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You might like to take a look at this new article on “The Conversation” website.
I’m glad you put the word “share” in inverted commas. The so-called sharing economy is a distraction from what’s really going on.
Sharing your residence would involve taking in visitors and giving them a room and some meals in the house or flat in which you live. That’s what has been called, since time immemorial, B&B. I note that the bnb in Airbnb originated from bed & breakfast, but these days it has little to do with that traditional model.
Most Airbnb hosts don’t do B&B. They mostly do short term rentals of self-contained self-catering accommodation. Mostly, it’s got nothing in common with B&B, and nothing at all is “shared”.
Same with Uber. Shared transport is an agreement to share a car when the driver needs to go to the destination anyway, and having extra passengers either contributes to costs or allows the use of restricted traffic lanes, or both. Uber isn’t ride-sharing, it’s a taxi service, which is a profit-making business, on which Uber and their drivers should pay tax like the rest of us. Do they pay tax? How many Airbnb proprietors pay tax?
Surely if the pensioner couple are the only ones to turn up to an AGM, there wouldn’t be a quorum, so they wouldn’t be able to conduct any business at all?
Ah yes, the “sharing” economy. So Airbnb have started using that word, just like Uber, the facilitator of “ride-sharing”.
Ride-sharing, Uber ain’t. Ride-sharing is when a car owner takes in some passengers to go from A to B because the driver is going there anyway and it provides a convenient benefit. I had such an arrangement a few years back with a couple who lived nearby – the three of us drove from Manly to North Sydney so that we could use the Transit Lane, halving our journey time in peak hour. And critically, the driver was going there for his work anyway.
Uber is not that. Uber is a for-profit business, effectively an alternative taxi service. The driver has no interest in going from A to B for any reason other than to make money.
Uber and Airbnb use the caring and sharing vocabulary to obscure their true reason for existence, which is that they are money-making enterprises.
Every time you see the word “share” in their communications, please point this out. It’s classic BS.
Sharing. Just like Uber, Airbnb loves the word “share”. The sharing economy. Nice and warm and fuzzy and cuddly and cooperative, sharing.
Except that’s largely not what these global mega-corps are about. They’re about making money. And most of the Airbnb so-called “hosts” aren’t renting out a room in their living space to people who need it. They’re about running a business to make money.
Just like Uber isn’t “ride-sharing”. Ride-sharing is car-pooling, where the driver, usually the owner of the car, recruits extra passengers to go where the driver is going anyway, for whatever reason (convenience, share petrol costs, qualify to use a Transit Lane?).
With Uber, the driver only goes from A to B for one reason – to make money. It’s a taxi service. Aka a business, which should pay full tax like everyone else, but all too often doesn’t.
Airbnb can go and get lost. Luckily the strata property I live in is miles away from the nearest tourist attraction, but if Airbnb invaded my strata, spawning a party block, I’d be out there fighting them with everything I’d got.