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A propósito
da do sentido de "partilha" da UBER e da AIRBNB ...
OVOODOCORVO
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What’s
Yours Is Mine: Against the Sharing Economy by Tom Slee review – the problem
with Airbnb and Uber
The most
significant examples of what used to be called the ‘sharing economy’ are giant
corporations pursuing monopoly power – what exactly is being shared?
Steven
Poole
Saturday 2
April 2016 07.30 BST
‘Sharing”
is one of the most rhetorically abused virtues of the age. First we had the
euphemism “file-sharing”, for duplicating and uploading copies of albums or
films to the internet. Well, you can’t share what isn’t yours in the first
place. (If I pilfer money from a bank and give it to my friends, I might plead
that I was just “money-sharing”, but I am more likely to be convicted of
robbery.) And now we supposedly have a “sharing economy”, the most-often cited
two examples of which – Uber and Airbnb – are giant corporations pursuing
monopoly power and fighting governments the world over. What exactly is being
shared here, and in whose interest?
The first
“sharing economy” organisations allowed members to timeshare things such as
cars or power tools, rather than owning one each and leaving it idle most of the
time. In their purest form such groups were “peer-to-peer”: self-organising,
with no central authority. Once a for-profit company is set up to handle the
logistics – such as Zipcar – however, the notion of “sharing” is arguably
already out of the window. Still, there remained the kernel of a communitarian
idea in the origin of Airbnb, founded by two tech workers who rented out
airbeds in their spare rooms for a conference, and thought there might be a
market.
Airbnb’s
marketing still plays on the feelings of virtuous and adventurous sociability
in the idea of a “guest” staying in a spare room of the “host’s” home. Yet, as
Tom Slee’s superbly argued book points out, the vast majority of Airbnb’s
business is now “entire home” rentals: self-contained flats or villas.
Long-term renters in cities such as San Francisco are being forced out by
landlords who see more profit in short-term Airbnb stays. Slee performs some
very clever data research and finds out that the most expensive Airbnb
apartment in Rome is one of several European luxury pads rented out by an
American tech entrepreneur, who bought them with the proceeds of the sale of
his last software company. The idea of “sharing” is as meaningless here as it
is in Uber’s made-up concept of “ride-sharing”, which sounds as ecologically
minded as “car-sharing” but actually describes a taxi service. Nor is any
“sharing” going on with companies such as TaskRabbit, in which people bid to
perform other people’s odd jobs.
What is
explicitly not shared by any of the poster children of the “sharing economy” is
responsibility. When something goes horribly wrong with an Airbnb or Uber
transaction, the companies just say: “It wasn’t me.” (The mega-corporation is
purportedly neither buyer nor seller but innocent middleman.) Slee has a
brilliant chapter on how star-rating “reputation systems” between users simply
don’t work, because people feel bad about giving low ratings even when they are
amply deserved, so they all cluster between four and five. Instead, trust has
to be enforced by authoritarian surveillance and discipline imposed by the
company itself. Even so, the companies insist that they are not even providing
a service; the websites and apps are just a “communications platform” to link
buyers and sellers. (Even as they price-gouge the sellers, with Uber taking
increasingly large cuts of up to 30% of a fare.) Nor, notoriously, does Uber
consider its drivers to be employees to whom they would owe responsibilities:
they are instead “independent contractors”.
What all
these artificial constructions amount to for Uber, Airbnb and the like is an
attempt to bypass laws enacted over decades precisely in order to protect both
renters and landlords, taxi drivers and passengers. Impressed by their
popularity and financial clout, most lawmakers bend over backwards to
accommodate them. Helpfully, California passed a special law recognising Uber
and its competitors as “Transportation Network Companies”. In the face of
complaints by London’s black-cab drivers, the high court ruled last year that
an Uber driver’s smartphone is not a “taximeter” because the measurement of
mileage through GPS signals and the calculation of the fare are done over the
internet. This might strike some as a perversely creative refusal to
acknowledge the plain meaning of the relevant legislation. The full definition
of “taximeter” in the Private Hire Vehicles (London) Act of 1998 reads: “In
this section ‘taximeter’ means a device for calculating the fare to be charged
in respect of any journey by reference to the distance travelled or time
elapsed since the start of the journey (or a combination of both).”
