[roymurdock]

Someone commented this but deleted it because they were getting downvoted:

Land ownership, intellectual property and limited liability ownership of companies by individuals are the basic building blocks of capitalism. I.e., property forms guaranteed by the government. Which one of these are being challenged by unicorn startups, again?

I think this is spot on and deserves repeating.

Unicorn startups are changing the way we utilize capital (Uber=cars and labor, Airbnb=property) but they are not changing the fundamental fabric of capitalism. Our legal framework forms the backbone of our society, and regulation/policy is the tool we use to adjust that foundation. Entrepreneurs and investors respond accordingly.

Uber and AirBNB might hire some lobbyists to change a few minor rules in the hoteling/taxi industry, but the really important variables are the distribution of government spending, scope of and resources committed to regulatory oversight, and the tax code.

The article lacks a comprehensive review of the data and its arguments come across as surface level speculation.

[narrator]

If anyone is changing the fundamental fabric of capitalism then it's the Chinese. They are ignoring intellectual property, the government prints its own money and hands it directly to the the banks that operate as partially privatized central planning with heavy political control.

[demian]

Some people argue that Uber and AirBNB are not actually changing the way we use capital on a fundamental economic level, but are instead using new channels in a way, and with a magnitude, never used before.

IMHO I tend not to agree with the hole "Sharing Economy is The Next Capitalist Revolution" thesis.

[_delirium]

I'd be curious if it's really an unprecedented magnitude (not impossible that it is, but I haven't seen numbers). For lodging, for example, it'd be interesting if someone could estimate at least approximate numbers for what proportion of the paid travel-lodging market was served by formal hotels vs. informal lodging arrangements in various cities over the decades. From what I've read of New York City (but no numbers), there has been a pretty wide array of lodging besides "proper" hotels in various periods, ranging from families running a few spare rooms as a boarding-house business, to large-scale "flophouse" operations. And, like today, it has been a political issue and led to debate over regulations periodically.

[loceng]

Uber and AirBnb are simply reducing the friction and reducing barriers to entry.

[carapace]

Or are they eroding laws and customs built up and evolved over time to manage complicated situations without clear-cut solutions in order that they can extract wealth and feed off society without contributing value? Frankly, I see both of those companies as parasites.

[rakoo]

If they really didn't contribute any value we wouldn't be talking about them, they'd have died a long time ago.

[carapace]

That is such a foolish statement I hesitate to reply. I use the term "parasite", do parasites die out?

Really the point hinges on your definition of "value". I don't credit these particular companies with adding any particular value to the domains in which they operate, and they are arguably degrading the local economic environments where they operate.

Part of my umbrage with airbnb in particular is personal: I live in the San Francisco Bay Area and I am looking for a new place to live. In the past I've used Craigslist for a long time with very good results, but these days it's very obvious that opportunistic landlords have colluded with airbnb to turn quite a lot of available rental spaces into poorly-managed quasi-hotels.

There are important reasons why we don't allow ourselves to e.g. drive and operate illicit taxis, or run unregulated hotels. We have, collectively, thousands of years of experience with letting to lodgers and hiring porters and carriages, etc.

If you got in your car and started driving people around for money, that's not legal. If you started a hotel in your spare bedroom, that's not legal. Just adding computers doesn't make it legal. Calling it "disruption" doesn't make it legal or right. These companies are criminals, they are extracting money and degrading the domains they operate in, and (as Airbnb's recent appalling ad campaign demonstrates) they are fully up their own asses when it comes to owning up to the consequences of their behaviour.

With any luck at all they will "die" soon and we won't be talking about them anymore.

[JoshTriplett]

I think the "sharing economy" represents a significant change, and things like AirBNB or Zipcar constitute major parts of that change. I don't, however, see why Uber gets lumped into that. Uber is not a "ride sharing" service; it's a transportation service to connect professional drivers to people getting driven.

[jefurii]

> it's a transportation service to connect professional drivers to people getting driven.

It looks more like a "service" that destroys a job in which people can support their family and replaces it with another hand-to-mouth subsistence job.

[thwest]

Nor are they addressing the reproduction of the classes shown by historical materialism to be just as fundamental a building block as the legalistic ones.