Wasn't there an article on a very similar theme on this site a week or so ago? Never mind. Sure technology has opened up new ways to better use resources, such as air b'n'b and uber taxis and so on, which has knocked around some industries. But this is all around the fringes of the existing economy and only applicable in certain areas. It is difficult to see how this shared approach would work in building office towers or coal mines, for example. The change has also had little apparent effect on productivity figures. Overall nice sentiments, shame about the facts..

Collaborative consumption?

Ridesharing? Or an Ubra app? Where then from there? House and or flat sharing in already overcrowded gridlocked cities where the average dweller creates 2.5 times the carbon of his/her country cousins!
It sounds like you've thought this through in order to maximise the profits for a privileged few?
And as always, these concepts as trialled previously, only work if all parties cooperate and observe all the rules scrupulously!
Better that we create self-sufficient rural communes where only like-minded folk want to participate! And share willingly!
Even then, it only takes one cleptomaniac or serial thief to cruel the whole experiment for all!
Ridesharing? Well, not such a bad idea, if it is a company vehicle and an electrically powered autonomous vehicle that puts four commuters on the road heading for the same destination, instead of four commuters in four cars, quadrupling the congestion as endlessly repeated examples every workaday morning in our larger cities! When it could be quartered?
Tools? Why not? If they're signed for and accompanied by a recoverable deposit?
Me? I'd rather my own and available when and where needed! Ditto accommodation replete with a traditional backyard! And an essential vehicle!
The NBN allows many more folk to work from home and away from gridlocked overcrowded cities. Where the crime rate and mental health issues, invariably increase exponentially with population growth and as always, full of strangers, who wouldn't give the average Joe the time of day?
I'm a fan of cooperative capitalism, just not this dream castle dweller example!
Alan B.

Out of the mouths of babes comes, yes baby talk.

Let me assure you Michael, no one but me is going to drive my favourite car. It is only those who value my stuff as highly as I do, that will look after stuff like I do. Not interested in finding out the hard way who will, or who won't. Also not interested in sharing repair costs with those who won't.

In a hobby farm area, with properties ranging from about 5 acres to about 30 acres, everyone needs a tractor for about 15 or 20 hours a year. Some decided it would be a good idea to share the cost between a few neighbours.

Things looked good for about 6 months, then a slasher & a rotary hoe broke down over a week or two. Arguments then arose about the reason, old age, worn out or misuse. Then when the clutch failed in a tractor, requiring a $2500 repair on a $5000 tractor, the arguments got serious. Some people still don't talk to each other 8 years later.

There are some people, [like me] who will baby a bit of old gear for years of extra use, & others [like my neighbour] who expect a little old tractor to do what a new bulldozer could not. Sharing between such people is not on.

Some of us now rent each others gear, but only among the more gentle, with the requirement it is returned in full working order if broken, but such sharing is very limited in who is involved users. I'll probably never use my heavy twin disc plow again, but a few selected others will. Short of another major flood destroying fences, I'll never need my neighbours post hole boring rig again, but who knows.

The Navy wasn't using the Garden Island dry dock much, so leased it out to private enterprise. They then had to wait months for a critical repair on a major ship. Sharing is not very practical.

So sorry Michael, it has been tried & found wanting.

Sounds like commo collectivism to me, especially coming from 'uni-boy'. No private ownership, one of the mainstays of Western democracy, from someone probably too young and naive to know what his 'system' did to people in the past.

...Instead of every person needing a power tool, only a few power tools will be required for community lending...

It's currently known as Plant Hire. Rent don't buy. It comes with a high price tag, and in balance it may be more economical to buy the tool, use it, and resell it on EBay.

And finally, insurance. A big killer of enterprise and responsible for vast amounts of over regulation. Whoever owns the plant, better be insured.

This is thought bubble stuff with little research IMO.

ttbn

You nailed it exactly.
When are we ever going to see an end to this kind of failed,communistic ideology..
It sounds wonderful on the surface but always fails dismally in practise.
Because you can never take human nature out of the equation.

To the author of this article
Hello! this was tried in the 1970's, remember the Hippie Communes, they failed miserably, especially, when their love and peace utopian settlements, started to experience the same violence and murder, they had left behind in the big bad world outside.