by Christian Iaione | Aug 20, 2015 | Commons Press
Sharing economy builds on new or revived social patterns having important business, legal and institutional implications: the social practices of sharing and collaboration. They both build on the well known social practice of co-operation.
Given its innovative and dynamic nature, the concept cannot be ultimately defined. It encompasses however phenomena presenting the following features:
(i) its main agent does not act as the standard economic agent, the homo oeconomicus;
(ii) the sharing economy adopts a platform approach whereby relations, reputation, social trust and other non-economic motives within a community become one of the main drivers;
(iii) on a large scale the sharing economy makes intensive use of digital technologies and data collection. Data becomes primary raw material. Fixed costs are mostly externalised;
(iv) on a smaller, local scale some sharing economy initiatives might be limited to the common use or management of physical assets (e.g. co-working spaces, urban commons, etc.) or to new forms of peer-to-peer, sometimes street or building level, welfare systems.
Many think that the main actor of sharing economy is no longer the “consumer” willing to own something or buy some service, but rather a citizen, commoner, user, maker, producer, creative, designer, co-worker, digital artisan, urban farmer willing to have access to some service or asset that is needed to satisfy some of her needs. However, others argue though that the sharing economy actor is in many instances also someone willing to act and take care of, manage, generate or regenerate a common, open access resource, material or immaterial, without the intermediation of a public or private provider, on a peer-to-peer, person-to-person small scale level. Thus in the sharing economy the actor is not a mere “economic actor”. It could rather be a social or personal or civic actor for whom traditional economic motives are secondary or entirely absent. Some of the SE realms are not necessarily “economies” in the strict sense, but social communities and networks of collaboration that generate new economic ventures or are functional to existing economic activities.
In any case sharing economy seems to question the homo oeconomicus, a self-interested profit or utility maximizing individual, as its main agent[1] and be able to give rise to a new economic identity. An individual not guided by the perpetual quest to maximize its own material interests, an individual unwilling to act alone[2]. It is an archetype of individual who, while not giving up the pursuit of her passions and interests, understands that her individual freedom is nothing if it is not associated with a commitment to the community, if the “acting alone” is not paired with the “acting in common”[3]. Sharing economy main agent might be thus framed more as a “mulier activa”[4]. An individual able to act in the public – social, economic, political – arena and to place herself in relation to others in order to take care of the general, common interest which is the main of the three pillars of a “vita activa”[5]
A distinction between the various forms of sharing economy is however needed. They all use the same social paradigm, the act of sharing, collaborating, cooperating. Yet they are very different from one another. There is room to spell out those forms of sharing economy that perpetuate in some way the same social and economic dynamics of the pre-existing economic model and apply to each of them a different legal regime. The profit/non-profit divide does help in reading sharing economy initiatives, but it is not sufficient to draw the line between different forms of sharing economy. There are forms of profit/non-profit activities in almost each of the sharing economy realms. Also the profit/non-profit criterion is increasingly questioned even by standard economics as new hybrid forms of business arise.
A first distinction could be drawn between “sharing economy in the strict sense” and collaborative forms of sharing economy by framing collaboration and cooperation as added layers of sharing. As a matter of fact a distinction could be made between sharing economy initiatives that create and ossify a distinction between different typologies of users (consumers-users vs. providers-users) and sharing economy initiatives that foster peer-to-peer approach in which every user could be provider and consumer at the same time or even be involved in the platform governance. Even further cooperation could suggest a commons-based approach to sharing economy[6]. If the actors involved do not just share a resource but collaborate to create, produce, regenerate a common resource for the greater public, the community, they are co-operating, they are pooling for the commons.
