An analogy to understand the concept of The Sharing Economy is your typical suburban courtesy bus.

When we see at your local RSL, bowlo or shopping cemntre, the term “courtesy bus” which picks you up and drops you off, we all know and understand what it’s all about.

It’s designed for your convenience to get you into the shopping  centre or down to the club and be seduced by the lights, bells and whistles of the pokies, a few cheap beers, a burger and and a raffle. You can immediatly understand and grasp the conept and the benefit.

Thats pretty much the average persons understanding of sharing a free ride to get you to a common destination.

The same could be said of the e-scooters and e-bikes that you can tap and go from where a previous rider left them.

It’s all pretty harmless within the confines of those particular contexts. One is to get you to THEIR particular business the other is a straight up business model.

So with that understanding, watch out for, be warned and be very wary of, the latest buzz phrase from the World Economic Forum, “𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐞𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐨𝐦𝐲”. Its much bigger than the courtesy bus or the e-bike and e-scooter.

It sounds so benign. Who could possibly argue? Sharing is a good thing, right? Well yes and no. It depends on whether it’s a one on one or a bottom up organic and community type of sharing where you are free to opt in or opt out and participate, or whether its a Big Brother, heavy hand, top down form of faceless bureacratic control

The phrase, the sharing economy, is simply a euphemism for socialism and community ownership. Call it what it is – Communism.

This is what Klaus Schwab means when he says, “you will own nothing and be happy”. You will share and you will like it.

The propinquity of sharing a ride for example with neighbours, people you don’t like or people you don’t know in a series of community cars, is about a diminution of a persons freedom and independence.

People generally like their own space.They like time to be alone, reflect, read or think.

The authoritarian will argue that people already share a ride on buses and trains so whats the problem? Yes they do but they choose to. It’s voluntary

You may not want to share and would rather drive where you want and when you want. Too bad.

Personal transport is but one, simple, easy to understand and small example of what will be under attack in the sharing economy.

From the WEF website Understanding the Sharing Economy – “On this typical journey in Manhattan, New York City, marked by the arrows above there were over 200,000 journeys annually in which people were taking the same route at the same time in different taxis who could have shared the journey with minimal disruption. This would save $3 million for consumers and nearly 450,000kg of CO2 emissions”.

The sharing economy is the total politicisation of the “community” or “courtesy” bus concept that we’re all familiar with.