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Fair Shares: The Sharing Economy

Sharing your neighbour’s car, tools and clothes have become a new style of enterprise. But existing regulations and laws are not set up for it and it is causing problems.

Home swaps, driving your neighbour’s car, private car parking in your drive, even renting your neighbour’s clothes. They are all part of a new style of collaborative enterprise in which nearly everyone can join and (maybe) make money - the ‘shared economy’. It is breaking cover, growing fast and could be important.

Perhaps the best known example is Airbnb but many more companies have sprung up allowing people to share their things and even their time. And now companies are trying to make money out of what makes all this sharing possible - trust.

But existing regulations and laws are set up for traditional businesses such as hotels and car hire companies, and that is causing problems. Peter Day investigates the opportunities and snags of the sharing economy and asks if it could become a big democratic movement.

Available now

29 minutes

Last on

Sun 11 May 2014 10:32GMT

Contributors to this programme

Debbie Wosskow - Founder and chief executive of Love Home Swap and Collaborative Consumption Europe.

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Richard Laughton - Chief executive of easyCar Club.

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Jit Patel - user of Streetbank.com

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Fiona Disegni - Founder of Rentez-vous.

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Even Heggernes - Airbnb country manager UK and Ireland.

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Rachel Botsman - Sharing economy guru and author of What’s Mine is Yours

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Miles Spencer - Co-founder and chairman of TrustCloud.

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Leah Busque - Founder and chief executive of TaskRabbit

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Lily - mother of two from North London – TaskRabbit customer

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Carlos - handyman TaskRabbit

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Ivo Gormley - Founder of Good Gym

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Broadcasts

  • Sat 10 May 2014 04:32GMT
  • Sun 11 May 2014 00:32GMT
  • Sun 11 May 2014 10:32GMT

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