The Share Economy…Here to stay or gone tomorrow?
There are many aspects to consider when one contemplates the possibility of a sharing, caring world, where all needs are met and in our own lifetime. It is important to note, that whilst the term The Share Economy may project images in your mind of a new, equitable and sustainable society, based on a new economic paradigm of giving, the reality is far removed from this, and each protagonist in this cause has vastly different visions of what sharing is. When Forbes magazine and other economic pundits refer to the Share Economy, they do so with the new definition being, Entrepreneurs who have figured out how to monetize the newly emerged need for short term rentals and sublets, (as opposed to outright purchases) in a credit strapped world. Of course to refer to it as the Sublet Economy in a credit strapped world, does nothing to add to sleek and sexy, to which we are all conditioned to salivate. Thus is born the wonderfully Bernaysian term The Share Economy.
In reality, having very little indeed to do with sharing at all and even less to do with creating a new economic paradigm of equality, what is now popularised to the masses as “Sharing” is nothing more than Collaborative Consumerism. While being a new, genetically modified variety of consumerism, it is really nothing more than your garden variety consumerism on steroids. Perhaps when referring to sharing, the spinmeisters simply meant sharing the profits amongst the people who have figured out how to rapidly capitalise on an economic landscape, that is changing at breakneck speed.
Companies like AirBnB and their backers Sequoia Capital, Greylock Partners, Andreessen Horowitz and Y Combinator, who have backed this venture to date for $120 Million*, are indeed gearing up, seeing the new Sharing Economy as one of the greatest growth spaces on the planet to be exploited.
Other organizations in the garden of these VCs, like Yerdle.com have also recognised the opportunity of how to monetize grassroots communities….communities who actually believe they are participating in legitimate sharing platforms, only to be profiled to the nth degree, and eventually sold to the highest bidder. This is so they can pinpoint-market to these communities a range of specifically targeted products and services, which are missing from the sharing part of the site. But make no mistake, they are backed to the hilt by Venture Capital groups looking to get their own back as fast as possible, so real sharing has little to do with these companies at all. Evidence of new sharing companies starting up every month suggests, that sharing entrepreneurs are doing their damnedest to position themselves into this space, one that from all accounts, has the potential to become one of the most lucrative marketing niches in history. Forbes Magazine estimates that this year alone $3.5 Billion will pass into people’s wallets through the “Share Economy”, while a Gartner Survey estimated that in 2013 the peer to peer financial lending market will hit $5 Billion.
With all of this considered, the questions of what is globally sustainable and what is reasonable, goes largely uncontemplated in the minds of all the participants in this type of new “Share Economy” from its entrepreneurs to its participants. In fact The Share Economy is starting to create mini entrepreneurial monsters, doing for Entrepreneurial-ship what Facebook did for the egoistic drive for personal celebrity. Take the example of Dylan Rogers, a 27 year old sales executive who this last year started renting out his under used BMW 6 series car, through a “share” site and found he was not only covering his payments, but making a hefty profit, enough to motivate him to purchase two more cars completely on finance, solely for “Sharing”, so that he can make $40,000 in the following year.**
With all of this wonderful sharing going on, there are just a few snags that could upset the sharing apple cart. These come in the form of the cities who are starting to express their distinct unhappiness, namely with their lack of share. Sharing Economy companies, with their presences being completely online and in the form of peer to peer platforms, present the unique opportunity for these companies to make copiously large amounts of money, off clips from both the person wishing to rent and the owner of the goods or services. This means two tolls for being the middle-man. These companies provide the peer-to peer platforms for everything from the short term rental of cars to the subletting of apartments, to bikes, to parking your car in front of someone’s place during the day. In addition, these companies have none of the traditional bricks and mortar business running costs. In the case of Airbnb,they don’t even spend on a basic level of support, to support their customer’s queries or complaints, so it is Caveat emptor (Buyer beware) at its best or worst, depending on which list of either very poor or terrible reviews you can read from disgruntled users who have lost their money and didn’t have a place to stay (available on their own site). Presently however, it is not just the traditional business costs these sharing companies have been able to avoid. They are currently able to escape the traditional taxes levied upon their bricks and mortar competitors in their space. $3.5 Billion in lost transaction taxes this year, growing to who knows how much next year, is just too sweet a share to give up. With a lot of cities going bankrupt all around the U.S. the remainder are gearing up to start litigating against Sharing companies, in order to get their sweet share of the Share Economy. New York City is already testing the waters against Airbnb, as it has reported it’s Office of Special Enforcements are receiving up to 10 complaints a week, from tenants complaining of strangers coming and going out of their apartment buildings***. Let’s understand however, that as paranoid as New Yorkers are of each other, make no mistake, it is not about the people coming and going, the safety issues or the regulations, but about the cold hard cash going missing.
