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The sharing economy was always a scam

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Re: The sharing economy was always a scam

#71

Post by onion2k »

KorematsuFred wrote: post #51

Sharing economy has existed well before technology and will outlast Uber and others. When you ask friends to drop you at airport that is sharing. When your aunt babyseats for you that is sharing economy. Potluck is sharing economy. Economic efficiency through sharing is a great thing for society, it is just that it is hard to get it right at scale but nevertheless we are trying and we will test success sooner or late…

Your examples are sharing, but not "the sharing economy", because there isn't a third party managing the economic aspect.

Re: The sharing economy was always a scam

#72

Post by antidesitter »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #35
neokantian wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am free to make the deals that I want, regardless of what they include or don't include. Why would I need you to protect me from myself? Why do you want to micromanage other people's lives? Is your own life not interesting enough already?

Because your life impacts mine. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19335217

Virtually everything you do impacts people around you. So can you be more specific?

Re: The sharing economy was always a scam

#74

Post by geezerjay »

aikah wrote: post #68
KorematsuFred wrote: post #51

Sharing economy has existed well before technology and will outlast Uber and others. When you ask friends to drop you at airport that is sharing. When your aunt babyseats for you that is sharing economy. Potluck is sharing economy. Economic efficiency through sharing is a great thing for society, it is just that it is hard to get it right at scale but nevertheless we are trying and we will test success sooner or late…

> When you ask friends to drop you at airport that is sharing. And your friend didn't need a professional insurance for his car for that. The difference is scale. Giving a lift from time to time to friends is very different from doing it full time while pretending you are not a taxi.

The main driving principle of the sharing economy is actually the ability to give a lift from time to time without any bother. The problem is that a number of factors do prevent supply from entering the market, thus the revenue available to established players is high enough to validate working full time.

Re: The sharing economy was always a scam

#76

Post by ggm »

neokantian wrote: post #11

If you do not like the sharing economy, then do not participate in it. "Other people should not be doing this, and should not be doing that, ..." is one bridge too far. For heaven's sake, who the hell are you, to tell other people what to do?

For heaven's sake, who the hell are you, to tell other people what to do?

I'm a voting tax-payer: thats how government of the people, by the people works. We pay the taxes so that our representatives stop this kind of "shitting in the commons" nonsense. The ubers and airbnb are avoiding paying community costs, avoiding compliance with safety laws, avoiding all kinds of things, while simultaneously exporting the profit into other peoples hands, by giving some to individuals at a cost to everyone else in the peaceful enjoyment of their own property.

Telling people what to do is what government is all about.

Re: The sharing economy was always a scam

#77

Post by _bxg1 »

jeffbax wrote: post #12

Articles like this ignore the impact on individuals. For every group that is trying to full time Uber/Lyft or turn an AirBNB into a hotel, there's also tons of people who are doing in the spare time to make some extra or work the better allocation of resources into something beneficial for them. See threads like: https://twitter.com/RantyAmyCurtis/status/110272136190510694... That's what sharing is about, more optima…

The problem is, in its current state, it creates monopolies which undercut the non-gig versions of those jobs, eventually blotting them out. And then the people doing them are left doing the same thing, generally for less pay, with little stability and no benefits (thank you, American health care system).

I tend to favor the perspective that the problem isn't tech but venture capitalists, and more directly the government that refuses to (or is too slow to) regulate all of this. It's the same old tricks people have been trying for 200 years of industry; anticompetitiveness, taking advantage of desperate labor, etc. The difference is that right now:

1) The markets can move (and even be created from scratch) so fast as to evade regulatory updates

2) They can dress it all up in flowery utopian language

That's a dangerous combination.

Re: The sharing economy was always a scam

#78

Post by bostik »

neokantian wrote: post #30
cwyers wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's the thing. Economic transactions can have externalities -- costs to someone not a party to the transaction that are not reflected in the cost of the good or service in the transaction. The "sharing economy" has loads of externalities. It's like saying, if you don't like the bonfire, don't participate to it, when you've set the fire downwind of someone and there's smoke blowing in their tent.

Yeah, it is always possible to discover new externalities, if you want to. If you sleep with that girl, I cannot do that at the same time. So, that is also an externality. Since it affects what I can do, I have the right to stick my nose into that business, no?

[flagged]

Re: The sharing economy was always a scam

#79

Post by wallace_f »

PostOnce wrote: post #16
neokantian wrote: post #11

If you do not like the sharing economy, then do not participate in it. "Other people should not be doing this, and should not be doing that, ..." is one bridge too far. For heaven's sake, who the hell are you, to tell other people what to do?

Participation will become non-optional. When one company, or tycoon, or whatever, owns everything, renting will no longer be optional. It's not hard to imagine a world in which most software is SaaS. It's also not hard to imagine a world in which the car company decides to stop selling and start renting. Arcade game manufacturers realized early on that it's stupid to sell a machine that makes $30K for $2.5K, so they…

>The people renting from him may never buy a house, given that building new ones here is becoming hardly possible due to zoning

You nailed the problem, actually. Stop giving authoritarians too much power to tell us what economic activity we can do. Stop the endless mess of subsidies which make honest business unprofitavle. Your argument supports the person you disagreed with.

Re: The sharing economy was always a scam

#80

Post by door5 »

geezerjay wrote: post #69
door5 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who is "us"? Maybe upper middle class consumers, but not the workers at these companies.

If those providing services through platforms such as Uber or airbnb didn't benefitted from them then they'd be doing something else instead. Furthermore, of detractors actually cared about "the workers" then they'd be worried about how they have no better options instead of attacking the best options they have. And no, banning Uber or airbnb does not make the workers' lives any better. It just an option off the tabl…

There are choices other than unemployment and shitty gig jobs -- stable, well-paying employment with benefits. Whether these jobs exist or not isn't because of some abstract economic theory: they have to be fought for and won through political struggle (ie unions & strikes). The gig economy disempowers workers and makes solidarity among workers more difficult, because workers may not have a single employer, and are easily replaceable.

I'm not saying we should ban these companies, I'm saying their workers should be paid much more than they currently are.

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