Sites like AirBNB and Sidecar let people obtain services in a peer-to-peer way that was impossible before the Internet, but are those services disrupting or supplementing the industries they’re in? Is a traveler staying in a spare bedroom through AirBNB hurting a city by not paying hotel taxes, or is their longer stay just as beneficial to the city and its whole economy?
Outside of the context of New York City and its fight with AirBNB, the real issue here is micro-micro-entrepreneurship, people sharing resources for pocket money, but not enough to earn a living. These exchanges don’t really fit into the way policymakers and ordinary people think about the economy, about jobs, and about industries.
The important question is this: are sites that connect people to share in ways that they couldn’t in the traditional market good or bad for the economy?
The Rise of Invisible Work [Atlantic Cities]
The Rise Of The Renting And Sharing Economy Could Have Catastrophic Ripple Effects [Business Insider]
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by Laura Northrup via Consumerist
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