Uber, Airbnb, delivery services and the like are nothing more than glorified communication and payment tools.
These services can only be called "sharing" economy if they operate at zero profit and their app code is open source.
I think they should and pretty soon will be public services, developed by the community and run by local non profit organisations, like Firefighters.
Furthermore, these should be local services, catering to the specific circumstances of the city or town they operate in, obeying the local customs and so on.
I think the "sharing economy" is one of the most impressive rebrands of an idea. It sounds all nice and friendly, who doesn't like sharing? And so new! I've not heard of the sharing economy before!
And it's just people selling things to other people. The same thing we've been doing as a species since we understood the concept of trading, something it seems chimpanzees have a grasp of.
Uber basically figured out how to be a cab company without having employees and without following laws. No overheads on salaries, employee benefits, taxes, or regulations. This is the "sharing economy", really: a libertarian dream. It appears that this has garnered Uber and Airbnb a lot of goodwill because whenever they're discussed online, they always seem to be portrayed as some champion against the evils of the cab or hotel industries. I personally have never felt as slighted by cabs or hotels as everyone seems to be whenever they are discussed online.
> Uber basically figured out how to be a cab company without having employees
Take a look around and you'll find that basically every company has been trying to do that in America for a long time.
The administration staff at many businesses is all outsourced to staffing agencies.
Hiring almost everywhere is outsourced to recruiting agencies.
I know a number of multi-billion dollar corporations pumping hundreds of millions into their tech divisions, where > 95% of the employees are staffed from IT staffing agencies/consultancies.
Nobody employs a landscaper, unless they're a landscaping company.
It appears to be a big secret, but everyone contracts out everything these days. Uber is doing it on the most individual scale, in the most streamlined way I've ever seen. I don't happen to think that's as bad as everyone else does.
Traditional cab companies don't have employees either. I feel like all the critics of Uber must live in a different universe from me, where cab drivers are never mistreated, are paid wonderfully, and consistently provide an on-time and courteous service.
How is that different from normal trading? Swapping something you don't need much for something you do, while your trading partner does the same. It's always been done, but some players (ebay for example) made it a bit easier. "Pay people for stuff more easily" doesn't sound as new and trendy as "the sharing economy" though.
I really don't understand how this is any different from regular trading. I've been able to pay people by the hour for jobs for a long time. I've been able to find small flatshares (for short periods too) in the past.
AirBNB are different, but the way I think that they're different is not what most people think. The thing they solved which was a real problem was insurance. Sure, there's a site for booking, some scheduling and payment transfer but they're not really key. It's the fact I can go to someone's house and say "Someone has checked my identity and here's a guarantee that if I break/steal things you'll get reimbursed" that smooths over the risks.
Uber, in the UK, is virtually identical to other taxi firms.
AirBnB, Uber, Lyft, etc. are all using assets that were not intended for paid services, whereas the people you are paying for services are using assets that have such intention.
The shared economy is (or was) more about accessing assets that were locked up by personal use, but still being underutilized. From an ethical perspective, it's maximizing value from something that wasn't easily accessible before.
Uber perhaps not, but the main problem with AirBnb is the transformation of homes into de facto hotels. Long-term residential rentals are misallocated as short-term when the supply of the former is already tight.
My definition of hotel is multi-unit building with service workers. It sucks if your neighbour now has 500% more foot traffic, but it's not exactly opening a lumber yard next door.
If freedom respecting public services are destined to replace proprietary platforms that demonstrated markets where you can use a communications platform to replace business, than facebook and twitter would be losing to gnusocial and diaspora.
In practice, consumers are ignorant about the consequences of the businesses they do business with. This exists way beyond tech to how companies consumers will spend money on for goods or services will take that money to then lobby government to harm those citizens, yet the vast majority of people are apathetic to taking responsibility for that behavior.
Hopefully we see state intervention to stop Uber for simply breaking regulations, like we saw in Austin, where in the aftermath of knowing about Uber more open communication tools were used instead because the citizenry realized they didn't need an app to have a network of drivers and customers who could rate and pay one another.
> These services can only be called "sharing" economy if they operate at zero profit and their app code is open source.
That's a very weird claim. It's like saying information economy can be called so only if everybody uses open source and nobody is making profit from information. That's just nonsense. Making profit is part of the economy - in fact, a vital part, an engine that makes the economy move, and using open source has nothing to do with this at all. I get that Stallman wants everybody to use open source - but it has nothing to do with economy. It's a moral ideal Stallman strives to, and it's fine, but economy can be economy with or without it, so can sharing economy.
> I think they should and pretty soon will be public services
They won't, unless the government forces them to and kills them by that.
> Furthermore, these should be local services, catering to the specific circumstances of the city or town they operate in, obeying the local customs and so on.
Nobody prevents you from doing that, but it's harder than you think. And on local level taxi lobby will swat such service like a fly. Uber can resist it because they are big enough to put up a fight. Volunteer non-profit service won't stand a snowball's chance in a volcano.
> It's like saying information economy can be called so only if everybody uses open source and nobody is making profit from information.
No it's not. Sharing is a word that has a meaning. What it's like is saying that you can't call the trade in oranges the information economy, because trading oranges has little to with information. Selling is not sharing.
>> Uber, Airbnb, delivery services and the like are nothing more than glorified communication and payment tools.
Let's focus on transportation services. Yes, their technology wasn't that big of a deal. But their largest contribution is building a thriving market. And that market could be used to offer interesting services like real sharing(UberPool).
Can communities build that market on their own ? well there's little effort and in general the results aren't encouraging. Even places who put a serious effort in such services(kutsuplus service in sweden), didn't seem to sucseed , and old services like dial-a-ride didn't seem to do so well with regards to scaling or sustainability.
Of course , it's hard to speak of the sustainability of current ride services(hopefully they wouldbe), but at least they seem take us a bit further.
Kutsuplus was in Finland. Some of the reasons it didn't succeed is that employing people in Finland is very expensive, there are a lot of regulations to be met, and Helsinki area a very small market so the payback period for any new investments is long (such as the information systems required).
Meanwhile Uber is successful in Finland alright but it's illegal and not really profitable for the drivers. (It's legal if the driver has a taxi permit which is very rare.)
Maybe(altough why do people still work? ) . But again, if they(or some other model) sucseed in scaling true sharing , maybe than would be the time to intervene a bit in behalf of drivers ?
A young man made the headlines driving Uber with his dad's car, where his dad paid for the gasoline and all. I don't remember the exact profit he made but I calculated that wouldn't cover the cost of servicing and fueling the car.
Someone else will make a better profit, of course. But enough to pay taxes, insurance, required employer costs? I don't think so.
> Furthermore, these should be local services, catering to the specific circumstances of the city or town they operate in, obeying the local customs and so on.
Please no. I have precisely zero interest in downloading a new app every time I go to a city.
It's amazing how ignorant of basic economics people on HN are. Have you ever heard of economies of scale? Uber pays literally millions of dollars to their developers every year. I sure as hell don't want my taxes going to pay for my city to develop its own Uber knockoff.
Then they'll soon get as effective and well developed as typical public services. Thanks, but no - I'd rather pay a little extra to someone who has a real incentive to do a good job than rely on charitable motivations of strangers.
Uber, Airbnb, delivery services and the like are nothing more than glorified communication and payment tools.
These services can only be called "sharing" economy if they operate at zero profit and their app code is open source.
I think they should and pretty soon will be public services, developed by the community and run by local non profit organisations, like Firefighters.
Furthermore, these should be local services, catering to the specific circumstances of the city or town they operate in, obeying the local customs and so on.