[jka]

What would be ideal, I figure, would be if we could have the infrastructure to enable a sharing economy, but without centralized gatekeepers taking a cut and ultimately being a middle-man.

Until then, there is certainly disruption happening (hotel chains, taxi firms, airport parking businesses are worried about all this), and that is a market positive - but it's certainly not the all-round-benevolent model that the name 'sharing economy' would suggest. There are winners and all you have to do is follow the money/data.

As a side-note, I think the kind of naming used for new technologies and business models is increasingly manipulative - I certainly share a lot of the author's skepticism, and agree that the mere name 'sharing economy' will likely encourage people of genuine good intention to put their energy into it without seeing the full picture.

[Amadou]

I remember when dis-intermediation was the big buzz-word. Nowadays it seems to be all about business schemes with intermediaries at the core who make the process less efficient than it has to be in order to extract profits for themselves.