(Deicy) Definitions:
Sharing Economy: a hybrid market model built around the sharing of human and physical resources. It is primarily coordinated through community-based online services and includes the shared creation, production, distribution, trade and consumption of goods and services by different people and organizations.
Disruptive innovation: an innovation that creates a new market by applying a different set of values, which ultimately (and unexpectedly) overtakes an existing market.
(Melissa) Summaries:
When trying to figure out who to sue in scenarios involving Uber, Airbnb, and like-services, its difficult to determine whether it would be the drivers fault in an accident and whether a certain insurance will cover it or not. Courts also consider whether the people are really employees since employers are technically responsible for the actions of their employees. Because of all these “gray areas” these companies can potentially face greater liability for whenever a driver is using their service. Although services like Uber can be seen similar to the concept of a site like Craigslist, it is different since Uber vouches for their drivers and provides customers with the ability to process their credit cards.
Many investors had invested a little over $1 billion into Uber; based on their investments which resulted in the percentage of ownership that those investors were getting in exchange, the value for Uber was $17 billion. The selling point for these companies is disruption and strategy since they are upending ways of doing business. Even though Uber upended taxi service, it is not in the taxi business in a conventional sense since it does not own cabs or cab drivers.Uber, rather, plays the role of a matchmaker, matching up a driver/car to a customer that is looking for a ride. Uber has about 900 employees overall and pays them fairly well; it’s been able to grow at an exponential rate since 2009, doubling in size approximately every six months. Since Uber doesn’t own the cars that the drivers use, then most of their investment is in technology infrastructure. This allows the company to grow at high rates with little reinvestment. It would definitely be seen as a disruptive innovation since it was introduced to disrupt the established players; the new entrants win out over the larger since they have little to lose. This makes Uber attractive to investors since it is targeting the car service market at the moment but has the intention to expand into other markets.
We live in a “share-the-scraps” economy where robots do everything that predictably programmed ahead of time and the profits go to their owners and everyone else do the unpredictable-odd jobs and patch together barely enough to live on. New technology is allowing a job to be divided up into tasks that are given to workers when needed with pay determined by that particular job, such as Uber. The big money goes to the corporations that own the software and the scraps go to the workers. This allows for risk and uncertainties to be shifted onto workers and that work may entail more time to do and be more stressful. In Uber’s scenario, the drivers use their own cars, have their own insurance, and work as many hours as they want and end up paying Uber a large percent since they aren’t paid what you pay for using the service. People in this instance and many others are monetizing their own downtime, so in the end that is turning into work time that is unpredictable and low-paid. This shows that the share-for-scraps economy we now live in is hurtling us backwards rather than forward.
(DS) Questions:
Do you believe that a share or share-for-scraps economy is minimizing the use of human work to its lowest potential?
Is a complete share economy model (in every sector) the future of our society?
Are the creations of disruptive innovations such as Uber and Airbnb upending existing ways of doing business in order to create newer and more efficient markets?
the385blog 
Uber and Airbnb may be classified as disruptive innovations; however, they are definitely improving our economy in a positive way; even if some jobs become destroyed. There was a lawsuit some time ago involving Uber in which they were being sued by taxi companies complaining that the innovation of Uber was causing them to see huge profit losses. In essence they attempted to destroy Uber in order to save the taxi industry. The supreme court ended up ruling in Uber’s favor because they felt that innovation should not be stifled in order to protect companies that have failed to adapt; essentially it remains survival of the fittest. Uber has come under numerous lawsuits from taxi companies since then, but I’m confident they will continue to be successful for the same reasons stated above. Ultimately, to answer your question, yes. These types of companies are upending existing ways of doing business, and thus creating newer and more efficient markets. Other industries where I can see this potentially moving to is the dining industry. Say a person wanted to get a home-cooked Italian meal. Maybe instead of going to a restaurant, they could go on an app and find someone locally who is very skilled at cooking exclusively Italian meals. This is just an idea, but it could prove to be a threat to the casual dining industry.
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Uber and Airbnb may be classified as disruptive innovations; however, they are definitely improving our economy in a positive way; even if some jobs become destroyed. There was a lawsuit some time ago involving Uber in which they were being sued by taxi companies complaining that the innovation of Uber was causing them to see huge profit losses. In essence they attempted to destroy Uber in order to save the taxi industry. The supreme court ended up ruling in Uber’s favor because they felt that innovation should not be stifled in order to protect companies that have failed to adapt; essentially it remains survival of the fittest. Uber has come under numerous lawsuits from taxi companies since then, but I’m confident they will continue to be successful for the same reasons stated above. Ultimately, to answer your question, yes. These types of companies are upending existing ways of doing business, and thus creating newer and more efficient markets. Other industries where I can see this potentially moving to is the dining industry. Say a person wanted to get a home-cooked Italian meal. Maybe instead of going to a restaurant, they could go on an app and find someone locally who is very skilled at cooking exclusively Italian meals. This is just an idea, but it could prove to be a threat to the casual dining industry.
