The Sharing Economy

I agree with the author in that this "Sharing Economy" will play an ever-increasing role in our economic future, but I think her conclusion that it requires government support to flourish is incorrect. None of the innovative services she mentions benefited from a large government loan or huge tax breaks. I would argue that some services like Kickstarter are prevented from reaching their full potential because of government laws regarding crowdfunding.<p>In order to reach its full potential, government should let the "group of people with shared needs and a common vision" she describes pursue that vision with as few hoops to jump through as possible, even if those people don't happen to be citizens of the United States.

I don't think any of those companies was started with the intention of becoming a nonprofit sustainably tying together the community, as this article seems to claim. This isn't the emergence of a sharing economy - that makes it sound like we're moving from capitalism to communism. What we're seeing is companies utilizing the Internet to bring together markets that would have been impossible to organize profitably 20 years ago (try running eBay as a mail-order or phone based system).

Dead on. I'm excited to see more services in the sharing economy. ebay and airbnb is just the beginning ...

Google: the Mesh by Lisa Gansky