Two main realms of sharing economy and four forms of sharing economy seem to emerge:
- “sharing economy in the strict sense” composed of:
- “access economy”, for sharing economy initiative whose business model implies that goods and services are traded on the basis of access rather than ownership. It refers to renting things temporarily rather than selling them permanently;
- “gig economy”, for sharing economy initiatives based on contingent work that is transacted on a digital marketplace;
- “pooling economy” composed of:
- “collaborative economy”, sharing economy initiatives that foster peer-to-peer approach and/or involve users in the design of the productive process or transform clients into a community;
- “commons-based economy”, “open cooperativism”, “open platform cooperativism” [7] for sharing economy initiatives that are collectively owned or managed, democratically governed, do not extract value out of local economies but anchor jobs, respect human dignity and offer new forms of social security.
Finally, the growth of sharing economy should only partially be considered a revolution and/or a consequence of the crisis[8]. For some aspects it might also represent, thanks to information technologies, the reverse-transformation[9] or the transition[10] of some sectors of the current economic model to long-standing economic traditions and economic models’ (e.g. cooperative economy, social economy, solidarity economy, handicraft production, commons economy etc.) and even to ancient forms of economic exchange (e.g. the bartering economy), which are alternative to capital-intensive forms of market economy.
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[1] Encyclical Letter Laudato si’ of the Holy Father Francis on care for our common home (24 May 2015). See paragraphs 13, 14, 90, 211. See also L. Trotsky, Attention to small things, (1 October 1921).
[2] For an archetype of individual willing to collaborate or “reciprocate” see for instance the “homo reciprocans” of S. Bowles, H. Gintis, Homo reciprocans, 2002.
[3] A. de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 1835.
[4] See C. Iaione, Economics and law of the commons, 2011.
[5] H. Arendt, Vita activa, 1964.
[6] D. Bollier, Think like a commoner: a short introduction to the life of the commons, 2014. S. Foster, Collective action and the Urban Commons, 2011; C. Iaione, The Tragedy of Urban Roads, 2009.
[7] J. Schor, Debating the sharing economy, 2014.
[8] K. Polanyi, The great transformation: The political and economic origins of our time, 1944.
[9] M. Bauwens, A commons transition plan, available at: http://commonstransition.org/
[10] See P. Conaty, D. Bollier, Toward an open cooperativism, 2014, available at http://commonstransition.org/toward-an-open-co-operativism/. See also T. Scholz, Platform cooperativism vs. the Sharing Economy, available at https://medium.com/@trebors/platform-cooperativism-vs-the-sharing-economy-2ea737f1b5ad
by Marina Bassi | Aug 9, 2015 | The Urban Media Lab
The 1st IASC (International Association for the Study of the Commons) Thematic Conference on urban commons is approaching. The call for abstracts is out until Aug 10th at 12:00 AM PT. The Conference title unveils the complexity and the ambition of an event that wishes to gather for two days the most prominent scholars and practitioners on urban commons, social innovation, sharing economy, to talk about “The City as a Commons: Reconceiving Urban Space, Common Goods And City Governance”. The Conference is organized by LabGov – LABoratory for the GOVernance of Commons, a partnership between the Urban Law Center of Fordham University and the International Center on Democracy and Democratization (ICEDD) of the LUISS University of Rome (http://www.labgov.it/the-city-as-a-commons-the-first-international-conference-on-urban-commons/). It will take place in Bologna on November 6-7, 2015. One of the track of the Conference concerns the Democratic Innovation and how governance of the urban commons could influence it. This is why we decided to interview one of the most prominent international scholars on democratic theory, Professor Nadia Urbinati.
On July the 5th, the Greek citizens went to the polls for the referendum announced by their Prime Minister, Alexis Tsipras. Greek people were asked to reply to a hard question, which then raised countless debates and opinions starting from the decision whether accept, or not, the austerity policies and economic measures proposed by the European Union and international creditors, to solve the issues about the Greek debt.
Many scholars, professors, writers and academics put the stress on the important fact that Greece is the cradle of democracy, the country where were born the most important historical thinkers of democracy.
