Can the Sharing Economy Provide Good Jobs?

[don]

Re: Sharing Doesn't Always Grow

VC Pitch, inspired from Michael Mayo's column in the Sun Sentinel (it's copy/paste protected)

The Pitch:

One-time theme bars, each in a unique and "down-home" setting.

A network of app-connected neighborhood homes where you could imbibe, dance and converse, and what's wrong with that.

A Jazz-home with wine, a C/W beer night, and a Cigar & Bourbon house with smoke and sip patio.

The name: Ubar.

Marketed as drink-sharing, though guests would pay and hosts would profit. But the drinks would be cheaper because:

No liquor license.

No full time staff.

No commercial rent.

We're self-regulating responsible.

So who cares what local authorities think. You're running a speakeasy and that's what our litigation war chest is for - you.

And neighbors? What about a free drink coupon. Believe me, there's ways.

Tipsy guests leave by ... you guessed it ... Uber.

And they can sleep it off at a airbnb.

Remember guys, it's the Shearing Economy and the sheeple await.

Invest today!

[santafe2]

Re: Sharing Doesn't Always Grow

Ubar...drink-sharing, guests would pay and hosts would profit. But the drinks would be cheaper

No friends? No problem...

[ProdigyofZen]

Re: Sharing Doesn't Always Grow

Tipsy guests leave by ... you guessed it ... Uber.

Uber driver picked me up from the airport Sunday the 5th. He stated he just finished taking home some very drunk high school kids at a party in the Highland Park area (think old money and very wealthy in Dallas) and all they asked from the Uber driver was; "where can we get cocaine?."

At least the Uber driver had sense enough to state "I'm glad they used Uber instead of driving home drunk and of course I know where to get cocaine but I wasn't telling them."

[don]

Re: Sharing Doesn't Always Grow

Palm Beach County isn't rolling over on driver background checks and commercial insurance. In last night's public hearing, a bit of Uber's slip was showing, as they stated that the cost of fingerprinting so many drivers, together with their high driver turnover rate, didn't fit their business model. They had complied in Houston and it wasn't to their liking.

[LorenS]

Re: Sharing Doesn't Always Grow

But simply cutting costs wasn’t the primary motivation. The real advantage was to enable the organization to focus on what it did best rather than distract itself with tasks for which it had little expertise and which were not especially profitable.

Right. I've seen businesses who have focused themselves into oblivion. I watched one company whose sole achievement was shrinking themselves enough so a competitor could purchase them with cash. If laying off people is what you do best it's time to refocus. Seriously, there are a whole lot of companies whose core competency is providing crappier products while employing less people. It's not a good long term focus.

Another problem with modern business is they don't understand that you don't get top notch management by paying bad managers a lot of money.


I work with people with multiple patents, I've seen real innovation, the "sharing" economy is not innovation, nor is it new. Uber, Air BnB and the like are no more innovative than an 8 year old's lemonade stand. The only innovation is the web site and the only thing of value is the customer list. It's not providing new jobs, it's merely disintegrating old ones.

[LorenS]

Re: Sharing Doesn't Always Grow

Duplicate post

[vt]

Re: Can the Sharing Economy Provide Good Jobs?

The new people coming in to replace those leaving are sharing space to be able to afford to live there:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articl...s-are-ditching

[vt]

Re: Can the Sharing Economy Provide Good Jobs?

