The Trust Economy (San Francisco, February 4th, 2014)

I am not an anthropologist, but I play one on my blog...

I recently went to a lecture on the peer-to-peer economy.  In America, we talk about the peer-to-peer economy as this newfangled thing. In China, it is just the economy. But already, I am digressing.

America has, for a century, been a b-to-c economy, meaning business to consumer. Big businesses make stuff; consumers buy stuff. There were little offshoots of consumer-to-consumer, think flea markets and garage sales. However, the business-to-consumer was, for all intents and purposes, the entire economy.

Then, in about 2000, came eBay, the first mass consumer-to-consumer market in America.

I think the most bizarre thing about the emergence of eBay is how long it took to replicate in different business verticals. But, now, for the first time¹, comes the first really viable addition, Airbnb. Airbnb is a private rental platform where by people with spare bedrooms are competing with hotels, peer-to-peer. 

While I was at this talk the other day, the speaker asked, “Why is this (the peer-to-peer economy) emerging?”

There are two obvious answers, economic reasons (economic hardship) and technological reasons (the internet can now facilitate these interactions). Lots of people can, have and do write on this. All the reasons are fascinating, but I feel there is an additional cultural reason rarely discussed.

There has been a quiet cultural revolution at play in the last decade. I am at a bit of a loss as to what to call it; but I am going to go with the us-and-us revolution.

To understand this cultural revolution, I, with virtually no history education am going to begin in the early 20^th century. In the early 20^th century, with greater and greater mass migration and “fast” transportation, a monumental, global us-and-them ethos arose. Sure, many things led to both world wars, but I would argue that migration and transportation, resulted in an us-and-them ethos contributing to escalation. Before the 20^th century, people were just far less likely to interact with people from 100 miles away let alone thousands! Suddenly there was no implicit contract which had, here to date, been provided by the communal village knowledge of people’s reputation. Without that knowledge, transience people could take advantage of their transience (or just simply do things in ways that were not locally acceptable) and non-transient people rightly would distrust outsiders. This bred the deeply rooted us-and-them ethos.

Us-and-them ethos + some differing beliefs (+ hostility)  = wars

Hence, world wars. Eventually these world wars took their toll on the global ethos, and the cold war started. Everyone focused on their own portion of the globe and their own people. “You don’t cross this line… and we will all go about our way focusing on our own backyards.”

But these were just lines. In America, men brought home women from Asia, in Europe families sought to be reunited across lines despite having new very separate lives.  And then kids starting backpacking through Europe. Tendrils across these us-and-them designations grew and grew.

I would argue that slowly, between 1980 and about 2000, the concept of us-and-them got progressively harder to determine. The other day, I hear on the radio (ok... streaming podcast) that there was a Korean vs. American soccer game. The announcer asked who the Korean American’s were rooting for?  This was an excellent question and the root of the us-and-us cultural revolution. Who is us? Who is them?

And then came Marc Zuckerberg. (Happy Birthday to Facebook today, February 4^th, by the way.) I am not super fan. I think he is smart and I think he was mostly in the right place at the right time. But I am about to credit him with significantly affecting global change.

I think Facebook dramatically eroded the us-and-them ethos. I have friends who post their political views. Some of those views I absolutely fundamentally disagree with. They are still friends. In the end, the pictures of their kids are still cute and I know that although I think they are entirely wrong on their political choices, their choices are rooted in the same deep-seated hope and desire for a better future.

With mass travel, cheap telecommunication, ridiculously easy sharing (and over sharing), we still entirely believe in the concept of us-and-them, but we also have come to realize the lines are utterly arbitrary, fleeting, and constantly changing.

Now add to it the growing “small world” effect we are becoming aware of, also frequently illuminated by Facebook. I work in the cruise industry, so it is not a huge surprise to me when I realize a friend in Sweden knows a friend of mine in Australia. But at this point, I think more than half of people on Facebook have had the experience where suddenly they realize a childhood friend, from perhaps a state away, is a mutual friend of someone they only recently met at work. Our large networks are folding back over into themselves. We are more and more aware it is indeed a small world.