Is it then going to be a legal armageddon that will vanquish these Sharing Devils? Perhaps not, as the VC companies that have funded these new sharing companies have learnt from the Peer to Peer Sharing mess of Sean Parker and Napster. Abracadabra…..along comes Peers, a so called ‘Grassroots‘ non profit organization of the people, with its sole mission to support these poor emerging ‘Sharing Economy’ minnows, so that they can get a fair go.
When Peers was asked at its official launch, why it was so that most of its 22 launch partners (which include Airbnb, Lyft, Getaround, Taskrabbit, Vayable, Yerdle) funded this organization, the response from its humble grassroots founder, was that the bulk of its funding had come from “mission-aligned independent donors”.****
In that one statement we have what is potentially a nomination for the best Bernays, psycho-babble, spin doctor, Orwellian doublespeak quote of the year. Natalie Foster, founder of Peers also co-founded “Rebuild the Dream” a member-driven organization to fix the U.S. economy. Given that Natalie was also deeply involved with the Obama campaign, it seems to be the perfect Resume to try to co-opt genuine people’s energy into a weapon against cities who come after the Sharing economy.
While Peers makes no secrets of how they intend to “Support” the Sharing Economy through their three objectives, number two being “Protect the sharing economy: Through policy campaigns for smart regulation”*****
(did you notice it’s the one in the middle) — some journalists such as Andrew Leonard******
have insinuated that Peers is just a well supported Lobbyist group. It could however be much worse than this. Peers could be a newly emerging type of entity, one that distorts and converts the well intentioned energies and momentum of people truly at the grassroots level of sharing, and turns their momentum into a political punch to the nuts of any city that is looking to take its share from the sharing companies who are its real masters. It is also interesting to note that most of the original 22 members are part of same stable of venture capitalists.
So how does this type of well controlled market of sharing bode for legitimate sharing-initiatives like ours at EnergeticXChange and many of the other organizations out there that are genuinely contributing towards promoting sharing in a practical manner as a true alternative to many of the problems that plague us as humanity? What possibility does it provide for a true sharing economy to evolve around the world and come into being? Perhaps to even refer to sharing as an economy or an alternative economic paradigm, underlies all that is wrong with the twisted terms of propagandist doublespeak that have guided and manipulated us down throughout the centuries. When you sat down in school and took half of your PB&J (Vegemite in Australia) sandwich and gave it to your friend who forgot his lunch, did you consider this to be an economic transaction, a commodity, or were you just sharing your lunch? Real, true, bonafide sharing will come to the forefront when we start to remember how to share and not look to charge our friend $1 for sharing our lunch.
However, there is an added challenge to sharing really coming to fruition in the developed world. To share, you actually have to know your neighbors or at least speak to them, which many of us rarely ever do today. Do you even know your neighbour’s name? For most of us, we move in well controlled, well regulated circles that mainly revolve around our work or school, which create disjointed, dysfunctional and dystopian representations of what human relationships are. We have reduced ourselves to become our jobs, our social statuses and our socio-economic classes. We are conditioned to be afraid of everyone around us and to see the bogeyman around every corner. I was recently jogging on the streets of a beachside town in Florida and said ‘good morning’ to a woman I was passing, only to have her respond with a scream of sheer terror and then cast a look of utter annoyance and disdain when I tried to apologise for wishing her a good day.