By L. GORDON CROVITZ

July 26, 2015 6:44 p.m. ET216 COMMENTS

Progressive New York Mayor Bill de Blasio and Socialist Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo found common cause on a shared threat while attending a recent climate-change conference at the Vatican. “The people of our cities don’t like the notion of those who are particularly wealthy and powerful dictating the terms to a government elected by the people,” Mr. de Blasio declared. “As a multibillion-dollar company, Uber thinks it can dictate to government.”
But before Mr. de Blasio could return from Rome, he learned that people really don’t like when politicians try to take away their favorite app for getting around the government’s taxi cartel. The mayor was forced to drop his plan to limit Uber to a 1% annual increase in cars, far below the current rate.
It’s hard to see why Mr. de Blasio thought that would be good politics. Two million New Yorkers have downloaded the Uber app onto their mobile devices—a quarter of the city’s population and more than twice the number of citizens who voted for Mr. de Blasio. But it’s easy to understand why he views Uber as an ideological threat. A tipping point is in sight where big-government politicians can no longer deprive consumers of new choice made possible by technology—whether for car rides, car sharing or home rentals. Mr. de Blasio’s experience should encourage other politicians to sign up for innovation.
Uber has become a wedge issue. The Conservative mayor of London, Boris Johnson, took the opposite approach from Mr. de Blasio. “You are dealing with a huge economic force which is consumer choice, and the taxi trade needs to recognize that,” he said recently. He told a gathering of taxi drivers in London: “I’m afraid it is a tragic fact that there are now more than a million people in this city who have the Uber app.” When cabbies objected that Uber drivers were undercutting their prices, Mr. Johnson replied: “Yes, they are. It’s called the free market.”
Presidential candidates are divided as well. Hillary Clinton implicitly criticized Uber in her campaign speech on economic policy, saying the “so-called ‘gig economy’ ” is “raising hard questions about workplace protections and what a good job will look like.”
By contrast, Florida’s Sen. Marco Rubio has a chapter in his presidential campaign book, “American Dreams,” titled “An America Safe for Uber.” He describes explaining to a college class he taught how Miami had banned Uber cars. “As my progressive young students listened to me explain why government was preventing them from using their cell phones to get home from the bars on Saturday night, I could see their minds change,” he writes. “Before I knew it, I was talking to a bunch of 20- and 21-year-old anti-government activists.”
For its part, Uber hired David Plouffe, who managed Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign, to help wage the political fight. Mr. de Blasio didn’t know what hit him. He justified the cap on Uber cars by blaming the company for traffic congestion, citing a 0.84-mile-an-hour decline in Manhattan’s average vehicle speed between 2010 and 2014. That took chutzpah, given that the mayor himself pushed through a reduction in the speed limit to 25 miles an hour from 30. It also ignored the numerous bike lanes and pedestrian roadblocks the city built during that period.
Uber made the fight personal by adding a “de Blasio” mode to its app, estimating how long the wait would be under the proposed law. Model Kate Upton tweeted in Uber’s support.Errol Louis wrote in the Daily News that “Mayor de Blasio is leaving N.Y.ers stranded—like a black man trying to hail a cab uptown.” An Uber spokesman picked up the theme: “There is nothing progressive about protecting millionaire taxi [campaign] donors who mistreat drivers and discriminate against riders.”
New York taxi medallions have plummeted in value due to competition. Their owners made the fatal miscalculation of assuming City Hall would always protect them by limiting the number of cabs. They failed to anticipate how new technology eventually disrupts every industry. Apps like Uber give consumers better protection, prices and services than regulators ever can.
Government-enforced cartels fall faster and harder to disruptive innovation than most businesses. When change comes, it is more dramatic than in industries that already have competition. The fate of taxis is a warning to other regulated industries that new technologies always give consumers more choice. And citizens can always make the choice to vote for candidates who embrace innovation over regulations that protect entrenched interests.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/why-uber...azy-1437950641

[seobook]

Re: Sharing Doesn't Always Grow

Uber driver picked me up from the airport Sunday the 5th. He stated he just finished taking home some very drunk high school kids at a party in the Highland Park area (think old money and very wealthy in Dallas) and all they asked from the Uber driver was; "where can we get cocaine?."

At least the Uber driver had sense enough to state "I'm glad they used Uber instead of driving home drunk and of course I know where to get cocaine but I wasn't telling them."

When I was at a Target about a month ago there was a bright Lyft car parked right up front, sitting as an ad.

