WTF is Airbn-something or other?
Sort of like Uber for houses, personally I say RUN!!
I’m fascinated by the MSM assault on these new-ish services (of course Uber gets a mention in the article as well). After a brief honeymoon, the unions, and the ‘Rat party are lining up against this disruptive technology with a constant drip of negatives.
Stepping back, what are Uber, Lyft, AirBnB, Sidecar, etc really doing? The companies themselves make their income as brokers: they connect a supply with a demand and take a cut. One of the ways they do this is by emulating Ebay’s trust model: they’re the third party that can arrange for the transaction, allow transparency between and among the various parties trust reputations, and allow a means of recourse if one of the parties is unhappy with the transaction. (ie, the identities of both the alleged victim and the suspect are known in the subject instance.)
Other things happen when these marketplaces are successful: consumer goods (apartments and cars, for instance) suddenly get added to an economy’s stock of capital goods, thus creating armies of micro-capitalists where only workers and consumers existed before. Uber drivers, for example, don’t report to a Taxi company, work on the company’s schedule or on the company’s route. They choose their own hours, area of operations and perform their own cost-benefit analyses of their efforts. Needless to say, this is not beneficial to existing crony capitalist companies, unions, or their captive politicians.
What these new “sharing economy” companies don’t do, contrary to the New York Time’s assertion, is provide rides, or apartments, or phone service, or any such thing. That’s the union’s , and this the MSM’s line of attack though. If these new marketplaces aren’t killed in the cradle by the established order, they won’t overturn hotels, or taxi companies, but they will create millions of people who suddenly start thinking like independent entrepreneurs and capitalists, who can solve problems on their own, thankyouverymuch, and don’t need the state, or a union in order to better their lives.
That, I think, is what the MSM fears most.