Someone commented this but deleted it because they were getting downvoted: Land ownership, intellectual property and limited liability ownership of companies by individuals are the basic building blocks of capitalism. I.e., property forms guaranteed by the government. Which one of these are being challenged by unicorn startups, again? I think this is spot on and deserves repeating. Unicorn startups are changing the w…
Some people argue that Uber and AirBNB are not actually changing the way we use capital on a fundamental economic level, but are instead using new channels in a way, and with a magnitude, never used before. IMHO I tend not to agree with the hole "Sharing Economy is The Next Capitalist Revolution" thesis.
I'd be curious if it's really an unprecedented magnitude (not impossible that it is, but I haven't seen numbers). For lodging, for example, it'd be interesting if someone could estimate at least approximate numbers for what proportion of the paid travel-lodging market was served by formal hotels vs. informal lodging arrangements in various cities over the decades. From what I've read of New York City (but no numbers), there has been a pretty wide array of lodging besides "proper" hotels in various periods, ranging from families running a few spare rooms as a boarding-house business, to large-scale "flophouse" operations. And, like today, it has been a political issue and led to debate over regulations periodically.