None of
this is to say that profitable pseudo-“sharing” operations cannot be set up to
work in the best interests of everyone. The introduction of Paris’s cycle-hire
scheme Vélib’ in 2007 was a great boon for residents of the city, and it now
also has Autolib’, a very successful similar operation for electric cars. In
the meantime, lots of us will continue to use Uber, too. To criticise it is not
the sole preserve of people who are unqualified admirers of London cabbies’
high fares and habit of driving past in the rain. Slee points out, rightly,
that his arguments are not about whether he or his readers actually use these
services. In modern times we have been miseducated to believe that consumer
choice is all-powerful, but the idea that consumers exercising their sovereign
right to choose will always lead to the best outcomes is obviously in the
interest of corporations seeking to escape official regulation. So, Slee uses
Airbnb himself but backs the city authorities seeking to regulate it more
tightly; and there is no contradiction in taking an Uber home from a party
while wishing the company were better behaved. Only the law can force it
to be so.
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MAGIC IS
GONE
USING
AIRBNB ISN’T FUN ANYMORE
By Rosie
SpinksDecember 3, 2017
I remember
the first time I ever used Airbnb. It was a studio in the 18th arrondissement
of Paris, with a slice of the Sacre Coeur visible from the window. I’d rented
it for a month from a woman roughly my age, and it was her first time being a
host. As she handed over the keys, I could sense we both felt the same thing:
relief that, so far, this strange transaction—brokered by a San Francisco
startup that had only launched in France the year before—was actually going
okay. The whole process had a charming, homespun quality that I remember
fondly.
In the
years that followed that moment, in 2013, I used Airbnb a lot. For two years,
lacking a permanent address, I more or less lived out of spare rooms from
Berlin to Ho Chi Minh City to Cape Town. And in that same period, Airbnb grew
from a scrappy, idealistic startup to a global behemoth valued at $30
billion—more than Hilton and Hyatt combined—and all without owning a single
room to rent.
No success
story is without its bumps, and Airbnb has gone through a particularly rocky
phase of late. Its recent problems go beyond the quality control pitfalls of a
business in the sharing economy—negligent hosts, the occasional bed bug
infestation, or, more chillingly, hidden web cams. The headlines the company is
most worried about these days are of another type entirely: gentrification,
urban housing crises, racial discrimination, and the thorny ethical question of
whether it’s okay to skirt local laws for cheaper accommodation.
Personally,
I’ve found that as Airbnb, the whimsical website you can use to to “belong
anywhere,” has become Airbnb, the multinational travel company accused of
raising housing prices and ruining once-beloved parts of some cities, it’s hard
to feel as warm and fuzzy about the proposition as I did that day in the 18th
arrondissement.
Where once
I was nervous about whether or not the linens would be clean (all but once,
they were), these days I often struggle to find listings that aren’t of the
“airspace” variety. First described by Kyle Chayka in The Verge, this refers to
the global creep of aesthetic gentrification where every listed apartment from
Mexico to Malta bears the aesthetic of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, rather than the
local culture where it’s based. When booking a recent trip, I found that the
“Homes” section of the interface was buried behind new offerings like paid
“Experiences” and featured destinations I had no interest in going to. I ended
up booking a boutique hotel at a similar price point.
Booking an
Airbnb in ParisReuters/Christian Hartmann Maybe I should just book a hotel?
The idea of
a “global community” that sounded so great when the company was founded in 2008
might be wearing off for some of the company’s employees, according to a recent
report from the Information. The cost-cutting measure of firing 50 full-time
employees and 100 contractors involved in the company’s much-loved food service
operation—which was often described to new hires as emblematic of the company’s
“be a host” value system—prompted an outcry among company employees.
As a
non-listed company, Airbnb’s financials are not public, so anything citing
their earnings is, at least in part, conjecture. That said, sources told the
Information that while the company had met its growth goals for the year,
“Airbnb saw a slowdown in the number of ‘nights booked’ earlier this year” and
employee surveys reflected a “downturn in morale.” A recent report from Morgan
Stanley also noted that the company’s growth had plateaued, despite
profitability. (The report only surveyed users in the US and Europe, not the
fast-growing markets of Latin America and China.)
While
internal company politics and financials don’t necessarily mirror public
perception—the company’s recent financials were strong, at least according to
“sources familiar”—it’s fair to say that the global community that Airbnb
treats as a main value proposition is imperiled in general these days. In the
past twelve months, Airbnb founder Brian Chesky has been forced to wade into
highly politicized issues ranging from white supremacy to refugee rights. While
the company’s generally progressive stance in these areas may have pleased most
of its core millennial demographic, the fact remains: This is no longer a
boutique travel company providing DIY authentic experiences. It’s a major
economic and political force. With that that comes a lot of complexity that’s
hard to conceal with slick branding.
