Share Economy: Band-aid solution or promoting sustainability?
The TV comedy Portlandia never misses a chance to poke fun at the latest fads -- this time it's the share economy. It's about businesses that use the internet to offer shared access to goods and services, such as AirBNB, zipcar, and taskrabbit are all part of the share economy. Next time you need a hole but don't have a drill...Vancouver's Tool Library can set you up.
The share economy is booming but some believe its actually a sign of a much bigger problem with the regular economy.
Steven Strauss is an adjunct lecturer in public policy at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and he was in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
The following 3 guests closely follow the rise of the share economy:
- April Rinne is the Chief Strategy Officer at Collaborative Lab which works with companies, governments and entrepreneurs interested in understanding the share economy. She was in San Francisco.
- Tom Slee is the author of No One Makes You Shop at Wal-Mart: The Surprising Deceptions of Individual Choice, and he was in Waterloo, Ontario.
- Chris Diplock is the co-founder of the Tool Library. He completed a study about the share economy in Vancouver.
Do you participate in the share economy -- if so, tell us how? If not, why not?
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This segment was produced by The Current's Lara O'Brien, Josh Bloch and Leif Zapf-Gilje.