sharing economy

Hustle and Gig: Struggling and Surviving in the Sharing Economy

by Alexandrea J. Ravenelle  · 12 Mar 2019  · 349pp  · 98,309 words

Alexandrea J. Ravenelle Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Ravenelle, Alexandrea J., 1980– author. Title: Hustle and gig : struggling and surviving in the sharing economy / Alexandrea J. Ravenelle. Description: Oakland, California : University of California Press, [2019] | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Description based on print version record and CIP

…

the Dream? 8. Conclusion Appendix 1. Demographic Survey Appendix 2. Interview Matrix Notes References Index Illustrations FIGURES 1. Young man with sign 2. The sharing economy and related forms of the platform economy 3. Lockboxes for Airbnb rentals attached to tree guards in the East Village 4. Lockboxes for Airbnb rentals

…

was nonexistent, and there were few options for redress. Despite its focus on emerging technology—apps, smartphones, contactless payment systems and review systems—the sharing economy is truly a movement forward to the past. Workers find themselves outside even the most basic workplace protections regarding discrimination and sexual harassment, the right

…

and PayPal by Pierre Omidyar.7 Later contributory organizations included the free hospitality-exchange website couchsurfing.com, founded in 2003. The increased interest in the sharing economy is thought to be fueled by the convergence of three technological advancements: smartphone ubiquity; secure, cashless payment systems; and customer review sites. But not

…

signifier for a diverse range of activities. Some are genuinely collaborative and communal, while others are hotly competitive and profit-driven.”8 Juliet Schor groups sharing economy activities into four broad categories: • Recirculation of goods. These services reduce transaction costs (such as consignment shop fees and the risk of financial loss

…

in the East Village, a popular Airbnb neighborhood, I found numerous lockboxes allowing hosts to exchange keys without any human interaction whatsoever. While the sharing economy may market itself as bringing people together, it results in the ultimate Gesellschaft as fleeting interactions and urban anonymity rule the day. Figure 3 and

…

the combination when sending confirmation messages. The lockboxes allow for an interaction-free key transfer between host and guest. Photos by author. Although the sharing economy—a term that increasingly feels inappropriate—may have been intended to democratize entrepreneurism, evidence suggests that it may simply be furthering the discriminatory status quo

…

TaskRabbit), and a relatively new upstart (Kitchensurfing).62 In addition, these companies were also chosen for their ability to highlight the different components of the sharing economy. For instance, all four services offer consumers access to underused physical assets (“idle capacity”), but TaskRabbit and Kitchensurfing offer consumer-to-consumer or “on

…

; successful hosting also requires creating a listing that will appeal to travelers (high-skill requirement). Table 1 Skill and Capital Barriers to Sharing Economy Work BACKGROUND ON SELECTED SHARING ECONOMY SERVICES The following section provides a short history on the four services chosen and their presentation of an entrepreneurial ethos.65 Airbnb Founded

…

workers inside New York factories often used patterns imported from the outside system to structure work. In a description that is equally apt for the sharing economy today, historian Christine Stansell notes that “by dispersing female workers among thousands of individual workplaces, outside employers made it virtually impossible for women to

…

for workers, and limited the workweek for women and children.10 MODERN WORKERS, WITHOUT GENERATIONS OF PROTECTION In a cruel irony, workers in the sharing economy—hailed as the height of the modern workplace—find themselves without any of the workplace protections enjoyed by their great grandparents. Although workplace protections still

…

’ compensation, unemployment benefits, paid vacation, retirement, overtime, disability accommodations, family leave protections, protection from discrimination, or the right to form unions. The majority of sharing economy services consider their workers to be independent contractors, or 1099 workers, named for the end-of-year tax document they receive that details their income

…

employee!” Even without making workers full employees, some start-ups are taking steps to protect them from workplace dangers. In July 2014, Postmates, a sharing economy delivery service, announced that it was offering its couriers full access to general liability insurance, auto excess insurance, and accidental occupational liability while on duty

…

were not usually shown their client reviews, but the company solicited and reviewed feedback from clients. No one suggested that they would lose their sharing economy gig work if they declined an invitation, but such invitations often created uncomfortable situations for workers and sounded suspiciously close to sexual harassment. BACKGROUND

…

while at work, or being invited to engage in a sex act with a client, would generally be verboten. But in the sharing economy, somehow anything goes. None of the sharing economy workers I interviewed described these experiences as sexual harassment. This isn’t unusual. As Rogers and Henson put it, “Particularly with

…

the sexual harassment or brushed it off as “nothing major” ignored the behavior because “it’s only temporary”—a response that is also prevalent among sharing economy workers. Sharing economy workers often peppered their descriptions of these sexually uncomfortable experiences with terms like “weird” and “bizarro-land” and laughter, suggesting that workers felt

…

awkward tone. Perhaps because Kitchensurfing chefs are almost always in direct contact with clients, they find themselves exposed to sexual behavior more often than other sharing economy workers. For instance, asking Randall, forty-three, a Kitchensurfing marketplace chef about “really memorable experiences” revealed a gig cooking for what he first

…

less likely to be accepted relative to identical guests with distinctively white names.10 Similar work on the website Craigslist, often described as an early sharing economy site, found “severe discrimination against African Americans, Hispanics, and Chinese-origin individuals.”11 Studies in Sweden that utilized the Internet as a research platform

…

sign up to do it,” Glass said. In many ways, Pooper is a perfect illustration of the trends that led to the sharing economy. Although the start of the sharing economy can be traced back to eBay and Craigslist, the wholesale launch of this new economic movement truly happened during the Great Recession

…

to arrange childcare, take college classes, manage a second job, or earn sufficient income.37 Temporary workers, just-in-time employees, massive layoffs—the sharing economy is just the newest (technological) innovation in treating workers shabbily. It combines the no-obligations-attached workforce of temps with the on-demand convenience of

…

marry each other, those with lower incomes and education levels are seen as less desirable and are less likely to get married. Likewise, the sharing economy turns paid employment into a luxury good that is increasingly accessed by better educated, technologically adept workers with smartphones and dependable data networks. Arun Sundararajan

…

burden of risk. An easy fix would be to change how gig economy workers are classified by employers. INDEPENDENT CONTRACTOR (MIS)CLASSIFICATION While many sharing economy services tell their workers that they are small business owners or independent contractors, the determination of employee or independent contractor is actually based on federal

…

firms.101 And of course, to disrupt the status quo of established industries is part of the goal of the sharing economy. When the term sharing economy first entered the public lexicon, the sharing economy itself looked like a step forward. Instead of having to compete with the Joneses and step onto in the “consumer

…

Christensen’s “disruptive innovation” is “the selling of a cheaper, poorer-quality product that . . . eventually takes over and devours an entire industry.”105 As sharing economy services have grown and proliferated, they’ve successfully subverted generations of financial gains and workplace protections. Workers have been returned to an early industrial age

…

disrupted in the name of a “cheaper, poorer quality” progress that is eviscerating a hundred years of workers’ rights. The disruption offered by the sharing economy is simply a hustle. APPENDIX 1 Demographic Survey APPENDIX 2 Interview Matrix Notes 1. STRUGGLERS, STRIVERS, AND SUCCESS STORIES 1. All names have been

…

Schor (2014a). 14. Stone (2012). 15. Thompson (2011). 16. Sacks (2011). 17. PricewaterhouseCoopers (2015). 18. For an interesting discussion of distinction and belonging in the sharing economy, see Schor, Fitzmaurice, Carfagna, Attwood-Charles, and Dubois Poteat (2016). For more on entrepreneurship, see Andrus (2014); Friedman (2014); McKinney (2013). 19. Kahn (1987:8

…

). 12. Tsotsis (2011). 13. Perez (2014). 14. Although TaskRabbit has since ended its corporation-focused branch, companies continue to hire through it and other sharing economy services. For instance, several Kitchensurfing chefs mentioned being hired to cook for company meetings or parties, and other businesses and organizations have announced that Uber

…

. LIVING THE DREAM? Portions of this chapter have been reproduced, with permission, from Alexandrea J. Ravenelle, “A Return to Gemeinschaft: Digital Impression Management and the Sharing Economy,” in Digital Sociologies, ed. Jessie Daniels, Karen Gregory, and Tressie McMillan Cottom, 27–46 (Bristol, UK: Policy Press/Bristol University Press, 2017); and from

…

Alexandrea J. Ravenelle, “Sharing Economy Workers: Selling, Not Sharing,” Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society 10, no. 2 (2017): 281–95. 1. Goffman (1963). 2. Heatherton, Kleck, Hebl,

…

in 2016. Washington, DC: Federal Reserve Board, May. Böcker, Lars, and Toon Meelen. 2017. “Sharing for People, Planet or Profit? Analysing Motivations for Intended Sharing Economy Participation.” Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions 23(June):28–39. Bohr, Nick. 2016. “Uber Driver Says She Was Sexually Assaulted by Passenger.” WISN, February 15

…

Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of Maryland. https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/7a7e/6871dfbce8940cd88f72ad87664876d8c888.pdf. Cannon, Sarah, and Lawrence H. Summers. 2014. “How Uber and the Sharing Economy Can Win Over Regulators.” Harvard Business Review, October 13. Cantillon, R. 1755. Essai sur la nature du commerce en général. London: Macmillan. Cass, Connie.

…

Cause Great Firms to Fail. Boston: Harvard Business School Press. Clifford, Catherine. 2015. “Who Exactly Are Uber’s Drivers?” Entrepreneur, January 22. ———. 2016. “The Sharing Economy Is More Than a Buzzword. It’s Changing How We Live.” Entrepreneur. January 7. www.entrepreneur.com/article/254772. Close, Kerry. 2015. “Uber Just Keeps

…

Jobs? Small versus Large versus Young.” Review of Economics and Statistics 95(2):347–61. Hamari, Juho, Mimmi Sjöklint, and Antti Ukkonen. 2015. “The Sharing Economy: Why People Participate in Collaborative Consumption.” Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2271971. Hamlin, Suzanne

…

W.W. Norton. McKinney, K. (1994). “Sexual Harassment and College Faculty Members.” Deviant Behavior 15(2):171–91. McKinney, Sarah. 2013. “A Growing Segment of Sharing Economy Users? Entrepreneurs.” Forbes, November 9. Merton, Robert K. 1938. “Social Structure and Anomie.” American Sociological Review 3:672–82. Mettler, S. 1994. “Federalism, Gender,

…

.” New York Times, October 14. ———. 2014a. “Debating the Sharing Economy.” Great Transition Initiative, October. www.greattransition.org/publication/debating-the-sharing-economy. ———. 2014b. “Risks and Rewards of Cultivating a Sharing Economy.” Brink, December 23. ———. 2015. “The Sharing Economy: Reports from Stage One.” Unpublished paper. ———. 2017. “Does the Sharing Economy Increase Inequality within the Eighty Percent?: Findings from a Qualitative

…

in Progress: Sociology on the Economy, Work and Equality, July 28. https://workinprogress.oowsection.org/2015/07/28/platform-providers-in-the-sharing-economy/. ———. 2017. “The ‘Sharing’ Economy: Labor, Inequality, and Social Connection on For-Profit Platforms.” Sociology Compass 11. Schor, Juliet B., and Connor Fitzmaurice. 2015. “Collaborating and Connecting: The Emergence

…

of a Sharing Economy.” Handbook on Research on Sustainable Consumption. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar. Schor, Juliet B., Connor Fitzmaurice, Lindsey B. Carfagna, William Attwood-Charles, and Emilie Dubois

…

Poteat. 2016. “Paradoxes of Openness and Distinction in the Sharing Economy.” Poetics 54:66–81. Schumpeter, Joseph A. 1942. Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy. New York: Harper. Scott, Marvin B., and Stanford M. Lyman. 1968. “Accounts

…

devolving of employment practices, 6, 71–89 East Village, 47–49, 48map1 eBay: discrimination on, 36; as secondhand economy company, 27; sharing and, 29; sharing economy and, 175; as sharing economy company, 26; unemployment and, 61; usage by race, 194 economic issues: architecture as economics, 17; economic inequality, 5; globalization, 187; need for multiple

…

Mechanical Turk, 73 Meelen, Toon, 28fig. 2 #MeToo movement, 23 Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Worker Protection Act, 196 millennials: defined, 219n14; Great Recession and, 10; sharing economy and, 23–24; technology and, 10; unemployment rate, 10 Minieri, Alexandra, 127 minimum wage, 38, 71, 225n23 mining industry, 68–69 Mohrer, Josh, 184

…

on-call services, 55 on-call taxi service, 26. See also Lyft; Uber on-demand contractor status, 202 on-demand economy: as form of sharing economy, 28fig. 2; sharing economy comparisons, 27; term usage, 5 on-demand platforms, 38 on-demand services, 42, 57–58, 59. See also consumer-to-consumer (C2C) sales

…

27, 75, 75tab. 2, 77, 78, 107 underemployment, 42, 62, 175 underground economy, 186 unemployment: discrimination against long-term unemployed, 62; long-term unemployed, 11; sharing economy and, 61 unemployment benefits: access to, 187; independent contractor status and, 94; unionization and, 177 unemployment insurance, 120, 191 unemployment rate, 10, 175, 176 unexotic

The Sharing Economy: The End of Employment and the Rise of Crowd-Based Capitalism

by Arun Sundararajan  · 12 May 2016  · 375pp  · 88,306 words

-set Premedia Limited. Printed and bound in the United States of America. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Sundararajan, Arun, author. Title: The sharing economy : the end of employment and the rise of crowd-based capitalism / Arun Sundararajan. Description: Cambridge, MA : The MIT Press, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references and index

…

day to imagine and create a better future. Table of Contents Title page Copyright page Dedication Author’s Note and Acknowledgments Introduction I Cause1 The Sharing Economy, Market Economies, and Gift Economies 2 Laying the Tracks: Digital and Socioeconomic Foundations 3 Platforms: Under the Hood 4 Blockchain Economies: The Crowd as the

…

Francesca Pick). I have also benefitted from numerous focused discussions about specific topic areas. These include conversations with: Neha Gondal about the sociology of the sharing economy; Ravi Bapna, Verena Butt d’Espous, Juan Cartagena, Chris Dellarocas, Alok Gupta, and Sarah Rice about trust; Paul Daugherty, Peter Evans, Geoffrey Parker, Anand Shah

