What's yours is mine - Tom Slee

The news is full of their names, supposedly the vanguard of a rethinking of capitalism. Lyft, Airbnb, Taskrabbit, Uber, and many more companies have a mandate of disruption and upending the "old order"-and they've succeeded in effecting the "biggest change in the American workforce in over a century," according to former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich. But this new wave of technology companies is funded and steered by very old-school venture capitalists. And in What's Yours Is Mine, technologist Tom Slee argues the so-called sharing economy damages development, extends harsh free-market practices into previously protected areas of our lives, and presents the opportunity for a few people to make fortunes by damaging communities and pushing vulnerable individuals to take on unsustainable risk. Drawing on original empirical research, Slee shows that the friendly language of sharing, trust, and community masks a darker reality.

Tom Slee writes about technology, politics, and economics and in the last three years has become a leading critic of the sharing economy. He has a PhD in theoretical chemistry, a long career in the software industry, and his book No One Makes You Shop at Wal-Mart is a game-theoretical investigation of individual choice that has been used in university economics, philosophy and sociology courses. He blogs at www.tomslee.net.

Selected praise for What's Yours Is Mine



"As Tom Slee's superbly argued book points out, the vast majority of Airbnb's business is now "entire home" rentals: self-contained flats or villas. ....Slee performs some very clever data research and finds out that the most expensive Airbnb apartment in Rome is one of several European luxury pads rented out by an American tech entrepreneur, who bought them with the proceeds of the sale of his last software company." -The Guardian



"In What's Yours Is Mine: Against the Sharing Economy, Tom Slee...delivers a smart and searing critique of a business that people are only just beginning to think about in a serious way. While some bloggers still treat the sharing economy as some kind of cause, Slee rightly analyses it as a business model masquerading as a movement." -The Spectator (UK)



"Slee is an extremely well-informed skeptic who presents a satisfyingly blistering critique of high tech's disingenuous equating of sharing with profiteering." -Counterpunch



"In this lucid and rigorous book, Tom Slee dismantles the facade of the sharing economy, revealing hidden and often troubling truths about companies like Uber and Airbnb. If you want to understand how internet businesses really operate, What's Yours Is Mine is the place to start." -Nicholas Carr, author of The Shallows and The Glass Cage



"In a field crowded with tech-utopian blowhards and app-happy snake oil salesmen, Tom Slee stands apart. His laser-sharp insights about the real impact of popular start-ups on our livelihoods and communities are the perfect antidote to sharing economy hype. What's Yours Is Mine is required reading for anyone interested in technology and economic justice." -Astra Taylor, author of The People's Platform: Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age



"Tom Slee's essential new book shows that the sharing economy has very little to do with sharing. Slee uses wit, clarity, and facts to demolish the self-serving mythologies of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and figure out what Uber, Amazon and their kind are really up to." -Henry Farrell, co-chair, Social Science Research Council's Digital Culture Initiative; professor of political science and international affairs, George Washington University