But is that Trust Misplaced?
The sharing economy is built on the idea bangkok condo for rent 1 month – go right here – of collaborative consumption. Basically, it’s a monetized form of sharing. If you want to be able to drive to the store or the airport, you need to buy a car. That’s called personal consumption. If you want to keep your lawn in control, you need to buy a weed whacker. In the traditional capitalist economic model, goods are owned by individuals. Collaborative consumption, on the other hand, is when only a few individuals own the goods, but other people can pay for the privilege to “borrow” them.
Let’s start by tracing the evolution of the sharing economy, from preschool crayon-swapping to Airbnb. 1999:Napster popularizes peer-to-peer file-sharing, technology that lets you share personal assets (MP3 files of music, in this case) with a connected “community” of anonymous Web users. The sharing economy didn’t appear out of thin air. Every positive rating earns a buyer or seller a colored star. 1995: eBay introduces a user-generated feedback system of buyer and seller ratings to deter fraud. Even though eBay users go by anonymous names like CarJunkie3895, they earn trust through their ratings.
If you own a car, that has value – both to you and the guy who wants to borrow it to drive to Buffalo this weekend. Why not earn some extra cash by “sharing” it? Starting in 2009 with the launch of the apartment-sharing Web site Airbnb, there has been an explosion of online companies enabling complete strangers to pay each other for the short-term use of goods or services: homes, cars, boats, dog sitters, office space, tools, grocery shoppers, tour guides and more. If your car sits idle, you are squandering its value.
Airbnb is quick to note that of the millions of stays it has sponsored, only a handful have resulted in burglary or serious damage. Still, the company carries a $1 million insurance policy on all properties. But I, for one, am going to stick with the sellers with five stars. It puts a premium on entrepreneurship and innovation that our economy sorely needs. I believe – and hope – that the sharing economy is here to stay.
Of course, trust in your fellow man can only take you so far. A study by two Harvard Business School economists found that African-American hosts on Airbnb charged about 12 percent less for properties than nonblack hosts, reflecting a lower demand. To get a better idea of the scope of the sharing economy, let’s look at some of the major players in this emerging online marketplace. These sharing companies add an extra layer of protection in these peer-to-peer exchanges by collecting and paying out the money for the service and providing a formal system for complaints.
2007: Netflix brings streaming video to the mainstream, popularizing the idea of “borrowing” vs. That trust is reinforced by face-to-face meetings. The sharing economy represents one more step in this evolution of innovation. With always-connected mobile devices, they can stream songs from Spotify or Pandora for free, or watch TV and movies online wherever, whenever. On sharing economy websites, trust is established using Facebook profiles and user-generated rating systems like the one popularized by eBay. Airbnb hosts, for example, are required to physically hand over their keys to renters.