…

Simas, Jessica Singleton, Adam Thierer, and Bradley Tusk about regulation; Elena Grewal, Kevin Novak, and Chris Pouliot about the use of data science in the sharing economy; Nellie Abernathy, Cynthia Estlund, Steve King, Wilma Liebman, Marysol McGee, Brian Miller, Michelle Miller, Caitlin Pearce, Libby Reder, Julie Samuels, Kristin Sharp, Dan Teran, Felicia

…

work. I am also thankful to Congressman Darrell Issa, Congressman Eric Swalwell, and Senator Mark Warner for their leadership and for many conversations about critical sharing economy policy issues. My current and former students and collaborators have provided me with invaluable assistance and inspiration as I have explored the varied facets of

…

this new model of organizing economic activity. My scientific research about the sharing economy would not have been possible without Hilary Jane Devine, Apostolos Fillipas, Samuel Fraiberger, Carlos Herrera-Yague, Marios Kokkodis, Marella Martin, Mareike Mohlmann, Lauren Morris and

…

Airbnb interesting as a company. The company has rapidly created a sophisticated organization, its public relations and marketing is among the savviest of all the sharing economy startups I have encountered, it conducts government relations with nuance, and perhaps most compellingly (and often in contrast with Uber), its community of providers genuinely

…

chatting with Léonard and Tincq about the tension I sense at the Fest between the profit-motivated and purpose-driven sides of the sharing economy, between people who see the sharing economy as a market economy and those who envision it more as a “gift economy.” “I think the confusion comes from all the

…

talking about. It is interesting, nevertheless, to consider the range of labels associated with these new economic systems. Beyond Owyang’s “collaborative economy”—favored over “sharing economy” by the authors Rachel Botsman and Robin Chase, and, somewhat ironically, by OuiShare—writers and thinkers since 2010 have experimented with the use of the

…

to the influence of the “geeky school” that sent him to the dictionary for answers to his questions, provides a short definition of the sharing economy: “The sharing economy is the value in taking underutilized assets and making them accessible online to a community, leading to a reduced need for ownership of those assets

…

explicit, however, in his interest in the “business” of sharing, and, realizing the inherent potential contradiction, explains his use of the term “sharing economy”: Why am I using the term “sharing economy” time and time again in this book? In part, I do so because this term has come to dominate discourse on the

…

emerging importance of social relations in general, and sharing in particular, as a modality of economic production.”22 Benkler’s measured approach to describing the sharing economy contrasts with the more ecclesiastical pronouncements of the scholar Michel Bauwens. While consistent with Benkler’s notion of commons-based peer production, Bauwens’s vision

…

are lost. At that point commerce becomes correctly associated with the fragmentation of community and the suppression of liveliness, fertility, and social feeling.40 The Sharing Economy Spans the Market-to-Gift Spectrum Hyde draws the examples in his book primarily from anthropological studies of small economies, he says, “not ... because

…

. It is neither the exclusive domain of altruistic givers nor full-steam-ahead capitalists. Of course, this diversity may also explain the sharing economy’s popularity and future potential. The sharing economy, although not politically neutral, is creating a new economic model—an interesting middle ground between capitalism and socialism—that also appears to

…

highly personalized Rotary Club, reconstructing fragmented communities around shared interests. Or maybe the blurring of lines between the commercial and the gift in tomorrow’s sharing economy will organically weave greater levels of connectedness into our everyday economic activities—finding a place to stay, driving to work, getting a meal, buying groceries

…

social contexts to replace the ones Durkheim lamented we lost through the Industrial Revolution. Perhaps, over time, this will be the true gift of the sharing economy. Notes 1. http://2015.ouisharefest.com. 2. http://democracyos.org. 3. Jeremy Heimans and Henry Timms, “Understanding ‘New Power,’” Harvard Business Review, December 2014,

…

foundations for thinking about what to expect from digital technologies in the future, and also explain some of the more visible digital determinants of the sharing economy. Three Fundamental Forces Let’s begin with these three fundamental forces that distinguish digital technologies from the other economy-shaping “general purpose” technologies that preceded

…

from browsing all available providers. My MBA students Andrew Covell, Varun Jain, and June Khin at NYU Stern have helped me classify over a hundred sharing economy platforms using this framework. Our research suggests wide variation across different platforms. Many resemble markets that facilitate entrepreneurship, whereas others look more like hierarchies that

…

, Etsy, and BlaBlaCar, labor platforms like Upwork and Thumbtack, social dining platforms like VizEat and Eatwith, the local tour guide exchange platform Vayable (founded by sharing economy pioneer Jamie Wong) are decidedly more market-like, ridesharing platforms Lyft and Uber fall somewhere in between, and focused services or labor platforms like Luxe

…

?”—is critical before determining whether these new economies of scale will lead to market power worthy of antitrust scrutiny.26 Increased Variety = Increased Consumption The sharing economy creates new consumption experiences of higher quality and greater variety. It is thus very likely that, rather than merely substituting old forms of commerce with

…

Vice President and Head of Government Affairs of the American Hotel and Lodging Association (AHLA), at a 2015 Federal Trade Commission meeting to discuss the sharing economy, where she noted: “Right now, there is an unlevel [sic] playing field that is compromising consumer safety, endangering the character and security of residential

…

of institutionalist perspectives.9 I will instead focus on the “regulation as an intervention to correct market failure” approach, viewing the challenges raised by the sharing economy through this lens. As platforms like Airbnb, Lyft, Getaround, and Etsy disrupt old economic systems rooted in firm-to-consumer interactions and individual ownership, we

…

in the world. Looking through a range of examples, Cohen and I identify four factors that may prove integral to establishing workable SROs within the sharing economy. First, an SRO must establish credibility early on through its performance. Second, self-regulatory actors must demonstrate strong enforcement capabilities. Third, SROs must be perceived

…

take advantage of participants’ reputational concerns and social capital.26 The state of California has pioneered a self-regulatory approach for one sector of the sharing economy, through the creation of Transportation Network Companies (TNCs) in 2013. As described in detail by Catherine Sandoval, the commissioner of the California Public Utilities Commission

…

(CPUC), at the 2015 Federal Trade Commission workshop about the sharing economy, this represents an interesting partnership between government and sharing economy platforms. Here’s how it works. The CPUC has defined a set of standards that drivers of smartphone-based point-to

…

one of the highest concentrations of computer science and machine learning talent in the world. Similar approaches hold great promise as a regulatory approach for sharing economy platforms. Consider the issue of discriminatory practices. There has long been anecdotal evidence that some yellow cabs in New York discriminate against some nonwhite passengers

…

use in confirming compliance. Correspondingly, leaving the data inside the platform’s own systems, while mandating its use in regulation, seems far more efficient. As sharing-economy SROs—whether platforms themselves or third-party associations that emerge—establish a track record of credibility and enforcement and gain legitimacy as partners in regulation

…

promising opportunities for self-regulation—ones that are appropriately reflective of the interesting meld of a decentralized marketplace and a centralized institution that sharing-economy platforms represent. Put differently, the sharing economy might offer innovative approaches to not just its own regulation challenges, but to unresolved regulation challenges that predate its emergence. There are

…

labor and the ensuing impacts on the relative productivity of different skill groups across different industry sectors. In contrast, as I demonstrate throughout this book, sharing economy platforms have an impact on the work prospects of people across the occupation spectrum, from computer scientists and consultants to household cleaners and cab drivers

…

has evolved into increasingly specialized schools organized by age, level, potential, and subject. Across fields, one’s economic success became increasingly contingent on specialization. With sharing economy platforms, however, we are witnessing an interesting revival of the generalist. The blurring of lines between the personal and the professional, and between formal work

…

microentrepreneurs in their spare time, the line between losing and gaining “jobs” becomes increasingly difficult to measure. How then do we measure employment in the sharing economy? A natural question in the United States is whether the unemployment numbers being collected by the Labor Department are sophisticated enough to capture these changes

…

new challenge, nor one created by the on-demand economy. Worker categorization is thus a historically vexing issue, not a fresh challenge posed by the sharing economy’s newly minted corporate giants. Second, the determination of “employee” versus “independent contractor” is not algorithmic. True, the issues discussed are always about how independent

…

the platforms will naturally provide a flexible and on-demand workforce. Over the summer of 2015, as class-action lawsuits against larger platforms intensified, many sharing economy platforms—including Shyp, Luxe, Eden (on-demand technical support), and Instacart—reclassified their flexible workers as full-time or part-time employees. Perhaps, as Marcela

…

of the stakeholders (the platforms or other companies, the providers themselves, the different arms of government). Any changes to categorization will apply not just to sharing economy workers but, potentially, to existing workers currently classified as full-time employees, affiliated with both digital intermediaries and other traditional corporations. (For example, if taken

…

the platform requires its providers to use its own centralized assets. A second dimension relates to pricing, supply, and merchandizing. For the most part, most sharing economy platforms—TaskRabbit, Airbnb, Uber, Lyft, Getaround—allow their providers to choose when they, their assets, or their services are available. This forces providers to “learn

…

networks of legal practitioners and changemakers with the goal of establishing a new category of case law and transactional lawyering meant to directly support new sharing economy activity. Another advocate, Chelsea Rustrum, notes in her Digital Cooperative 101 that cooperatives also support greater community development.28 Over the course of 2015, Trebor

…

the New School and Nathan Schneider of the University of Colorado have become the face of a movement calling for the emergence of “platform cooperatives,” sharing economy platforms owned by their providers and funded through mechanisms other than institutional venture capital.29 Their inaugural “Platform Cooperativism” conference, held in November 2015, brought

…

idea—allocating shares of platforms (that remain shareholder corporations) to providers—seems like the most pragmatic near-term path towards sharing the wealth of the sharing economy. Such “provider stock ownership programs” (PSOPs) could achieve, for platforms, the mix of joint ownership and profit sharing that employee stock ownership programs (ESOPs) aspire

…

Firm” (Benkler), 210n19 Cohen, Molly, 139, 153 Coleman, James, 60 Collaborative consumption, 28, 82 Collaborative economy, 25–28 Collaborative Economy Honeycomb, 82–84 Collaborative-Peer-Sharing Economy Summit, 105, 114–115 Commercial exchange, history of peer-to-peer, 4–5 Commons-based peer production, 30–32, 210n19 Community accommodation platforms and, 38

…

–43 creation of, 36 funding, 41–43 human connectedness and, 44–46 service platforms and, 43–44 Congressional Sharing Economy Caucus, 137, 182 Consumer Electronic Show, 100 Consumerization of the digital, 54–55 Contractor dependent contractor, 183–184 versus employee, 159–160, 174–175, 178

…

, 199 Dahlander, Linus, 76 Dalzell, Richard, 98–99 Dandapani, Vijay, 121 DarkMarket, 85–86 Data Darwinism, 200–202 Data-driven delegation, 155–158 Debating the Sharing Economy (Schor), 208n12 Decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), 101 Decentralized collaborative organizations (DCOs), 101 Decentralized peer-to-peer exchange, 58–60, 87–95 attention, search, and discovery

…

12 Zipcar, 30, 107 Zluf, Shay, 94 Table of Contents Title page Copyright page Dedication Author’s Note and Acknowledgments Introduction I Cause 1 The Sharing Economy, Market Economies, and Gift Economies 2 Laying the Tracks: Digital and Socioeconomic Foundations 3 Platforms: Under the Hood 4 Blockchain Economies: The Crowd as the

What's Yours Is Mine: Against the Sharing Economy

by Tom Slee  · 18 Nov 2015  · 265pp  · 69,310 words

War Primer What’s yours is mine, what’s mine is my own. Traditional Yorkshire saying To my mother, Audrey Slee Contents 1 The Sharing Economy 2 The Sharing Economy Landscape 3 A Place to Stay with Airbnb 4 On the Move with Uber 5 Neighbors Helping Neighbors 6 Strangers Trusting Strangers 7 A

…

Short History of Openness 8 Open Wide 9 What’s Yours Is Mine Bibliography Endnotes Acknowledgements 1. The Sharing Economy The Sharing Economy is a wave of new businesses that use the Internet to match customers with service providers for real-world exchanges such as short-term apartment

…

transit and tourism industries. These two are followed by a flock of other companies vying to join them at the top of the Sharing Economy world. Supporters sometimes describe the Sharing Economy as a new type of business and sometimes as a social movement. It’s a familiar mix of commerce and cause in

…

to experiences rather than possessions to give meaning to our lives. Well, that was the promise. Unfortunately, something different and altogether darker is happening: the Sharing Economy is extending a harsh and deregulated free market into previously protected areas of our lives. The leading companies are now corporate juggernauts themselves, and are

…

Industries built on openness have delivered some remarkable things, but they have repeatedly failed to deliver on their promises of democratization and equality, and the Sharing Economy is busy running down the path paved by these previous industries. As Silicon Valley has grown wealthier and more powerful, the beliefs that you can

…

around sharing and openness, but commercial instincts will tend to drive out altruistic behavior, and the generous impulses that inspired the Sharing Economy will be crushed by monetary incentives. The Sharing Economy is young and it is changing rapidly. It will be shaped by our behavior as consumers, but also by our behavior

…

you need a place to park your car, try ParkAtMyHouse; if you want to rent a bike or surfboard, reach out to Spinlister. There are Sharing Economy organizations sprouting up for all kinds of activities. Getting around is the most prevalent offering, represented by ridesharing companies (Lyft, Sidecar), car sharing (RelayRides),

…

a steep price for what is essentially an office leasing company. But WeWork’s business model, which combines real estate with technology, plays into the “sharing economy” trend that has captivated investors in recent years, thanks to hit companies like Uber and Airbnb. Both companies infused established industries (car services and

…

their established predecessors (taxi and limo services and hotels). And so it goes with WeWork.7 Botsman and Owyang both extend the definition of the sharing economy to include companies largely outside the scope of this book. Coursera and others are challenging university education by providing massively open online courses (MOOCs),

