By 2030, the number of things we nay share-homes, cars, and jobs-may well be nearly endless. Forecasts of the size and impact of the collaborative economy in the near future differ. The Brookings Institution estimates that it will be twenty times bigger by 2025. According to PwC, a consultancy firm, the highest rates of growth will be in crowdfunding, online staffing, peer-to-peer accommodations, ride-sharing, and music and video streaming. A linear extrapolation of these trends indicates that by 2030 the collaborative economy will account for upwards of 30 percent of total work and consumption.
Sharing and the return to the “old norm”
A new social category is being ushered in by technology: the “sharing class”. It’s defined by lifestyle, not property. To a large extent, technology-along with changing cultural values-is behind this transformative trend. If sharing homes and cars were the only big trends driven by digital platforms, the impact wouldn’t be as potentially transformational. The asset0sharing economy is just one part of the broader “ collaborative economy,” which also includes peer-to-peer lending, crowdfunding, crowdsourcing, reselling, coworking, co-freelancing, and many other ways of cooperating online. Many of the companies that populate sharing economy are best described as facilitators. They do not produce or deliver themselves. These platforms reduce transaction costs, making it convenient and affordable to engage in collaboration. The big lateral question for 2030 are: Will the collaborative economy make the world more or less unequal? Will it make jobs as we know them to disappear? Can it help address the environmental crisis?
2030 by Mauro.F.Guillen: 178–184