Nadia Urbinati is one of those we are referring to. She is “Kyriakos Tsakopoulos Professor of Political Theory and Hellenic Studies” at the Department of Political Science of the Columbia University, she is also a political theorist who specializes in modern and contemporary political thought and the democratic and anti-democratic traditions. She co-chaired the Columbia University Faculty Seminar on Political and Social Thought and founded and chaired the Workshop on Politics, Religion and Human Rights.
The day before the Greek referendum, the Italian newspaper “La Repubblica” published an interesting article written by professor Urbinati. The title of the article is Greece and the European democracy myth which briefly but effectively analyses the history of democracy and the development of the political thought around this myth.
Some LabGov editors seized the opportunity and had the chance to build up a dialogue with professor Nadia Urbinati, trying to investigate the intersections between LabGov projects and the academic thought of professor Urbinati:
1) The twenty-first century seems to be identified as “urban century”. Can you create a model of urban democracy in Greece, in Italy, in Europe, or in the world? What features should you get?
Aristotle writes in the collection of the Greek constitutions that there are urban democracies and countryside democracies. However, a good democracy is mostly urban. Democracy, historically speaking, had its roots and developed in urban areas. Cooperation among people is essential to achieve it, regular exchanges are needed. These features are all better achieved in a urban environment. It is even possible to say, that democracy is the best form of an urban policy.
In ancient Greece or during the American or French revolution, participation was limited and fluctuant. Ephialte and Pericles created daily indemnities to allow people to participate. Today the situation is completely different, and there is the co-existence of two apparently opposite trends: on the one hand, physicality is no longer necessary in order to share in power, (the social media allow us to participate without “being there”); but on the other hand, politics lost credibility and attraction at least at the national level. Yet we witness the rise to a re-discover of “locality” and as we know democracy lives in small spaces better than in large ones, closer to us better than far from us.
2) The twenty-first century seems to have also another feature, a prefix. The one of the Latin “cum” or the Anglo-Saxon “CO-“. There are many debate on co-operation, co-working, co-design of the commons (i.e. “beni comuni”), the regained centrality of the community, the importance of communication, the knowledge economy, etc. In Bologna, Mantua, Battipaglia, Palermo, Rome – as well as in other Italian and foreign cities – are emerging examples underlining the need for the community to get involved in public life through public actions and in daily collaboration of citizens. For example, in Battipaglia there is a process of collaborative planning, which puts around the same table to co-design services: citizens, institutions, businesses, civil society organizations, schools and universities. The main goal is to propose a new approach to the city’s development through a fostered channel of both citizens and institutions. In Bologna, we recently celebrated the first year of the Regulation on the collaboration between citizens and Public Administration for the care and regeneration of urban commons (i.e. “Regolamento sulla collaborazione per la cura e rigenerazione dei beni comuni urbani“). In Mantua, it has been built a platform of collaborative governance for a development centered on local culture and knowledge. What kind of role can these experiments have in the broader process of rethinking the local democracy? Could – a model of this kind – be the right approach to give Mediterranean countries back the role of “cradle of democracy”?
The founding fathers had this intuition. Altiero Spinelli thought of the unification starting from the local not only the national. Subsidiarity tells us that what can be solved at the local level, should not be solved at the national level. Take the issue of immigration, which is wrongly always thought as a national problem. However, it is in each municipality that lies the seeds of a possible solution: we should involve marginalized people; there are many things they can do, and many sector in which they can play a big role as participant. But in order to do so, a strong local community is needed.
3) Greece, and even more its citizens need to work in order to reactivate their economy: how can an investment in democratic innovations turn into a positive economic investment for the welfare of the local community?
Let’s think of the referendum recently held in Greece; it did not turn out to be what many believed it ought to, but at least it was a strong statement by the Greek people. Most of us had no idea of the meaning of public debt (who owns what to whom?). We need a stronger Europe, with less bias by Norther States against Mediterranean States. And above all we would need bright leaders and with strong European belief. In the US, when the State of California when bankrupt, Washington took the lead of a process of economic regeneration — we have to do the same in Europe too. Innovations, even democratic ones, may have a positive impact on our life; and so we would need to invest in our community, and unleash all their potentiality. Cooperation is the only way forward.