…

all the members of Peers, and all the groups mentioned by Botsman and Owyang, are technology-focused organizations, and this is central to the Sharing Economy story. If Sharing Economy companies define the name, then it is clear that the Internet is a central part of their self-identification. It is the commercial embodiment

…

and the Sierra Club, and other leading members had community-organizer backgrounds. When Peers described itself as a grassroots, member-driven organization that supports the Sharing Economy movement, there were people who believed in that description. But the picture is more complex. The formation of Peers was announced by another co-

…

in Peers: much of the organization’s funding came from “mission-aligned independent donors” and foundations, but those independent donors included investors and executives of Sharing Economy startups. Peers leader Natalie Foster traced the idea for the organization back to seed money from Airbnb that started a “conversation among stakeholders” at Purpose

…

power” if you like, or more accurately “peer power.” But a moment later, he is more interested in building businesses: I attended a meeting of Sharing Economy participants . . . they were developing ideas—brilliant ideas actually—to share customers with each other, across verticals. One person even suggested that there could be

…

intent of the more community-focused Peers activists, the group functioned in part as a front for Silicon Valley lobbying. The funding behind the larger Sharing Economy companies highlights the contradictory currents that drive it. Billionaire and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has invested in both Airbnb and Uber; leading venture capital

…

wealth and, in some cases, outspoken Libertarian politics, is a long way from the picture of a grassroots movement invoked by ­Douglas Atkin. The Sharing Economy is a movement: it is a movement for deregulation. Major financial institutions and influential venture capital funds are seizing an opportunity to challenge rules made

…

because, in October 2014, Peers changed its leadership and its mission. Natalie Foster was replaced as Executive Director by Shelby Clark, the founder of Sharing Economy company RelayRides. In December 2014, Clark announced that Peers would split into two organizations: the Peers corporation and the Peers Foundation.15 The Peers Foundation

…

challenge current economic models and that fails to deliver on sustainability or community ideals. Despite the anti-consumerist talk of the advocates, these scaled-up Sharing Economy companies are just as consumerist as those they have disrupted. LYFT Zipcar and Airbnb are not alone. Lyft is another company that has traded

…

to helping disabled people. But that commitment stops short of taking responsibility for the services that provide them with their revenue. In many cases, Sharing Economy companies have been arguing that municipal regulations are obsolete in the face of their new technologies and new business models. Disabled access rules are clearly

…

that’s the neighborhood and community aspect that other digital platforms emphasize. There is no pretense of anything other than a straightforward commercial transaction. While Sharing Economy advocates point to web platforms as enablers of peer-to-peer exchanges, removing corporations from the picture, the home services wing of the movement

…

an emerging demographic of ever-more entitled consumers, providing them with a frictionless, hermetically sealed experience in the name of Sharing. 6. Strangers Trusting Strangers Sharing Economy companies love to talk about trust: they claim that we can trust stranger-to-stranger exchanges on their platforms because of what Brian Chesky calls

…

some form of recommendation. As rating systems have become ubiquitous their usefulness has become a matter of faith in the world of software development. The Sharing Economy is at the cutting edge of a push for “algorithmic regulation” in which rules protecting consumers are replaced by ratings and software algorithms. Law

…

best competitors managed to compensate for these effects, but only in an environment where individual movies were getting millions of ratings, quite different from the Sharing Economy case. Despite the fact that more expertise was poured into improving the Netflix rating system than any other, Netflix has moved away from using

…

to avoid the threat of a negative (non-) review in return. RATINGS AS SURVEILLANCE Despite their failings, reputation systems do serve a useful purpose for Sharing Economy transactions. The orthodoxy around reputation systems is that critical reviews provide information to other peers, but we have seen that there is little information about

…

system becomes a form of surveillance: a “denunciation system” in which they may be publicly shamed at any moment and, in the case of Sharing Economy platforms, punished. Sharing Economy reputation systems have become fronts for hierarchical and centralized disciplinary systems, which have nothing to do with notions of “peer-to-peer” reputation, “algorithmic

…

regulation” or regulation with a “lighter touch” through ratings. We trust strangers on Sharing Economy platforms for the same reason we trust hotel employees and restaurant waiters: because they are in precarious jobs where customer complaints can lead to disciplinary

…

of practices is a sign that commons are complex, and potentially vulnerable. While the openness of Wikipedia and Linux are the foundation myths of the Sharing Economy, the internal management of these commons has become more complex over time, displaying a steady accretion of formal procedures as well as hierarchies of

…

; software platform owners appeal to openness but are silent regarding their own commercial incentives (advertising revenue, for example). Examples abound on the web sites of Sharing Economy companies: “Couchsurfers share their lives with the people they encounter, fostering cultural exchange and mutual respect,” “Our community is comprised of users, passionate and

…

monitoring and enforcing community norms are shared, in a non-commercial fashion, among those who have a stake in the health of the underlying commons. Sharing Economy companies use software reputation systems to manage “marketplace reputation” as a common. The reputation system itself, with all the evaluations and ratings that populate

…

create credit default swaps for marketplace loans.” 59 The problems of alienation, erosion, and distortion all sharpen as the scale of financial involvement grows. Sharing Economy advocates who seek to recapture the egalitarian, sustainable, and community focus that inspired many to join the movement can do so only by avoiding the

…

need the regulation (and costs) that go with professionalism. The picture of small-scale, intimate exchanges is a key to the environmental sustainability claims of Sharing Economy companies, but such claims increasingly read as the selective truths of company marketing departments. Airbnb trumpets its environmental impact by comparing the energy use of

…

the disabled is not their problem; suggestions that Airbnb’s platform inadvertently enables the propagation of racial profiling have met with the same response. Successful Sharing Economy companies avoid the expense of wages by keeping their service providers off the payroll, and classifying them instead as independent contractors, often called “1099 workers

…

responsible and socially-beneficial ways. The effectiveness of reputation systems and algorithmic ratings systems in providing a solid basis for trust is exaggerated in the Sharing Economy world. Sites that rely on algorithmic ratings have run into problems of fairness and of proper process, for example marketplace lending company Lending Club.

…

startup, which has raised $45.7 million in funding, imposes onerous demands on workers, including instructing them on “how to use the bathroom.” 17 Sharing Economy platforms have grown more quickly than would otherwise be possible, because they claim that their service providers are not employees. They can offer cheaper services

…

.html. MacQueen, Graeme. The 2001 Anthrax Deception: The Case for a Domestic Conspiracy. Atlanta, GA: Clarity Press, Inc, 2014. Manjoo, Farhad. “Grocery Deliveries in Sharing Economy.” The New York Times, May 21, 2014. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/22/technology/personaltech/online-grocery-start-up-takes-page-from-sharing-services

…

Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action. The Cambridge Series on the Political Economy of Institutions. Cambridge University Press, 1990. Owyang, Jeremiah. “The Collaborative Sharing Economy Has Created 17 Billion-Dollar Companies (and 10 Unicorns).” Web Strategist. Accessed June 21, 2015. http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2015/06/04/the

…

Row as Airbnb Thrives.” BBC News, December 26, 2014. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-30580295. Schor, Juliet. “Debating the Sharing Economy,” October2014. http://www .greattransition.org/publication/debating-the-sharing-economy. Scola, Nancy. “The Black Car Company That People Love to Hate,” Features, November 11, 2013. http://nextcity.org/features/view/the

…

Shontell, Alyson. “My Nightmare Experience As A TaskRabbit Drone,” Dec 72011. http://www.businessinsider.com/confessions-of-a-task-rabbit-2011-12. Silver, James. “The Sharing Economy: A Whole New Way of Living.” The Guardian, August 4, 2013. http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/aug/04/internet-technology-fon-taskrabbit-blablacar. Sinclair

…

Orig. ed. with new chapters. New York, NY: The New Press, 1997. Todisco, Michael. “Share and Share Alike? Considering Racial Discrimination in the Nascent Room-Sharing Economy.” Stanford Law Review Online 67 (March 14, 2015): 121. Toyama, Kentaro. Ten Myths of ICT for International Development. Accessed May 17, 2015. https://www.youtube

…

Share Your Mac-and-Cheese.” 3 Tanz, “How Airbnb and Lyft Finally Got Americans to Trust Each Other.” 4 Botsman, “The Sharing Economy Lacks a Shared Definition.” 5 Owyang, “The Collaborative Sharing Economy Has Created 17 Billion-Dollar Companies (and 10 Unicorns).” 6 “From the People, for the People.” 7 Lapowsky, “Believe It.”

…

Networked Age. 10 Tam and Merced, “Uber Fund-Raising Points to $50 Billion Valuation.” 11 LeWeb, Douglas Atkin—Airbnb—LeWeb London 2013. 12 Leonard, “The Sharing Economy Gets Greedy.” 13 Bulajewski, “The Cult of Sharing.” 14 Cortese, “Loans That Avoid Banks?” 15 Clark, “A Transition at Peers to Create Greater Impact.”

…

Aren’t Charged HST. Uber Canada Says Its Drivers Are Responsible for Collecting and Remitting the Tax.” Chapter 5 1 Crunchbase, “TaskRabbit.” 2 Silver, “The Sharing Economy: A Whole New Way of Living.” 3 Carhart, “The Ten Ninety Nihilists.” 4 Shontell, “My Nightmare Experience As A TaskRabbit Drone.” 5 Raphel, “TaskRabbit

…

Asking Its Customers to Do Something New.” 24 Erbentraut, “Here’s What The People Delivering Your Instacart Groceries Really Think.” 25 Manjoo, “Grocery Deliveries in Sharing Economy.” 26 Wilhelm, “Analyzing Postmates’ Growth.” 27 Underhill, “Postmates.” 28 Naughton, “Meet Tech’s New Concierge Economy, Where Serfs Deliver Stuff to Rich Folk.” 29

…

more professional shape than they received. Before that, I’d been following a pack of journalists providing critical, insightful and entertaining reporting on the emerging Sharing Economy, turning it into a beat worth covering. Pack leaders included Johanna Bhuyian, Sam Biddle, Susie Cagle, Liz Gannes, Ellen Huet, Andrew Leonard, Andrew Orlowski,

After the Gig: How the Sharing Economy Got Hijacked and How to Win It Back

by Juliet Schor, William Attwood-Charles and Mehmet Cansoy  · 15 Mar 2020  · 296pp  · 83,254 words

The publisher and the University of California Press Foundation gratefully acknowledge the generous support of the Lawrence Grauman, Jr. Fund. After the Gig HOW THE SHARING ECONOMY GOT HIJACKED AND HOW TO WIN IT BACK Juliet B. Schor and collaborators William Attwood-Charles Mehmet Cansoy Lindsey “Luka” Carfagna Samantha Eddy Connor

…

Oakland, California © 2020 by Juliet B. Schor Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Schor, Juliet, author. Title: After the gig : how the sharing economy got hijacked and how to win it back / Juliet B. Schor with William Attwood-Charles, Mehmet Cansoy, Lindsey "Luka" Carfagna, Samantha Eddy, Connor Fitzmaurice, Isak

…

5: Juliet B. Schor, Connor Fitzmaurice, Lindsey B. Carfagna, Will Attwood-Charles, and Emilie Dubois Poteat. 2016. “Paradoxes of Openness and Distinction in the Sharing Economy.” Poetics 54:66–81. Note: This Book Has Been Coproduced This book is the product of a thoroughly collaborative effort among a team of researchers

…

half. Mehmet scraped and we later purchased large quantities of Airbnb data. I helped field the first national random sample poll on the sharing economy. We’ve attended multiple sharing economy conferences. Throughout the book we present this interview and ethnographic data. Where we do not provide notes citing other sources, the information

…

by small-scale asset-holders who self-govern in “harmonious community.”11 Many of these ideas would carry over into the original discourse of the sharing economy—personal empowerment through decentralized task-based work, egalitarianism, and community. An additional dimension of New Communalist thinking—cybernetics, the study of machine-based control

…

our informants criticized global supply chains, corporate conformity, and exploitative and alienating social relations. We found an inchoate but powerful nostalgia, in which the sharing economy was envisioned as a household space, what we term a “domestic imaginary.”40 Production takes place within the home, social relations are familial, and

…

in the larger labor market, platform worker organizing, and increased regulatory activity. I ended the previous chapter with questions about the nature of the sharing economy. Does it represent a new paradigm, based on a liberatory technology? Can platforms free earners from the strictures of centralized control while providing decent

…

presence of neighborhood ties and trust, local, placed-based sharing may develop organically. Bellotti and her collaborators’ research confirms the general argument of this section. Sharing economy initiatives often have a mismatch between providers and users. As they note, providers, on the one hand, are driven by “idealistic motivations, such as

…

this book with the problems of work under capitalism—unfreedom, lousy bosses, the nine-to-five grind, excessive supervision, meaninglessness, and low wages. The sharing economy promised an escape by empowering individuals to work for themselves with the technological and market support of a platform. Many of the people we interviewed

…

and profitability relies on passive workers and consumers plus captured government. Although those conditions prevailed in the United States in the first decade of the sharing economy, that may be changing. Workers are organizing. Democratic politicians and economists have been developing analyses and policies to address market power.12 As regulatory

…

empowered relations among users. By the 1990s, many in that community thought that privately owned corporations were the way to achieve those outcomes. When the sharing economy emerged, participants adopted a similar position—the idealist discourse. It consisted of claims about economic, social, and environmental benefits that would flow automatically from the

…

also had informal interviews and conversations with platform employees. Juliet helped to field the first national random sample U.S. poll that asked about the sharing economy, in collaboration with newdream.org and PolicyInteractive. How We Discuss Our Data in This Book Anonymity: We have used pseudonyms throughout the book for

…

percentages) TABLE B.3 Demographic Information for Participants in Nonprofit Cases TABLE B.4 Demographic Information for Stocksy Artists Appendix C Who Are Sharing Economy Participants? The earliest users of sharing economy platforms were young, highly educated, and relatively privileged. Over time, the user base has diversified, but we can’t be too

…

immigrants; however, outside of these services the provider workforce is generally highly educated, particularly on higher-wage platforms like TaskRabbit. Appendix D Defining the Sharing Economy There is considerable debate over terminology among scholars who study sharing platforms. We have discussed this issue in Schor and Fitzmaurice (2015) and Schor and

…

that among her respondents, those without assets to rent, such as Uber drivers and TaskRabbits, reject the term. A final point is that the sharing economy exists within a larger universe. For some, that context is collaborative online relations, in particular the open-source software movement and peer production communities (

…

of the economy being effected by Facebook, Google, Amazon, and other large platforms (Kenney and Zysman 2015; 2016b). In their view, to understand the sharing economy requires that broader analysis, which is why they use the term platform economy. Given this terminological proliferation, and the legitimate argument that much of this

…

clearly outside the United States, where for-profitness is less defining, pressures for egalitarian outcomes are stronger, and the movement to create a pluralistic sharing economy is more robust. Our commitment to this ideal also explains why we have studied both the profit-oriented and community entities. Notes Introduction 1.