It isn’t
just a macro shift in our politics that has complicated Airbnb’s brand; there’s
an actual, quantifiable backlash, too. The company has been blamed for
everything from declining populations in central Paris to putting immigrant
enclaves like Berlin’s Neukölln and Kreuzberg on the fast track to unchecked
gentrification through the rise of “Airbnb clusters.” The Hotel Association of
New York City recently put out an ad connecting the company with the disgraced
Donald Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, who’s been accused of putting his
New York City condo on Airbnb as part of a money laundering scheme. There have
been crackdowns ranging in severity in Paris, London, Berlin, Barcelona, New
York, Amsterdam, and San Francisco, to name a few. The city of Santa Monica, in
West Los Angeles, has gone after the company particularly hard.
While the
locally-imposed rules and regulations affect hosts by imposing, for example,
limits on the maximum days one can rent per year, they are increasingly seeping
into guests’ experiences too. There have been reports of listings which ask
guests to keep quiet about the fact that they are using Airbnb. This is in some
cases to avoid detection from local officials, but perhaps more damning, the
ire of fellow building tenants who are tired of transient arrivals, too. While
it’s nice to help a local pay their rent while I’m traveling, it feels more complicated
when the local residents whose lives I’m trying to emulate clearly don’t want
me there.
It’s
important to note that, while the backlash has has appeared definitive in the
headlines, the data that supports the claim that Airbnb has an adverse effect
on the housing crisis is not as black and white. There are a bevy of factors
that contribute to increases in rents, which vary widely by city and country.
Much of the research done showing Airbnb has an adverse effect on the housing
or rental market (or no effect at all), is either funded by groups who have a
vested interest in their outcome—such as affordable housing advocacy groups, or
the company itself—or met with skepticism due to the scope of their data.
According
to Andy Cunningham, a veteran Silicon Valley marketing and brand strategist,
the reason my feelings have changed about this brand I once loved is at least
in part because they failed to update their narrative.
“Airbnb
developed a really great brand strategy early on when they were able to gain a
foothold. It was so great that they don’t know how to evolve it as the world
changes around them,” Cunningham told me. “When you are one of the forces that
is changing the world, like Airbnb, you have an even bigger responsibility to
adjust your narrative going forward. Instead, they keep introducing new
products, without shifting the narrative of how that connects to the company at
all.”
A year
since launching the “Trips” part of the platform—which includes Experiences,
which the company recently announced has “grown by 20x since January 2017, with
guests paying an average of $55 per booking”—users can now use Airbnb not just
to find a place to stay, but also what they should do when they get there and
where they should make a dinner reservation, too. It’s worth noting that, in
the early days of the platform, these are all things I used to ask my host
about, for free. But with its co-hosting feature, Airbnb even offers hosts a
way to circumvent what was once the whole appeal—interacting with their
guests—by paying for someone to do it for them.
In a sense,
the whole platform has started to feel less like a tool to plan the kind of
trip I want to have, and more like a travel company that wants to plan my
entire trip for me—and make money off it at every step in the process.
Is it
possible to have the kind of spontaneous, Rioja-sipping evening with a
mandolin-playing bohemian that I’ve had in the past while using Airbnb? Sure.
Does Airbnb still offer benefits over a hotel that mean I will probably use it
again? Absolutely. But as Airbnb has grown, so too has my sense that maybe I
should just get a hotel, book a trendy hostel, or stay with friends.
It’s a hard
thing to measure—and maybe, at this point, the company doesn’t even care—but
for me, the romance is gone.
Lisboa reacciona al problema de la
vivienda por culpa de la "gentrificación"
Lisboa sigue
el camino de muchas capitales mundiales. La masiva llegada de turistas y
capital extranjero ha desatado un proceso de "gentrificación" de su
territorio
AUTOR
JORDI
GONZÁLEZ. LISBOA (EFE)
19.12.2017 – 18:20 H.
Lisboa ha
seguido el camino de muchas capitales mundiales en los últimos años y, ante la
masiva llegada de turistas y capital extranjero, ha asumido un proceso de
"gentrificación" de su territorio. Las desorbitadas subidas del
precio de la vivienda están llevando al desplazamiento hacia las afueras o las
áreas metropolitanas de aquellos que vivieron durante generaciones en la misma
casa.