I am loosely a Santa Barbara girl. In Santa Barbara, an area of roughly 140,000 people, you generally can’t make it through a week without running into someone somewhere. I don’t even live there and when I am there, generally, within a few days, at the mall or the grocery store, I run into someone. The entire town of 140,000 is a collection of individuals one degree of separation from one another.

When you are one degree of separation from every person you interact with on a daily basis, the social contract strongly inhibits negative action. You just can’t screw people over twice in a town that small.

And I think this is what the internet has done. It has expanded the enforcement of social contracts to entire strangers. Yelp being a great illustration of this.  A car mechanic that constantly does poor work will inevitable be exposed even in a city with millions of people.

Thus I feel we have entered the era of trust and the trust economy. When I go onto eBay and buy something, I generally trust I will receive it as advertised. Don’t get me wrong, I think there are people out there (Nigerian princes) trying to defraud people. But I also think there are radically fewer of them than there are of people just honestly trying to sell their used items on eBay.

And as people have more and more decent interactions with strangers, facilitated by the internet, I think only better things are to come. These acceptable positive interactions are like an economic lubricant.  The more acceptable internet based economic transactions you have with complete strangers, the more you choose to engage in.

The talk I was at was hosted by a vaguely environmental group.  Part of the argument here is that this will lead to a better use of resources. I don’t want to buy a $100 drill for the ten minutes I am going to use it this weekend, but would rather borrow it for $20. This leaves me with $80 to spend on other things. (The concept of “better” resource use is left to the be{er}holder.)

It is still going to take the legal system quite some time to figure out how to assist ensuring honest peer-to-peer interaction. (After all, if the drill breaks was it because I was using it improperly, probably, or because it was improperly maintained?)

But all in all, I think we are on the cusp of a momentous shift in the economy, and while economists and technologist speak about all sorts of reasons, I think our growing awareness of membership in one humanity, with a bazillion arbitrary groupings, is not a negligible component in the emergence of the peer-to-peer economy.

Stupid: The once imperative necessity to distrust.

Cool: The growing emergence of trust.

Footnote 1: I can  hear my friend Aaron Brown contesting the “first time” claim in the statement above. I believe Airbnb is the first, mass, peer-to-peer platform selling something other than eBay’s specialty of small consumer goods. Craigslist is not a platform, but rather a listing service.

Plans, Honesty and Failure (Posted from the West Coast of Mexico, January 16th, 2014)

This year started with a plan.

The montage of the obscure
photos posted to Facebook.
 (The license plate is Swedish,
by the way.)

I was going up to San Francisco for the seven weeks of non-travel time, through February 19^th.

I got two places through airbnb.com in the city.

I signed up for a meetup.com event every day.

I drove up on January 2^nd. I checked into my first place, which by the way had absolutely the most awesome dog in the world. My first meetup was a bust as I never found it.

But after that, I worked every day, posted an obscure picture taken within the city to Facebook to keep my friends guessing as to what city I was in, and went to a meetup every weekday evening or in the afternoon on the weekends.

(A quick review of my meetup highlights: I saw the trails of San Bruno, learned about comic strips as a method of communication, did a walking tour from Ferry Building to North Shore, saw a three set comedy act on being single in the city, learned about software pricing strategies from some economists at major software firms including Microsoft.)

And yet…

When I got a text, out of the blue, with no preamble: “can you go for a few days? Puerto Vallarta, possibly Honolulu?”

Like a jonesing addict, my twelve day stay in San Francisco came to an abrupt end.

Out of the car came my “just-in-case” suitcase of summer clothing, into the car went the winter clothes, and off to long-term parking went the car.

Literally on my way to the airport, another email came in which essentially said, “Can you be in Germany for the end of January?”

I loved San Francisco from January 2^nd to January 15^th.

Personally I am at a state of extreme conflict. I really fundamentally LOVE my travel life.  I love my thick passport. I love sitting here on the plane writing. I love the fact I will have a great dinner with old friends/colleagues in Puerto Vallarta tonight.

But my girlfriend in Sweden could really use a hug. My girlfriend in LA would really love to grab a cup of coffee. Neither of whom I will see any time soon.  I dropped plans with multiple friends who by good fortune were supposed to be visiting San Francisco this weekend.

I rarely make plans for more than seven days in the future.