…

platforms include VRBO (1995) and HomeAway (2005). 26. For the argument that Craigslist and eBay are the precursors of the sharing economy, see Schor and Fitzmaurice (2015). A number of sharing economy founders originally worked at eBay and adopted its ratings and reputation systems for their companies. Stein (2015). 27. Duhaime-Ross (

…

Economy” (Schor et al. 2019); “Dimensions of Platform Labor Control and the Experience of Gig Couriers” (Attwood-Charles 2019a); and “Provider Vulnerability in the Sharing Economy” (Ladegaard, Ravenelle, and Schor 2018). See also Vallas and Schor (2020), which discusses the literature on platform work and sets out our view of what

…

(2018). 4. Benner (2016); Njus (2018). 5. For a discussion of these competing perspectives, see Cansoy and Schor (2019), “Who Gets to Share in the ‘Sharing Economy’: Understanding the Patterns of Participation and Exchange in Airbnb.” 6. Sperling (2015). 7. Sundararajan (2016): “Democratization of opportunity” (123) and “already turning the tables”

…

scheme similar to Turo. They concluded that “below median-income consumers will enjoy a disproportionate fraction of the eventual welfare gains from this kind of ‘sharing economy’ through broader inclusion, higher-quality rental based consumption, and new ownership facilitated by rental supply revenues.” Fraiberger and Sundararajan (2015, 1) (in Abstract). To

…

others forced to work, see Zatz (2016). 19. Author’s notes from Platform Cooperativism conference. 20. This 72 percent agreed or strongly agreed that the sharing economy “builds friendships and social relationships.” Center for a New American Dream and PolicyInteractive (2014). 21. Ikkala and Lampinen (2015); Ladegaard (2018b); Lampinen (2014); Lampinen

…

Social Biases among Airbnb Users.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 114 (37): 9848–53. Acevedo, Deepa Das. 2016. “Regulating Employment Relationships in the Sharing Economy.” Employment Rights and Employment Policy Journal 20:1–35. Airbnb. 2018. “Celebrating Our Community of Teacher Hosts.” 180814B. San Francisco, CA: Airbnb. https://press

…

Center University of Chicago, #27. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3259965. Barron, Kyle, Edward Kung, and Davide Proserpio. 2017. “The Sharing Economy and Housing Affordability: Evidence from Airbnb.” SSRN Electronic Journal. https://ssrn.com/abstract=3006832. Belk, Russell. 2007. “Why Not Share Rather Than Own?” The ANNALS

…

the Reproduction of Racial Inequality on Airbnb.” Unpublished paper. Boston College. Cansoy, Mehmet, and Juliet B. Schor. 2019. “Who Gets to Share in the ‘Sharing Economy’: Understanding the Patterns of Participation and Exchange in Airbnb.” www.bc.edu/content/dam/files/schools/cas_sites/sociology/pdf/SharingEconomy.pdf. Carfagna, Lindsey B

…

City.” http://tomslee.net/how-airbnb-hid-the-facts-in-nyc. Cui, Ruomeng, Jun Li, and Dennis Zhang. 2016. “Discrimination with Incomplete Information in the Sharing Economy: Field Evidence from Airbnb.” SSRN Electronic Journal. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2882982. Cullen, Zoë, and Chiara Farronato. 2018. “Outsourcing Tasks Online: Matching

…

14–054. Harvard Business School. www.west-info.eu/files/airbnb_research.pdf. Edelman, Benjamin, Michael Luca, and Dan Svirsky. 2017. “Racial Discrimination in the Sharing Economy: Evidence from a Field Experiment.” American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 9 (2): 1–22. Edelman, Benjamin, and Abbey Stemler. 2018. “From the Digital to

…

Isak Ladegaard, William Attwood-Charles, Mehmet Cansoy, Lindsey B. Carfagna, Juliet B. Schor, and Robert Wengronowitz. 2018. “Domesticating the Market: Moral Exchange and the Sharing Economy.” Socio-Economic Review. https://doi.org/10.1093/ser/mwy003. Fitzmaurice, Connor, and Juliet B. Schor. 2018. “Homemade Matters: Logics of Opposition in a Failed

…

thenatureofcities.com/2017/08/20/ostrom-city-design-principles-urban-commons. Fraiberger, Samuel P., and Arun Sundararajan. 2017. “Peer-to-Peer Rental Markets in the Sharing Economy.” SSRN Electronic Journal. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2574337. Frank, Thomas. 1997. The Conquest of Cool: Business Culture, Counterculture, and the Rise of

…

2017. “Does Craigslist Reduce Waste? Evidence from California and Florida.” Ecological Economics 132:135–43. Frenken, Koen. 2017. “Political Economies and Environmental Futures for the Sharing Economy.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences 375 (2095): 1–15. Frenken, Koen, Toon Meelen, Martijn Arets, and Pieter van

…

and Clodagh Miskelly. 2014. “Design for Sharing.” Northumbria University: EPSRC Digital Economy. https://designforsharingdotcom.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/design-for-sharing-webversion.pdf. ———. 2015. “Sharing Economy vs Sharing Cultures? Designing for Social, Economic and Environmental Good.” In special issue, Interaction Design and Architecture(s), no. 24, 49–62. Light, Sarah E

…

, Jane. 2019. “Speed-Dating Your Sofa.” New York Times, May 6, 2019. Markov, Tamar. 2019. “Who Wants My Half-Eaten Sandwich? Food Waste in the Sharing Economy.” Unpublished paper. Yale University. Martineau, Paris. 2019. “Inside Airbnb’s ‘Guerilla War’ against Local Governments.” Wired, March 20, 2019. Mays, Jeffery C. 2018. “

…

an Age of Insecurity. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Quattrone, Giovanni, Davide Proserpio, Daniele Quercia, Licia Capra, and Mirco Musolesi. 2016. “Who Benefits from the ‘Sharing’ Economy of Airbnb?” In WWW ’16: Proceedings of the 25th International Conference on World Wide Web, 1385–1394. Republic and Canton of Geneva, Switzerland: International World

…

-Day Dollar Loss Ever of Any US IPO.” Business Insider, May 11, 2019. Ravenelle, Alexandrea J. 2019. Hustle and Gig: Struggling and Surviving in the Sharing Economy. Berkeley: University of California Press. Reich, Robert B. 2015. “The Share-the-Scraps Economy.” Robert Reich, February 2, 2015. http://robertreich.org/post/109894095095

…

. Richardson, Lizzie. 2015. “Performing the Sharing Economy.” Geoforum 67 (December): 121–29. Ritzer, George. 2007. The McDonaldization of Society. 2nd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge. Robinson, H. C. 2017. “Making

…

Law and Policy Review 10:479–520. ———. 2018. “Fissuring, Data-Driven Governance, and Platform Economy Labor Standards.” In Cambridge Handbook of the Law of the Sharing Economy, ed. Nestor B. Davidson, Michèle Finck, and John J. Infarca, 304–15. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Roose, Kevin. 2019. “After Uproar, Instacart

…

New York: HarperPerennial. ———. 2010. Plenitude: The New Economics of True Wealth. New York: Penguin. ———. 2014. “Debating the Sharing Economy.” www.greattransition.org/publication/debating-the-sharing-economy. ———. 2015. “Homo Varians: Diverse Motives and Economic Behavior in the Sharing Economy.” Unpublished paper. Boston College. ———. 2016. “ ‘Old Exclusion in Emergent Spaces.’ ” In Ours to Hack and to Own

…

In New Goals for a Just Economy, edited by Danielle Allen, Yochai Benkler, and Rebecca Henderson. Schor, Juliet B., and William Attwood-Charles. 2017. “The Sharing Economy: Labor, Inequality and Sociability on For-Profit Platforms.” Sociology Compass 11 (8): 1–16. Schor, Juliet B., William Attwood-Charles, Mehmet Cansoy, Isak Ladegaard,

…

Antitrust-Away-from-the-Courts-Report-092018–3.pdf. Skjelvik, John Magne, Anne Maren Erlandsen, and Oscar Haavardsholm. 2017. Environmental Impacts and Potential of the Sharing Economy. TemaNord. Nordic Council of Ministers. https://doi.org/10.6027/TN2017–554. Skott, Peter, and Frederick Guy. 2007. “A Model of Power-Biased Technological

…

-content/uploads/2019/01/Impact-of-New-STR-Regs-2019.pdf. Wachsmuth, David, and Alexander Weisler. 2018. “Airbnb and the Rent Gap: Gentrification through the Sharing Economy.” Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space 50 (6): 1147–70. Walker, Edward T. 2016. “Between Grassroots and ‘Astroturf’: Understanding Mobilization from the

…

110. See also dependent earners Lyft, 2, 11, 25, 151; carbon offsetting, 118; drivers’ share, 75; lobbying, 157; losses, 35; LyftLine, 108, 118; as sharing economy platform, 193; and social connection, 114; traffic congestion, 117 makerspace, 125–27, 136–41, 192 manual labor, 97, 100 manufacturing, 3 Marco, 129 Margaret, 28

…

servant economy, 96, 109 Shapiro, Aaron, 68, 79 ShareSomeSugar, 34 “sharewashing,” 193 sharing, informal, 146 sharing cities, 164, 171–74, 193 Sharing Cities, 13 sharing economy, 1–2, 16–17. See also community sharing; nonprofits; platforms, for-profit; and capitalism, 2, 6, 37–39; and community initiatives, 8; defining, 191–94

…

47, 161; European regulation, 152–53; gender discrimination, 87; labor competitor, 59; lobbying, 156–57; network effect, 32; origin story, 25; quiet mode, 114; as sharing economy platform, 193; taking (advantage), 159; traffic congestion, 117; transaction fees, 86; UberPool, 108, 118; worker experience, 58, 62, 76 Uberland, 13 Uber of x,

The Seven Rules of Trust: A Blueprint for Building Things That Last

by Jimmy Wales  · 28 Oct 2025  · 216pp  · 60,419 words

platform to cultivate trust among strangers and become a global phenomenon. So did eBay, Uber, Lyft, Airbnb, and the other giants of the so-called sharing economy. And when those companies were launched, they, too, seemed pretty ridiculous to most people. Think about the world as it was in 1995, when eBay

…

writing, Airbnb is a global behemoth generating almost $10 billion in revenue per year. Wikipedia is a nonprofit encyclopedia written and edited by volunteers. The sharing-economy giants are for-profit corporations with paid employees. They’re very different. Yet in important ways they cultivated the essential ingredient of their success—trust

…

not. It can’t be. The Global Crisis of Trust If the story about trust in Wikipedia and its successful for-profit cousins in the sharing economy is one of growth, the story about trust in so many other organizations and institutions, online and off, is decline. We are facing a global

European Spring: Why Our Economies and Politics Are in a Mess - and How to Put Them Right

by Philippe Legrain  · 22 Apr 2014  · 497pp  · 150,205 words

to connect people who want to rent out rooms, cars and all sorts of other things with those who want to borrow them – a new sharing economy that offers huge potential for growth. Airbnb, a company based in San Francisco, allows people to rent out accommodation for the night; by the end

…

fiscally rather than exclusively by monetary means. Both labour and capital need to be more versatile to cope with reasonably predictable variability, and the new sharing economy offers huge potential for growth. As workforces shrink and societies age in pretty predictable ways, economies need to adjust by getting more people into work

The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism

by Jeremy Rifkin  · 31 Mar 2014  · 565pp  · 151,129 words

of the Commons 11: The Collaboratists Prepare for Battle 12: The Struggle to Define and Control the Intelligent Infrastructure Part IV Social Capital and the Sharing Economy 13: The Transformation from Ownership to Access 14: Crowdfunding Social Capital, Democratizing Currency, Humanizing Entrepreneurship, and Rethinking Work Part V The Economy of Abundance 15

…

pay tribute by either working the manorial fields or handing over part of their production in the form of a tax. Coming together in a sharing economy became the only viable way to ensure the meager largesse they were left with would be optimized. The takeaway lesson is that a democratic form

…

into a collaboration. The IoT potentially connects every human being in a global community, allowing social capital to flourish on an unprecedented scale, making a sharing economy possible. Without the IoT platform, the Collaborative Commons would be neither feasible nor realizable. The adjective collaborative didn’t even exist until well into the

…

are likely to be the litmus test for measuring the economic wellbeing of every nation. In the unfolding struggle between the exchange economy and the sharing economy, economists’ last fallback position is that if everything were nearly free, there would be no incentive to innovate and bring new goods and services to

…

way to a tripartite partnership with Commons management playing an ever-greater role, complemented by government and market forces. Part IV Social Capital and the Sharing Economy Chapter Thirteen The Transformation from Ownership to Access If private property is the defining characteristic of a capitalist system, then the privately owned automobile is

…

the Commons taming the market—a reality that has yet to be fully grasped by those who continue to labor under the assumption that a sharing economy is a market opportunity rather than a devourer of capitalism. The shift in personal mobility from ownership to access and from markets to shared Commons

…

cost society. Millions of people are sharing not only automobiles and bicycles, but also their homes, clothes, tools, toys, and skills in networked Commons. The sharing economy is arising for a combination of reasons. The global collapse of the Second Industrial Revolution economy in the summer of 2008 was a wake-up

…

of the Internet allowed millions of people to find the right match-ups to share whatever they could spare with what others could use. The sharing economy was born. This is a different kind of economy—one far more dependent on social capital than market capital. And it’s an economy that