El problema
de la "elitización" residencial está provocando una incipiente
reacción en la población y en los gobernantes, que ya han incluido el problema
de la vivienda en sus agendas. A su vez, el modelo económico vigente, con la
especulación inmobiliaria como uno de sus ejes, ha provocado el surgimiento de
movimientos sociales en defensa del derecho a la vivienda como "Morar en
Lisboa", compuesta por individuos y asociaciones locales de diferentes
sectores.
Leonor
Duarte, una de sus portavoces, explica a Efe que, más que un problema de exceso
de visitantes, Lisboa está experimentando una "sustitución de la
población" y aclara que la asociación no es "antiturismo".
"El verdadero problema es la falta de regularización en la industria del
turismo y el sector inmobiliario", denuncia. Duarte relata que las
políticas fiscales creadas en los últimos años se dirigieron esencialmente a
las clases acomodadas y los extranjeros, que pueden obtener desde una exención
de impuestos hasta un pasaporte portugués si fijan su residencia en el país.
La
reconversión de la capital lusa en una "ciudad de inversión", como la
asociación lo define, no solo afecta a su economía, sino también a su tejido
social. "Si Lisboa construye pisos pensados específicamente para el
turismo y tiene una población de paso o que quiere una segunda residencia o
simplemente invertir, se pierde ciudadanía", lamenta.
Los
problemas para adquirir viviendas llevaron al ayuntamiento de la capital lusa a
firmar un manifiesto conjunto con Barcelona y Nueva York en el que piden poder
limitar los precios. "La ciudad es nuestro hogar, y sin embargo hoy es
también donde el derecho a la vivienda, uno de los derechos más básicos pero
menos protegidos, se encuentra más amenazado", escribían en el texto los
responsables de vivienda de las tres urbes.
Además de extranjeros e inversores, Lisboa se ha convertido
también en un epicentro de jóvenes y, en concreto, universitarios europeos que
llegan con la beca Erasmus. El número de estudiantes que llegaron a Portugal en
2016 fue de 37.990 personas, el equivalente al 11 % de población en edad
escolar del país, de los que casi la mitad residieron en la capital. Muchos se ven obligados a vivir en
residencias de estudiantes o en pisos compartidos, ante los inalcanzables
precios del alquiler.
El informe European Student Housing 2017 sobre viviendas
para estudiantes en el continente sostiene que, en el caso de Portugal, se
operan "a través de apartamentos privados, a menudo en régimen informal y
con baja calidad, o equipamientos públicos bastante obsoletos e
incómodos". El continuo
encarecimiento de los precios ha motivado, al mismo tiempo, que muchos jóvenes
portugueses abandonen Lisboa. Solo en la última década, la capital y su área
metropolitana han perdido el 29% de sus jóvenes autóctonos, una constante que,
según Duarte, ha estado vigente "durante los últimos treinta años".
En Berlín, los alquileres han subido un 45,6% desde 2007. Las empresas del sector tratan de
aprovecharse induciendo procesos de gentrificación a los que algunos vecinos
tratan de resistirse
Para
combatir tanto la "gentrificación" como la marcha de jóvenes, el
Gobierno luso creó el programa "Porta 65", por el que se otorgan
ayudas económicas a portugueses de entre 18 y 30 años para que puedan
permitirse alquilar una vivienda. Según datos del Instituto de Vivienda y
Rehabilitación Urbana, en 2016 se aprobaron 7.167 de las 19.094 candidaturas
presentadas.
Sin
embargo, Duarte alerta que propuestas como ésta no tienen en cuenta el
"valor real" de los precios de mercado: "Los programas del
Gobierno no crecen al nivel de los precios y los ciudadanos no encuentran
viviendas de acuerdo al programa del Gobierno ni a sus rentas", apunta.
Para 2018, el Ejecutivo portugués dará prioridad al programa
y aumentará su presupuesto hasta los 18 millones de euros, y su duración máxima
de tres a cinco años, medidas que la portavoz espera que "mejoren" su
funcionamiento. Duarte concluye que, tarde o temprano, las políticas
contradictorias de los Gobiernos en materia de alojamiento llevarán a "una
implosión o una explosión" del modelo económico portugués y lisboeta.
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