I don't get out much ;) and I've not used Uber, but the first time I saw/noticed someone using it was about a week ago. My computer broke while I was at Disneyland & I was waiting for the valet to take my rental car back after going to get some parts to try to fix it & some drunk guys from Texas who were there for their brother's wedding told me they were taking Uber. The guys were quite kind, but they were frustrated with their Uber driver the first time trying it because he didn't speak much English and didn't know how to find the main Disneyland Hotel in Anaheim. That lack of local domain knowledge seems quite absurd particularly in light of all the mobile mapping interface stuff and whatnot. I can understand getting stuck in traffic during rush hour, but when it is close to midnight and there is no traffic it can't be hard to find something that amounts to the economic heart of a city.

[don]

Sharing Economy: It's In the Bag

Starting a Rent a Designer Handbag Business
By Skip McGrath

All your life you have loved purses. Big ones, little ones, unique ones, designer ones, it did not matter; you just had to buy it. Now you have a closet full of designer handbags.

They held memories, carried everything you ever needed, maybe even kept you out of trouble, but they are beginning to take over. There is no more room for them. This solution may be just the thing to allow you to keep them and make some money at the same time!

If this sounds like you, then you would also benefit from starting a purse rental. What could be better than lending out and borrowing designer or even funky bags! You are not the only woman in your neighborhood that likes to look fashionable. The problem is in the original cost of the bag, especially if you are only going to use it once for a special occasion!

How It Works

This business works with used handbags you now own or you can buy new ones. Imagine being able to buy a new Channel handbag and write off the cost against your taxes as a business expense?

You could rent out purses individually, but there are other options. Charging a membership could be the answer. You could make several levels of membership depending on how often the members want to borrow, or how expensive the collection is that they borrow from.

You could allow the members to keep the purse as long as they want, return it, and then borrow a new one. You would not have to keep track of late fees, just membership details. You could also offer to let the members buy any bag that they cannot bear to give back! By offering membership to your current purse selections, you will be able to add to your collection without feeling guilty!

For a basic membership, allow them only one purse at a time. If they wish to borrow more than one bag, offer a premium membership.
If a member wants to purchase a bag, you can review such factors as who the designer is, the availability of a new one, the length of time they have been a member, your initial cost, and the age of the bag. If they agree to the price you quote, you can then arrange payment.

You don't have to limit your business to used or old purses. Once you have a membership base, you can buy designer handbags from the outlet stores -such as the Coach Outlet stores at outlet malls. Another source for wholesale designer handbags is Magazzino Italiano at http://www.luxurymagazzino.com.

Advantages to Borrowing

Your members will never have to worry about having the latest designs. Instead of having their closets full of out-of-date bags, they will be able to borrow what they want and then borrow a new one when they are tired of the one they have.

If a member has a black-tie or very dressy event to go to, they do not want to spend money for a new evening bag just to have it sit in their closet after the evening is over. Instead they can borrow an evening bag and return it in a day or two saving them money.

If a member is going on vacation and would love to have a hot designer bag to carry, they could borrow one and return it after vacation.
A member's teenage daughter is starting to get fashion conscious and she wants to borrow some a purse. The member could upgrade and allow the daughter to borrow some of your old trendy bags from when you were younger!

Some women would carry a different bag every day, if they could afford to. With your purse rental service they could do so with no problem! The monthly membership fee would allow them to have unlimited bags as long as they return the one they are done with.

How to Get Started

If you have a computer, use either Publisher or Word to create a flyer with your new membership program information. Both software products make it easy to put little tabs on the bottom that you can put your name and phone number on. This way they can tear it off and call you later. Print the flyer on some bright colored paper to catch the eye.

Now, go around to the local beauty shops, grocery stores, Laundromats, anywhere where they have a bulletin board. If they don't have a bulletin board, ask them if you can post it inside their store.

In the meantime, make up some membership agreements detailing the terms for rental: Membership prices, fees for damaged purses, etc. Print up several, along with a membership form that includes a blank space for their name, address, phone number, level of membership, price of membership, and a place for their signature and date.