…

on anonymous market forces. Rachel Botsman, an Oxford- and Harvard-educated former consultant to GE and IBM who abandoned her career to join the new sharing economy, describes the path that led up to collaborative consumption. She notes that the social Web has passed through three phases—the first enabled programmers to

…

2012, and orders are growing by a whopping 51 percent a month.44 Who could be opposed to the idea of collaborative consumption and a sharing economy? These new economic models seem so benign. Sharing represents the best part of human nature. Reducing addictive consumption, optimizing frugality, and fostering a more sustainable

…

. The user benefits from the lower cost of short-term access versus long-term ownership and also comes to feel like part of a larger sharing economy that is less wasteful and more sustainable. Interesting idea. Certainly it provides retailers with a piece of the action—but it’s more like throwing

…

differ significantly from the baby boomers and World War II generation in favoring access over ownership. When asked to rank the rational benefits of a sharing economy, respondents to the survey listed saving money at the top of the list, followed by impact on the environment, lifestyle flexibility, the practicality of sharing

…

moving a project forward. The Gartner Group estimates that peer-to-peer financial lending will top $5 billion by the end of 2013.11 The sharing economy, in all its various incarnations, is a hybrid creature, part market economy and part social economy. While the market economy is regulated by laws and

…

crop of reputation services. TrustCloud “measures your virtuous behavior and transactions online then turns it into a portable TrustScore you can use anywhere within the Sharing Economy.” Each member is ranked from 1 to 1,000 (the latter being a perfect score) for his or her truthfulness.13 Rankings take into consideration

…

The collaborative economy is coming on strong. Just before sitting down today to write, I happened to read this week’s cover story on the sharing economy in The Economist—the editors and contributors extolling its virtues and arguing about its potential impacts on the traditional market economy. Many observers are wondering

…

the global workforce with AI and automated technology, the shift from ownership to access, the transformation from markets to networks, and the emergence of a sharing economy represents a fundamental assault on the system itself. Even when confronted with the crowdfunding of capital, the democratization of currency, and the rapid spread of

…

materialistic trends and less invested in obsessive consumerism as a way of life. These findings dovetail with the sharp rise of collaborative consumption and the sharing economy. All over the world, a younger generation is sharing bikes, automobiles, homes, clothes, and countless other items and opting for access over ownership. A growing

…

of generics and cause-oriented brands and are far more interested in the use value of material things than their exchange value or status. A sharing economy of collaborative prosumers is, by its very nature, a more empathic and less materialistic one. The waning of the materialistic ethos is also reflected in

…

, 2010, http://www.frost.com/prod/servlet /press-release.pag?Src=RSS&docid=193331843 (accessed May 29, 2013); Danielle Sacks, “The Sharing Economy,” Fast Company, May 2011, http://www.fastcompany.com/1747551/sharing -economy (accessed March 19, 2013). 4. Elliot Martin and Susan Shaheen, “The Impact of Carsharing on Household Vehicle Ownership,” ACCESS 38

…

America,” ProQuest, February 2009, http://www.csa.com/discoveryguides/debt/review.php (accessed February 3, 2014). 29. Danielle Sacks, “The Sharing Economy,” Fast Company, May 2011, http://www.fastcompany .com/1747551/sharing-economy (accessed November 12, 2013). 30. Rachel Botsman and Roo Rogers, What’s Mine Is Yours: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption (New

…

-slows/. 92. Claire Cain Miller, “Google Grapples with Mobile,” International New York Times, October 19–20, 2013, 14. 93. Ibid. 94. “National Study Quantifies the ‘Sharing Economy’ Movement,” PRNewswire, February 8, 2012, http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/national-study-quantifies-the-sharing-econo my-movement-138949069.html (accessed March 19, 2013

…

). 95. Neal Gorenflo, “The New Sharing Economy,” Shareable, December 24, 2010, http://www.share able.net/blog/the-new-sharing-economy (accessed March 19, 2013). 96. Bryan Walsh, “10 Ideas that Will Change the World: Today’s Smart Choice: Don

…

.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,20 59521_2059717,00.html (accessed March 19, 2013). 97. Danielle Sacks, “The Sharing Economy,” Fast Company, April 18, 2011, http://www.fast company.com/1747551/sharing-economy (accessed March 19, 2013). 98. Bob Van Voris, “Apple Battles E-Books Pricing Claims in Antitrust Trial,” Bloomberg, June

…

control the intelligent infrastructure, 193–222 as technological soul mate of the IoT, 18 see also the comedy of the commons; social capital and the sharing economy the comedy of the commons, 155–172 design principles of effective commons, 161–162 rediscovering, 156–165 and Törbel Commons covenant agreement of 1483, 160

…

., 166 rallying around free software, 174–177 Raspberry Pi, 80 Raymond, Eric S., 176–177 RelayRides, 228 rental(s)/renting. see social capital and the sharing economy reputation rankings on the web, 257–259 reviews, consumer-generated, 248–249 Rifkin, Milton, 305–306, 309 rise in collaborative innovation, 21 Rochdale Society of

…

of the Public Domain” (Boyle), 181–182 sensors, use of, 11–13, 73–74, 143, 219, 230 Shareable, 238 SharedEarth, 239 sharing economy/good(s). see social capital and the sharing economy Siemens, 14–15 Simmel, Georg, 259 Skoll Foundation, 265–266 smart cities, 12 smart grid(s), 142–144, 149, 205–206, 294

…

entrepreneurs, 19, 21, 99, 101, 103, 119, 144–147, 238, 262–269, 298, 309 trust, 234 web, four phases of, 234 social capital and the sharing economy, 223–269 and advertising, the end of traditional, 247–252 and automobile sharing, 225–231 and bike sharing, 227 and a biosphere lifestyle, 297–303

Value of Everything: An Antidote to Chaos The

by Mariana Mazzucato  · 25 Apr 2018  · 457pp  · 125,329 words

narrative to show how, ultimately, it is false. Claiming value in innovation, most recently with the concept of ‘platforms' and the related notion of the sharing economy, is less about genuine innovation and more to do with facilitating value extraction through the capture of rents. Picking up on the false innovation narrative

…

‘forces for good' and for the progress of society rather than as profit-oriented businesses.61 Excited advocates have talked of a rising and revolutionary ‘sharing economy', or even of ‘digital socialism',62 advancing a rosy view according to which digital platforms ‘empower' people, giving us free access to a wide range

…

, with an eye to assessing their overall social impact in terms of value creation and value extraction. Firms like Google, Facebook and Amazon - and new ‘sharing-economy' firms like Airbnb and Uber - like to define themselves as ‘platforms'. They don't face a traditional market, in which the firm produces a good

…

commodification of personal data, transforming through the alchemy of a two-sided market our friendships, interests, beliefs and preferences into sellable propositions. The so-called ‘sharing economy' is based on the same idea. For all the hype about ‘sharing', it is less about altruism and more about allowing market exchange to reach

…

produced, shared and delivered - more horizontally, with consumers interacting with each other, and less intermediation by old institutions (e.g. travel agents). The so-called sharing economy, based on this framework, works by reducing the frictions between the two sides of the market: connecting buyers to sellers, potential customers to advertisers, in

…

.25 per minute. When, in 2016, charges fell to $3.75 per mile or $0.65 per minute, consumers gained. But the result of this sharing economy is that Uber Black drivers are paid less, ‘standards' rise (with pressure for drivers to offer ‘pool' services to customers) and competition from Uber's

…

investments.74 If anything, companies owing their fortunes to taxpayer investment should be repaying the taxpayer, not seeking tax breaks. Moreover, the rise of the ‘sharing economy' is likely to extend market exchange into new areas, where the dynamics of market dominance look set to repeat themselves. The second major consequence of

…

public sector also gets its return; drug prices could become ‘fairer', reflecting the collective contribution of different actors and making a healthcare system sustainable. The sharing economy would not be based on the ability of a few companies to use public infrastructure for free and the dynamics of network economies to monopolize

…

a market. A true sharing economy must by definition respect the hard-won gains of all workers, irrespective of race, gender or ability. The eight-hour day, the weekend and holiday

…

Lane and Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013). 66. Evgeny Morozov, ‘Don't believe the hype, the “sharing economy” masks a failing economy', the Guardian, 28 September 2014: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/28/sharing-economy-internet-hype-benefits-overstated-evgeny-morozov; Evgeny Morozov, ‘Cheap cab ride? You must have missed Uber's

…

Costs of Economic Growth (New York: Praeger, 1967). Morozov, E., ‘Don't believe the hype, the “sharing economy” masks a failing economy', the Guardian, 28 September 2014: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/28/sharing- economy-internet-hype-benefits-overstated-evgeny-morozov Morozov, E., ‘Silicon Valley likes to promise “digital socialism” - but it

Collaborative Society

by Dariusz Jemielniak and Aleksandra Przegalinska  · 18 Feb 2020  · 187pp  · 50,083 words

Some already acknowledge sharing as an important term of self-description for digital cultures.22 But others see the very concepts of open collaboration or sharing economy as still unclear and problematic because they embody at least a half dozen diverse phenomena: acts of communication, gifting, swapping, distributing, contributing, and digital

…

Notions of “sharing” and “collaboration,” however, proliferate in popular discourse and among decision-makers. For instance, Italy passed a bill in 2016 that defines the sharing economy as an “economic system generated by the optimization and shared allocation of space, time, goods, and services through digital platforms.”26 Similarly, the EU Commission

…

seem evermore distant considering the ubiquitous online presence of these companies and their influence on users’ lives. For some companies attempting to benefit from the “sharing economy,” the notion of sharing has become a marketing strategy, thus redefining sharing in the eyes of the millions who partake in these practices. Two examples

…

of “sharing economy” fallout illustrate this point: First, unionized taxi drivers recently protested that apps such as Uber allow almost anyone with a driver’s license to become

…

prices. Although we believe these discussions to be important, we must point out that the rise of collaborative society extends beyond the phenomenon of the sharing economy or the deconstruction of capitalism. Yes, economic transactions play a role in technology-enabled cooperation. But collaborative society further encompasses the emerging fields of remix

…

book in the following way. In chapter 2, “Neither ‘Sharing’ nor ‘Economy,’” we discuss the key concepts of sharing economy, collaborative economy, platform capitalism, cooperativism, and gig economy. We criticize the persistence of “sharing economy” as a term in popular and academic discourse by critically analyzing its oversimplistic and fuzzy meaning. We also point

…

to their positive capabilities. Finally, we consider the possible impact of intermediating technologies on the future of collaboration. 2 Neither “Sharing” nor “Economy” Open collaboration, sharing economy, platform capitalism, and peer production all describe certain aspects of a revolutionary change resulting from sociotechnological advancement. In this chapter we briefly describe these concepts

…

also appreciate platforms that allow for free software development and collaboration. The Abuse of Sharing The term used for new phenomena associated with open collaboration, sharing economy, sometimes referred to collaborative economy, has become a buzzword today, possibly the most recognizable term related to the processes of open collaboration. It has yielded

…

term’s prevalent use in academia.9 Quite clearly, however, the name is doubly misleading. As we show in this chapter, what many often call “sharing economy” is neither about sharing nor just about the economy. In this section we offer a brief typology of commonly used terms related to the topic

…

sharing and collaboration to piggyback on the popular notions of those terms. It even makes some sense, as early definitions assumed the backbone of the sharing economy to derive from leveraging surplus and talent goods.11,12 But let’s look at what happens when Uber markets a service—and assigns a

…

sharing. They are in fact an outcome of a typical Silicon Valley innovation narrative.13 The term used for new phenomena associated with open collaboration, sharing economy, sometimes referred to as collaborative economy, has become a buzzword today. Nicholas John argues that pointing to the misuse of the word sharing glosses over

…

enforcing antidiscriminatory regulations. Public and industry pushback, however, may eventually inhibit such loopholes. Let’s momentarily ignore this conundrum and stretch our understanding of the sharing economy to include monetary transactions. And let’s agree as well that Airbnb (for example) fosters apartment sharing among strangers. The extent of this endeavor as

…

been paid for and removed from the market; hence, the platforms allow for their endless recirculation. An Umbrella Term of Contradictions Should we agree that sharing economy is a meaningful term and covers initiatives as different as Wikipedia and Airbnb, we would immediately be pulled into a jumble of contradiction. We would

…

social turn toward collective activity and away from mediating institutions, the overgeneralized or fuzzy conceptual chaos surrounding it impedes that opportunity. As Arun Sundarajan observes, “sharing economy spans the market-to-gift spectrum.”24 It includes cooperativism, gift giving, barters, and other altruistic ventures, as well as strictly commercial, for-profit endeavors

…

that would make Henry Ford look like a socialist. Sundarajan’s approach assumes “sharing economy” to be a catchall concept, in which the logic of market exchange and functional efficiency somehow—in a truly Hegelian fashion—coexist with the logic

…

of communal virtue and symbolic socialization.25 Like the two-realities paradox in the Schrödinger’s cat thought-experiment, sharing economy simultaneously saves us from hyper-consumerist obsessions of late capitalism while serving steroids to neoliberalism.26 It is more reasonable to observe the clear distinction

…

the “just-in-time” philosophy of workflow and inventory.29 (See figure 1 for a comparison of interest shown in the terms gig economy and sharing economy.) A contingent workforce, by the way, operates with radical information asymmetry: in this context specifically, workers are at a disadvantage because they deal with

…

aptly call “ghost work,” dehumanized and invisible labor streamlined by apps and intermediary platforms.34 Figure 1 A Google Trends graph measures interest in the sharing economy (in black) versus the gig economy (in gray) according to search engine statistics from 2014–2019. Source: https://g.co/trends/TvMAB Because of

…

these practices and conditions, some authors propose the use of platform capitalism to refer to the ongoing phenomena of corporate domination in the “sharing economy.”35 This term well reflects the economic drive of the capital market to harness the power of cutting-edge technologies, disempower users, and turn them

…

into workers and customers, rather than inspire them to actually share anything. Of course, it is possible to perceive the domination of the sharing economy by commercially driven organizations as a temporary distortion of the idea.36 It may well be that corporations are the first to adapt to new

