The title was my first thought when I started my research about the sharing economy. The concept of it is so easy that it seems to be even obvious : you own a thing (car, cake recipe, room) that you do not currently need, so you lend it to someone else in exchange for money (using third parties, like Uber or Airbnb). To be honest, it is too simplified, but the main point is the same. The purpose of this article is to clarify whether the title’s statement is true or not. Also, the professor has told us that it is supposed to be witty, so be ready for stupid jokes.
Let’s see what we can find in common of sharing and collaborative economy – people share things ( goods and services); environmental benefits of non- over consuming, higher level of tight communication between communities, central control and decreased competition. I would like to extend my thoughts about some of these points. Thus, we receive environmental benefits when we decrease the need of owning things for every person, as a result we make the demand of its production much lower and some factories might be closed or reduce their working hours. Besides, we observe the slap in the capitalistic face, because this also means that my ( me as an average citizen) productivity will also be decreased a little bit, as I do not see the point of buying some expensive goods as car or university degree, so I can work less and do not have long term savings. Nevertheless, I personally do not consider it to be a negative phenomenon because in the long term perspective it might change values of our society. As a result, one day people may catch a thought that they exist not only to work to get a lot of money and consume everything they can see.
Overall, the previous paragraph, which I wrote a day ago and now trying to understand what it was about, explains the positive influence of the sharing economy as a part of a collaborative one. Now I would like to write about their differences and negative consequences. First of all, these two both have centralized hierarchy. Let me clarify, now we are talking about a sharing economy and not peer-to-peer one. So, what it means for us, as the participants of market relations. It leads to lack of control at the low parts of organizations. For instance, CEO of Uber has no idea what their freshman driver is up to – he is rapist, serial killer or worse – he has a horrible music taste and likes talking during the road. Additionally, the core difference between sharing and collaborative economies is hiding here. This centralized hierarchy shows us that the sharing economy is much closer to capitalism than it might seem at first, because in the end the drivers actually have low salaries and only people at the highest positions receive all the money. Of course, Uber helps them to find clients, but this scam still being unfair and rich people try to pay their workers as low as possible.
There is one more difference that proves us that the sharing economy is a child of McDonald’s and Zara. The main point of collaborative economy is that everyone owns approximately the same amount of assets, but sharing economy shows that rich people on Airbnb rent their apartments (they them own) to other people ( who do not actually own it) . It is especially highlighted in today’s realities, because there a lot of flat owners who raised the month rent to unbelievable prices to cash in on Ukrainian refugees.
To sum up, sharing economy is a nice invention from some points of view, but most likely it is not going to change society in a better way, but probably will help rich people to pay less and earn more. Answering the main question, sharing economy is too far from collaborative economy, so the title was just a clickbait, sorry guys.
Sources:
https://climate.selectra.com/en/environment/sharing-economy
https://theconversation.com/the-sharing-economy-could-end-capitalism-but-thats-not-all-45203
The Politics of the Sharing Economy
