Share Vs. Rent

I am constantly surprised  (and a little dismayed) when an article that is ostensibly about sharing, and the sharing economy talks about renting. This quote,”You could start to equalize standards of living if you allow people who have a lot of stuff to comfortably rent out things to people who don’t,” from  Arun Sundararajan, and NYU researcher, is even more alarming. The article I lifted the quote from is on FastCoExist, “How The Sharing Economy Could Help the Poorest Among Us” How does it help the poorest among us for those who have stuff to charge the poor to use it. That sounds pretty much like the world we live in now. The paradigm shift (and I hope the quote was taken out of context) is when those who have stuff will lend it to those who don’t have stuff, ideally NOT for money. IE Share the stuff with people, not rent the stuff to people.

Originally Posted on Tumblr