Comment 113023

By kevlahan (registered) | Posted July 23, 2015 at 12:05:45 in reply to Comment 113018

There is a difference between bartering (exchanging goods or services rather than using money as a medium of exchange) and the sharing economy we're talking about with uber or sobi (paying money to use something from as needed rather than owning it).

And then there is the question of how to pay and provide for goods and services: run by the government or non-profits and paid through a combination of general or specific taxes and user fees, or run by private companies or individuals for profit and entirely paid by the users (although usually with some of the costs also borne by society as a whole).

You could also have a barter-based shared economy, but that would be far more complicated, especially with strangers (there is a reason we invented money).

What we've seen is that with the internet, smartphones and gps it is becoming much easier to share certain goods and services (like cars, tools, bikes or spare rooms) that are under-used by their owners.

The sharing economy is just a much more efficient and fine-grained form of renting. But ease of use and flexibility (e.g. real-time pricing, internet communications and gps) is making all the difference!

Comment edited by kevlahan on 2015-07-23 12:07:18

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