The Sharing Economy租生活-分享型经济在流行.docVIP

The Sharing Economy租生活:分享型经济在流行For most of the past century， Americans have been the worlds greatest consumers. And usually consumption has meant ownership： just before the Great Recession， the average American household owned 2.28 cars， and had more television sets than people. But these days a host of new companies are trying to disrupt1） the paradigm―offering the benefits of consuming without the costs of ownership. Ride-sharing companies such as Lyft， Sidecar， and， in some cities， UberX2）， own no cars themselves. Instead， they sign up ordinary car owners： when you need a ride， you can use their apps to find a driver near you and ask to be picked up. Many other companies are trying to cash in on3） whats often called “the sharing economy.” Airbnb4） now features more than three hundred thousand listings from people making their apartments and homes available for short-term rentals. RelayRides and Getaround let you rent cars from their owners. Boatbound offers boat rentals， Desktime office space， ParkatmyHouse parking spaces. SnapGoods makes it possible for people to borrow consumer goods from other people in their neighborhood or social network. It may not be too long before youre able to pay to sit in a stranger’s living room and “share” his home theatre. Just a couple of weeks ago， Uber disclosed that it had raised more than a quarter of a billion dollars in venture-capital funding， most of it from Google. The flood of new money into all these new businesses feels like a mini-bubble in the making. But beneath all the hype5） is a sensible idea： there are a lot of slack6） resources in the economy. Assets sit idle―the average car is driven just an hour a day―and workers have time and skills that go unused. If you can connect the people who have the assets to people who are willing to pay to rent them， you reduce waste and end up with a more efficient system. In the past， this was hard to pull off7）， because the transaction costs involved in borrowing and lendi