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Comment by branchless | Hacker News Reader

This is spot on. Companies want to have you rent everything from them. Sharing is owned by the community without middle-men deriving rent. Uber and AirBnB just want to avoid regulation and taxes to undercut incumbents and take a bigger cut for themselves.

They have nothing to do with the local community, in fact a global taxi firm degrading workers rights couldn't be further from this.

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Sharing is owned by the community without middle-men deriving rent.

By this definition, virtually nothing is sharing beyond maybe volunteer operated community gardens. Virtually every service involves some sort of middle men getting a cut. Even a volunteer run community garden would if gardening supplies are purchased rather than wrought from supplies indigenous to the land.

You're being intentionally obtuse and making a flawed analogy. There is a major difference between a community garden where someone has to go to Home Depot to buy supplies and Uber/AirBnb. In the Garden scenario, Home Depot does not act like Uber as they are not the gatekeepers to your community garden, but instead one (of many) sources for supplies. Home Depot is not rent seeking or deriving rent.

Uber is one of many suppliers for driver/rider matching services. They are not a gatekeeper either, and its unclear what rent you think they collect.

(In contrast, traditional taxis do collect rents - the delta between a medallion restricted taxi market and one without barriers to entry.)

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