[jaclaz]

>The sharing economy was always fron day 1 about rentals. That's the central premise.

If I may, the central premise is about being middle-man in a (renting) transaction, shaving off a fee from it for the service of establishing a contact between the two parties and - optionally - provide ancillary services (again at a cost for either party involved in the transaction).

[geezerjay]

You've just defined a business transaction. Being paid for providing a service is not the central premise, and completely misses the whole point.

The central premise of sharing economy is that people have access to resources, whether they are goods or services, that are underused or even wasted, resulting in an unnecessarily high level of economic inefficiency. Thus if a system is set to encourage those who have the resources to make them available to potential clients for a fee then everyone involved wins. A key concept is to set a centealized service which handles the hard part of a business such as transactions, business models, and disputes.

[jaclaz]

Well, that is exactly what the "businesses" revolving around it are doing.

Offering in your words a "centralized service which handles the hard part of a business such as transactions, business models, and disputes" cutting a fee from the value of the transaction.

The point of disagreement between our opinions only revolves around that service(s) being the "hard part" of the business and about the actual amount of the fees involved for these services.

Anyway a line needs to be drawn between an actual "sharing car" approach, as an example we have here blablacar where someone already has to go from A to B and offers a ride to recover some costs and something like Uber and Lyft, here the driver is going from A to B only because the customer(s) needs to go from A to B.