Upstream - The Sharing Economy? (15 minute shortened version)

Episode Date: March 29, 2016

In this shortened version of our "The Sharing Economy?" episode, we look at how companies like Taskrabbit and Uber have influenced an entire generation and entirely shifted the economic landscapes of major cities globally. Through candid conversations with journalists and industry insiders, we explore the darker side of these giant companies and investigate how this phenomenon arose and what implications are in store. Featured guests: Doug Henwood (Author, radio host, columnist for Harper's and the Nation Magazine) Keally McBride (Professor of Politics and the Chair of International Studies at the University of San Francisco) David Korman (Lyft driver, former TaskRabbit, Couchsurfing host) www.upstreampodcast.org Twitter: @upstreampodcast Facebook: /upstreampodcast Instragram: upstreampodcast

You are listening to Upstream. Upstream. Upstream. Upstream. A radio documentary series that is part of the Economics for Transition project. I'm Della Duncan. Join me as we journey upstream

to the heart of our economic system and discover cutting-edge stories of game-changing solutions based on connection, resilience, and prosperity for all. I had a really weird dream last night where I, like, felt scorn for all these kids I know from high school who I see on Facebook are, like, getting married and, like, have quote-unquote real jobs

and, like, are in the rat race. And I wonder, I guess I wonder in my dreams, in my subconscious, you know, whether what I'm doing here is right. But then I wake up. I live 20 minutes from downtown San Francisco, five minutes from downtown Oakland. I work only when I want to. I'm respected by the people I work for. And how much is Lyft a part of that?

Lyft is the glue, the necessary glue that holds my life together right now. When I can't make enough money working for City Arts and Lectures at the Norse Theater, when I can't make enough money doing photo booths for Snap Yourself or serving food to people, when all of that is not enough to pay the bills, then I drive Lyft to make up the extra cash to, you know, to pay the rent. But usually the jobs I love a lot are enough. This is David Corman. He drives for Lyft, an app which connects drivers with passengers directly instead of using a centralized booking service or hailing a cab on the street. And in exchange, the app takes a portion of the driver's earnings. When we visited him, we got to take a ride in his car. So do you play music usually? Like don't people like, I've heard sometimes people like curate

the experience. They have like glow in the dark stars. Oh, and they pass out candy. Sometimes, I don't have any gum. Or like water. Yeah, I've given water. I've had it. It's good to have on hands, you know, just in case someone's about to vomit. Has that ever happened to you? Have they ever vomited in your car? Not in the car, but I've had about enough...

I've had about that much warning to pull over, and I have. Good. David is part of something called the sharing economy, and I have. Good. David is part of something called the sharing economy, which in 2011, Time magazine called one of the top 10 ideas that will change the world. The term generally refers to online platforms that allow people to acquire or access goods and services from individuals outside of traditional businesses or corporations. Time argued that companies like Lyft, Uber, Lyft's main competitor, as well as Airbnb, a short-term vacation rental service, help us do many things.

They help us make and waste less stuff because we're just increasing the use of things already in existence. They help us save money because we don't have to own things ourselves, we can simply buy access to them, and that they help us make meaningful connections with strangers, such as we might when we get into someone else's car in the case of Uber or Lyft,

or stay at someone else's house in the case of Airbnb. Although there may be some cases where these things are true, this isn't the whole picture. David told us that the sharing economy pretty much defines his life. He works for Lyft, worked previously for TaskRabbit, an app which allows people to outsource household errands and tasks that they need to get done to strangers. And he also hosts for CouchSurfing, which helps people visit and host each other for free. I wondered what David thought about all of these companies being under the name the sharing economy. car to provide a service, but I'm not sharing my car with anyone. I'm sharing my thoughts if I have

a conversation with them. I'm sharing my advice if they ask me where a cool music venue is and my experience in that way. But it is work. Doing someone else's laundry through TaskRabbit is work. Just because you share an experience doesn't mean that the economy is a sharing one. I don't think you can economize sharing. I share my couch, my living room, the extra blankets in my house. I share that with people, and we share experiences,

and we talk about our lives, and then we part, and we share those things. But no money changes hands because you can't sell and share at the same time. You know what is a sharing economy that was providing rides? The Montgomery bus boycott, and the civil rights leaders who organized carpools

for black people in Montgomery during the bus boycott. That was a sharing economy. They created an alternate system, an alternate bus system, so that their people wouldn't have to take public buses and be subjected to discrimination and to show that they had economic power. That's a sharing economy. Curious about this contradiction, we asked Doug Henwood, a U.S. American journalist and economic analyst,

if he uses the term the sharing economy. Well, I use that because it's a term that people know, and it's kind of hard to make up your own terminology given that language is a social thing. People like the idea of sharing. There's a certain appeal to that, and I think people who use this language understand that there's an appeal to it, that people have a more utopian longing to get away from this atomized individual world we all live in and to have some connection with other people.

