Sharing – Happiness and Hardship 15911.3 Sharing as a Modern Way of Life
Perhaps we can say that sharing has become a prominent kind of be-
haviour in modern people. In the same way that we describe people in
the Middle Ages as being willing to pray, British people as being polite,
or the Swiss as having no sense of humour, we can say that in the mod-
ern age people like to share. Research shows that today more than half
of Americans are using social networks, such as Twitter, Facebook, In-
stagram, Pinterest, Tumblr, YouTube, etc.^138
Through these sharing platforms, many of which originated from
America, we can further understand the coming of ‘sharing economy
era’.
11.4 Sharing Economy
A ‘Sharing Economy’ is the economic phenomenon that presents it-
self through social platforms with the sharing of physical resources and
cognitive surplus, to provide services for a lower marginal cost than
professional organisers to obtain income. By adjusting the stock of so-
cial resources, a sharing economy claims to maximize the use of prod-
ucts and services, completely subverting the traditional idea of using
continuous investment to stimulate economic growth, and is an econom-
ic model which stimulates the economic benefits through revitalising
large-scale economic surplus. In the past, the traditional economy was
the exclusive world, to create exclusive monopoly.
Nowadays, the sharing economy poses as a business model, a crea-
tive factor and counter attack, changing the traditional concept of con-
sumption. The Sharing Economy is full of new thinking and cross-
border interaction, subversive of the traditional economy. The Sharing
138
Pew Research Center, Social Media Usage: 2005–2015,
http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/10/08/social-networking-usage-2005-2015/