---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: David Week (Assai) <[email protected]> Date: Sat, Jun 28, 2014 at 2:27 AM Subject: Analysis of how Monkey Parking crosses the line To: Michel Bauwens <[email protected]> http://www.salon.com/2014/06/27/libertarians_anti_government_crusade_now_the... Libertarians’ anti-government crusade: Now there’s an app for that - Salon.com Monkey Parking’s solution intended to generate profit off of a public good by rewarding those who are able to pay — and shutting out the less affluent. That’s outrageous and not something any civilized society should tolerate. (By way of contrast, you can make a decent case that an operation like Airbnb provides real value to the less affluent, both in savings on hotel rooms, and in earnings from letting out spare rooms.) And yet at the same time, understanding where Monkey Parking crosses the line helps us better appreciate why we should hold up every “sharing economy” app to close scrutiny. The entitlement and obvious self-interest that led Monkey Parking to decide it could solve a San Francisco municipal problem with a blatantly illegal business model is shared by many “disruptive” entrepreneurs — often cloaked under the cover of libertarian ideology. More to the point: finding ways to exploit regulatory loopholes is another way to game public goods. If, for example, hotels have to pay taxes and abide by safety regulations that private homeowners do not, Airbnb gains a competitive advantage. Those safety regulations are a kind of public good. But the profit-focused sharing economy tends to see regulations as a hindrance. What we end up with, if we just let the disruptors proceed as they please, is the kind of digital economy Ronald Reagan might have envisioned. Government is an irrelevant obstacle, while the benefits of sharing economy apps trickle down to everyone! -- *Please note an intrusion wiped out my inbox on February 8; I have no record of previous communication, proposals, etc ..* P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net <http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation>Updates: http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens #82 on the (En)Rich list: http://enrichlist.org/the-complete-list/