Sharing aint Caring

[alice malice]

With so many choices, so many products and services to buy, but none
of them significant, and all of them a "vote" for unelected power
levers that form and direct the only policy that matters, economic
policy, what difference does it make? There is no ethical, political,
or, god forbid, intellectual concern here. It is, as the Chinese say,
about two things: Money...and Money. Playing on the total defeat of
democracy by capital, such schemes are marketing a product, a beta if
you will, that, while it rejects a politics, of frustration, of
populist discontent and fear and resentment, invites, as Confidence
Men will, a share in the scam that only looks like a pyramid but is,
Stubb surmised when Ahab kicked him with his ivory leg in a dream, an
honor. How slick, a person who works without compensation....as
Ishmael says, "Who ain't a slave?

On Fri, Sep 26, 2014 at 6:26 AM, John Bailey <sundayjb at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm interested in what P-Listers think of the new 'sharing economy'.
>
> Businesses such as Uber, AirBnB, Skype etc enlist the rhetoric of a
> kind of grassroots DIY anarchist economic system that sticks it to The
> Man. I've read some articles that really persuasively argue the
> opposite - this system is capitalism in its most naked form.
>
> I'll let them do the talking. Would love to hear thoughts, esp as this
> seems pertinent to Pynchon's own collisions of capitalism, anarchism,
> communitarianism, collectivism, libertarianism etc in Against the Day.
>
> "'Sharing economy' companies like Uber shift risk from corporations to
> workers, weaken labor protections, and drive down wages.":
>
> https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/09/against-sharing/
>
> "Companies in the “sharing economy” can only function because they are
> using your “assets,” your resources: your car (Bla Bla Car,
> Getaround), your apartment (Airbnb), and your computing power
> (Skype)."
>
> http://www.publicseminar.org/2014/06/the-politics-of-the-sharing-economy/#.VCU7zxbrG8H
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l