Sharing Is Good: How to Save Money, Time and Resources Through Collaborative Consumption (6 page)

footprint, is more important than loading up on material posses-

sions. Examining our society from this new perspective allows us

to see that when “mine” becomes “ours,” everyone’s needs can be met 20

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without waste. The beauty of this new worldview is that it doesn’t force us to surrender our personal identities. You can be part of the sharing economy without giving up the ability to pursue your own

dreams, without setting aside personal goals and aspirations, and certainly, without eliminating the innate desire to leave a unique mark on the world.

Unlike other ideologies that have tried to emphasize “we” over

“me,” there’s plenty of room for self-interest in the world of collaborative consumption. It’s just that once you get involved and see how truly enriching this lifestyle can be, it becomes clear that selfishness stands in the way of dreams more than it facilitates them. Through an emphasis on collaboration, community, and the idea that what

goes around comes around, those who try collaborative consump-

tion often realize that, by making themselves available as a resource for others, they too are lifted up by the community. Things that

never seemed possible when working on your own can be accom-

plished in a matter of minutes or days when you can tap into the

amazing power of the sharing community.

Sharing may not be a new idea as a personal behavior, but that

doesn’t mean it’s not revolutionary. Collaborative consumption is a new vision for what life on this planet can look and feel like — a broad and quite frankly audacious vision of how people — without

money, without politicians — can turn our consumption-obsessed

society into an economic democracy. So this is about more than just swapping your old clothes for new ones, or joining a car-sharing service. It’s about catalyzing a total paradigm shift in how we produce, consume, and govern.

Chapter 2

Why We Don’t Share

Sharing. It sounds so simple, even childish. In fact, it’s

when we were still toddling around in diapers that most of us

got our first life lesson about sharing, but that doesn’t mean it was an easy one to learn. Kids are perfect examples of human nature unbri-dled. Sally has new toy, and Johnny wants to play with it. Sally can a) snatch the toy away and scream about the infringement on her personal life, or b) play with something else while Johnny gives it a try, or c) share it with him. Many parents teach their children to share without reservation. Not only is the sight of a toy-hoarding child rather unpleasant, it’s an early demonstration of the way selfishness leads to the (temporary) happiness of only a few, while sharing leads to the happiness of many.

As we get older, the concept of sharing becomes more compli-

cated. We start to see differences in value, and understand the effort required to have “nice things.” We make exceptions for our selfishness, although we don’t call it that. We see sharing as cheating by those who don’t work as hard as we do. We start to categorize things as “used” or “shabby” and hold them in lower regard than things that 21

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are “new” or “expensive.” We gauge our success in life by the type and number of things we possess, and constantly compare our things

to our neighbors’ things. We become confused about the difference between “needs” and “wants.” We assume we need the things we want in order to be happy. We make grandiose statements about independence and hard work. We think these concepts are all tied up in money and personal possessions. Eventually, we start to view sharing as a silly thing that may be a nice idea for kids, but not for us. We see how easy it is to go out and buy what we need, and forget that there are other ways to live.

Now we’re seeing the terrible damage that mindless consumption

does to our planet, our economy, and our quality of life. We can feel, in our gut that something needs to change, but we’re paralyzed. We don’t like change. It’s new and scary and has the potential for failure. We love the idea of just grabbing a solution off the shelf and getting back to our regularly scheduled programming. But we can’t buy ourselves out of this mess. Sharing is the one alternative that eliminates this knee-jerk consumerism without asking us to live lower-quality lives.

Still, excuses bubble up. Compelling reasons are offered about why we can’t change,
not just yet.
Here are a few you’ve probably heard.

Time

“I’m so busy.” We, our friends, and coworkers utter this phrase on a daily basis, often as if our heads were about to explode with all the obligations vying for our time. Between work, school, church, sports, going to the gym, eating three meals a day, and making time to gaze lovingly into the eyes of our significant other, we feel like headless chickens. We’re interested in the fastest, most convenient options. We’d rather pay extra for the pizza to be delivered, the laun-dry to be folded for us, or the gas it takes to drive to the grocery store that’s less than a mile away. After all, it’s so much faster than walking.

Anything that might take a moment of extra effort is completely out of the question. We just don’t have the time. Or do we?

Why We Don’t Share

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According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics’ exhaustive

“American Time Use Survey” (www.bls.gov), and other sources, including Pew Research and the “Mendelsohn Affluent Survey,” we aren’t as busy as we think we are. In fact, we have plenty of discretionary time, we just waste it doing mindless things. Some surprising statistics:

• Working parents, who are usually (and understandably) at the top of the list of people who claim to “have no time,” spend only one hour less on leisure activities per day than do those without the same childcare concerns.

• Ninety-five percent of all Americans over the age of 15 watch 2 to 3 hours of television a day. That’s 10 percent of our 24-hour day

— and a much higher percentage if you measure it only against

the time we’re awake.

• Adults living in households with children under age 6 spend an average of 2 hours per day directly interacting with those kids

(bathing, reading, eating). Adults living in households where the youngest child was between the ages of 6 and 17 spend less than

half as much time providing primary childcare to household chil-

dren — around 47 minutes per day.

