sharing economy

MaryW commented on the word sharing economy

LAST night 40,000 people rented accommodation from a service that offers 250,000 rooms in 30,000 cities in 192 countries. They chose their rooms and paid for everything online. But their beds were provided by private individuals, rather than a hotel chain. Hosts and guests were matched up by Airbnb, a firm based in San Francisco. Since its launch in 2008 more than 4m people have used it—2.5m of them in 2012 alone. It is the most prominent example of a huge new “sharing economy”, in which people rent beds, cars, boats and other assets directly from each other, co-ordinated via the internet.

Such “collaborative consumption” is a good thing for several reasons. Owners make money from underused assets. . . . Renters, meanwhile, pay less than they would if they bought the item themselves, or turned to a traditional provider such as a hotel or car-hire firm. . . . And there are environmental benefits, too: renting a car when you need it, rather than owning one, means fewer cars are required and fewer resources must be devoted to making them.

April 6, 2016

MaryW commented on the word sharing economy

There are a lot of names for it: the "sharing economy," the "gig economy" and the "on-demand economy" seem to be the three most popular. But the most precise description of the new labor relationships being enabled by digital technology may actually be, in the U.S. at least, the "1099 economy."

The 1099-MISC is the form that businesses, nonprofits and government agencies have to fill out when they pay someone $600 or more a year in nonemployee compensation.

April 6, 2016