The Sharing Economy: The End of Employment and the Rise of Crowd-Based Capitalism
254
The Sharing Economy: The End of Employment and the Rise of Crowd-Based Capitalism
254Paperback(Reprint)
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Overview
Sharing isn’t new. Giving someone a ride, having a guest in your spare room, running errands for someone, participating in a supper club—these are not revolutionary concepts. What is new, in the “sharing economy,” is that you are not helping a friend for free; you are providing these services to a stranger for money. In this book, Arun Sundararajan, an expert on the sharing economy, explains the transition to what he describes as “crowd-based capitalism”—a new way of organizing economic activity that may supplant the traditional corporate-centered model. As peer-to-peer commercial exchange blurs the lines between the personal and the professional, how will the economy, government regulation, what it means to have a job, and our social fabric be affected?
Drawing on extensive research and numerous real-world examples—including Airbnb, Lyft, Uber, Etsy, TaskRabbit, France's BlaBlaCar, China’s Didi Kuaidi, and India’s Ola, Sundararajan explains the basics of crowd-based capitalism. He describes the intriguing mix of “gift” and “market” in its transactions, demystifies emerging blockchain technologies, and clarifies the dizzying array of emerging on-demand platforms. He considers how this new paradigm changes economic growth and the future of work. Will we live in a world of empowered entrepreneurs who enjoy professional flexibility and independence? Or will we become disenfranchised digital laborers scurrying between platforms in search of the next wedge of piecework? Sundararajan highlights the important policy choices and suggests possible new directions for self-regulatory organizations, labor law, and funding our social safety net.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780262533522 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | MIT Press |
| Publication date: | 04/21/2017 |
| Series: | The MIT Press |
| Edition description: | Reprint |
| Pages: | 254 |
| Sales rank: | 693,484 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.90(d) |
| Age Range: | 18 Years |
About the Author
Table of Contents
Author's Note and Acknowledgments xi
Introduction 1
Airbnb-Design Your World Right 7
Lyft-Hospitality in Transportation 9
The Rise of the On-Demand Workforce 10
BlaBlaCar-Global Infrastructure Built on Trust 12
The Melding of Commerce and Community 13
La Ruche Qui Dit Oui-Redefining Perfection 16
How to Read This Book 17
I Cause 21
1 The Sharing Economy, Market Economies, and Gift Economies 23
What Is the Sharing Economy? 26
How Key Early Thinking on the Sharing Economy Evolved 30
Is the Sharing Economy a Gift Economy? 35
The Sharing Economy Spans the Market-to-Gift Spectrum 38
Accommodation 38
Funding 41
Service Platforms 43
The Sharing Economy and Human Connectedness 44
2 Laying the Tracks: Digital and Socioeconomic Foundations 47
Precursors: eBay, Craigslist, Kozmo 48
Digital Determinants of the Sharing Economy 52
Three Fundamental Forces 52
The Consumerization of the Digital 54
The Digitization of the Physical 55
Decentralized Peer-to-Peer and the Blockchain 58
The Digitization of Trust 60
Socioeconomic Drivers of the Sharing Economy 65
3 Platforms: Under the Hood 69
Markets and Hierarchies 70
How Digital Technologies Reorganize Economic Activity 72
Are Platforms a New Firm-Market Hybrid? 77
Gansky's "Meshy-ness" Grid 79
Botsman's Four Quadrants 82
Owyang's Honeycomb 82
4 Blockchain Economies: The Crowd as the Market Maker 85
Understanding Decentralized Peer-to-Peer Exchange 87
Bitcoin 87
OpenBazaar and Smart Contracts 91
Decentralized Service Platforms 94
Value Creation and Capture in Decentralized Exchange 95
Attention, Search, and Discovery 96
Trust and Reputation 97
Logistics 98
Some Challenges and Opportunities 99
II Effect 103
5 The Economic Impacts of Crowd-Based Capitalism 105
The Trouble with GDP 109
Additional Measurement Challenges in the Digital Economy 111
Four Key Economic Effects 114
Altering Capital "Impact" 114
Economies of Scale and Local "Network Effects" 117
Increased Variety = Increased Consumption 121
The Democratization of Opportunity 123
A Deep Dive into Peer-to-Peer Rental Markets 125
6 The Shifting Landscape of Regulation and Consumer Protection 131
Why Regulation Still Matters 138
Information Asymmetry 139
Externalities 140
Blurring of Boundaries 141
The Evolution of Regulation: Trust, Institutions, and Brands 142
A Historical Example: The Maghribi Traders 142
Economic Institutions and Brand-Based Trust 144
Where the Sharing Economy Is Taking Regulation 146
Future Regulatory Models 150
Peer Regulation 151
Self-Regulatory Organizations 152
Data-Driven Delegation 155
7 The Future of Work: Challenges and Controversies 159
"Freelanceability," Off shoring, and Automation 162
Off shoring 162
The Second Machine Age 164
The New Digitally Enabled Workforce 167
New Marketplaces 167
New Generalists 171
Immediacy of Labor Supply 172
Task Economies 173
Invisible Work 175
8 The Future of Work: What Needs to Be Done 177
Independent Workers and Dependent Contractors 178
The New Social Safety Net 187
How Entrepreneurial Is Your Platform? 192
Incubation 192
Independence 194
Infrastructure 195
Sharing Ownership in the Sharing Economy 196
Data Darwinism 200
9 Concluding Thoughts 203
Notes 207
Index 229
What People are Saying About This
Information technology is disrupting a host of industries including transportation, hotels, banks, and marketplaces. The very nature of work is changing. Sundararajan offers an insightful guide to the forces shaping our economy today—and tomorrow.
Fortunes have already been made in the sharing economy, yet the biggest impact on business and our daily lives is yet to come. There's no better guide to this transformation than Arun Sundararajan's book.
Sundararajan has taken all the loose talk about the sharing economy and given it a rigorous and readable treatment. He makes it clear that there is no one model for these new economic forms, but that taken together, they represent a profound shift in how we think about everything from utility to capital to labor to employment.
Sundararajan has taken all the loose talk about the sharing economy and given it a rigorous and readable treatment. He makes it clear that there is no one model for these new economic forms, but that taken together, they represent a profound shift in how we think about everything from utility to capital to labor to employment.
—Clay Shirky, author of Cognitive Surplus and Here Comes Everybody
Information technology is disrupting a host of industries including transportation, hotels, banks, and marketplaces. The very nature of work is changing. Sundararajan offers an insightful guide to the forces shaping our economy today—and tomorrow.
—Hal Varian, Chief Economist, GoogleFortunes have already been made in the sharing economy, yet the biggest impact on business and our daily lives is yet to come. There's no better guide to this transformation than Arun Sundararajan's book.
—Erik Brynjolfsson, co-author of The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant TechnologiesSundararajan has taken all the loose talk about the sharing economy and given it a rigorous and readable treatment. He makes it clear that there is no one model for these new economic forms, but that taken together, they represent a profound shift in how we think about everything from utility to capital to labor to employment.
—Clay Shirky, author of Cognitive Surplus and Here Comes Everybody