By Van Jones (PopTech 2007)
The shareable economy is home to some of the economy’s most inspiring practices and promising tools. But the shareable economy’s share of the total economy is still very small—greatly below its vast potential. The 99 percent can help to scale and popularize “shareable economy” tools to drive sustainable and collaborative consumption. Hundreds of thousands of 99 Percenters could work together to facilitate innovation, entrepreneurship, and build distribution systems to tackle their economic and financial problems together. They could be encouraged to act together in their own economic self-interest, such as driving Zipcar, shopping at farmers’ markets, living in cohousing, buying goods from Etsy, and sharing tools instead of purchasing them.
The shareable economy includes technologies and practices that center on barter, gift, direct exchange, and peer-to-peer loans. These include high-tech solutions such as Kickstarter and Kiva, platforms that support crowd-sourced funding and people-powered finance. It also includes “high-touch” solutions such as “resilience circles,” which are small, face-to-face support groups. Members of resilience circles help each other meet unmet needs by offering each other their skills, talents, resources, and unused time. Such circles enable people to achieve their American dreams by helping one another.
There are countless sources of inspiration, from the success of farmers’ markets and community supported agriculture (CSAs) to peer-to-peer marketplaces like Etsy (for handmade goods) and Airbnb (for accommodations), and even peer-to-peer lending services such as Prosper, Lending Club, and Zopa.
Through Airbnb, anyone with a spare room can now earn extra money by renting out their space. Through Kiva, the poorest of the poor can now have access to the capital needed to start a small business. Through Culture Kitchen, immigrant women can now earn an income by teaching others to cook in the style of their homeland. Having discovered that the average American uses her or his car just 8 percent of the time, new platforms like Getaround, RelayRides, and Zimride have sprung up to enable the sharing of autos owned by individuals. Some users of RelayRides make enough to offset their car payment each month. The shareable economy has been launched on the resource-full shareable.net.
Excerpted with permission from Rebuild the Dream, by Van Jones. Available from Nation Books, a member of The Perseus Books Group. Copyright 2012.
I had a dream once where there was nothing else in the universe except light. We were all floating particles of laser beams in the infinit darkens and we combined together and produced new colors. I love the way the picture uses light being refracted on waves and its as if each refraction is dancing on this gorgeous beauties skin.
Susana Soares, BEE’S, 2007–2009. By using Pavlovian reflex conditioning, bees can be easily trained to recognise a wide range of biomarkers and hence to diagnose a whole spectrum of diseases.
About me
I posse to you this question.... Is this world worth saving? I figure ill go first, here is my answer:
