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Matthew Feeney joins us for a discussion on how the so-called “sharing economy” undermines the regulatory establishment and makes people’s lives better.
This week we’re talking about Uber, Airbnb, and other business models that are based on “sharing” human and physical resources, often using information technology to facilitate these transactions. In other words, the sharing economy.
How do these new business models work? Are they even all that new?
Are consumer feedback systems effectively replacing the quality-control mechanisms that are ostensibly the reason for government regulation in these markets? Asked another way, how safe are these services without government licensing and regulatory oversight?
What effect have these new business models had on traditionally regulated services like taxicabs and hotels?
Why do libertarians seem to like the sharing economy so much?
Matthew Feeney is head of technology and innovation at the Centre for Policy Studies. He was previously the director of Cato’s Project on Emerging Technologies, where he worked on issues concerning the intersection of new technologies and civil liberties, and before that, he was assistant editor of Reason.com. Matthew is a dual British/American citizen and received both his BA and MA in philosophy from the University of Reading in England.
Aaron Powell founded Libertarianism.org. He is now the host of (Re)Imagining Liberty, a podcast about the case for radical freedom.
Trevor Burrus was a research fellow in the Cato Institute’s Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies and editor-in-chief of the Cato Supreme Court Review. His research interests include constitutional law, civil and criminal law, legal and political philosophy, legal history, and the interface between science and public policy.
He is the editor of A Conspiracy against Obamacare (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013) and Deep Commitments: The Past, Present, and Future of Religious Liberty (Cato, 2017). Burrus holds a BA in philosophy from the University of Colorado at Boulder and a JD from the University of Denver Sturm College of Law. He also contributed a chapter to Libertarianism.org’s Visions of Liberty.