This article was hand-written.
Introduction
What is a shared economy?
It is the pooling and sharing of income between individuals, as a collective entity.
The spending of income, is managed by the collective entity.
Be it for the purpose of achieving a goal, collectively providing upkeep or a safety-net for one-another.
It extends traditional concepts like the nuclear family to financial entities of size greater than a couple, and describes the sharing of income between individuals that aren’t direct family with one-another.
This can occur on many scales, national, regional, markets, communities and between small groups of people.
There is no suggestion as to how they might be managed, be it democratically, autocratically, meritocratically, choose your poison, for now this is an abstract observation.
How does it differ from the sharing economy?
We all have heard of the “sharing economy”, but most of us associate this with platforms upon which the sharing of goods over traditional ownership.
The shared economy is the sharing of income, not necessarily restricted to the sharing of goods that is managed by a centralised instance. (Such as Uber, Airbnb and other sharing economy platforms.)
Concept Cross-pollination
What are shared economies already similar to?
- Taxes (national scale)
- Crowd-funding (market scale)
- Grassroots universal basic income
- The nuclear family as a financial entity (local scale)
How do shared economies exist already?
- The existence of public safety-nets (national scale)
- The idea of universal basic income (deemed not feasible on the national scale, but what about the local scale?)
- Eco-communities (local scale)
Potential for shared economies
For whom?
- Political activists with frozen bank accounts
- Eco-communities
- People that want to support each-other beyond the traditional constraints of a family
Where?
In countries where safety-nets may not exist.
Critique
Why should we break from existing structures?
Isn’t marriage (group size 2) already complex enough?
How to achieve balance?
What happens when there is a bad-actor?
What happens when bonds are broken between group members?
Technology
Humanity over process
Blockchain
- enables governance
- rigid
- development brings too much technological overhead?
Software
- enables collective management
- is it worth creating software for something that is so changing, abstract and formless as human relationships? Or am I getting in the way by romanticising the representability of human relationships?
- Is software even necessary here? → A monthly zoom call is more than enough. → It seems the need is more mentoring, and collective education/coaching about money.