And I have a love-hate relationship with all of it. After all, I would not have my fabulous Swedish friend had I not been a traveler, but that very same traveling prevents me from being a good friend.

At this point, I am aware that I am dancing around the hard, cold, somewhat anguishing, real truth.

I know the real truth.

But whether to share the real truth, heart on my sleeve, with the world…

Well I guess so….

The real truth is, I would give up this life up, in a heartbeat, to curl up every night with the right person.

But coming home, night after night, to an empty bed, it is soul crushing. So like most addicts, the fix dulls the pain. If the bed is in a luxury suite overlooking the Mediterranean (as it was in December), the fact that it is empty is not glaring.

My friend Kristin is convinced that since traveling is the life I love, I will meet someone enjoying this life. Fifteen years into this life, I know it is not true.

So, I started this year with a plan: seven weeks, in San Francisco.

Work.

Enjoy the city.

But perhaps to be honest with myself, meet people.

Male people specifically.

Intelligent, stimulating, fun, enjoyable to hang out with, single male people.

And yet, here I am, on a flight to Mexico.

Cool: As addictions go, it is not a bad one to have.

Stupid: Failure, this profound sense of failure.

Failure.

Failure.

Failure.

Failure.

Failure

Failure

Failure

Alone, over Mexico.

Ljubljana, Slovenia (December 14, 2013)

Not the greatest picture, but you get a glimpse of a
lovely near full moon, the fog wisps, the clock tower,
the castle, the hillside of lanterns, the charming
buildings, packed bustle of  the riverfront cafes, the
light adorned trees...

This city, the weeks prior to Christmas is nearly beyond description. Words burst through the mind; enchanted perhaps the most encompassing. Runner up, but not a word, is fairy-tale-esque. Given the Roman road ruins by the city center and the Wikipedia indication that records mention the township as early as 1125, the city is amazingly old.

But around the 15^th century, the city entered its own Renaissance.  The center is a small castle a top what I imagine is a 300-400 foot hill; the hill is nearly surrounded, perhaps 300 degrees around, by a river. The river is lined with charming three to four story, hundreds of years old, buildings.

This time of year, with sun not yet having shown in the days I have been here, the light dim, a cold wet fog resting not far above, the city, at night, is nonetheless cheerful and merry beyond comprehension.

The streets, the buildings, the trees adorned by a spectacle of lights, the spectacle seemingly never ending, creeping upward with lanterns littering the hillside all the way to the beautifully and colorfully lit, though sometimes mysteriously obscured by fog, castle and clock tower.

The City Center.

Despite the 30 degree Fahrenheit temperature, the damp cobble-stoned streets, surprisingly filled with the warmly dressed and merry, are also lined by numerous vendors selling mulled wine, many selling food items, including roasted on the spot, warm, chestnuts.

Shops are closed in the evenings, but all restaurants and bars offer a lovely evening, and a shocking amount of much used outdoor seating.

The sounds are strange and sometimes too familiar. The language, Slovenian, is harsh and sounds to me more similar to Russian than their much closer Austrian neighbor’s language of German. However, the tones are all wrong. The language has all the harshness of Russian in the sounds, but the tone, volume, intonation is much softer to the English speaker’s ear. I would not say it is jovial, even for this time of year, but perhaps matter of fact in tone, contrary to Russian which always seems somewhat assaulting and annoyed. The town square had musicians playing everything from folky Serbian (neighbor country) music to Pink Floyd. Like I said, strange and sometimes too familiar.

Some of the river front around the castle.

The Slovenian’s are their version of meat and potato people.  Friday night, with four native Slovenia’s, we went for traditional Slovenian fare. This basically consisted of pork cook about twenty different ways and a cheese and egg noodle casserole. They have sausage, rolled loafs (a bread with pork throughout, perhaps six different varieties of pork preparation), something they called blood sausage which I would call haggis, a pork concoction which was pork with pieces of pork prepared otherways forced through it. Like I said, pork pork pork. There were consistently hints of Italy’s proximity in Slovenia food. From the very Italian coffee and coffee regiment, to the egg noodle casserole, to the pizza.

The city center from a little bit down the river.

