Maybe you make some money by renting out your bed. But maybe your friend is fired from the hotel because it loses business. Or wages are kept low because hotel-room rates must be kept low, because of competition from Airbnb. At the same time it gets harder to rent an affordable place to live. And those who live close by regularly let Airbnb ‘homes’. Do we love it? No, we hate it. The ‘sharing’ economy (sharing is not a financial transaction – do words mean nothing?) does not factor social consequences into its business model. The consequences for other people, for thriving cities where people
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