(DTC356 Blog 11) Sharing vs. Commercial Economy

Lawrence Lessig breaks economics down into two different categories, a Sharing economy and a Commercial  economy.

Commercial: Lessig describes most of our day to day transactions as a Commercial economy. For example anything exchanging of objects are categorized as such. In our culture it is mostly trading money for another object, other examples could be trading a object for another object.

Sharing: This is the exchange of goods for the promise of doing something else in return. This economy is run by relationships and not monitory prices. An example of this could be wikipedia where by accessing and sharing data/content you are not expecting a price for your services, you are instead doing this because of other reasons possibly to help add to the vast collection.

Lessig brings both types of economics up because he feels that the internet is evolving into a shared economy. Sites like Amazon, Wikipedia, and Google are giving their applications with simply a shared economy or a combination of shared and commercial economy. Google is a site where it is simply a sharing economy; it asks nothing for the use of its products but in return for that usage Google keeps all the data you put into its search engines or other applications. Amazon uses a hybrid because it not only deals with a shared economy, but it uses that information to enhance the commercial economy aspect of its business. By browsing through its products, it is able to see what you like and build a pattern of items you like and uses that along with others "liked items" to build a suggested buying list for you. This creates a long tail effect and opens the market up and has been a large part of Amazons success. Lessig gives an example of why Amazon is superior to Barnes and Noble. To have a suggested selling much like Amazon, the store would have to be knowledgeable on hundreds upon hundreds of texts and also know your personality and the types of books you like. This is an example of what gives the web a upper hand on other forms of economy.