“Sharing is Communism” – Insane Myths About Collaborative Consumption

When I first heard of the idea of “collaborative consumption” (collcons) from Rachel Botsman’s website, I was intrigued.

This was a new way of bringing communities together and saving money by sharing.  That’s right – sharing.  The solution for a bad economy and disintegrating sense of community was taught to us by our mothers when we were learning how to socialize with other kids.

While I was excited about the new possibilities of collcons, I never imagined the idea would make some align this concept with Communism.  Yes, Communism.

(Sigh) Here we go again.

In a recent article on cnn.com, Rachel writes how the idea of “sharing” is replacing “owning” and the response in the comments section is nothing short of lunacy.  Commenters opposed to the concept seem to confuse a community’s voluntary effort with a mandated redistribution of resources.

Scanning through the comments, I saw readers arguing back and forth.  As supporters defended collcons as an entirely optional way of life, anti-collcons people argued that this was a fad; renting disingenuously repackaged as a so-called virtuous concept for irresponsible slackers who can’t afford to own their own stuff.

“Been there, done that,” they said.  “Don’t you remember communes of the 60s and 70s?  I didn’t think so.”  But crankypants-reponses like this were just the beginning.  Other responses sounded like angry town hall protesters from the summer of 2008.  Take, for example, this comment from “Rightworld:”

“What’s mine is yours…….
You do not have anything to share…….
Why do all the people with nothing to share want to share our property all over to them.
They that have nothing to lose love this type of nonsense.
A Truly purely Communist move……..
Getting Bold aren’t they……”

"You can't make me share, damnit!!!"

See, I told you – lunacy.  Everyone relax, no one is coming to take your stuff.

Why does a voluntary movement aimed at saving the planet and bringing people together incite fear and contempt with those who are opposed?  And why do these people who are opposed assume that the community, which revived this concept of sharing, has nothing to share?  And HOW IN THE WORLD does this point to Communism???

I have a simple question for those who believe that ownership trumps sharing:

What has the epidemic of owning anything and everything we could ever possibly desire gotten for us? We build bigger and bigger houses to store more and more stuff we own.  When is it ever enough?  I got a surprisingly transparent answer from another online commenter a few weeks back on the HuffPo message boards a few days after the midterm elections.

What began as a discussion about political games that only hurt the electorate ended with the admission that resistance to a new way of life all comes down to fear.  HuffPo commenter “INDIVIDUALTERRY” admitted that he only wanted a safe, comfortable life for himself and his family – he just didn’t want someone else giving him rules to live by.  Nice cars, nice homes and all the stuff that fills them – according to Terry, as long as we’re hardworking, we’re all entitled to this.

This is what the culture of consumerism has gotten us; people who are afraid of losing their stuff.  So afraid of losing what defines them, they become paranoid.  But is it about stuff or is it the feeling of supremacy that our country is capable of consuming so much – consequences be damned?

Look – this isn’t about liberal or conservative, communist or capitalist, Millennial or Boomer.  Whether we like it or not, we live by the Earth’s terms and not the other way around.  As we learned in Annie Leonard’s The Story of Stuff, mass-production of everything is depleting the Earth of resources, polluting everything and rapidly propelling us into a grim future.

It's my right to own a bunch of junk cheaply made from valuable resources in other countries which I will use briefly before disposing of.

It comes down to this: Collaborative Consumption allows us to build community by sharing what we’ve already got which reduces the demand for more stuff.  Yes, people are going to resist; this is a big change from how we’ve operated for a long time.  People are going to say that it will never work because borrowed items will get broken or that you just can’t trust strangers.  Let people say that it won’t work – it might not for a lot people – but, for the rest of us, we owe it to ourselves to continue to develop this movement.