Vanguards of the “Sharing” Economy: A Maniacal Game of Monopoly
By: Christina Grey
Tags: Neoliberalism, Monopoly, Uber, Selfishness, Sharing Economy

“Sharing is caring!” Snaps my mother in an ironic recess of my memory; my sister and I are feuding over some immaterial-material object — a projection of my past that resurfaces daily in one form or another; humanity’s selfish pursuits. “If only you two could just get along,” parents chime in an effort to promote kinship among children competing for their attention. And yet, for all these attempts to steer us in the right direction, we grow up, beg for smart phones, and download an assortment of apps that marginalise the self-employed employees of the platform.

Now responsible teenagers, our parents deem us ‘smart’ enough to handle our smart-phones, so we open Uber, jump in a car with a stranger, and head over to a party; another parental proverb — ‘Never get in a car with a stranger’ — recedes into the horizon as we catapult into adulthood and its many moral complexities.

It’s no secret that humans are selfish. We are genetically programmed to survive no matter the cost. So naturally the shock value is relatively low when companies price success above morals and the peers with whom they “shared” an economy. Overnight, some of these share-mongering ‘superstar firms’ skyrocket into elite monopolies, leaving behind the very peers that built the platform for their Lyft-off.

Photo Credit: Jaunt Air Mobility. Passenger flying in an Uber Copter.

It certainly helps when the monopolistic forces driving Uber (and their ilk) across the Great West to Silicon Valley’s golden frontier are seasoned professionals of the game. But it may just be that Uber’s rush to break the transportation sector’s sound barrier is finslly being liquidated into fool’s gold, ending their Midas-like rule. Despite trying to expand into multiple markets — spanning sea, land, and now sky — speculations continue regarding the company dropping out of the race.

Uber is far from the only company that has left the masquerade ball of sharing economies. Companies drop out regularly, leaving their masks on the mantle before throwing on their capitalist cloaks — a bit-size carcass is left for a Benefit full of canapés.

Photo Credit: ScUber Website. From May 27 to June 17, 2019, this once-in-a-lifetime experience provided riders with an unfiltered view of an extraordinary underwater world, rich and diverse in marine life.

“It’s time to discard the rose-tinted spectacles with which we have hitherto viewed these Silicon Valley outfits…The billionaire geeks who currently run the giant internet companies may look and talk like a new species of entrepreneur but it would be more prudent to view them as John D Rockefellers in hoodies.”

— The Guardian’s John Naughton

Current economic models rely on user generated data extraction for profit. Therefore any digital infrastructures built to facilitate social exchanges often capture audience information and commoditise it. The concrete monetisation of abstract social transactions fuel established corporations to snap up innovative software licenses that organise mass audiences into fine tuned user-profiles.

The services these corporate giants provide have become central to all businesses and has the potential to decentivise, or at least heavily inhibit, digital entrepreneurs.

This leads to network monopolies such as Facebook that encase users into commodified clusters.

Photo Credit: IPPR Digital Commonwealth: How Platform Enclosure Occurs.

With position and wealth comes power, and the pillars of power today are marked by five universal web-based platforms whose combined annual revenue make up the GDP of 90% of the world’s countries. That seems fair, right?

In response a dangerous and legally complex pattern has emerged wherein governments struggle to regulate the algorithmic expansion of the new societal dimension.

Some governments are so terrified of these giants that they yield to them entirely; even requesting “support” by embedding political messages within their network clusters — noted notoriety in FaceBook.

Curious who these leading giants are? List the web-based platforms you visit most frequently and the device to open them and you’ll have your answer. Here’s a hint: It’s FaceBook, Amazon, Google, Apple, and Microsoft.

Image Credit: IPPR The Digital Common Wealth

Real inequalities for the average citizen are the exchange for high income earners in these ‘superstar firms’ — among them is Uber, but more notable are the top 5 arbiters of economic power.

Curious who these leading giants are? List the web-based platforms you visit most frequently and the device to open them and you’ll have your answer.

Here’s a hint: It’s FaceBook, Amazon, Google, Apple, and Microsoft.

These conglomerates operate much like airport hubs; full of enclosed shops, and more: they rule airlines, command flight departures, landings, and destinations; they sift passengers into classes, cramming some into distinguishable discomfort in order to save expenses in every area.

Thriving in the digital era has been systematically inflated through established capitalist norms and the inherent transactional value embedded within industrialised societies. But this relatively stale version of normative economic growth is starting to gain consumer attention, and a unified rise against monopolistic institutions is mounting.

Altruistic proverbs of yesteryear remain with imbued hope that tomorrow’s generations will live within an economic framework promoting co-existence rather than radical competition and market domination.

All this seems entirely fair, don’t you think? I wouldn’t concern yourself with it. There’s no way that our governments are at the mercy of these tech giants. We can all rest easy at night that our leaders are reliable and transparent servants to the common good. (Said no one ever.)