And I am happy to say, the Slovenians love their desserts as much as I do. Again, the Italian influence apparent with panna cotta readily available, but almost everything consisted of a slim light pastry or cake substrate, topped with a nice creamy substance and powdered sugar. Their traditional dessert is roughly this collection of substances, in nine layers, and includes a sweetened poppy seed paste/jelly layer or two.

Finally, with a day off, I wandered the city. I walked into the souvenir shop. The young girl there welcomed me in Slovenian. But while I was there she slipped easily through Italian, French, and English to serve tourists. I asked; she is also fluent in German and can somewhat negotiate Spanish and Portuguese.

Everyone in Slovenia speaks English and not broken tongue-tied, word searching English. They slip into English without a thought and most speak it as fluently as someone who has lived in the US for years.  They start learning in school around aged 10, but I think the fact that nearly half of television and media is in English promotes the fluency. Not to mention almost all tourists speak English, even if they are from continental Europe. English is the somewhat the universally accepted international language.

I do not know why these guys were (fairies
perhaps?) hanging from the trees in the park,
but they were lively and festive.

The Slovenians are hundreds of generations of home bodies. These people do not move. It is unusual at thirty years old to live 15 miles from where you were born and where your parents have lived in since they were married. Most of the parents’ generation live on the land that their parents’ lived on. Non-urban Europeans don’t leave their little bubbles. A friend of mine, who lives in Switzerland, recently said, “I commute 35 minutes to work, but you have to understand, for a European, that is UNHEARD of. That is really far.”  For the Slovenians this is very true. I don’t have the statistics, but it certainly sounds to me that the people here probably spend over 95% of their lives with 20 miles of where they were born, perhaps an additional 4.9% within 100 miles.

Europeans cite language, culture, and international borders as the reason they stay. I understand that for me, moving 3000 miles away is not really a cultural, language or national adjustment whereas for them moving 100 miles might not only mean all those changes, but differs dramatically depending on direction, Italy (west) or Austria (north).  That reasoning doesn't really hold up to me, because they don’t even move to the other side of town.

But this is changing. I don’t think this will be true of the teenagers today, especially with their

The park full of the hanging, um...
I am not even sure what to call them.

expansive multiple language fluency and exposure to media in different languages. When you can watch TV in Italian, Slovenia, German or English…. It just does not seem that strange to move to somewhere where the people speak those languages, especially when German and Italian speaking countries are so close.  (I asked the break down, TV channels are roughly 50% English, 20% Italian, 20% German, 10% Slovenian.)

My time now in Slovenia is short… so I best be getting to breakfast of multiple sausage products and amazing Italian coffee.

A profound thank you to Matej Jaksa, my colleague, for a delightful time, sharing so much with me and enduring my endless questions. (And with the good humor to just start making things up. "Matej, what is the story behind that tepee thing?" His reply, "Oh that is the famous tepee monument, haven't you heard of it?" In reality it was just a covering to protect a bronze monument from the harsh winter cold, something that would never have occurred to this a warm blooded California girl.)

Stupid: The fact that I tried to get out of going to Ljubljana during the cold dark of winter.
Cool: The great fortune to have gone, somewhat against my will, during such an enchanted time.

Making My Way Home, Part 2 - The 43 Hour/Five-Flight Journey (written at various stages)

At some point, you start hoping more things will go wrong, just to make the story better....

Itinerary 1:

Ljubljana – Zurich

Zurich – Newark

Newark – LA

LA - SB

I left my hotel at 2:30 pm GMT on Sunday December 15^th. I made it to the airport shortly thereafter. Upon arriving I was told my flight had been “merged” with another flight. This was their nice way of saying, we need to make another stop first. My SO anticipated dinner plans in Zurich with Louis and Pia (mentioned in my prior blog) were no longer possible as I was going to be making a stop in Frankfurt delaying my arrival some 2.5 hours and making a lovely Swiss fondue dinner, impossible.

Itinerary 2:

Ljubljana – Frankfort

Frankfort – Zurich

Zurich – Newark

Newark – LA

LA - SB

I promptly complained about this on Facebook as I was now taking five flights to get home. FIVE FLIGHTS! I was quickly informed by my friend on the ship that I debarked six days earlier, that had I stayed onboard for the Atlantic crossing, it not only would have taken more time to get home but I would have been seasick most of the way too. (Perspective achieved, suddenly five flights home didn’t seem so bad.)