So yeah, I use it, but I hope you can hear the air quotes when I do use it, because it's a strange concept of sharing. We learned in kindergarten that sharing is a good thing, but the way that sharing operates in the Uber, Airbnb world isn't exactly

the selfless thing that we all aspired to back in kindergarten. But yes, it's a term I use, but quickly, go into an explanation of what it's all about. I think sharing is a misnomer. I think sharing is a misnomer with most of these corporations. This is Dr. Keeley McBride, professor of politics and the chair of international studies at the University of San Francisco,

who is currently conducting research about the sharing economy. We asked her what term she would use instead. I would say the gig economy, where you make yourself available for really specific gigs. And it's not any kind of extended employment. It's entirely precarious. I think the gig economy is a pretty good word for it. What they're doing is they're capturing assets that are already in existence.

So Airbnb has been able to scale up insanely quickly because they don't actually have to ever build any brick-and-mortar buildings like other hotel chains do. So Airbnb as a company does only a very small part of what a hotel chain would do. So that's why they're able to just expand as quickly as they have. At one point in the early Industrial Revolution, it began with piecework. There was this idea that, well, you don't want women to work outside the home. And also factories who couldn't expand quickly enough to meet all their orders. They would just pass the pieces off to women and they would take them to their apartments and they would sew them off site and they would get paid per piece. I look at the sharing economy as something really similar to that, where we're not going to provide anything for you.

Those women had to buy their own sewing machines. They had to maintain their sewing machines, transport the pieces to and from the factory themselves, right? So it's a way of offloading the... The risk. Yeah, the risk and the capital needed to maintain... And they're alone. They're working alone.

Yes. In their houses. Yes. Eventually, people realized that they were getting less wages than they would if they were actually working in the factory. So there was a movement to push it back into the factory and regulate piecework. Before, it used to be like there was no minimum wage attached to it, right? Because you just got paid per piece. Things like TaskRabbit, they're going straight back to that.

One of the effects of neoliberalism over the last 30, 35 years has been to erode people's sense of political possibility. They tend to think in very individualized terms. And even their sense of doing good gets very individualized. It's just whatever consumption choices they make. They tend not to think about how we can get together in large groupings politically as parties or organizations or whatever. They tend to think of smaller-scale individual actions, but we need to get beyond that and go against this neoliberal trend in which we're all just lowly individuals in this world making choices and think about more solidaristic models of organization and action. I see kind of the sharing economy as a band-aid that's emerged at this time, like where workers are bleeding,

that's emerged at this time, like we're, workers are bleeding. People are really suffering. And they're trying to figure out how to make ends meet. But what we need is a political answer to this, not an individual one. Just like feminism had the personal is political, we need to have a, the economic is political. It's not personal, right? You experience it as a personal, political. It's not personal, right? You experience it as a personal, right? You're the one that says, oh, I can't pay that bill. Oh, I can't pay my mortgage or my rent. So you feel it's personal, right? But there needs to be a kind of fight back against the market as something that no one can do anything about. And so I would argue what we need is something kind of akin to like a worldwide labor movement again. I was a TaskRabbit for a year or two, but I actually got off-boarded from TaskRabbit.

But it wasn't working out anyway because I couldn't get paid. I wanted $20 an hour for event work, or any work, really. I found it really difficult to work for less than $20 an hour. And a lot of people were just getting task-rappered gigs by working for, you know, what seemed like below minimum wage. But that was just my perception. I don't know if that actually happened. That's not an accusation. But I guess that's supply and demand, right? But taking advantage of people is really not good for anyone. And if you do it enough, you create a principle where you're undervaluing people's time. And really, I felt it was just disrespectful.

It's disrespectful not to pay someone enough money to cover their bills for the day, you know, if they're working for a whole day for you oh the reason i drive nights and weekends is because well the reason i drive nights is because there are just way less things to hit. There are less buses, there's less people crossing the street, there's less bicycles, there's less other drivers driving really badly. There's still the same percentage of people driving really badly. There's just less people driving. Yeah. So less people driving badly. Yeah.

We've been in the car with David Corman. Lift sticker on the dash. The pink light up mustache tucked away. Thank you. That was a wild ride. Thank you for listening to Upstream. To check out more episodes, interviews, resources and events, please visit www.economicsfortransition.org. economics for transition dot o-r-g