4) According to Professor François Garçon, author of Knowing Switzerland, the debt crisis reflected the indifference of the sovereign people. Greece, which has already taken a first step through a referendum, towards a model of direct democracy on economic and financial choices, could now explore new ways to regain possession of their relays and by doing so revive the economy itself, starting from small urban and regional economies. What is your opinion on that?
On an European dimension: we can and we must criticize the actual governance in Europe. The member states have no equal power and have no equivalence among them. There is not a European demos capable of expressing beyond the states. Treaties are no longer enough, especially in a time of economic crisis. The whole European construction was allowed by very lucky circumstances, like economic growth and reconstruction after WW2. Unfortunately, today’s circumstances are dramatically different. We must return to strengthen the local even more than the national if we want to have a political EU. The state should be an enabler of this change, and lately a partner.
5) How would it be possible, for local community inspired by the Rules of Bologna to interact with each other, and so give their contribution in the creation of democratic and horizontal network of local communities? Can they really change democratic and economic premises
It is a matter of education. Legality begins in interpersonal relationships, and cooperation is already a sign of education. American pragmatist thinkers had understood that for the management of a public good coordination was necessary to make everyone fell responsible. We often use the wrong words. For example the word “owner” is improper. We use the word for understanding reasons, but we rarely “own” something; we rather “borrow” or “share”. The key to success is to set good rules so as to make all the people who are involved in some communal enterprise feel they are partners on a equal foot.
by Marina Bassi | Aug 7, 2015 | The Urban Media Lab
The city council of Sao Paulo, South America’s largest metropolis, voted to ban the U.S.-based Uber ride-sharing service late Tuesday. City lawmakers decided 48-1 in favour of banning application-based private car services such as Uber in a preliminary vote[1].
But What are the lessons and forms of innovation that we can learn from this literature and this movement in managing the urban commons? Some possibilities are the regeneration of common spaces in cities for co-working and co-manufacturing, forms of cooperative ownership models such as community land trusts and real estate investment cooperatives, and the conscious emergence of a collaborative class in cities which transforms the economic relations between urban inhabitants. Is the collaborative/sharing economy the way to a commons-based urban economy? These, are the open questions on which we should think about.
The first IASC Conference, named “The City as a Commons: Reconceiving Urban Space, Common Goods And City Governance” is coming! LabGov organizes it in collaboration with Fordham University of New York and the ICEDD of the LUISS University of Rome. The Conference will take place in Bologna on 6-7 November 2015. The conference will be co-chaired by the LabGov’s coordinator Professor Christian Iaione (UniMarconi University and LUISS Guido Carli) and by Prof. Sheila Foster (Fordham University) both pioneer scholars in conceiving the urban commons.
The Conference aim to analyses the phenomenon of urban commons in a comprehensive way, dividing the two day work in 6 Tracks. One of the them is devoted to the Collaborative/ Sharing Economy as the basis for a commons-based urban economy. . The emerging sharing or collaborative economy, across all sectors of society, suggests strong, more democratic and horizontal alternatives to producing, distributing and managing a host of private and public goods across society. Professors, scholars, experts are invited to submit a paper for contributing to the ongoing debate on the sharing economy. The Conference want to investigate on what are the lessons and the forms of innovation that it is possible to learn from the literature on the collaborative economy and from the experiences of the movement active all around the world.
Recently, Shareable published an interview about the IASC Conference, in which Professor Christian Iaione explicated “The urban commons discipline actually comprises several fields of studies (city governance and local democracy, urban design and economics, urban sociology and geography, service design, land use and comparative law, just to name a few) but remains still understudied by scholars and it is often an unfamiliar terrain for both local institutions and citizens. Therefore, the primary focus of the IASC conference is to expand and explore this new frontier of a collaborative governance for the urban commons movement.”