Later you can make up an index card to place in a file in alphabetical order. Leave a space on the index card so you can put the purse rental information with the date they rented it. This way you will always know which purse they have. Assign a number or other identification to each purse in stock. Use this information whenever someone borrows a purse.

Once you get the business started locally and start generating cash flow, you can now turn to the Internet and start an internet-based membership site (see below for resources on how to do this).

Helpful Resources:

• Build a membership website with XsitePro
• http://www.sba.gov/smallbusinessplanner/index.html

[don]

Re: Sharing Economy: It's In the Bag

wonder if their insurance covers this . . . .

[don]

Sharing Economy's Unicorns

There are 74 "unicorns” in US tech sector, valued at $273 billion. Will they become extinct? http://econ.st/1GXFGRq

[don]

Selflessness

Twisting Words to Make ‘Sharing’ Apps Seem Selfless

By NATASHA SINGER


I have trouble with the sharing economy. Ditto the peer economy, the people economy and the collaborative economy.

To be clear, I’m not objecting to the services themselves. Ride-hailing apps like Lyft and Uber, odd-jobs marketplaces like TaskRabbit, vacation rental sites like Airbnb, and grocery-shopping apps like Instacart have clearly made travel, lodging, home renovation and dining more efficient for millions of people.

What I find problematic is the terminology itself and how it frames technology-enabled transactions as if they were altruistic or community endeavors.

Let’s begin with “sharing,” a concept that implies something selfless — like giving a part of your liver to a relative who needs a transplant. Now, at least in industry parlance, the word has also come to denote just about any online venture that connects consumers seeking goods and services with people willing to provide them. That would include apps that charge a fee to stay in strangers’ spare bedrooms or use their cars — ventures formerly known as “renting.”

Lyft and Uber, for instance, have both described their services as “ride-sharing” whether the ride involves one or multiple passengers. Lyft also promotes itself as “your friend with a car.” Uber calls its drivers “partners”and “entrepreneurs.” Of Airbnb’s lodging rentals, its site says, “trust is what makes it work.” The names of some service-on-demand apps even carry share-and-share-alike connotations; take Favor, a food delivery start-up where consumers can order “favors” like takeout meals.

Of course, marketing by its very nature involves concocting the most appealing expressions to attract consumers. But start-ups that enable consumers to summon drivers, lunch deliveries or domestic help at the tap of an app have added incentives to portray themselves in feel-good terms.

Government regulators, legislators and courts in the United States have started scrutinizing the app-mediated service sector with the idea of determining whether longstanding consumer protection and labor rules apply to these new delivery models.

One of the central questions is whether people who perform services for on-demand apps should be classified as employees — who are entitled to workers’ benefits and safeguards — or as independent contractors who are on the hook for insurance, expenses and other costs. Judges’ and regulators’ decisions on this issue will depend in large part on whether the workers themselves generally control their own work or “are generally subject to the business’s instructions about when, where and how to work,” according to a federal test for classifying independent contractors.

Against the backdrop of possible regulation, egalitarian-sounding words like “sharing” and “partner” distance start-ups, linguistically at least, from the traditionally regulated industries they seek to displace.

“Framing it as ‘sharing’ or ‘peers’ is a way of trying to keep the focus on the people who provide the services — and off the platforms, which may be very rigid and deterministic as to when, where and how the services are delivered,” says Erin McKean, a lexicographer who is the founder of Wordnik, an online dictionary.

Altruistic words may also lend an aura of incontestability to app-enabled transactions. After all, who wants to challenge services that invoke generous concepts like sharing?

In a forthcoming study on the technology-mediated work experiences of Uber drivers, however, two researchers argue that terms like “sharing” can put a gloss on business practices that may work against the interests of the supposed sharers — that is, the drivers themselves.

