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The a16z Show

a16z Podcast: An Economics Take on the Sharing Economy

The a16z Show

a16z

Disruption, Culture, Technology, Software Eating The World, Innovation, Science, Entrepreneurship, Business

4.21.2K Ratings

🗓️ 16 June 2016

⏱️ 28 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Love the term or hate it, the concept and reality of the "sharing economy" (or "gig economy" and so on) is here to stay. And in fact, argues NYU Stern professor and researcher Arun Sundararajan, it may even reduce the income distribution gap between ...

Transcript

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0:00.0

The content here is for informational purposes only, should not be taken as legal business, tax,

0:05.6

or investment advice, or be used to evaluate any investment or security and is not directed

0:10.3

at any investors or potential investors in any A16Z fund. For more details, please see A16Z.com

0:16.8

slash disclosures.

0:18.8

Hi, everyone. Welcome to the A6 and Z podcast. I'm Sonal, and I'm here today with Arun Sunderarajan,

0:23.6

who's a professor at NYU's Stern School of Business, and he's a longtime expert on the so-called

0:28.9

sharing economy. The reason I say so-called is because a lot of people have a love-hate relationship

0:34.1

with that phrase. They've proposed alternatives like gig economy. There are lots of

0:38.4

other proposals on the table. For lack of a better phrase, we're going to stick to it. And the other

0:42.2

reason we're going to stick to it is because it happens to be the title of Arun's new book, which is

0:46.4

called The Sharing Economy, the End of Employment and the Rise of Crowd-Based Capitalism. Welcome, Arun. Good to be here, Sonal. Well, it's funny, Arun, because as you

0:54.8

recall, we wrote an op-ed about four, over four years ago in Wired. And I think it was one of the

1:00.1

very early op-eds. We didn't coin the term by any means. But I did do a Google search at the time,

1:04.3

and I only saw it use in a few places. And I remember having a little fight with the headline desk because the title of the op-ed is why the

1:12.0

government should not regulate the sharing economy. And they were like, what the hell is the sharing

1:16.9

economy? Well, for the next few years, I had to deal with being the guy who wrote, why the government

1:22.2

doesn't need to regulate every time I spoke to government officials. And so the positive part of that, I guess, is that, like,

1:30.0

a lot of people in government did in fact read that op-ed. And the first one I wrote about regulating

1:34.3

the sharing economy. Well, that makes me happy to hear that. The term has been around for a while.

1:37.9

And I think we do talk about it a lot, but you're writing one of the early definitive books on the topic. I actually would love to deep dive on some of the things that people don't talk about.

1:47.2

You have a subtitle called The End of Employment and the Rise of Crowd-Based Capitalism.

1:52.4

And that part is what I find very intriguing.

...

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