The Sad
Truth About The Sharing Economy
You’ve heard of the services: Uber, Lyft, Airbnb
They’ve certainly made the news of late, although mostly negative. Governments have been trying to ban them or
regulate them or limit their impact on local communities. Uber certainly has gotten its share of bad
press these past few weeks with claims
of sexual harassment and the resignation
of its president, Jeff Jones. But
even with the bad press, you can’t deny that these services have made a
significant impact on society, not to mention the economy.
Taxi and limo services now have to compete with ordinary people driving
their cars around. Want to party without
getting busted for DUI? Hire a driver to
drive you to where you want to go to get your drink on and then hire another
one afterward to drive you home.
Hotels and motels now have to compete with ordinary people putting up
their homes and apartments and guest rooms on the market for a limited period
of time. Going to be away for a week on
vacation? Don’t pay to have someone
watch your house, have someone pay you to stay there for that time.
They call it the “Sharing Economy”; the idea that there is a boatload of
money to be made by people “sharing” what they already have with others in
need. Just develop an app to connect
these two groups, and you’re set for life.
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg!
You can rent your pets to someone who will take care of them while
you’re away. Have a trade you’re good at
but you don’t want to make it a full-time job?
You can actually rent your trade to someone who needs services
done. Not using your bicycle? You can rent your bike to someone who will
use it. You can rent out your WiFi
access. You can even rent your clothes
and appliances. Not sell, rent!
There is even a service in Japan that will let you rent
friends and even
rent families! No joke! Lonely overworked
businessmen needing “friends” for a function or “family members” so they don’t
feel left out at events can rent those things. What was once a dumb plot-point
to the comedy movie “We’re the
Millers” is now an actual business.
And the business world is busy churning out a script that says that these
are all great and wonderful things and a sign of the “new normal” for
society. The idea that anything and
everything can be rented out…
Wait. Scratch that. There is still “one thing” that we’re not
allowed to “rent out”. I’ll get back to
that.
Anyway… the idea that almost anything and everything can be rented out by
ordinary people thanks to technology is supposedly “the way of the future”.
Except that it is not “the way of the future”.
Women have long been able to rent out their wombs as surrogate
mothers. It’s a complicated procedure
spanning several months and not exactly something that you can put on a phone
app, but it has been there.
Crowdfunding? Micro-lending? Not new.
Remember Depression-era Wimpy from the Popeye cartoon? “I will gladly pay you Tuesday for a
hamburger today.”
Thrift stores and consignment shops have long allowed people to buy and
sell used items, except that now it has become trendy to hit up these places
instead of getting them off-the-rack at those “named” stores. Book and movie exchanges have been going on
for a long time in certain neighborhoods and workplaces. Remember video rental stores like Blockbuster
and Movie Stop?
But there is a sad truth that is not being told about the “sharing
economy”, and it is one that desperately needs to be acknowledged.
This is not supposed to be normal.
Let’s get brutally honest here… while business wonks can praise the
“sharing economy” as a business opportunity for both mobile software developers
and ordinary people, it also serves as a counter-productive placebo to the
global problem of income inequality.
Sure, it’s okay for people to do a little side-work for some extra money,
but in these post-Recession times, it can also be used as another justification
to not pay people for what they are worth.
A certain “big box” chain has been notorious for telling its workers how
they can apply for food stamps and welfare to supplement the meager wages that they
are being paid for the hard work that they put in. It’s no stretch of the imagination to picture
those same company managers telling their employees that they should sell
themselves out as Uber and Lyft drivers to help make ends meet on top of
working those long hours for said low wages.
Taking part in a “sharing economy” out of the goodness of your heart is
one thing. But when you’re forced to do
so just to keep your bills paid and a house over your head and food on your
table, that’s a sign of desperation. It’s
no different than if you’re selling blood or reproductive material.
Plus there is also something else that is sacrificed in the “sharing
economy”, and that is the sense of true ownership.
You see, that car that you own, that’s not really “yours” anymore,
because now you have to share it with others as a Lyft or Uber driver. Your time, your insurance policy, your gas
and maintenance charges, they all go into a service that has you in the service
of others. And if someone gets sick in
your car, that’s on you to clean it.
Your home, your talents, your appliances, your tools, even your clothes
are not really “yours” anymore.
It would be one thing if you sell it outright, because then it wouldn’t
be your problem anymore. But when you
rent your guest bedroom as an Airbnb, it’s still yours in name and
responsibility. You still pay the taxes
and the insurance and you still have to maintain it. And if you have bad renters, the neighbors
don’t complain to them; they complain to you.
Because it’s still yours.
That’s another thing that people are finding out when they take part in
some of these “sharing economy” services: even if the local laws allow them to
share their cars and homes, their insurance providers don’t. They’ve been busy re-writing policies so that
if they find out you are working for Uber or Lyft or Airbnb or any other kind
of “sharing” service, your policy prices could go sky-high or else said policy
could be cancelled on a whim. And you
wouldn’t know it unless you look carefully at that legalese fine print that they
love to shove at us, knowing full well that we won’t read it.
Do you know how to destroy a sense of ownership? You minimize the benefits of having it while either
maintaining or increasing its responsibilities and obligations. And that’s exactly what happens when we trade
off the pleasures of ownership for some added money without lessening any of
the burdens.
And remember what I said about how we can put almost everything up for
rent? Well we supposedly can put our
homes, our cars, our clothes, our appliances, our talents, our friendships,
even our pets and families for rent… but not our intimacy.
But if you think about it, what is prostitution anyway? It is the limited sharing of our intimacy for
money. The “girlfriend” or “boyfriend”
for the night, or for a couple of hours.
Now consider this: we can prostitute our car and driving skills,
prostitute out our homes and rooms, prostitute our talents, prostitute our
pets, prostitute our lawn mower and power tools, prostitute our clothes,
prostitute our bicycles, prostitute our WiFi access, prostitute our blood and
organs and reproductive material, even prostitute out our friendship and sense
of family... but only the sharing of our “intimacy” for money is considered
illegal. We can put everything else that
defines ourselves as individuals on the market, and nobody is batting an
eyelash over it, but even remotely suggest making the “world’s oldest
profession” legal and people cry foul.
Now that is a double-standard worthy of the late Heath Ledger’s Joker
from “The Dark Knight”.
Look, I have no problem with new ways to bring commercial transactions to
the great unwashed. And I understand
that the world of business has an obsessive fixation on squeezing every drop of
blood from us turnips. But the idea that
almost everything in our individual lives should be up for sale with the right
app should be something taken very cautiously.
While necessity may be the mother of invention, it’s also the father of
exploitation, and it doesn’t matter if we’re talking about Lyft or lust, the
exploitation of anything involving the human condition should be wrong, not
just the stuff that excites our “naughty parts”.