More info on: http://www.labgov.it/wordpress/urbancommons/
[1] http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/07/01/us-uber-brazil-idUSKCN0PB4N720150701
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Il consiglio comunale di San Paolo, la più grande metropoli del Sud America, ha votato per vietare Uber ride-sharing Martedì. I legislatori hanno deciso 48-1 a favore del divieto servizi di auto privata application-based, come Uber in una votazione preliminare.Ma cosa sono le lezioni e le forme di innovazione che possiamo imparare da questa letteratura e questo movimento nella gestione dei beni comuni urbani? Alcune possibilità sono il risanamento degli spazi comuni nelle città di co-working e co-produzione, le forme di modelli di proprietà di cooperazione quali i trust terra comunità e cooperative di investimento immobiliare, e l’emergere di una classe consapevole collaborazione nelle città che trasforma le relazioni economiche tra gli abitanti urbani. È la collaborazione / condivisione economia la strada ad una economia urbana basata su comuni? Queste, sono le domande aperte su cui dovremmo riflettere.
La prima conferenza IASC, denominata “The city as a Commons” è in arrivo! LabGov la organizzerà in collaborazione con la Fordham University di New York e la ICEDD della LUISS di Roma.
by Benedetta Gillio | Jul 26, 2015 | Commons Press, The Urban Media Lab
The European Union Committee of the Regions, the EU’s Assembly of Regional and Local Representatives, has launched an initiative to open at the EU level the discussion on what is known as “sharing economy” and/or “collaborative economy“. The name itself and the scope is under scrutiny. Several EU institutions are working on similar if not identical subjects, using different label such as collaborative economy, circular economy or commons-based economy.
Benedetta Brighenti, Vice Mayor of Castelnuovo Rangone, will act as political rapporteur and Christian Iaione, LabGov director, will act as technical expert appointed by the Committee to carry out the consultation process with stakeholders and later the actual drafting of the CoR opinion.
Many European, national and local policymakers, public officials, scholars and practitioners from all over Europe willing to contribute to the CoR opinion drafting process will be involved in the launch of a new platform on sharing/collaborative economy.
The final version of the opinion is going to be approved on December 3.4, 2015. By the end of August, Brighenti and Iaione will deliver the draft opinion on which the consultation process will be carried out. The main moments of the consultation process are going to be held in Berlin at the CoR ECON Commission meeting on September 28, 2015, in Rome at LUISS University within a conference on the Smart Collaborative City on October 12, 2015, and The City as a Commons conference in Bologna on November 6-7, 2015, Milan on November 9-10 at SharItaly.
Brighenti and Iaione are willing to meet and involve as many public officials, practitioners, operators and scholars as possible in the discussion and will be available to hold deep dives, hangouts or workshops in other European cities that are willing to organize them.
Find below the working document that paves the way for the CoR opinion:
COR-2015-02698-00-00-DT-TRA-EN
COR-2015-02698-00-00-DT-TRA-ES
COR-2015-02698-00-00-DT-TRA-NL
COR-2015-02698-00-00-DT-TRA-FR
COR-2015-02698-00-00-DT-TRA-DE
COR-2015-02698-00-00-DT-TRA-HR
COR-2015-02698-00-00-DT-TRA-RO
COR-2015-02698-00-00-DT-TRA-BG
COR-2015-02698-00-00-DT-TRA-SL
COR-2015-02698-00-00-DT-TRA-SK
COR-2015-02698-00-00-DT-TRA-PL
COR-2015-02698-00-00-DT-TRA-MT
COR-2015-02698-00-00-DT-TRA-LV
COR-2015-02698-00-00-DT-TRA-HU
COR-2015-02698-00-00-DT-TRA-ET
COR-2015-02698-00-00-DT-TRA-CS
COR-2015-02698-00-00-DT-TRA-FI
COR-2015-02698-00-00-DT-TRA-EL
COR-2015-02698-00-00-DT-TRA-DA
COR-2015-02698-00-00-DT-TRA-PT
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Il Comitato delle regioni ha appena lanciato una iniziativa per aprire o riaprire la discussione su un nuovo paradigma sociale, economico e istituzionale che viene definito economia della condivisione, e che include, si integra o sovrappone ad altre forme di nuova economia come l’economia collaborativa, l’economia circolare, l’economia dei beni comuni.