…

unlikely. Profit-driven organizations exert great power in a large number of industries; they test different models and mechanisms to gain a competitive edge over sharing economy “incumbents,” including “tight or loose control over participants and high or low rivalry between the participants.”37 The motivation of the participants themselves is another

…

profits because involvement in the organization and its financial outcome distinguishes them from platform capitalism. Some free/open source initiatives popularly considered part of a “sharing economy” organize around sharing communities. They often rely on commons-based peer production, which includes open-source endeavors like Wikipedia or Linux. Peer production organizations do

…

. The nonreciprocal exchanges, social bonding, and solidarity are powerful drivers of the new, collaborative turn.52 A quantitative analysis of the academic literature about the sharing economy shows an equal focus on four main areas: sustainable development and commons governance; community building and participation; labor, production, and digital markets; and new production

…

#MeToo, Occupy Wall Street Biohacking We believe that many of these examples refer to the phenomena of open collaboration or collaborative consumption, but neither term, sharing economy nor peer production, adequately covers their scope. As we see it, the significant change occurring in the society, apparent in the above phenomena, relates first

…

connectivity and collective formation.54 We thus propose that the social turn underway is related to the rise of collaborative society. The Possibilities of Giving Sharing economy, open collaboration, peer production—all these terms describe aspects of collaborative society that have scaled up globally thanks to technology. The turn to collaborative society

…

economical and ecological costs of collaboration? Transforming Our Collaborative Ways To explore our first question, let’s establish that despite doubts and questions concerning the sharing economy, online platforms, or the use and misuse of data, many scholars argue that the internet can still augment avenues for personal expression and promote citizen

…

are not necessarily community-based, as the examples in this book demonstrate. As Adam Arvidsson has noted in his article “Value and Virtue in the Sharing Economy,” and as we have stressed in some of our previous chapters, attempting to reconcile sharing in terms of a business model that allows for economic

…

methods to advance or provide knowledge, organized collaboratively and outside of academic hierarchies, and allowing a wider public engagement in scholarly discovery. Collaborative economy See sharing economy Collaborative society An increasingly common phenomenon of emergent and enduring cooperative groups, whose members have developed particular patterns of relationships through technology-mediated cooperation. Free

…

companies, get married, network socially, or attend events. By 2013, Second Life had approximately one million regular users. The number of current users is unknown. Sharing economy (also called collaborative economy) A very broad term related to utilizing the idle capacity of different kinds of resources and making them available for free

…

It also claims that technology is the main driver of societal change. Unsharing economy The term emphasizes the market-driven aspects of the so-called sharing economy, which leads to reducing the number of actual acts of genuine nonprofit sharing while accommodating and monetizing the idle capacities of different goods and services

…

. Felson and J. L. Spaeth, “Community Structure and Collaborative Consumption: ‘A Routine Activity Approach.’” American Behavioral Science 21 (1978): 614. 21. J. Schor, “Debating the Sharing Economy,” Great Transition Initiative (October 2014). 22. C. Shirky, Cognitive Surplus: How Technology Makes Consumers into Collaborators (Penguin, 2010). 23. A. Wittel, “Counter-commodification: The Economy

…

for-profit peer-to-peer platforms emphasize that they rely on sharing, and consider Uber or Airbnb to be the good examples of “sharing economy.” J. Schor, “Debating the Sharing Economy,” Great Transition Initiative (October 2014). 10. M. Kaplan, “Fijian Water in Fiji and New York: Local Politics and a Global Commodity,” Cultural Anthropology

…

and R. Rogers, What’s Mine Is Yours: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption (HarperBusiness, 2010). 13. T. Slee, What’s Yours Is Mine: Against the Sharing Economy (OR Books, 2017). 14. N. A. John, The Age of Sharing (Polity, 2017). 15. Ibid. 16. P. Aigrain, Sharing: Culture and the Economy in

…

Rise of Crowd-Based Capitalism (MIT Press, 2016), 38. 25. A. Arvidsson, “Value and Virtue in the Sharing Economy,” Sociological Review 66 (2018): 289–301. 26. D. Murillo, H. Buckland, and E. Val, “When the Sharing Economy Becomes Neoliberalism on Steroids: Unravelling the Controversies,” Technological Forecasting and Social Change 125 (2017): 66–76. 27

…

Autonomy and Control: Strategies of Arbitrage in the ‘On-Demand’ Economy,” New Media & Society 1461444817738236 (2017). 31. J. B. Schor and W. Attwood‐Charles, “The ‘Sharing’ Economy: Labor, Inequality, and Social Connection on For‐Profit Platforms,” Sociology Compass 11 (2017): e12493. 32. M. Bauwens and V. Kostakis, “From the Communism of Capital

…

Platform Capitalism (John Wiley & Sons, 2017). 36. Slee, What’s Yours Is Mine. 37. I. Constantiou, A. Marton, and V. K. Tuunainen, “Four Models of Sharing Economy Platforms,” MIS Quarterly Executive 16, no. 4 (2017): 231–251. 38. V. Kostakis, “In Defense of Digital Commoning,” Organization 1350508417749887 (2018). 39. R. Belk, “Sharing

…

the Commons, and the Future of the Firm,” Strategic Organization 15 (2017): 264–274. 53. D. Arcidiacono, A. Gandini, and I. Pais, “Sharing What? The ‘Sharing Economy’ in the Sociological Debate,” Sociological Review 66 (2018): 275–288. 54. J. Kennedy, “Conceptual Boundaries of Sharing,” Information, Community, & Society 19 (2016): 461–474. 55

…

M. W. Wallin, “Carrots and Rainbows: Motivation and Social Practice in Open Source Software Development,” Mississippi Quarterly 36 (2012): 649–676. 9. A. Sundararajan, The Sharing Economy: The End of Employment and the Rise of Crowd-Based Capitalism (MIT Press, 2016). 10. https://perma.cc/FQ5S-REAY 11. D. Jemielniak, Common Knowledge

…

sharing at least a little bit. Still, many users keep sharing after having downloaded the files. 26. J. Hamari, M. Sjöklint, and A. Ukkonen, “The Sharing Economy: Why People Participate in Collaborative Consumption,” Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology 67 (2016): 2047–2059. 27. A. Diamant-Cohen and O

…

Four Elementary Forms of Human Relations: Communal Sharing, Authority Ranking, Equality Matching, Market Pricing (Free Press, 1991). 11. A. Arvidsson, “Value and Virtue in the Sharing Economy,” Sociology Review 66 (2018): 289–301. 12. U. Dolata and J.-F. Schrape, “Masses, Crowds, Communities, Movements: Collective Action in the Internet Age,” Social Movement

…

, “Access-Based Consumption: The Case of Car Sharing,” Journal of Consumer Research 39, no 4 (2012): 881–898. 20 Arvidsson, “Value and Virtue in the Sharing Economy.” 21. L. Ciechanowski, A. Przegalinska, M. Magnuski, and P. Gloor, “In the Shades of the Uncanny Valley: An Experimental Study of Human–Chatbot Interaction,”

…

the Economy in the Internet Age. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2012. John, N. A. The Age of Sharing. Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2017. Sundararajan, A. The Sharing Economy: The End of Employment and the Rise of Crowd-based Capitalism. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2016. More about studying the digital society Gloor, P. A

…

160 and real-life relationships, 159 Self-management, 140 Self-quantification, 131, 135 data gathering, 139 Shaping of self, 147–148 Sharing, 7, 22–24 Sharing economy, 7, 21–22, 27, 207–208n9. See also Economy of sharing Slacktivism, 98–99 Snapchat, 167–170 Custom Stories, 167–168 future of, 170 gamification

Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist

by Kate Raworth  · 22 Mar 2017  · 403pp  · 111,119 words

of economic value that was once sold at a profit in the marketplace being shared for low or no cost in the collaborative commons. The sharing economy is also growing, in which the culture of ownership – with every household equipped with its own washing machine and car – is giving way to a

…

Sen, Amartya, 43 Shakespeare, William, 61–3, 67, 93 shale gas, 264, 269 Shang Dynasty, 48 shareholders, 82, 88, 189, 191, 227, 234, 273, 292 sharing economy, 264 Sheraton Hotel, Boston, 3 Siegen, Germany, 290 Silicon Valley, 231 Simon, Julian, 70 Sinclair, Upton, 255 Sismondi, Jean, 42 slavery, 33, 77, 161 Slovenia

The Corruption of Capitalism: Why Rentiers Thrive and Work Does Not Pay

by Guy Standing  · 13 Jul 2016  · 443pp  · 98,113 words

Ghost Road: Beyond the Driverless Car

by Anthony M. Townsend  · 15 Jun 2020  · 362pp  · 97,288 words

Investing to Save the Planet: How Your Money Can Make a Difference

by Alice Ross  · 19 Nov 2020  · 197pp  · 53,831 words

The Retreat of Western Liberalism

by Edward Luce  · 20 Apr 2017  · 223pp  · 58,732 words

Machine, Platform, Crowd: Harnessing Our Digital Future

by Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson  · 26 Jun 2017  · 472pp  · 117,093 words

Radical Technologies: The Design of Everyday Life

by Adam Greenfield  · 29 May 2017  · 410pp  · 119,823 words

The End of Traffic and the Future of Transport: Second Edition

by David Levinson and Kevin Krizek  · 17 Aug 2015  · 257pp  · 64,285 words

Future Politics: Living Together in a World Transformed by Tech

by Jamie Susskind  · 3 Sep 2018  · 533pp

Life After Google: The Fall of Big Data and the Rise of the Blockchain Economy

by George Gilder  · 16 Jul 2018  · 332pp  · 93,672 words

Humans as a Service: The Promise and Perils of Work in the Gig Economy

by Jeremias Prassl  · 7 May 2018  · 491pp  · 77,650 words

Move Fast and Break Things: How Facebook, Google, and Amazon Cornered Culture and Undermined Democracy

by Jonathan Taplin  · 17 Apr 2017  · 222pp  · 70,132 words

Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy

by Lawrence Lessig  · 2 Jan 2009

The Wealth of Humans: Work, Power, and Status in the Twenty-First Century

by Ryan Avent  · 20 Sep 2016  · 323pp  · 90,868 words

The People's Republic of Walmart: How the World's Biggest Corporations Are Laying the Foundation for Socialism

by Leigh Phillips and Michal Rozworski  · 5 Mar 2019  · 202pp  · 62,901 words

Empire of Things: How We Became a World of Consumers, From the Fifteenth Century to the Twenty-First

by Frank Trentmann  · 1 Dec 2015  · 1,213pp  · 376,284 words

Connectography: Mapping the Future of Global Civilization

by Parag Khanna  · 18 Apr 2016  · 497pp  · 144,283 words

Peers Inc: How People and Platforms Are Inventing the Collaborative Economy and Reinventing Capitalism

by Robin Chase  · 14 May 2015  · 330pp  · 91,805 words

Blockchain Revolution: How the Technology Behind Bitcoin Is Changing Money, Business, and the World

by Don Tapscott and Alex Tapscott  · 9 May 2016  · 515pp  · 126,820 words

The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class

by Joel Kotkin  · 11 May 2020  · 393pp  · 91,257 words

Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World

by Jason Hickel  · 12 Aug 2020  · 286pp  · 87,168 words

Reimagining Capitalism in a World on Fire

by Rebecca Henderson  · 27 Apr 2020  · 330pp  · 99,044 words

The Job: The Future of Work in the Modern Era

by Ellen Ruppel Shell  · 22 Oct 2018  · 402pp  · 126,835 words

Capitalism Without Capital: The Rise of the Intangible Economy

by Jonathan Haskel and Stian Westlake  · 7 Nov 2017  · 346pp  · 89,180 words

Terms of Service: Social Media and the Price of Constant Connection

by Jacob Silverman  · 17 Mar 2015  · 527pp  · 147,690 words

Makers and Takers: The Rise of Finance and the Fall of American Business

by Rana Foroohar  · 16 May 2016  · 515pp  · 132,295 words

Everything for Everyone: The Radical Tradition That Is Shaping the Next Economy

by Nathan Schneider  · 10 Sep 2018  · 326pp  · 91,559 words

Gigged: The End of the Job and the Future of Work

by Sarah Kessler  · 11 Jun 2018  · 246pp  · 68,392 words

The Finance Curse: How Global Finance Is Making Us All Poorer

by Nicholas Shaxson  · 10 Oct 2018  · 482pp  · 149,351 words

AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order

by Kai-Fu Lee  · 14 Sep 2018  · 307pp  · 88,180 words

Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist's Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations

by Thomas L. Friedman  · 22 Nov 2016  · 602pp  · 177,874 words

How Will Capitalism End?

by Wolfgang Streeck  · 8 Nov 2016  · 424pp  · 115,035 words

The Internet Is Not the Answer

by Andrew Keen  · 5 Jan 2015  · 361pp  · 81,068 words

Uberland: How Algorithms Are Rewriting the Rules of Work

by Alex Rosenblat  · 22 Oct 2018  · 343pp  · 91,080 words

Radical Markets: Uprooting Capitalism and Democracy for a Just Society

by Eric Posner and E. Weyl  · 14 May 2018  · 463pp  · 105,197 words

The Purpose Economy: How Your Desire for Impact, Personal Growth and Community Is Changing the World

by Aaron Hurst  · 31 Aug 2013  · 209pp  · 63,649 words

Plenitude: The New Economics of True Wealth

by Juliet B. Schor  · 12 May 2010  · 309pp  · 78,361 words

The Industries of the Future

by Alec Ross  · 2 Feb 2016  · 364pp  · 99,897 words

Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus: How Growth Became the Enemy of Prosperity

by Douglas Rushkoff  · 1 Mar 2016  · 366pp  · 94,209 words

Platform Revolution: How Networked Markets Are Transforming the Economy--And How to Make Them Work for You

by Sangeet Paul Choudary, Marshall W. van Alstyne and Geoffrey G. Parker  · 27 Mar 2016  · 421pp  · 110,406 words

