Stop calling it the Sharing Economy – That isn’t what it is

&quot;Laws that took decades to come up with by the community in which they apply, whose intent was to established the most ideal balance possible between cab fares and consumer protections. &quot;<p>This sounds a little bit too naive to me.<p>I am not saying that it is not like this. Just this is not the full picture and perhaps not the honest one.<p>I think that some industries do need disruption, but I agree with the author that perhaps not the kind we are seeing right now.

I never got why Uber would be part of a sharing economy.<p>Sharing economy is about sharing underutilized resources, in other words, fully utilizing expensive assets by spreading usage across a larger number of users. The focus here is on the asset, not the service.<p>AirBnB? Check, that&#x27;s sharing economy, you&#x27;re clearly increasing usage of an underutilized asset (your home when you travel, or your spare bedroom), although there are exceptions (those who buy a place to rent on AirBnB like a hotel).<p>TaskRabbit? Nope. Uber? Nope. That&#x27;s just the service economy, nothing new to see here folks.

NB: I was confused until I realised that this is not the same Olivier Blanchard who is chief economist of the IMF. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Olivier_Blanchard" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Olivier_Blanchard</a>

Companies like Uber and AirBnb have put a spotlight on the cost of old and sometimes outdated information and are driving changes that were not going to come from within the system. In some cases we end up with a better end state, in others we are forced to weigh all the pros and cons and we rejig our current model.

I think some companies&#x2F;individuals hide behind the name(Sharing Economy)?<p>It just sounds fair, progressive, and everyone benefits? This Sharing Economy has make a lot of people insanely rich, provided a lot of middle class jobs(Programmers, Tech workers), and a lot of promises to the rest of us.<p>What&#x27;s going to happen when these companies are streamlined, and running pretty well? All the kinks have been eliminated. The point, if they ever completely get past all the regulation; where all they really care about is customer growth? What&#x27;s going to happen to all those good paying Programmer&#x2F;Tech jobs? (In reality, I hope Tech workers will just move on to the next opportunity. I just hope certain companies don&#x27;t get preferential treatment because they were the first to arrive? I hope Tech workers will have a lot of opportunities.)<p>I do think some of us will look back, and reminisce about the good ole days? And yes--that seems to happen with ever bull market, and subsequent fall.<p>I wouldn&#x27;t be that concerned, but it looks like the big boys(Uber, Airbnb, etc.) are buying their rights to the party? A party that looking harder to get into daily? I thought by now, we would have a bunch of Ubers? It looks like their only competition is Lyft? Yea--I know everyone is waiting on the side lines waiting to see exactly what regulations Uber is required to follow? Maybe that&#x27;s true?

Sharing: &quot;use, occupy, or enjoy (something) jointly with another or others.&quot; Economy: &quot;offering value for money&quot;<p>There are many very interesting discussions to be had about the Sharing Economy [1]. But the name isn&#x27;t one of them.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medium.com&#x2F;the-wtf-economy&#x2F;networks-and-the-nature-of-the-firm-28790b6afdcc" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medium.com&#x2F;the-wtf-economy&#x2F;networks-and-the-nature-o...</a>

&quot;The ticket scalpers&quot; happen when prices of tickets are too low. So either price discovery of the correct price is too risky&#x2F;costly or the seller wants to subsidize the buyer for some other reason.<p>This isn&#x27;t even dependent on the EMH - if there is no price theory <i>at all</i>, then...<p>So Uber et al could actually <i>be</i> &quot;ticket scalpers&quot; and there&#x27;s only a deeply normative reason - not a rational one backed by economic theory - to decry them. Of course this illustrates a .... nice example of shear between complex social arrangements and the (ab)use of mathematics.<p>Taxi medallions are a textbook example of rents. A business model that goes after rents almost cannot be &quot;evil. Of course if it&#x27;s your ox being gored...<p>&quot;Sharing&quot; is Just One Of Those Words - like &quot;nice&quot; or &quot;fair&quot;.

Is anyone old enough to remember the original &quot;Sharing Economy&quot; -- ZipCar and FlexCar and the newish bike shares. When did the term get misapplied to &quot;contractor economy&quot;?

I don&#x27;t get why he thinks a sharing economy couldn&#x27;t do all the things he points out to be bad without being mislabeled.<p>He can argue &quot;disruption&quot; by rule breaking is a somehow objectively bad thing. He can believe that selling something shouldn&#x27;t qualify as &quot;sharing&quot;.<p>All of this seems very constructed to me.<p>To me it looks like he just doesn&#x27;t like those services, rationalized it and spins it in a way where he assumes others were misleaded to gain attention.

Every time you say the word &quot;no&quot; in your article, it’s not a fact, it’s your opinion. Trying to change people’s minds is about educating them, not telling them to stop using words or phrases or to tell them that all their ideas are wrong.

What I question is the fact that these startups become too big to fail which puts them on par with corporations, meaning we start to support corporations rather than the underdog. Corps still win.