How Airbnb and Lyft Finally Got Americans to Trust Each Other

Don

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Wired has an interesting article about internet-enabled social change.
The sharing economy has come on so quickly and powerfully that regulators and economists are still grappling to understand its impact. But one consequence is already clear: Many of these companies have us engaging in behaviors that would have seemed unthinkably foolhardy as recently as five years ago. We are hopping into strangers’ cars (Lyft, Sidecar, Uber), welcoming them into our spare rooms (Airbnb), dropping our dogs off at their houses (DogVacay, Rover), and eating food in their dining rooms (Feastly). We are letting them rent our cars (RelayRides, Getaround), our boats (Boatbound), our houses (HomeAway), and our power tools (Zilok). We are entrusting complete strangers with our most valuable possessions, our personal experiences—and our very lives. In the process, we are entering a new era of Internet-enabled intimacy.
The article then goes on to discuss trust relationships that governed most interactions in the pre-industrial age, and how important reputation was in those mostly-smaller communities. Then it goes on to describe how that reputation-based environment was modified as the world changed.
That all started to change around the mid–19th century. As Americans moved from small towns to big cities, small merchants were replaced by large corporations, and local markets gave way to national distributors. Suddenly people couldn’t rely on interpersonal relationships or cultural norms to safeguard their transactions; they didn’t know, and often never even met, the people they were doing business with. The result, UCLA sociologist Lynne Zucker has argued, was the destruction of the trust that had sustained the US economy up until that point.

In the ensuing years, formal systems sprang up as proxies for the trust that citizens had lost in one another. The decades between 1870 and 1920 saw the explosion of the “social overhead capital sector”—industries like banking, insurance, and legal services that established rules and backstops for the new business environment. Meanwhile, a slate of government regulations helped establish the rules that this new breed of corporations had to follow.
Finally, the author delves into how the purveyors of these new services in the "sharing economy" have approached replacing the formal systems in place in the centralized economy with arrangements somewhat more focused on interpersonal relationships and trust. In this new economic paradigm, trust and reputation once more move to the forefront of human interaction.

Just as the internet has transformed and decentralized intellectual property management and 3-D printing promises to transform and decentralize production, I believe the services that make up the "sharing economy" will transform and decentralize a wide range of personal services, once again reducing people's reliance on mega-corporations and government regulators.

In this way, the internet, 3D printers and easily affordable CNC machines, P2P file sharing, mesh wi-fi, services such as Airbnb, Lyft, eBay and etsy and payment systems such as bitcoin and Ripple are all interrelated, and all point to a drastically different society in the future.

What say you?
 

Plot Device

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I have a fairly lengthy post somewhere in the AW archives where I gave a quick thumbnail of the Consumer Protection Act, singed into law by President Kennedy. That law came into being because it recognized this exact extinction of the previously ubiquitous and eons-old two-party relationship of the local small town merchant and his local small town customer base. But then with the rise of industrialism, it became no less than three parties with the middle-man being the local K-Mart, a decidedly impersonal mega-corp with little regard for the little guy. But beyond three parties are the fourth and fifth parties of the distributer and the wholesaler, etc, etc.

Yes, we are a great big huge inhuman world of automation and mass-distribution. It sucks. So huge corporations need to be reigned in.

Meanwhile, the future of 3-D printers does look like it can change the current paradigm, sending us into a strange sideways return back to the two-party relationship, but with a 21st century twist to it.

I can't fully fathom how that will turnout. But it is interesting to think about.
 
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William Haskins

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New York judge considers subpoena for Airbnb user data
Peer-to-peer home rental site Airbnb had its day in court Tuesday but will have to wait to find out if a New York judge will order it to turn over user data to the attorney general, who asserts many of the 15,000 users in New York City are operating illegally.

"Today, the Attorney General again made it clear that he remains determined to comb through the personal information of thousands of regular New Yorkers just trying to make ends meet," Airbnb posted on its website late Tuesday afternoon. "We were proud to stand up for our hosts who share their homes and against this over-broad, government-sponsored fishing expedition. Cities like Paris, Amsterdam and Hamburg are embracing the sharing economy and New York shouldn't be stuck playing catch-up."

Since October, New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has been seeking to enforce a subpoena to gain access of the user data on the 15,000 or so hosts who offer rooms in New York City through Airbnb. After several postponements, Judge Gerald W.Connolly in the Supreme Court of the State of New York, County of Albany, on Tuesday heard arguments from both sides.

The judge reserved his decision and will issue his ruling sometime in the future, according to the court clerk's office.


http://www.cnbc.com/id/101602236
 
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Don

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Trust is all well and good until Airbnb sends a sex party to your apartment.
I'd rather receive a sex party from Airbnb than a no-knock raid from the DEA. YMMV. :D Also, I hear that Airbnb pays for damages, unlike the DEA.
 

clintl

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With Airbnb, you might actually get both.
 

Don

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‘Why are governments so afraid of Uber and Airbnb?’
It’s not governments which are afraid of these innovative (and often fantastic) products. It’s the cab companies and the hotel chains which which own local governments which are afraid.

The middlemen no longer have the market or history on their side. But for a short window they still have the power. Thus the effort to regulate away the new competitors.
A fairly concise explanation of where the "flying cars" and many of those innovations we dreamed of as kids went, as well. The status quo hates innovation and will use whatever power they possess to maintain their market share.
 
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rugcat

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In San Francisco there's been quite a fuss about landlords evicting longtime tenants so they can use the apartments as super short-term rentals through Airbnb and make themselves a lot more money.
 

clintl

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Uh, I don't see how hotel chains are any more "middlemen" then Airbnb. In fact, it seems to me that Airbnb is the classic example of a middleman, where hotel chains are direct merchants. In fact, all of these "innovators" are middlemen.
 

Albedo

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Uber is playing out over here at the moment. Some states are cautiously watching, whilst Victoria appears to have gone full state overreach, threeatening all and sundry with 'investigation'.

There is definitely a huge element of rent-seeking by the existing (overpriced, protectionist, mediocre-quality) taxi industry here, but there are also legitimate concerns, I think, about adequately insuring these defacto commercial vehicles. And such matters DO need to be investigated. Road space is a commons like any other.