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 20th century. In
the early 20th 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 20th 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 4th, 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.