The Age of Cryptocurrency: How Bitcoin and Digital Money Are Challenging the Global Economic Order

by Paul Vigna and Michael J. Casey  · 27 Jan 2015  · 457pp  · 128,838 words

City 2.0: The Habitat of the Future and How to Get There

by Ted Books  · 20 Feb 2013  · 83pp  · 23,805 words

The Autonomous Revolution: Reclaiming the Future We’ve Sold to Machines

by William Davidow and Michael Malone  · 18 Feb 2020  · 304pp  · 80,143 words

Autonomous Driving: How the Driverless Revolution Will Change the World

by Andreas Herrmann, Walter Brenner and Rupert Stadler  · 25 Mar 2018

Ghost Work: How to Stop Silicon Valley From Building a New Global Underclass

by Mary L. Gray and Siddharth Suri  · 6 May 2019  · 346pp  · 97,330 words

Don't Be Evil: How Big Tech Betrayed Its Founding Principles--And All of US

by Rana Foroohar  · 5 Nov 2019  · 380pp  · 109,724 words

The People's Platform: Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age

by Astra Taylor  · 4 Mar 2014  · 283pp  · 85,824 words

Virtual Competition

by Ariel Ezrachi and Maurice E. Stucke  · 30 Nov 2016

Green Swans: The Coming Boom in Regenerative Capitalism

by John Elkington  · 6 Apr 2020  · 384pp  · 93,754 words

The Rise of Carry: The Dangerous Consequences of Volatility Suppression and the New Financial Order of Decaying Growth and Recurring Crisis

by Tim Lee, Jamie Lee and Kevin Coldiron  · 13 Dec 2019  · 241pp  · 81,805 words

The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies

by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee  · 20 Jan 2014  · 339pp  · 88,732 words

Social Democratic America

by Lane Kenworthy  · 3 Jan 2014  · 283pp  · 73,093 words

Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress

by Steven Pinker  · 13 Feb 2018  · 1,034pp  · 241,773 words

How to Fix the Future: Staying Human in the Digital Age

by Andrew Keen  · 1 Mar 2018  · 308pp  · 85,880 words

What Algorithms Want: Imagination in the Age of Computing

by Ed Finn  · 10 Mar 2017  · 285pp  · 86,853 words

Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People?

by Thomas Frank  · 15 Mar 2016  · 316pp  · 87,486 words

A Pelican Introduction: Basic Income

by Guy Standing  · 3 May 2017  · 307pp  · 82,680 words

Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism's Stealth Revolution

by Wendy Brown  · 6 Feb 2015

5 Day Weekend: Freedom to Make Your Life and Work Rich With Purpose

by Nik Halik and Garrett B. Gunderson  · 5 Mar 2018  · 290pp  · 72,046 words

The Stack: On Software and Sovereignty

by Benjamin H. Bratton  · 19 Feb 2016  · 903pp  · 235,753 words

Four Futures: Life After Capitalism

by Peter Frase  · 10 Mar 2015  · 121pp  · 36,908 words

The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future

by Kevin Kelly  · 6 Jun 2016  · 371pp  · 108,317 words

Basic Income: A Radical Proposal for a Free Society and a Sane Economy

by Philippe van Parijs and Yannick Vanderborght  · 20 Mar 2017

Revolution Française: Emmanuel Macron and the Quest to Reinvent a Nation

by Sophie Pedder  · 20 Jun 2018  · 337pp  · 101,440 words

Googled: The End of the World as We Know It

by Ken Auletta  · 1 Jan 2009  · 532pp  · 139,706 words

Rebooting India: Realizing a Billion Aspirations

by Nandan Nilekani  · 4 Feb 2016  · 332pp  · 100,601 words

Cities Are Good for You: The Genius of the Metropolis

by Leo Hollis  · 31 Mar 2013  · 385pp  · 118,314 words

Exponential Organizations: Why New Organizations Are Ten Times Better, Faster, and Cheaper Than Yours (And What to Do About It)

by Salim Ismail and Yuri van Geest  · 17 Oct 2014  · 292pp  · 85,151 words

The Truth Machine: The Blockchain and the Future of Everything

by Paul Vigna and Michael J. Casey  · 27 Feb 2018  · 348pp  · 97,277 words

A World Without Work: Technology, Automation, and How We Should Respond

by Daniel Susskind  · 14 Jan 2020  · 419pp  · 109,241 words

Smart Cities: Big Data, Civic Hackers, and the Quest for a New Utopia

by Anthony M. Townsend  · 29 Sep 2013  · 464pp  · 127,283 words

The Fourth Industrial Revolution

by Klaus Schwab  · 11 Jan 2016  · 179pp  · 43,441 words

Stuffocation

by James Wallman  · 6 Dec 2013  · 296pp  · 82,501 words

The People vs. Democracy: Why Our Freedom Is in Danger and How to Save It

by Yascha Mounk  · 15 Feb 2018  · 497pp  · 123,778 words

The Theft of a Decade: How the Baby Boomers Stole the Millennials' Economic Future

by Joseph C. Sternberg  · 13 May 2019  · 336pp  · 95,773 words

The Only Game in Town: Central Banks, Instability, and Avoiding the Next Collapse

by Mohamed A. El-Erian  · 26 Jan 2016  · 318pp  · 77,223 words

Tech Titans of China: How China's Tech Sector Is Challenging the World by Innovating Faster, Working Harder, and Going Global

by Rebecca Fannin  · 2 Sep 2019  · 269pp  · 70,543 words

The Gig Economy: A Critical Introduction

by Jamie Woodcock and Mark Graham  · 17 Jan 2020  · 207pp  · 59,298 words

Chokepoint Capitalism

by Rebecca Giblin and Cory Doctorow  · 26 Sep 2022  · 396pp  · 113,613 words

The Smartphone Society

by Nicole Aschoff

New Power: How Power Works in Our Hyperconnected World--And How to Make It Work for You

by Jeremy Heimans and Henry Timms  · 2 Apr 2018  · 416pp  · 100,130 words

The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and Its Solutions

by Jason Hickel  · 3 May 2017  · 332pp  · 106,197 words

The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order: America and the World in the Free Market Era

by Gary Gerstle  · 14 Oct 2022  · 655pp  · 156,367 words

Everyday Utopia: What 2,000 Years of Wild Experiments Can Teach Us About the Good Life

by Kristen R. Ghodsee  · 16 May 2023  · 302pp  · 112,390 words

Scots and Catalans: Union and Disunion

by J. H. Elliott  · 20 Aug 2018  · 811pp  · 160,872 words

The Contrarian: Peter Thiel and Silicon Valley's Pursuit of Power

by Max Chafkin  · 14 Sep 2021  · 524pp  · 130,909 words

Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World

by Naomi Klein  · 11 Sep 2023

The End of Big: How the Internet Makes David the New Goliath

by Nicco Mele  · 14 Apr 2013  · 270pp  · 79,992 words

Work in the Future The Automation Revolution-Palgrave MacMillan (2019)

by Robert Skidelsky Nan Craig  · 15 Mar 2020

Cogs and Monsters: What Economics Is, and What It Should Be

by Diane Coyle  · 11 Oct 2021  · 305pp  · 75,697 words

Data and the City

by Rob Kitchin,Tracey P. Lauriault,Gavin McArdle  · 2 Aug 2017

Matchmakers: The New Economics of Multisided Platforms

by David S. Evans and Richard Schmalensee  · 23 May 2016  · 383pp  · 81,118 words

Billion Dollar Loser: The Epic Rise and Spectacular Fall of Adam Neumann and WeWork

by Reeves Wiedeman  · 19 Oct 2020  · 303pp  · 100,516 words

Team Human

by Douglas Rushkoff  · 22 Jan 2019  · 196pp  · 54,339 words

Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World

by Anand Giridharadas  · 27 Aug 2018  · 296pp  · 98,018 words

Platform Capitalism

by Nick Srnicek  · 22 Dec 2016  · 116pp  · 31,356 words

Who Needs the Fed?: What Taylor Swift, Uber, and Robots Tell Us About Money, Credit, and Why We Should Abolish America's Central Bank

by John Tamny  · 30 Apr 2016  · 268pp  · 74,724 words

Fool Me Twice: Fighting the Assault on Science in America

by Shawn Lawrence Otto  · 10 Oct 2011  · 692pp  · 127,032 words

Blockchain: Blueprint for a New Economy

by Melanie Swan  · 22 Jan 2014  · 271pp  · 52,814 words

The End of Ownership: Personal Property in the Digital Economy

by Aaron Perzanowski and Jason Schultz  · 4 Nov 2016  · 374pp  · 97,288 words

You've Been Played: How Corporations, Governments, and Schools Use Games to Control Us All

by Adrian Hon  · 14 Sep 2022  · 371pp  · 107,141 words

Augmented: Life in the Smart Lane

by Brett King  · 5 May 2016  · 385pp  · 111,113 words

Nomad Century: How Climate Migration Will Reshape Our World

by Gaia Vince  · 22 Aug 2022  · 302pp  · 92,206 words

The Crux

by Richard Rumelt  · 27 Apr 2022  · 363pp  · 109,834 words

Sunbelt Blues: The Failure of American Housing

by Andrew Ross  · 25 Oct 2021  · 301pp  · 90,276 words

The Internet of Us: Knowing More and Understanding Less in the Age of Big Data

by Michael P. Lynch  · 21 Mar 2016  · 230pp  · 61,702 words

Riding for Deliveroo: Resistance in the New Economy

by Callum Cant  · 11 Nov 2019  · 196pp  · 55,862 words

A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things: A Guide to Capitalism, Nature, and the Future of the Planet

by Raj Patel and Jason W. Moore  · 16 Oct 2017  · 335pp  · 89,924 words

The Infinite Machine: How an Army of Crypto-Hackers Is Building the Next Internet With Ethereum

by Camila Russo  · 13 Jul 2020  · 349pp  · 102,827 words

Frugal Innovation: How to Do Better With Less

by Jaideep Prabhu Navi Radjou  · 15 Feb 2015  · 400pp  · 88,647 words

The Business Blockchain: Promise, Practice, and Application of the Next Internet Technology

by William Mougayar  · 25 Apr 2016  · 161pp  · 44,488 words

The 100-Year Life: Living and Working in an Age of Longevity

by Lynda Gratton and Andrew Scott  · 1 Jun 2016  · 344pp  · 94,332 words

The Inner Lives of Markets: How People Shape Them—And They Shape Us

by Tim Sullivan  · 6 Jun 2016  · 252pp  · 73,131 words

The People vs Tech: How the Internet Is Killing Democracy (And How We Save It)

by Jamie Bartlett  · 4 Apr 2018  · 170pp  · 49,193 words

Consent of the Networked: The Worldwide Struggle for Internet Freedom

by Rebecca MacKinnon  · 31 Jan 2012  · 390pp  · 96,624 words

Rethinking Capitalism: Economics and Policy for Sustainable and Inclusive Growth

by Michael Jacobs and Mariana Mazzucato  · 31 Jul 2016  · 370pp  · 102,823 words

The Growth Delusion: Wealth, Poverty, and the Well-Being of Nations

by David Pilling  · 30 Jan 2018  · 264pp  · 76,643 words

Squeezed: Why Our Families Can't Afford America

by Alissa Quart  · 25 Jun 2018  · 320pp  · 90,526 words

Creating a Life Together: Practical Tools to Grow Ecovillages and Intentional Communities

by Diana Leafe Christian  · 1 Jan 2003

Uneasy Street: The Anxieties of Affluence

by Rachel Sherman  · 21 Aug 2017  · 360pp  · 113,429 words

The Middleman Economy: How Brokers, Agents, Dealers, and Everyday Matchmakers Create Value and Profit

by Marina Krakovsky  · 14 Sep 2015  · 270pp  · 79,180 words

Why We Drive: Toward a Philosophy of the Open Road

by Matthew B. Crawford  · 8 Jun 2020  · 386pp  · 113,709 words

Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century

by Jessica Bruder  · 18 Sep 2017  · 273pp  · 85,195 words

Rentier Capitalism: Who Owns the Economy, and Who Pays for It?

by Brett Christophers  · 17 Nov 2020  · 614pp  · 168,545 words

Choose Yourself!

by James Altucher  · 14 Sep 2013  · 230pp  · 76,655 words

Death Glitch: How Techno-Solutionism Fails Us in This Life and Beyond

by Tamara Kneese  · 14 Aug 2023  · 284pp  · 75,744 words

Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech

by Brian Merchant  · 25 Sep 2023  · 524pp  · 154,652 words

Humankind: A Hopeful History

by Rutger Bregman  · 1 Jun 2020  · 578pp  · 131,346 words

The Green New Deal: Why the Fossil Fuel Civilization Will Collapse by 2028, and the Bold Economic Plan to Save Life on Earth

by Jeremy Rifkin  · 9 Sep 2019  · 327pp  · 84,627 words

The Facebook Effect

by David Kirkpatrick  · 19 Nov 2010  · 455pp  · 133,322 words

No Ordinary Disruption: The Four Global Forces Breaking All the Trends

by Richard Dobbs and James Manyika  · 12 May 2015  · 389pp  · 87,758 words

Postcapitalism: A Guide to Our Future

by Paul Mason  · 29 Jul 2015  · 378pp  · 110,518 words

Super Founders: What Data Reveals About Billion-Dollar Startups

by Ali Tamaseb  · 14 Sep 2021  · 251pp  · 80,831 words

Bit by Bit: How P2P Is Freeing the World

by Jeffrey Tucker  · 7 Jan 2015

Trees on Mars: Our Obsession With the Future

by Hal Niedzviecki  · 15 Mar 2015  · 343pp  · 102,846 words

The Age of Stagnation: Why Perpetual Growth Is Unattainable and the Global Economy Is in Peril

by Satyajit Das  · 9 Feb 2016  · 327pp  · 90,542 words

How to Be the Startup Hero: A Guide and Textbook for Entrepreneurs and Aspiring Entrepreneurs

by Tim Draper  · 18 Dec 2017  · 302pp  · 95,965 words

WEconomy: You Can Find Meaning, Make a Living, and Change the World

by Craig Kielburger, Holly Branson, Marc Kielburger, Sir Richard Branson and Sheryl Sandberg  · 7 Mar 2018  · 335pp  · 96,002 words

