You can not only find someone online willing to rent you a room in
their house, but someone who will share their car, their desk, their
power tools, their child’s toys. You can find someone to walk your dog,
deliver your dinner, assemble your furniture, lend you clothes or hold
your place in a queue for the latest iPhone.
This is the “sharing economy”, hailed by the government for creating “micro-entrepreneurs” and by economists for putting “excess capacity” to use. Traditional businesses and workers – from hotel owners to taxi drivers – have been less welcoming.
The sector is growing fast. Airbnb claims to have more than 1m rooms available, compared with the 13m rooms provided by formal hotel chains (not including bed and breakfast rooms). Uber can claim thousands of drivers – some poached from other lift services, or working for more than one. Not all companies are doing so well: TaskRabbit, which puts you in touch with vetted “taskers” to take whatever chore you want off your hands, has struggled to grow beyond its current 19 cities, which include London.
As poster children for the sharing economy (even if Uber shrugs off the title), both Uber and Airbnb have been accused of riding roughshod over the regulations other companies have to play by. The list of places where Uber has been banned now runs to Berlin (and later Germany), the state of Virginia, New Delhi, Belgium, the state of New South Wales in Australia, Spain, Portland in Oregon (it went ahead anyway), Thailand and Seoul in South Korea. A number of those bans were later lifted.
The ride-hailing service, started by Travis Kalanick after he found he couldn’t use his smartphone to hail a cab in Paris, has been the lightning rod for much of the anger at the disruption being caused by these new companies. In a number of cities, including London and Paris, taxi drivers have protested at the presence of the firm, claiming its avoidance of many regulations enables it to undercut them on price; in other cities, Uber “drivers” – the company insists they are not its employees – have protested too.
Meanwhile Airbnb, started by two designers who in 2008 hosted three people looking for a temporary place to stay, has had a series of run-ins with US regulators. New York state in particular has taken the company to task over whether its activity constitutes sub-letting, thus breaking the leases of many residents who offered rooms or homes. In April 2014, New York state authorities found that two-thirds of the apartments being offered there broke the law in that way.
Read more: Why the sharing economy could be the internet’s most divisive revolution yet | Technology | The Guardian
This is the “sharing economy”, hailed by the government for creating “micro-entrepreneurs” and by economists for putting “excess capacity” to use. Traditional businesses and workers – from hotel owners to taxi drivers – have been less welcoming.
The sector is growing fast. Airbnb claims to have more than 1m rooms available, compared with the 13m rooms provided by formal hotel chains (not including bed and breakfast rooms). Uber can claim thousands of drivers – some poached from other lift services, or working for more than one. Not all companies are doing so well: TaskRabbit, which puts you in touch with vetted “taskers” to take whatever chore you want off your hands, has struggled to grow beyond its current 19 cities, which include London.
As poster children for the sharing economy (even if Uber shrugs off the title), both Uber and Airbnb have been accused of riding roughshod over the regulations other companies have to play by. The list of places where Uber has been banned now runs to Berlin (and later Germany), the state of Virginia, New Delhi, Belgium, the state of New South Wales in Australia, Spain, Portland in Oregon (it went ahead anyway), Thailand and Seoul in South Korea. A number of those bans were later lifted.
The ride-hailing service, started by Travis Kalanick after he found he couldn’t use his smartphone to hail a cab in Paris, has been the lightning rod for much of the anger at the disruption being caused by these new companies. In a number of cities, including London and Paris, taxi drivers have protested at the presence of the firm, claiming its avoidance of many regulations enables it to undercut them on price; in other cities, Uber “drivers” – the company insists they are not its employees – have protested too.
Meanwhile Airbnb, started by two designers who in 2008 hosted three people looking for a temporary place to stay, has had a series of run-ins with US regulators. New York state in particular has taken the company to task over whether its activity constitutes sub-letting, thus breaking the leases of many residents who offered rooms or homes. In April 2014, New York state authorities found that two-thirds of the apartments being offered there broke the law in that way.
Read more: Why the sharing economy could be the internet’s most divisive revolution yet | Technology | The Guardian
No comments:
Post a Comment