THE NAKED CITY – IT’S ‘SHARE’ LUNANCY
“There has never been a more exciting time to be an Australian.” – We’ve all heard those words recently, but perhaps they needed the qualification – “particularly if you have millions of dollars stashed away in the Cayman Islands.” Then again, if you are a taxi driver, working fifty to sixty hours a week, the excitement level is probably not quite that elevated – with the threat of Uber tailgating your every movement.
Only last week the Labor Party announced its plans for the so called “sharing economy”, emphasising that “the next Uber should be launched in Australia.” There was the usual waffle about regulating the global giants like Airbnb and a ‘guestimate’ that there were potentially 16 million rooms that could be let out across the country.
Forgive us if we are overwhelmed by our own cynicism, but not only is the ‘sharing economy’ nothing new, its current promotion is essentially just a money-making grab. Technology has certainly enhanced the opportunity to become your own maverick taxi driver or flog your granny flat to a bunch of Swedish backpackers, but the idea is nothing new.
We can well remember the days when people advertised online to share petrol costs and ‘company’ on a trip to Melbourne; the driver arrived at your door and all was going well until he suggested a detour via the Belanglo State Forest. Likewise, landlords (both the honest and totally unscrupulous) have been renting out spare rooms for ages. Reinventing that concept as Airbnb might look like an attractive idea to some gentrified folk, but personally we’d rather not have perfect strangers leaving semen stains on our vintage Joyce Mayne waterbed.
We all know it’s the technocrats who come up with these concepts like Uber, and the technocrats who reap the greatest rewards as their tentacles spread worldwide. Good Lord, Uber has even entered poverty stricken Peru where for years drivers in Lima could purchase a detachable plastic taxi sign for a few dollars and affix it to their rattletrap whenever they wanted to earn a few extra bucks.
The so called “sharing economy” is simply just a mask for opportunist, tech driven globalisation. If it affects and eventually screws conventional businesses, then it’s simply labelled good old fashioned competition. Like when Starbucks was setting up its global chain of coffee shops, it would often open right alongside a long established independent café, poaching their customers and eventually driving them out of business.
All we can do is speculate as to what the next obscenely successful startup of the sharing economy will be. Maybe brothels and escort services should be on guard, as “wife swapping” becomes a legitimised enterprise. Pimping your partner could be an added attraction for your home b&b, with 24h pick up in your own Uber cab.
Share your pet, share your jacuzzi, share your compost pit, share your grandparents and share just about anything that is shareable. Everybody will be looking for that next shareable asset that can be exploited on line, masterminded by some huge global conglomerate and accessible with the click of a smartphone.
The irony of course is that the “sharing society” is largely controlled by the ‘unsharing society’, the tech barons and wealthy shareholders who control most of the world’s wealth. Those charities and NGOs who genuinely share within the community, without any financial remuneration, must surely take umbrage at the descriptor. Perhaps we should now label the whole phenomenon as the ‘snaring’ economy – just another money trap out to capture your bucks, regardless of any collateral damage.
