Comments on: Is Sharewashing the new Greenwashing?

By: Elizabeth Burton

Elizabeth Burton — Sat, 14 Jun 2014 17:21:46 +0000

As the wife of a licensed cab driver in a city where the “shared ride” companies have arrogantly ignored the regulations and simply moved in and started doing business, this subject is of special interest to me. The fans of these services jumped on a tragedy at a recent large event caused by a drunken driver to advance the false idea there aren’t enough cabs to ensure inebriated people can get home without driving.

There are plenty of cabs available. Their drivers just aren’t in the mood to spend an hour or more cleaning puke out of their cab, all the while losing money in a business with very tight margins, or risk physical injury if a drunk passenger gets belligerent. However, the tactics these companies use are so blatantly the same as what any other for-profit “service” industry engages in, it’s sad and frustrating that people who know nothing about how taxi service works embrace them as a huge improvement when they are anything but.

It’s been pointed out elsewhere that the “sharewashing” services at least allow the unemployed or underemployed to make some money on the side, but the ones I’ve read so far don’t mention, as does this piece, that those drivers (just like cabbies—who knew?) are responsible for insurance and fuel. However, as part of the fees cabbies pay to the cab company, they get their repairs taken care of, for the most part. Who’ll do that for the “citizen drivers” when some uninsured driver plows into them when they have passengers aboard?

And let us not forget that most if not all personal auto insurance companies don’t cover the cars if they’re used for commercial purposes. Or that rates go up based on the number of miles driven annually. Are the shared-ride companies telling their drivers all these things, or do they want and let it be a surprise?

By: Curmudgeon

Curmudgeon — Sat, 14 Jun 2014 15:18:13 +0000

So, social and financial obligations and morals are set aside in favor of “sharing”. It works both ways.

What happens when people decide not to “share” their income with the government, tax authorities or chose not to “share” their eyewitness information with police after a crime is committed?

What happens when people decide not to “share” their neighborhood with minorities or outsiders?

By: Anthony Kalamar

Anthony Kalamar — Tue, 27 May 2014 18:08:36 +0000

Hello Michel,

I agree that it is not a matter of “policing language” – even the actual police do not have this ability, thankfully! There is, nevertheless, an assymetrical war of ideas that is being played out in the realm of words. In the current round of media coverage, the broad interpretation of “sharing economy” assists in the recuperation of the commons-oriented p2p movement by the other “sharing economy” backed by venture capital. (This is perhaps most easily done in English, where the word “sharing” has multiple complicated connotations, much like the word “free,” as many people have pointed out).

So often I see this formula in the media: idealists and activists are invited to discuss the ideals and possibilities of the sharing economy; an academic is called upon to provide the stamp of scientific authority; then the discussion turns to AirBnB and Uber, etc. showing how these “entrepreneurs” are putting the ideals into practice in a way that implies also, and not by accident, that the “free market” is the best guarantor of “freedom.” In any event the activists and academics introduce the ideal of the peer economy, but it is capitalism that delivers. This easy narrative needs to be disabled, or at least made more difficult.

“Greenwashing” was a great term that did exactly this when corporate environmentalism was first catching on. The very term encourages a healthy suspicion of the altruistic claims of any for-profit entity. “Greenwashing” as a word and a critical concept did not do away with greenwashing as an activity, but it helped make it more difficult – Chevron’s infamous “People Do” campaign, for example, became a laughingstock.

By: Michel Bauwens

Michel Bauwens — Sun, 25 May 2014 13:28:08 +0000

I think the general problem is that whatever term we will use, it will always be systematically adapted to other, including dominant interests. We are not strong enough to avoid this, and probably should not be in the game of policing language anyway. But what we can do is to be careful and precise about how use language. Indeed, p2p, in countries like the Netherlands for example, is almost exclusively use to describe so called distributed marketplaces (which are almost always centralized platforms). Our p2p-f interpretation of p2p is entirely different, as that form of relationing and creating value that creates commons, associated to the real sharing of that common resources. Typically, that is precisely the part that is left out by people like Rachel Botsman when they offer a synthesis of the sharing economy. It has all the parts of the rental and ‘work piecemeal for low wages’ economy and manages to entirely ignore peer production and commons-based economies. But apart from semantics, what really matters is: who controls and governs the mutualisation of resources in times of increasing resource and energy scarcity. So this is not just a bubble stacco, though bubbles may occur along the way, this is the key struggle for the future phase of the economy and civilization.

By: Bob Haugen

Bob Haugen — Sun, 25 May 2014 12:40:19 +0000

Stacco, I’m totally with you on cooperatives, too. My grandparents were members of the Nonpartisan League, which you can read about here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonpartisan_League

They were subsistence farmers in western North Dakota, a difficult environment to farm in. In their community, no farmers lost their land during the dust bowl and depression of the 1930’s, largely because of their cooperatives and solidarity that were forged in the NPL.

By: Stacco Troncoso

Stacco Troncoso — Sun, 25 May 2014 12:20:27 +0000

Great points, all. I really enjoyed the article Anthony and we'd love to republish more of your work on an ongoing basis. I agree with you too, Bob. Maybe it's a bit of an oversimplification but I intuitively perceive "Commons" as more emotional and feminine and "P2P" as more intellectual and masculine. We're trying to speak of the "P2P/Commons movement" and building bridges to include the "Cooperative movement" as one of the fairer forms of interfacing with the market to ensure our sustainability. (Read this trialogue, Anthony, if you haven’t already) So that's the work we have cut out for us in these next few years. We feel that the VC-led Micro-rental economy may just be the next big economic bubble (alongside Fracking, it'll be interesting to see how that plays out. As the bubble bursts, we want real Full-P2P (as in both use and exchange value) initiatives to be on the ground and creating a viable counter-economy.

By: Anthony Kalamar

Anthony Kalamar — Sun, 25 May 2014 11:53:12 +0000

Thank you for “sharing” (ahem) the article. I am a fan of the p2pfoundation and all that you accomplish.

I do feel that corporate use of the term “sharing” is moving into a new stage in its cycle as a media buzzword. Just as it increasingly picked up in the media, more cracks appear in the facade as more people start to question the relevance of the word “sharing” in this context. There could be some hope that this will lead to greater social awareness of other projects more genuinely concerned with the idea.

On the other hand, as marketers search around for a new term to replace “sharing” they are increasingly turning to “peer” or “peer to peer.” You can find these terms increasingly applied to centralized networks on the basis of some quite limited (and carefully managed) ranges of “choice” allowed to customers and service providers. I hate to say it but as sharewashing declines, p2p-washing is bound to rise. Advocates of bottom-up p2p networks need to insist on clarity in public debate on what p2p means, and what it does not.

Bob Haugen put it very well in his comment.

In Solidarity,
Anthony

By: Bob Haugen

Bob Haugen — Sat, 24 May 2014 15:16:00 +0000

P2P needs Commons to have any soul. Stacco, I know you know this.

This is just a reminder, not criticism of this wonderful article. I love it, as well as the others on this topic that you have posted recently.

By: Stacco Troncoso

Stacco Troncoso — Sat, 24 May 2014 11:29:34 +0000

In reply to Matthew Slater. Totally agree, Matthew and we should (in fact, are) create our full P2P-type organizations.

By: Matthew Slater

Matthew Slater — Fri, 23 May 2014 22:33:39 +0000

Important subject thanks.
I don’t think we can nip sharewashing in the bud because we are not the ones doing it. We can fight a war over semantics or we can realise how both debt hunger for profit drive organisations to lie about what they are doing.
It is up to us to act on good information when we do business with organisations we don’t know. The organisation itself is the last place we should be looking for that information!