Uber and Lyft, for instance, each set the prices passengers pay. But, the study notes, the Uber app is devised to require drivers to accept a ride request before knowing a passenger’s destination and being able to determine if that fare would be financially worthwhile. The study also points out that Uber asks drivers to return passengers’ iPhones and other lost items — a service that earns good will for the company — without automatically compensating drivers for their effort. Some drivers have also noted that the companies encourage them to provide bottled water, mobile phone chargers and other services to passengers at their own expense.

These practices seem inconsistent with the idea of workers as partners who have a say in the business or autonomous, self-directed entrepreneurs, the authors write.

“I think that the biggest problem with the sharing-economy language is that it co-opts you into your own disempowerment,” says Alex Rosenblat, a researcher at Data & Society, a research center in Manhattan, and a co-author of the study.

(Disclosure: I am starting a part-time fellowship this fall at Data & Society.)

Kristin Carvell, a spokeswoman for Uber, said the app was intended to provide “transport without discrimination” wherever and whenever consumers choose. That is why, she said, drivers learn a passenger’s destination only after accepting a ride request. She added that providing water or phone chargers was an optional customer service for drivers and that drivers could return forgotten items directly to a passenger or to Uber.

The industry rhetoric could be dismissed as mere semantics if the stakes were not so high for investors (a recent financing round valued Uber at about $51 billion), workers and government authorities involved with industry oversight. As with other hot-button issues — do you say “illegal aliens” or “undocumented immigrants”? — word choice here can offer clues to a person’s stance.

In May, for instance, Representative Darrell Issa, Republican of California, announced that he and a Democratic colleague, Eric Swalwell of California, had formed a bipartisan Sharing Economy Caucus to focus “on these pioneering industries and ensure Congress is taking all of the necessary steps to facilitate, rather than hinder, the next great idea.”

A month later, the Federal Trade Commission held a workshop titled “The ‘Sharing’ Economy.” Marina Lao, who directs the commission’s office of policy planning, told me the quotation marks around “sharing” were meant to indicate that the agency was simply citing a popularly understood term and “not supporting any particular business model.”

And last month, Senator Al Franken, a Minnesota Democrat, and Senator Bob Casey, a Pennsylvania Democrat, wrote a letter to the Labor Department about the industry without once invoking “sharing.” The legislators asked labor regulators to examine whether business in “the new on-demand economy” had the potential to misclassify workers as independent contractors and the possible ramifications of such a problem. They also called it the “gig economy.”

News organizations, too, are grappling with what to call these services.

Last year, The Associated Press Stylebook, the ultimate American language manual for many reporters, added an entry for Uber. It described the company, along with Lyft, as “ride-hailing” or “ride-booking” services that allow people to use smartphone apps to book and pay for a car service. The entry cautioned: “Do not use ride-sharing.”

The A.P. manual does not yet have an entry for “sharing economy.”

In a telephone interview, David Minthorn, co-editor of the A.P. Stylebook, told me that “sharing” tends to imply an informal agreement among people, like carpooling. So it seems inaccurate, even euphemistic, he said, to use “sharing” in the context of commercial enterprise.
“We prefer a more forthright description,” he said.

[don]

Re: Selflessness

a recent financing round valued Uber at about $51 billion

Representative Darrell Issa, Republican of California, announced that he and a Democratic colleague, Eric Swalwell of California, had formed a bipartisan Sharing Economy Caucus to focus “on these pioneering industries and ensure Congress is taking all of the necessary steps to facilitate, rather than hinder, the next great idea.”

any connection here?

[dcarrigg]

Re: Selflessness

any connection here?

Yeah. Both the distinguished gentlemen from California like Ben Franklin so much, they just can't seem to get enough of little slips of paper with his portrait on them.

Reading this nonsense is enough to make you gag. The Congressmen talk about "The Sharing Economy" but only mention three companies by names specifically, Uber, Lyft, and AirBnB. Funny that. And Lyft was whining about not getting preferential tax treatment like busses and trains in there...as if it were a public service. Gross.

I mean, there's literally a peanut caucus and a bicycle caucus, so why not a California Criminal Enterprise Caucus?