I arrived and checked into the Day Rooms at Zurich Airport, at 9:45 pm GMT. (I love the Day Rooms in Zurich, a short walk within the airport to a place with all the necessary amenities of a hotel room, place to sleep, shower, at a reasonable price.)

At 4am GMT, my phone alerts me, my flight to Newark has been canceled. This baffled me 

because I had been telling people for a week, erroneously, I was scheduled to fly through Washington DC. I even had a conversation with my friend Kathy to see if we would be at Dulles at the same time as she too was scheduled to fly through DC. But United seemed to think I was scheduled to fly to Newark. So I get on the phone with United. Forty-five minutes later, I am flying through Washington DC.  It’s like I knew all along. If only United would have gotten with the program.

Itinerary 3

Ljubljana – Frankfort

Frankfort – Zurich

Zurich – DC

DC – LA

LA - SB

My new flight was an hour later, making my layover at Zurich, 13 hours, and my layovers in the US dangerously short but hopefully it would work out OK. (Of course you know it won't....)

I spent the morning working at the Swiss Lounge. The Swiss Lounge (frequent flyer lounge for Star Alliance members) has a cappuccino machine and Swiss chocolate, which really was all I felt was necessary. But being that the rest of the clientele was entirely men around 50, they also had food and beer. 

(Some noticed gender numbers during my travels: my flight from Istanbul to Ljubljana was 65 men and two other women. The Swiss Lounge was all men except one wife, and myself. )

Hour 20, I get on the plane in Zurich for a 10:30 am (GMT) departure.

And proceed to sit on the tarmac for two hours, ground stop due to fog.

I complain via email to my coworker that I don’t think I am ever going to get home. He mentions he hates Mondays and nothing is working. I agree as my entertainment system for my nine hour flight plus two hours on the tarmac is dead. This by the way was followed promptly by discovering the book I downloaded for the flight corrupt beyond use. Eleven hours on a plane with nothing to do. (How on earth did people take road trips with kids in the 1960's?)

Hour 32, I arrive in DC at 4:05 pm EST (10:05 pm GMT) which by the way, is exactly the same time as my flight to LA starts to board. I turn on my phone to an email from United. It says, “If you do not make your connection, you have been rebooked on the following flights. Please simply proceed to the new gates.”

Itinerary 4:

Ljubljana – Frankfort

Frankfort – Zurich

Zurich – DC

DC – Denver

Denver - SB

I cannot tell you how awesome I think that is. I open the United App and I have new boarding passes.  No hassle, no talking to people or waiting in the enormous customer service line I eventually passed, no discussion. Just done.

And it was a good thing as it took me another 90 minutes to make it through passport control where it was 95 degrees F, there were about 225 people in front of me, and by strange confluence, only five people behind me for all ninety minutes.

Due to the extreme wait in passport control, I would have missed the new flight too had the new flight, now to Denver, not also been delayed. (Yes really.)

So, I can’t tell you much more about the trip home as I slept the rest of the way, including from the gate where I landed in Denver to the connecting flight gate to SB. I am sure I made it from one gate to the other, since I woke up in Santa Barbara, so it must have happened….

Hour 43, December 17th, 9 am GMT, I arrive in SB.

And no big surprise here, my luggage did not.

I go to report my missing luggage. There is a line of five people. I decide I am too tired. I am really too tired to care.

It has been 43 hours since I left my hotel in Slovenia. I want a shower to wash off the sweaty 90 minute wait in passport control.  I take a cab home ignoring my lost luggage entirely.

The next morning, I drive to the airport to pick up my luggage which I am 95% convinced will simply miraculously be there. (This comes from years of travel experience. If your luggage doesn’t make it with you, you can go report it missing and sometimes it has made it in on a flight before you did. Most of the time though if you just show up 12 hours later, it will be there waiting.)

The beach is adjacent to the Santa Barbara Airport.
So I stopped to enjoy on my way to pick up my luggage.

