“sharing economy”
The “sharing economy” has attracted a lot of attention of late. For example, platforms such as Airbnb and Uber have been really growing over the years (Martin,2020). This has prompted administrative and political fights. Supporters guarantee that the new innovations will yield idealistic results—strengthening conventional individuals, proficiency, and even lower carbon impressions. However, some are against them saying that they are all about serving economic self-interest rather than sharing as they claim, instead they are ruthless and exploitative.
Many of the sharing economy sites publicize social association as a center result of their action. Be that as it may, the question is, do these bring people together and social trust?
Martin and Belk, in their lectures, tells us the framings of sharing economy. The economic opportunities it brings, sustainable form of consumption, how it is a pathway to a decentralized, equitable, and sustainable economy.
The sharing economy has been propelled by the new innovations that keep on coming. The mystery with which people and strangers can connect with ease just via platforms. People can now share and exchange ideas even when they are worlds apart. With such platforms, we can now be able to interface, trade, share data, and collaborate extraordinarily. This a positive side of the sharing economy that basically everybody concurs with. Technology, however, is more of the political and social setting in which they are utilized. Crowdsourcing gives us incredible assets for building social solidarity, sustainability, and democracy.
The commonalities in sharing consumption practice involve temporary access to non-ownership models of utilizing consumer goods and services with their reliance on the internet. For example, p2p was the first sharing economy that involved the sharing of music.
The sharing economy, however, has its dark sides. It creates unregulated market places, reinforces the neoliberal paradigm, and is an incoherent field of innovation (Belk).
It also produces class, gender, and racial biases, thus leading to racial discrimination.
However, the positive sides of sharing economy still outways its negatives as people are coordinating acquisition and distribution of resources for a fee, thus employment opportunities.