecified definitions about what sort of activity counts as sharing economy transactions.
[41] A February 2018 study ordered by the European Commission and the Directorate-General for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs indicated the level of collaborative economy development between the EU-28 countries across the transport, accommodation, finance and online skills sectors.
[47] In most sharing-economy platforms in China the user profiles connected to WeChat or Alipay which require real name and identification, which ensures that service abuse is minimised.
[56][61] Using a personal car to transport passengers or deliveries requires payment, or sufferance, of costs for fees deducted by the dispatching company, fuel, wear and tear, depreciation, interest, taxes, as well as adequate insurance.
[65] Several studies have shown that In the United States, the sharing economy restructures how legal disputes are resolved and who is considered the victims of potential crime.
[66] The introduction of civil law cases has the potential to increase victims' ability to be made whole, since the legal change shifts incentives of consumers towards action.
With freelance workers offering their services in the sharing economy, firms are able to save money on long-term labor costs and increase marginal revenue from their operations.
Since you don’t have to make any sort of commitment, you can easily take time off for the big moments in your life as well, such as vacations, a wedding, the birth of a child, and more.
[76] The theory of open or "transparent" access to information enables greater innovation, and makes for more efficient use of products and services, and thus supporting resilient communities.
With social media and information technology, such people can donate small slivers of time to take care of simple tasks that others need doing.
Christopher Koopman, an author of a 2015 study by George Mason University economists, said the sharing economy "allows people to take idle capital and turn them into revenue sources".
"[80] Arun Sundararajan, a New York University economist who studies the sharing economy, told a congressional hearing that "this transition will have a positive impact on economic growth and welfare, by stimulating new consumption, by raising productivity, and by catalyzing individual innovation and entrepreneurship".
[91] Additional benefits include: Oxford Internet Institute Economic Geographer Mark Graham argued that key parts of the sharing economy impose a new balance of power onto workers.
But what's getting them to the threshold in the first place is a damaged economy and harmful public policy that has forced millions of people to look to odd jobs for sustenance.
[97] However, in a report published in January 2017, Carl Benedikt Frey found that while the introduction of Uber had not led to jobs being lost, but had caused a reduction in the incomes of incumbent taxi drivers of almost 10%.
[8]: 25 It has been argued that this trend is de facto "obliterating the achievements of unions thus far in their struggle to secure basic mutual obligations in worker-employer relations".
[8]: 28 In Uberland: How the Algorithms are Rewriting the Rules of Work, technology ethnographer Alex Rosenblat argues that Uber's reluctance to classify its drivers as "employees" strips them of their agency as the company's revenue-generating workforce, resulting in lower compensation and, in some cases, risking their safety.
"[100] The California Public Utilities Commission filed a case, later settled out of court, that "addresses the same underlying issue seen in the contract worker controversy—whether the new ways of operating in the sharing economy model should be subject to the same regulations governing traditional businesses".
[102] A 2015 article by economists at George Mason University argued that many of the regulations circumvented by sharing economy businesses are exclusive privileges lobbied for by interest groups.
[112] William Alden wrote that "The so-called sharing economy is supposed to offer a new kind of capitalism, one where regular folks, enabled by efficient online platforms, can turn their fallow assets into cash machines ...
[113] The local economic benefit of the sharing economy is offset by its current form, which is that huge tech companies reap a great deal of profit in many cases.
[116] This is reminiscent of a peak Rentier state "which derives all or a substantial portion of its national revenues from the rent of indigenous resources to external clients".
In order to reap the real benefits of a sharing economy and somehow address some issues that revolve around it, there is a great need for the government and policy-makers to create the “right enabling framework based on a set of guiding principles” proposed by the World Economic Forum.
