Show what you want to share

A super-simple solution for showing your neighbors what you are willing to share: Put a sticker on your mail box that shows it.
The stickers are available from Swiss pumpipumpe.

Uber controversy in Business Week

BusinessWeek ran a good story on the legal challenges following the rise of Uber - which, judging from investments from the likes of Google, is now valued at an incredible $17 bio.

Uber: The Company Cities Love to Hate

Mine or our? They are very different games

There is an important difference between mine and ours, when it comes to commitment and roles. It makes a big difference whether it's ”my” project or if its ”our” project – and exactly the same is true for a company or organization, for knowledge, for stuff and gadgets, and for profits ... Are you thinking in terms of ”me” or ”we”? They are different games, with different logics. And my argument would be that we are moving towards more of an ”Our” approach, ​​because it pays off better with the tools we have available, and because it works better with the challenges we must overcome these days. 
If it's ”your” project, well, that's what it is - then it's not mine, and it’s not any of a lot of other potential contributors’. That makes a difference, and we should be aware of its implications.

My interview with Lisa Gansky on the Mesh economy

I reviewed Lisa Gansky’s ”The Mesh” and Rachel Botsman’s ”What’s mine is yours” in the Danish newpaper Politiken this weekend. In addition to the review they published an audio recording of an interview I did with Lisa Gansky.

You can hear the interview here.

From the interview:

”A lot of the mesh economy is organized around this particular theme:

unused value equals waste. So, at a global community level we already have a lot of stuff. But we don’t need a lot of what we have much of the time. And so a lot of these services are about getting more yield or getting more utilization out of what we already have”.

Virtues of the formal economy: There are reasons for having taxes and regulations

The ideas of the ”mesh” economy and ”collaborative consumption” are to create services built on shared access and shared maintenance of goods. Lots of businesses are based on this: Hotels, rental cars, car sharing, and airlines… What’s new is how digitization, urban density and a tight economy makes it possible to share many more things: Tools, sports equipment, car rides, little chores like shopping or assembling IKEA furniture.

In a sense it is a very efficient market: if someone has idle capacity, it can be offered to others and used easily and quickly and with a minimum of regulatory hassle and paperwork. Wonderful!

However, there are a few dilemmas that arise as the exchange becomes less formal, and you start doing a lot of peer-to-peer exchange and bartering.

In many ways it's the good old moonlighting economy, but digitally enhanced – and the trouble with moonlighting is that you can’t collect taxes from it, and there’s no way to enforce society’s normal regulation.

So, if you believe in having a well functioning and adequately funded public sector, good roads, public healthcare and education – or if you believe in regulation to keep track of pollution and unsafe working conditions – or if you believe in trade unions to protect decent wages and blatant exploitation of those who are too weak to negotiate – well, then you might feel that a growing informal sector is undermining the rights that others have fought hard to ensure over the past century.

It’s a paradox that the mesh economy is seen as a way of strengthening local communities and building stronger social interaction – but at another level, you can argue that it short-circuits the building blocks of society as a whole.

I have no doubt that the current commercial system, and our current way of regulating business and interactions is too rigid and often counter productive. Mesh-style initiatives are needed to challenge and explore.

But going local shouldn’t mean ignoring your obligations to contribute to society at the greater level.