[smil]

Airbnb and Uber have nothing, 0.000%, to do with sharing. They have simply built a digital infrastructure for renting out rooms and selling taxi fares. Their success lies in the fact that digital communication systems are significantly lower cost and more flexible than pre-internet ones. They now own that infrastructure 100% and aim to become monopolies.

(Edit: Another good example of a digital infrastructure company is Amazon. That's what they are, not a retailer or anything else.)

[aaronbrethorst]

Yeah, but "sharing economy" makes for much-better sounding TED talks.

[smil]

Indeed. Ad-financed media has to be entertaining, not factual.

[jahnu]

Whatever your views on it, the fact is another big part of their success is providing a novel method of regulation avoidance.

[return0]

What will they become when regulation catches up with reality?

[sobkas]

By that time, owners of this companies will have enough money to retire them and drivers/home owners enough debt to ruin their lives.So everyone that matters wins and are ready to disturb other parts of economy.

[TeMPOraL]

Also some common social interactions will probably become collateral damage of those regulations. So in the end, not only "everyone that matters" wins, but they do so at the cost of society. Which is tragic, because society has limited endurance and given that "damaging social trust to earn quick buck" seems to be a very popular business model today, it may turn out bad for all of us quite soon.

[dschiptsov]

Multiple causation, as usual. They manage to push themselves as a payment-processing man-in-the-middle in an Asian-style ride-sharing service. Same for AirBnb. It is automation (payment processing) of "third world's" practices. Very clever in retrospect, but it is a matter of chance that these particular startups picked up momentum. Like Facebook.

[makeitsuckless]

Their success lies in undercutting existing market prices by circumventing regulation.

Circumventing regulation not just by using soon-to-be-closed loopholes, but by encouraging people to break the law.

Airbnb and Uber have more to do with organized crime and right wing activism than with sharing.

[mattlutze]

The advance from the two companies is using the ubiquity of the Internet to replace the inefficient part of renting/fare-searching -- the middleman who coordinates searchers with providers.

Uber is a taxi company without a scheduler and dispatch desk. Airbnb is a hotel reservation system where the hotel rooms aren't in the same building, and the front desk has "perfect" knowledge of which rooms are open, when.

[cactusface]

When you take a roommate, aren't you sharing the cost of rent? Sharing can mean mutual contribution as much as it means mutual partaking. Also, what? Amazon is not a retailer? They have giant warehouses, they ship physical product with Amazon logos on the boxes, and they accept returns. They allow for 3rd party vendors, but they are still very much their own retailer. eBay perhaps, but not Amazon.

[michaelt]

You could say that if you buy a washing machine or a pack of tampons or a computer chip you and other buyers are "sharing" the cost of the production line, designers, marketing and distribution.

Personally, I wouldn't call it sharing even though it meets some dictionary definitions.

[smil]

renting out isn't sharing.

[cactusface]

It is if you live there. You share space and cost.

[pjc50]

There is a big distinction between houseshare (two people on an equal basis jointly renting from a third party), renting (one person is the property owner and the other isn't), and subletting (the person in the middle is both renter and landlord).

Only the first can reasonably counted as equitable sharing.

[cactusface]

On reflection, I concede that AirBnB is largely landlords renting their space or tenants subletting for substantial profit without their landlord's permission. However, I think subletting is fine, as long as you aren't making a substantial profit without your landlord's permission. I've sublet many times with my landlord's permission, it's regulated by tenancy laws, etc.

[smil]

no, i rent it out.