Is Sharing Truly Caring? the Capitalisation of the Sharing Economy

Summary

This thesis provides a research overview regarding definitions, benefits and issues of sharing economy. The aim is to outline complexity of the sharing economy trend and to examine the dangers of sharing economy and its capitalisation in the realities of free market, often referred to as platform capitalism.

Sharing economy is not a new economic model. However, the scale of it is bigger than ever before thanks to technological development. Consequently, the blurred definition of the trend and confusion with terms are leading to increased deregulation, promoting grey area and accelerating precarity. In media, both experts and consumers use interchangeably terms such as collaborative consumption, peer economy, collaborative economy, on-demand economy, gig economy, to describe the same phenomenon.

Moreover as the commodification of sharing economy is progressing, corporate platforms providers use the notion of “sharing” being an ideology for on-demand labour system, called platform capitalism.

Keywords sharing economy, collaborative consumption, access economy, platform capitalism, platform cooperativism