Santa Barbara airport being the tiny little stop that it is, there was me and the woman behind the United counter and we were pretty much it. (I am sure someone else was at the airport, but I did not see them.) I wait two minutes at the counter, while the woman looks baffled at my luggage tags from Adria airlines (because really, how often do people start the day on the national carrier of Slovenia and end in Santa Barbara). Deciding not to even try to decipher it, she just walks back and looks. 

My luggage is there waiting.

Stupid: 43 hours to get home

Cool: Work that takes me a world away, and the fabulous perspective provided by my friend Alex Tan who reminded me the alternative to 43 hours and five flights, was 11 days of being seasick.

Making My Way Home (Written in Flight from Barcelona to Istanbul, December 11, 2013)

I am on a plane from Barcelona to Istanbul, as usual, happy as a clam to be flying.  I will be in Ljublijana, Slovenia, tonight. I am excited to be going to Slovenia. It is a new country to add to my list, and those are fairly hard to come by. I have been to over thirty countries this year, yet I think only Japan, Korea and soon to be Slovenia are new countries on my list of countries visited.

So this was not by flight to Istanbul... but
some flight on November 22.
Seemed a fitting picture anyway.

I have such a weird wonderful life.  I have just spent a whirlwind of 17 days onboard a ship I once called home. I got off the ship all of an hour and a half during those seventeen days, mostly because my mother insisted I get her a postcard from Casablanca. And I, as usual, bought a bag. (For a girl who virtually NEVER carries a handbag, I seem to have a strange fixation with buying them.) And though I love the ship, I would have loved to have gotten off more. But the project I led turned out to be about six times the amount of work anticipated.

There is so much interesting to say about this past trip I hardly know where to start. Strangely, I think I will start with making my way home.

This was added after my original post
thanks to a friend who had it on Facebook.

I got off the ship in Barcelona and stayed, for a day, with my girlfriend Kathy who has a flat right off the water front.  I am flying through Istanbul, which will make it the fourth or fifth time I have been in Turkey this year, I think. I am in transit to Slovenia, where I will work a few days in my company’s office there. From there I am headed to Zurich “for dinner” with friends.… and then finally from there I will fly home. I have friends all over Europe asking why I am not stopping by.  I would love to visit everyone, but as Christmas nears, the ticket prices soar and I would like to be home for a traditional Christmas dinner, which, naturally means Chinese food. (I am not Chinese; I am Jewish. Google it: Christmas Jews Chinese Food. It is a thing.)

In regards to going to Zurich “for dinner,” as quoted in the sentence above, I should say the quotes are intentional.  Much as I wish I could say, I am flying to Zurich “for dinner” with Louis, Pia, hopefully Dan but regretfully not Michael, it is more that all flights from Slovenia to California passed through Zurich. Thus I am taking advantage of a layover and having dinner with friends.

But it sounds SO much more posh to say, “I am flying to Zurich for dinner with friends” so let’s go with that.

I want to say I have a thing for countries that start with the letter S. Sandra in Sweden, a gaggle of friends in Switzerland, my endearing friend Ruth technically in the UK but I am going to skirt her in under Scotland, and my coworkers in Slovenia. That is just Europe. I have so many friends in South Africa, Facebook thinks I am from there.

It was snowing in Istanbul when I landed.
Snowing in  Istanbul!
I didn't even know that was possible!

In re-reading this post, I cringe. Kathy and I were talking about our lives and how we really do hide our crazy traveling lives. (And I should go on record as saying I am significantly less traveled than Kathy.) This whole post reads as a brag… “Isn’t my life awesome!”

The post reads as, “Isn’t my life awesome!” because I think it is awesome. I love this life. But it could just as easily be a complaint about being on the road for over three weeks, with crazy flights including a STUPID twelve hour layover in Zurich, that I missed Thanksgiving with family, so I could work 17 hour days, half a world away on a ship under re-construction with no air conditioning and was thus sauna hot, that I have been subjected to conditions that the UN has banned as arguably "torture" (blog on that to come), etc and so forth.

Making my way home is a strange statement too. I stay at my parents’ house when I get back to California. I have given up on having a place of my own. As someone who has been out of the country more of this year than in it, add to that hotel stays all over California and a trip to Florida, it just makes no sense to have a place called home.

It is not a life for everyone.

But it is the life for me.

Isn’t that awesome.