Sharing You Can Believe In: The Awkward Potential within Sharing Economy Encounters

Summary

For too long now I’ve been researching and advocating on behalf of systems of shared use. This year, the ‘sharing economy’ has shown itself to be overwhelmingly an anti-regulatory, precariat-creating way of monetizing social interactions. The term has been so exploited by some of the most vile, greedy technolibertarians around that it is time for me to write off more than a decade’s work. (When I do, I will refer to it as my ‘failed research focus startup’ so that it actually bolsters my credentials.)

But because my other primary area of research has recently been revealed to be indubitaly an anti-Semite (I had before now thought that Martin Heidegger was that rare beast, a non-anti-Semitic uber-Nazi), I feel the need to make a last pitch for what I think is and could be the significance of ‘sharing economies.’ In particular, I want to try to defend the term ‘sharing,’ or argue for why it should be reserved for certain kinds of systems, ones that could actually change how our societies work from the current ‘business-as-usual.’