COR-2015-02698-00-00-DT-TRA-IT_sharing economy
by Marco Quaglia | Jul 21, 2015 | The Urban Media Lab
According to Google it was in 2009 when someone typed for the first time the term “sharing economy. It goes without saying that things have changed in these 6 years, and now, knowingly or less, everyone is aware of this non-traditional business model.
A recent study published by the Cologne Institute for Economic Research, is a good scientific benchmark against which comparing the approach to “sharing economy” on both the shores of the Atlantic.
Designed in the US, a sharing economy model represents a paradigmatic shift from an “ownership based” economy to a “use based” economy. Aside from that, to underline the basic features upon which this model of business is not that easy; and the scientific literature still needs to fully address this sort of shortcoming. However, a broad definition, that is generally accepted is the following: “(a sharing economy model) includes all economic activities that focus on sharing goods, services or knowledge”.
Basicly the human being share goods and services with his peers since time immemorial. In the last decade, new IT technologies have boosted these practices to the skies. Let’s just think of online platforms able to match demand and supply instantaneously. Therefore, it is possible to say that technology was and still is the main driver of new sharing economy businesses. Day after day, they are easier, cheaper and more flexible. Car2Go, AirBnb, Bla Bla Car, and Uber, are just some of the most successful experiences of the last years.
The main focus of the study is however to put in the spotlight the interaction between these companies – which are all very different – and traditional business companies on national or European markets. On the one hand, because of their often “platform-based” nature, sharing economies companies find it easier to enter markets in comparison to traditional entrants; on the other hand, they need to work in a legislated environment which was not conceived for them. The consequence is a negative reaction, often an open conflict, with traditional companies who complain about unfair competition in markets that used to be uncontested for some time.
The conclusion of the study is that basically, pre-sharing economies regulation is inapplicable to sharing economies companies, especially P2P model – let’s just take the case of private accommodations: if a private should oblige to regulation in the matter of fire safety, pollution control or hygiene, almost no private accommodation would be suitable for rent.
Therefore, a different approach is needed. The legislator, according to the author of the study, should work following these policy directions:
- level the playing field quickly for both traditional and non-traditional companies;
- provide resources for competition in Europe
- foster venture capital
- foster the ease of starting business
- promote entrepreneurship in school
At the the end of the day, and this is in my opinion the most important conclusion of the study, “sharing economy” is an opportunity for everyone; to some extent also for traditional business model actors. For example, when a “sharing economy company” enters a market, it also contribute in increasing the demand for that particular market – i.e. consumers interested in sustainable consumption, and so forth. If a traditional company understand that, new market segments are open for everyone to take it.
LabGov welcomes the beginning of this debate in Europe, and especially in Italy. We are in fact well aware that good ideas are worthless in unregulated environments, and we are also working to fill this gap.
Un recente studio pubblicato dall’Istituto di Ricerca Economica di Colonia, ha messo in evidenza le sfide che la diffusione di modelli basati sulla sharing economy stanno ponendo nei mercati tradizionali. Connotati da caratteristiche uniche – in particolare ll’idea dell’uso dei beni e non dalla proprietà – questi modelli vivono e prosperano grazie a nuove tecnologie in grado di mettere in contatto diretto domanda ed offerta di beni. L’altra faccia della medaglia è rappresentanta dal vulnus normativo che crea tensioni con le imprese tradizionali. L’Europa, ancora indietro rispetto gli Stati Uniti sotto questo punto di vista, deve aggiornare le proprie leggi e regolamenti per fare in modo che la “sharing economy” diventi un’opportunità di crescita per tutti, nel rispetto delle regole e della concorrenza.
Marco Quaglia