It’s not that we don’t have enough time, it’s just that we’re not using that time efficiently. When sharing alternatives present themselves, we make excuses because we’re convinced there isn’t time or energy. Yes, deciding to share or swap to meet your needs takes effort, and that effort takes time, especially when you’re a newbie. But since when has anything worthwhile been easy or instantaneous?

When we share, other people’s schedules, needs, desires, and abilities must be considered; that can sometimes slow things down. It’s when we realize that this slower pace of life is actually better for us, our communities, and our planet that the extra effort becomes an investment rather than a cost. Living a life based around collaborative consumption doesn’t mean we can’t still want things. It just changes how we go about fulfilling those desires. Instead of waiting, baby 24

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bird style, for corporations to tell us about the next big thing we can’t live without, and then rushing out to exchange our meaningless dollars for that thing, it is useful to recognize that the sharing economy provides a cheaper, equally convenient alternative.

Safety

By the time you arrive at work in the morning, you’ve endured at

least five life-threatening situations. Taking a shower, running the garbage disposal, driving the car, etc. All of these activities pose a threat to our safety, yet we do them without even batting an eye. It’s only when we do something out of the ordinary, like bungee jumping or

walking through an unfamiliar part of town at night, that we sud-

denly become concerned about risk.

Humans are hardwired for survival, so we take every precaution

to protect our health and safety. We wear seatbelts, we slather on sunscreen, we don’t talk to strangers. We do these things because they makes us feel like we’re in control of our fate, which makes us feel safer. We like driving our own cars and buying brand-new things because it means we’re in control of the situation, and we know what to expect. If we pay for a good or service and it doesn’t deliver, we complain to the manager or return it to the store for a full refund.

We demand satisfaction, and when we don’t get it, we fire off scathing reviews on our favorite social media network.

Stepping outside this familiar framework makes us feel uncom-

fortable. Staying at someone else’s house instead of booking a hotel room means we might have to wait for the bathroom or fix our own

breakfast. Sharing a ride means we might have to change our plans to fit with the driver’s schedule. In short, sharing means being flexible and trusting our fellow humans, and this too can make us feel unsafe.

We don’t like putting ourselves in unfamiliar situations where we can’t control all the variables, so we assume sharing is implicitly less safe than what we’ve been doing. But there’s no proof this is actually true. Yes, things do go wrong, but there’s no evidence to support the Why We Don’t Share

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idea that sharing puts us at increased risk for being involved in an unsafe situation or at the mercy of unsavory people. When you consider the millions of sharing transactions that take place every day, and the fact that there have been only a handful of incidents severe enough to make the news, it would seem that most sharing participants are willing to play by the rules so that everyone can benefit.

Money

One of the most attractive things about the sharing economy is that it’s accessible to everyone, regardless of their liquid assets. So why list money as a barrier to sharing? Shouldn’t shared goods or services be less expensive than owning them, or even free? We’ve already seen that some of the more complex examples of sharing, like time banks or alternative currency economies, remove the need for money altogether. But saving money is only one of the benefits of collaborative consumption. There are even more important benefits: increased access to the things we need, when we need them; decreased negative impact on the planet; and stronger ties between members of the community — including for-profit businesses. “What I see as the ‘secret sauce’ of collaborative consumption companies, and why I believe

they have the potential to play a transformational role in our communities, is that their very basis is people, and the primary purpose of these platforms is to connect people so that their needs can be met in an efficient way,” says Lisa Fox of OpenShed. “As a social movement I believe collaborative consumption has the potential to change the way we live,” Fox continues, “offering us greater flexibility, a great sense of empowerment over our own lives, and far more daily connections.”

There are many things that can be shared. Some are big, like cars or vacation homes, and some are small, like a hammer or a bushel

of apples. Big things, like cars and houses, need to be maintained very carefully if they’re going to be safe for people to share. Other big sharing endeavors, like bike-sharing programs, food co-ops, or coworking spaces, need real estate, licenses, paid staff, and insurance 26

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to make them work properly. These added factors cost money, and in many cases, that cost is absorbed by you, the sharer. These costs are often far lower than they would be for an individual to buy or rent their own car, house, bike, or solo office, but still, for some people, even the shared cost puts these services out of reach. Money is also a requirement if you want to start your own sharing endeavor with peers, especially if space or other essentials aren’t readily available through crowdsourcing.

Faced with the prospect of having to spend (or raise) money in

order to participate in or organize a sharing community, some might decide it’s just not worth the expense. What these people are forget-ting is that money isn’t the only way to measure something’s value.

Renting a room from a corporate hotel chain instead of a local resident might seem cheaper and easier, but will the hotel chain pick you up from the airport? Introduce you to their incredibly cute dog or invite you to enjoy the sunset on their back porch? Will a hotel concierge tell you which restaurants the locals
really
love? Probably not.

Just like buying your food from the grocery store doesn’t give you the same opportunities to meet the farmer the way participating in a local CSA does, sharing experiences are incredibly valuable in ways that can’t be measured in dollars and cents. They are the things that make us feel alive and give us memories that will last forever.

People

Things and experiences do not share themselves. Sharing depends