It is my feeling that people will eventually see beyond this type of well documented manipulation, that has been effectively exercised on the masses for millennia. It may however take some form of drastic change to our current system of living and how this directly affects people’s lives, before they really pay attention though. Through our experiences in working with people in the USA, Canada, and South America over the last year, we have come to accept that there is not one globally cultivatable accepted view of what we need to do, but that there are many locally inspired initiatives that will come together on a global basis if we just participate. There are a number of really good and practical initiatives that are actually already in your neighbourhood, just waiting for you to take your active role in them and it is surprising what an effect they are having on our global landscape. They do not require five hours of your time a week, most of them wouldn’t even require fifteen minutes of your time, for you to really make a difference. You don’t have to be radical, a trouble maker or protest. This would be just too much effort. Initiatives like freecycle.org, www.energeticxchange.com and neighborgoods.net simply require your heartfelt generous participation and they cost you nothing to participate in. If you are really interested in sharing, here are three guidelines that you could easily follow:
- Be discerning: Don’t get Eaten by the Wolf….
Not all sharing organizations are out there to serve the world. Do a little research on who is behind them before you give them your details and get involved. I would suggest if any of them have any form of Venture Capitalist funding behind them, that they’re not in it for the sharing. You can most likely bet that they are collecting you for their database to sell you more things. While most of the not for profit organizations’ websites are not as polished, they are making a difference. There is Freecycle.org, www.energeticxchange.com and many others who are not-for-profit and dedicated to making a difference.
- Start sharing things in the community you are already involved in…
Many people are involved in communities of some sort even if they don’t know their neighbors. This is either through their social circles, with their children’s sporting teams or their local groups or churches. This is the best place to start sharing as there is so much in these groups to share. You will be surprised at just how many things people have in your community that you need and how many things you can get rid of that they need. This type of activity could arguably save the entire group 30% to 40% of their income, just by sharing with the people in your groups and not spending on new purchases. It need not even be the things you own. Remember the PB&J sandwich? You could simply be giving small things that really make a difference. Be the first in your group to let people know of how easy it is to use an EnergeticXChange for your group to exchange goods and services. We stand by this and would offer this tool for free to every community in the world so that it could facilitate the sharing of everything, from goods to services and anything you could think of. You will be surprised at just how accessible and available we are to assist your community.
- Start Something Yourself
While this sounds the most daunting of the three options, it need not be. This starts by you going next door and just saying hello to your neighbor. From here miracles have happened. There are literally thousands of initiatives that people in urban and suburban areas have engaged in that make sharing real. In urban environments community gardens are cropping up everywhere. Speak to the manager of your building and get all the tenants together to discuss this opportunity. Apart from the fact that you may save money in the coming year on your groceries, you may gain so much more than this. The sheer enjoyment and reward of watching something grow from your own hands has no adequate words to describe the fulfilling feelings it bestows. If you live in the suburbs, talk your neighbors about converting those front lawns into vegetable patches or even planting fruit trees… something that after a few years could be enjoyed and shared by generations to come.
Whether these new charlatans of sharing survive or not is not really what we should be considering. In fact, it would only take one change of the economic tide, like another downturn, where there is no fluid money for short term rentals and all their non-sense would go away. Perhaps this is what will also need to happen before the greater majority consider the need to participate in real sharing. All of this however, is simply academic hypothesis. What is practical, what is real and available now to you is your choice. You may convince yourself that you have no time or energy to get involved, but therein lies the answer and you have made your choice. My point is, it’s yours to make. In all of this, don’t just throw your hands up in the air and say that it’s too hard, because when you do this, you have just let someone else make the choice for you.
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