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contribute tab at Best of the Left.com. Now welcome to the award-winning Best of the Left podcast with clips today from KQED News, the Laura Flanders Show,

Economic Update with Professor Richard Wolfe, the Ralph Nader Radio Hour, Activism from the next system project, the Majority Report, and then somewhere in the middle there,

you're going to hear maybe an unexpected clip from the Gipper himself, Ronald Reagan.

There is a small movement, but one that's gaining steam to stop using the phrase sharing economy. That's the term much of the media uses to refer to companies like Uber, Airbnb, and TaskRapet. Critics say these companies have nothing to do with sharing.

Sam Hartnett explores how the term sharing economy came to be and why some people want to want to banish it.

These days the most recognized businesses in the so-called sharing economy are built around apps where you pay for stuff, rides or places to stay. This is far from the original idea of the sharing economy says Neil Goranflow.

It's sharing through and through. It's where individuals are working with one another to create the products and also provision the services that we need to live and live well.

Goranflowrunsharable.net, a hub for co-ops and websites like Freestyle where people give things away.

He says the real sharing economy picked up after the 2008 financial crisis. It was Utopian, anti-capitalist, all about reducing consumption.

Then companies like Uber and Airbnb took off. Now for most people, they define the sharing economy.

There are sort of like the sharing economy, death stars, you know, they're so aggressive. They raise so much money, you know.

They're taking up all of the oxygen and the discussion, you know, in some ways, which is really frustrating for us.

Goranflow says it's a classic example of corporations co-opting the feel-good language of social activism.

The phrase sharing economy is particularly powerful since John Eckhart, a professor of marketing at Royal Holloway University of London.

If facilitates consumers thinking that they are part of a larger movement.

Ironically, Eckhart says instead of being about conservation, the phrase now puts a whole new positive spin on consumption.

You're not paying for a ride or a room, you're a part of a community sharing.

People want to believe that the consumption activities that they're doing have a larger purpose.

Eckhart is one of many pundits and reporters trying to kill the sharing economy label.

So's Alex Hurnn. He reports on tech for the Guardian newspaper in England.

He says the argument is so simple even little kids would understand.

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