Monday, May 20, 2013

Not Quite Clear on the Concept: How to Take Advantage of the Sharing Economy

Today's "Wall Street Journal This Morning" radio show had a segment on The Sharing Economy which was a pretty good intro for newbs but had the very unfortunate teaser I used in the headline:
How to take advantage of the Sharing Economy. 
Ouch.
As Izzy said in the second paragraph of last Wednesday's "Social networks as evolutionary game theory":
...Many of these collaborative models do after all offer a tempting opportunity to cheat or exploit the model. In home exchanges, there’s the temptation to steal or damage your fellow swapper’s house. In shared car schemes, there’s the temptation to damage or abuse the shared equipment. In file sharing, there’s the temptation never to reciprocate and just to take, take, take. In timebank job swapping there’s a temptation to under perform. And in car pooling or couch-surfing there’s the temptation for an unsavoury sort to totally take advantage. And so on…
I don't mean to be harsh on WSJAM's Gordon Deal and Gina Cervetti, they are pro financial broadcasters and probably don't write their own teasers anyway. And after the break Gordon did change the teaser to "How can you make the sharing economy work for you?"
It's just that the first run-through was so jarring.
Me? I think of the chimpanzees and the dopamine D4 receptor:

 Caring and sharing: Chimpanzees can be as selfless and charitable as kinder examples of their human cousins, a study has found

At the Public Library of Science (PLoS):
Dopamine D4 Receptor Gene Associated with Fairness Preference in Ultimatum Game