Live Work Work Work Die: A Journey Into the Savage Heart of Silicon Valley

by Corey Pein  · 23 Apr 2018  · 282pp  · 81,873 words

Ours to Hack and to Own: The Rise of Platform Cooperativism, a New Vision for the Future of Work and a Fairer Internet

by Trebor Scholz and Nathan Schneider  · 14 Aug 2017  · 237pp  · 67,154 words

Platform Scale: How an Emerging Business Model Helps Startups Build Large Empires With Minimum Investment

by Sangeet Paul Choudary  · 14 Sep 2015  · 302pp  · 73,581 words

Open: The Story of Human Progress

by Johan Norberg  · 14 Sep 2020  · 505pp  · 138,917 words

Work: A History of How We Spend Our Time

by James Suzman  · 2 Sep 2020  · 909pp  · 130,170 words

The Costs of Connection: How Data Is Colonizing Human Life and Appropriating It for Capitalism

by Nick Couldry and Ulises A. Mejias  · 19 Aug 2019  · 458pp  · 116,832 words

12 Bytes: How We Got Here. Where We Might Go Next

by Jeanette Winterson  · 15 Mar 2021  · 256pp  · 73,068 words

Decoding the World: A Roadmap for the Questioner

by Po Bronson  · 14 Jul 2020  · 320pp  · 95,629 words

The Metric Society: On the Quantification of the Social

by Steffen Mau  · 12 Jun 2017  · 254pp  · 69,276 words

The Measure of Progress: Counting What Really Matters

by Diane Coyle  · 15 Apr 2025  · 321pp  · 112,477 words

Wasteland: The Dirty Truth About What We Throw Away, Where It Goes, and Why It Matters

by Oliver Franklin-Wallis  · 21 Jun 2023  · 309pp  · 121,279 words

Bootstrapped: Liberating Ourselves From the American Dream

by Alissa Quart  · 14 Mar 2023  · 304pp  · 86,028 words

Golden Gates: Fighting for Housing in America

by Conor Dougherty  · 18 Feb 2020  · 331pp  · 95,582 words

Can't Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation

by Anne Helen Petersen  · 14 Jan 2021  · 297pp  · 88,890 words

The Day the World Stops Shopping

by J. B. MacKinnon  · 14 May 2021  · 368pp  · 109,432 words

Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution

by Howard Rheingold  · 24 Dec 2011

The New Prophets of Capital

by Nicole Aschoff  · 10 Mar 2015  · 128pp  · 38,187 words

Underwater: How Our American Dream of Homeownership Became a Nightmare

by Ryan Dezember  · 13 Jul 2020  · 279pp  · 87,875 words

The Misfit Economy: Lessons in Creativity From Pirates, Hackers, Gangsters and Other Informal Entrepreneurs

by Alexa Clay and Kyra Maya Phillips  · 23 Jun 2015  · 210pp  · 56,667 words

The Mesh: Why the Future of Business Is Sharing

by Lisa Gansky  · 14 Oct 2010  · 215pp  · 55,212 words

The Evolution of Everything: How New Ideas Emerge

by Matt Ridley  · 395pp  · 116,675 words

The Upstarts: How Uber, Airbnb, and the Killer Companies of the New Silicon Valley Are Changing the World

by Brad Stone  · 30 Jan 2017  · 373pp  · 112,822 words

The Great Fragmentation: And Why the Future of All Business Is Small

by Steve Sammartino  · 25 Jun 2014  · 247pp  · 81,135 words

The Patterning Instinct: A Cultural History of Humanity's Search for Meaning

by Jeremy Lent  · 22 May 2017  · 789pp  · 207,744 words

Frenemies: The Epic Disruption of the Ad Business

by Ken Auletta  · 4 Jun 2018  · 379pp  · 109,223 words

Open for Business Harnessing the Power of Platform Ecosystems

by Lauren Turner Claire, Laure Claire Reillier and Benoit Reillier  · 14 Oct 2017  · 240pp  · 78,436 words

The Business of Platforms: Strategy in the Age of Digital Competition, Innovation, and Power

by Michael A. Cusumano, Annabelle Gawer and David B. Yoffie  · 6 May 2019  · 328pp  · 84,682 words

Modern Monopolies: What It Takes to Dominate the 21st Century Economy

by Alex Moazed and Nicholas L. Johnson  · 30 May 2016  · 324pp  · 89,875 words

The Automatic Customer: Creating a Subscription Business in Any Industry

by John Warrillow  · 5 Feb 2015  · 186pp  · 49,251 words

Mine!: How the Hidden Rules of Ownership Control Our Lives

by Michael A. Heller and James Salzman  · 2 Mar 2021  · 332pp  · 100,245 words

Silicon City: San Francisco in the Long Shadow of the Valley

by Cary McClelland  · 8 Oct 2018  · 225pp  · 70,241 words

Make Your Own Job: How the Entrepreneurial Work Ethic Exhausted America

by Erik Baker  · 13 Jan 2025  · 362pp  · 132,186 words

Vassal State

by Angus Hanton  · 25 Mar 2024  · 277pp  · 81,718 words

The Happiness Industry: How the Government and Big Business Sold Us Well-Being

by William Davies  · 11 May 2015  · 317pp  · 87,566 words

The Intelligent Investor (Collins Business Essentials)

by Benjamin Graham and Jason Zweig  · 1 Jan 1949  · 670pp  · 194,502 words

The Second Curve: Thoughts on Reinventing Society

by Charles Handy  · 12 Mar 2015  · 164pp  · 57,068 words

The Economic Singularity: Artificial Intelligence and the Death of Capitalism

by Calum Chace  · 17 Jul 2016  · 477pp  · 75,408 words

The Airbnb Story: How Three Ordinary Guys Disrupted an Industry, Made Billions...and Created Plenty of Controversy

by Leigh Gallagher  · 14 Feb 2017  · 290pp  · 87,549 words

No Is Not Enough: Resisting Trump’s Shock Politics and Winning the World We Need

by Naomi Klein  · 12 Jun 2017  · 357pp  · 94,852 words

Together

by Vivek H. Murthy, M.D.  · 5 Mar 2020  · 405pp  · 112,470 words

The Cult of We: WeWork, Adam Neumann, and the Great Startup Delusion

by Eliot Brown and Maureen Farrell  · 19 Jul 2021  · 460pp  · 130,820 words

Power, for All: How It Really Works and Why It's Everyone's Business

by Julie Battilana and Tiziana Casciaro  · 30 Aug 2021  · 345pp  · 92,063 words

This Is Not Normal: The Collapse of Liberal Britain

by William Davies  · 28 Sep 2020  · 210pp  · 65,833 words

The Enigma of Capital: And the Crises of Capitalism

by David Harvey  · 1 Jan 2010  · 369pp  · 94,588 words

The Unbanking of America: How the New Middle Class Survives

by Lisa Servon  · 10 Jan 2017  · 279pp  · 76,796 words

Streetfight: Handbook for an Urban Revolution

by Janette Sadik-Khan  · 8 Mar 2016  · 441pp  · 96,534 words

Blitzscaling: The Lightning-Fast Path to Building Massively Valuable Companies

by Reid Hoffman and Chris Yeh  · 14 Apr 2018  · 286pp  · 87,401 words

Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest

by Zeynep Tufekci  · 14 May 2017  · 444pp  · 130,646 words

The Complacent Class: The Self-Defeating Quest for the American Dream

by Tyler Cowen  · 27 Feb 2017  · 287pp  · 82,576 words

The Network Imperative: How to Survive and Grow in the Age of Digital Business Models

by Barry Libert and Megan Beck  · 6 Jun 2016  · 285pp  · 58,517 words

Uncanny Valley: A Memoir

by Anna Wiener  · 14 Jan 2020  · 237pp  · 74,109 words

Dollars and Sense: How We Misthink Money and How to Spend Smarter

by Dr. Dan Ariely and Jeff Kreisler  · 7 Nov 2017  · 302pp  · 87,776 words

Hope Dies Last: Visionary People Across the World, Fighting to Find Us a Future

by Alan Weisman  · 21 Apr 2025  · 599pp  · 149,014 words

Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI

by Karen Hao  · 19 May 2025  · 660pp  · 179,531 words

The Equality Machine: Harnessing Digital Technology for a Brighter, More Inclusive Future

by Orly Lobel  · 17 Oct 2022  · 370pp  · 112,809 words

Amazon: How the World’s Most Relentless Retailer Will Continue to Revolutionize Commerce

by Natalie Berg and Miya Knights  · 28 Jan 2019  · 404pp  · 95,163 words

Pattern Breakers: Why Some Start-Ups Change the Future

by Mike Maples and Peter Ziebelman  · 8 Jul 2024  · 207pp  · 65,156 words

Simple Rules: How to Thrive in a Complex World

by Donald Sull and Kathleen M. Eisenhardt  · 20 Apr 2015  · 294pp  · 82,438 words

The End of Jobs: Money, Meaning and Freedom Without the 9-To-5

by Taylor Pearson  · 27 Jun 2015  · 168pp  · 50,647 words

What to Think About Machines That Think: Today's Leading Thinkers on the Age of Machine Intelligence

by John Brockman  · 5 Oct 2015  · 481pp  · 125,946 words

A More Beautiful Question: The Power of Inquiry to Spark Breakthrough Ideas

by Warren Berger  · 4 Mar 2014  · 374pp  · 89,725 words

The Perfect Police State: An Undercover Odyssey Into China's Terrifying Surveillance Dystopia of the Future

by Geoffrey Cain  · 28 Jun 2021  · 340pp  · 90,674 words

The Cryptopians: Idealism, Greed, Lies, and the Making of the First Big Cryptocurrency Craze

by Laura Shin  · 22 Feb 2022  · 506pp  · 151,753 words

Deep Time Reckoning: How Future Thinking Can Help Earth Now

by Vincent Ialenti  · 22 Sep 2020  · 224pp  · 69,593 words

On the Future: Prospects for Humanity

by Martin J. Rees  · 14 Oct 2018  · 193pp  · 51,445 words

Custodians of the Internet: Platforms, Content Moderation, and the Hidden Decisions That Shape Social Media

by Tarleton Gillespie  · 25 Jun 2018  · 390pp  · 109,519 words

Aiming High: Masayoshi Son, SoftBank, and Disrupting Silicon Valley

by Atsuo Inoue  · 18 Nov 2021  · 295pp  · 89,441 words

How Music Got Free: The End of an Industry, the Turn of the Century, and the Patient Zero of Piracy

by Stephen Witt  · 15 Jun 2015  · 315pp  · 93,522 words

Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble

by Dan Lyons  · 4 Apr 2016  · 284pp  · 92,688 words

Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One

by Jenny Blake  · 14 Jul 2016  · 292pp  · 76,185 words

Your Face Belongs to Us: A Secretive Startup's Quest to End Privacy as We Know It

by Kashmir Hill  · 19 Sep 2023  · 487pp  · 124,008 words

Copenhagenize: The Definitive Guide to Global Bicycle Urbanism

by Mikael Colville-Andersen  · 28 Mar 2018  · 293pp  · 90,714 words

Kings of Crypto: One Startup's Quest to Take Cryptocurrency Out of Silicon Valley and Onto Wall Street

by Jeff John Roberts  · 15 Dec 2020  · 226pp  · 65,516 words

Insight Guides Iceland

by Insight Guides  · 6 Dec 2024  · 415pp  · 110,831 words

Mastering Ethereum: Building Smart Contracts and DApps

by Andreas M. Antonopoulos and Gavin Wood Ph. D.  · 23 Dec 2018  · 960pp  · 125,049 words

Better Living Through Criticism: How to Think About Art, Pleasure, Beauty, and Truth

by A. O. Scott  · 9 Feb 2016  · 218pp  · 65,422 words

Tools of Titans: The Tactics, Routines, and Habits of Billionaires, Icons, and World-Class Performers

by Timothy Ferriss  · 6 Dec 2016  · 669pp  · 210,153 words

The More of Less: Finding the Life You Want Under Everything You Own

by Joshua Becker  · 2 May 2016  · 219pp  · 59,600 words

Intertwingled: Information Changes Everything

by Peter Morville  · 14 May 2014  · 165pp  · 50,798 words

Growth Hacking Techniques, Disruptive Technology - How 40 Companies Made It BIG – Online Growth Hacker Marketing Strategy

by Robert Peters  · 18 May 2014  · 125pp  · 28,222 words

Lonely Planet's 2016 Best in Travel

by Lonely Planet  · 30 Sep 2015  · 190pp  · 50,133 words

Side Hustle: From Idea to Income in 27 Days

by Chris Guillebeau  · 18 Sep 2017  · 206pp  · 60,587 words

Simple Matters: Living With Less and Ending Up With More

by Erin Boyle  · 12 Jan 2016  · 127pp  · 38,674 words

To Be a Machine: Adventures Among Cyborgs, Utopians, Hackers, and the Futurists Solving the Modest Problem of Death

by Mark O'Connell  · 28 Feb 2017  · 252pp  · 79,452 words

Slow

by Brooke McAlary  · 22 Aug 2017  · 149pp  · 44,375 words

Extreme Teams: Why Pixar, Netflix, AirBnB, and Other Cutting-Edge Companies Succeed Where Most Fail

by Robert Bruce Shaw, James Foster and Brilliance Audio  · 14 Oct 2017  · 280pp  · 82,355 words

Happy Inside: How to Harness the Power of Home for Health and Happiness

by Michelle Ogundehin  · 29 Apr 2020  · 245pp  · 78,125 words

J.K. Lasser's Your Income Tax 2022: For Preparing Your 2021 Tax Return

by J. K. Lasser Institute  · 21 Dec 2021

San Francisco Like a Local: By the People Who Call It Home

by Dk Eyewitness  · 5 Apr 2023  · 168pp  · 33,200 words

San Francisco Like a Local

by DK Eyewitness  · 4 Oct 2021  · 268pp  · 35,416 words

Everything I Know About Love

by Dolly Alderton  · 1 Feb 2018  · 267pp  · 81,144 words

Habeas Data: Privacy vs. The Rise of Surveillance Tech

by Cyrus Farivar  · 7 May 2018  · 397pp  · 110,222 words

Lonely Planet Pocket Vienna

by Lonely Planet  · 135pp  · 33,344 words