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I believe that this share-the-scraps economy is definitely minimizing the amount of human work now-a-days. It is making way for big corporations to make money by providing softwares that can do a lot of the technical work while leaving a lot of the physical less expensive work to actual people. Even though this in some ways is creating efficiency for bigger companies, it has a really big effect on the working class people who are trained to perform these specific jobs. I believe that over time this share-the-scraps economy will just increase as companies are just finding more and more ways to obtain cheap labor. I also believe that newer innovations such as Uber and Airbnb are contributing to this as they divide up jobs in ways where workers are only used when they are needed. This type of on-demand work has a huge effect on the workers where they end up taking most of the risk and compensated minimally for it.
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When it comes to a share or share-for-scraps economy they really are minimizing the use of human work. They are taking things that people use to do and replacing them with robots. It brings less meaning to people work when they get replaced by a machine. I mean robots make things easier and cheaper for owners. They benefit us greatly in more ways then one but, people are losing jobs. A complete share economy model, in every sector, is the future of our society. In the end we will all be working together on things. Every company now uses some kind out business or work that is not a part of their company. People would make an idea and have someone produce it. It just comes down to the cost of having your own production line or having an outside company for much cheaper. I feel as tho everyone in the future will be going with the complete share economy model, sooner or later. It’s something the world is just going into now. I agree with Brian on the 3rd question. I feel that these companies are changing the ways we do business but they are doing it in a positive way. Its all about adapting to the new age of things. With Uber they did just that, they changed the way you travel and get to one place to another. I feel that in the near future we will be seeing the disappearance of taxi companies or even they taking on the new age of things. It’s a dog eat dog world out there and you just have to keep up with your competition.
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Share for scraps economy is really lowering the amount of human work being done because the robots are pretty much doing all of the work that humans do while there owners, whether it be the people who created to robots or the people who own the given company these robots are doing work for are going to gain more of a profit. The effect of this type of economy is that the owners and management are going to do better money wise by gaining the profit from the products that they are selling. I do not believe that the complete share economy model is not necessarily our immediate future but could be after our lifetimes. Uber’s work is very unique and very innovate for their company, but at the rate that our country is going could lead to problems in our economy and in turn would disrupt the way our business operate in our society.
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The share the scraps type of economy will without a doubt lower the amount of human work being done, which in turn will obviously lower the amount of jobs available to humans. The more corporate America automates the further human interaction is distanced. What I mean by this is as companies create these smart devices the less we will need humans for these low level job roles. This does not mean that everything will be automated, but many predictable things can be and will be automated; this comes with the mindset of why pay someone to do it, when you can write a program that can do it for you. Humans will always have a place where things are unpredictable, and when that real human interaction is necessary. These huge companies that run corporate America are always looking for ways to cut costs and looking for ways to increase profit. So with that said if they can automate something or find a cheaper way to do it, you better believe they will go with that option. With regards to Uber think about when self driving cars become relevant. Uber is going to cut out many if not all of the drivers they employ because now that is just one more area to increase profits. Even though these companies are changing the way we all work I don’t necessarily feel that the change is for the worse. As technology advances more jobs will open if anything. Look at the dilemma the country is in right now, we have tens to hundreds of thousands of technology jobs open and available, but there is not enough qualified people to support these positions. So with that said I feel there will always be a place for humans to work and the economy to thrive, but the demographic of work may change.
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Unfortunately that is how the United States corporations work. The CEO and high leveled positioned shareholders sit back and collect money while other people do their work. I agree with Javis that the share the scraps economy will lower the amount of human work being done. With Uber having programs run their cars, its a risk that the CEO will have to make. Advantages to Uber is that it will save them employee wages tremendously because they will not need drivers with a self-driving car. Disadvantages to us humans is that thousands of potential and current jobs will be cut back. But you have to understand if you were the CEO or a shareholder in a company what choice would you make? It is only human nature to maximize our potential gains, after all, at the end of the day it is a company that wants to make the most money it can from their services.
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The introduction of share/share-to-scrap economy is minimizing the the use of human work to its lowest potential because jobs are being taken away, either by robots or cheap labor markets abroad. This has caused many issues including high unemployment rates with no way to stop this negative trend to our economy. I think that the whole economy, in every sector, will never truly happen because many job require different skills other than simple task, more analysis and quick thinking that is very hard for others to complete without proper training. I think that the introduction of Uber and Airbnb has changed the way business is conducted. These businesses have created a new market which has diluted the monopoly that has been created by the taxi industry and the hotel industry
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I believe that the share-for-scraps economy is not minimizing the use of human work to its lowest potential. I think it is increasing the potential of human work. This gives workers more time to be working on more important things than the tasks we have robots doing such as driving, production, and Airbnb. We can better our society even more with increased power and no wasted time in businesses and technology.
I think a complete share economy model will be the future of our society. More and better technology will keep coming and so our economy and way of life will keep changing to get better and better.
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Share-for-scraps economy has actually been helping the economy greatly. The market nowadays looks for the best interest in the people. And with great advances in technology and the ability to call for a taxi within seconds shows how far we have come. Uber and Lyft are only the beginning of innovating companies that appeal more to their market and several companies must adjust to this. Since Uber and Lyft allow the employers to use their own vehicle, they essentially cut those expenses right out where they do not need to purchase any vehicle. Not only does that benefit the company as a whole, but the workers are paid a little more than usual.
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