96 97 The contrast is instructive. For-profit platforms can weather downturns and scale because they tap into capital markets and design around stable revenue flows, while non-profits rely on fragile networks of volunteerism and philanthropy. This disparity has strategic implications. Platform cooperatives and other alternative models cannot realistically replicate the venture capital model, but they can pool resources, federate across initiatives, and build durable partnerships with States and municipalities. Without shared infrastructure and supportive legal and financial frameworks, even the most innovative cooperative platforms will struggle to compete with well-capitalized corporations. This suggests the need for a dual strategy: horizontal resource pooling among cooperative actors and vertical collaboration with State institutions to secure regulatory, financial, and infrastructural support. Our research on gig platforms also illuminates why for-profits have had such a powerful hold, especially for economically dependent workers. In interviews with Postmates and Favor couriers in the Boston metropolitan area, we found that economically dependent gig workers experienced platforms less as spaces of community and reciprocity, than as mechanisms of market control. For these workers, platforms served as coping strategies amid stagnant wages and precarious employment. Those who depended on gig earnings were more tightly bound by algorithmic and market discipline, while supplemental users had greater freedom to pick and choose their engagements. This bifurcation allowed platforms to sustain a labor force without fostering moral legitimacy or collective identification. The platforms’ reliance on venture capital enabled them to offer temporarily attractive conditions such as flexibility, immediate pay, and low entry barriers, while avoiding the need to construct durable social obligations. These dynamics underscore why voluntary initiatives alone cannot rebalance the landscape. For-profits enjoy structural advantages that flow from their integration into financial markets and their ability to operate without relying on the affective and moral commitments of participants. Non-profits, in contrast, are vulnerable precisely because they lean on voluntarism in a post-legitimate society where institutional commitments have eroded, and individuals face economic pressures that limit their capacity to give. To build sustainable alternatives, cooperatives must learn from these asymmetries. Resource pooling, shared infrastructure, and strategic State engagement are not optional supplements to voluntarism; they are necessary conditions for survival and growth in a competitive environment dominated by capital-intensive firms. There were always internal debates about how broadly or narrowly to define the Sharing Economy. Narrow definitions focused on mechanisms like peer-to-peer exchange, the use of idle assets, and open knowledge repositories. This vision emphasized disintermediation, cutting out bureaucratic and corporate middlemen, and resonated with critiques of alienation and standardization. A more substantive vision saw sharing as a way to reinvigorate the commons and counter extractive economic logics. This vision recognized that sharing cannot permanently avoid politics or the State. It must develop new institutional forms that embed sharing within broader social systems. Voluntarism is necessary for any commons, but it is not sufficient. Durable commons require institutions that persist even when individuals are tired or disengaged. Historically, cooperative federations and labor or credit unions developed for this reason. They pooled resources, created governance structures, and linked local initiatives into larger networks. Contemporary sharing surges have often failed to do this. They remain fragmented across sectors, regions, and demographics. Even within a single city, different initiatives often duplicate efforts rather than coordinate. Technology can help overcome this fragmentation by linking local drives into broader networks. Platform cooperativism offers one model for using digital platforms to coordinate democratic ownership and governance. Open-source infrastructure can facilitate interoperability between initiatives. Municipalities and States can shape the environment through regulation, taxation, and procurement, favoring cooperative and commons-based models. Barcelona’s Decidim platform and cooperative procurement policies supported local digital commons. Seoul declared itself a Sharing City, passing regulations and funding programs to support sharing, while protecting public interests. Germany’s carsharing regulations created favorable conditions for non-profit and cooperative models, alongside commercial ones. These examples show that policy and politics can shape Sharing Economies in ways that align with social goals. The Sharing Economy began as a response to structural transformations in economic and social life. Economic stagnation and debt pushed people to seek alternative income streams. The hollowing out of social institutions left them yearning for authentic bonds. These conditions echoed classical sociological concerns about the erosion of integration and regulation in modernity. Participants turned to sharing initiatives to meet material needs and recover forms of solidarity they felt were missing. The early wave of Sharing Economy initiatives revealed both the power and limits of voluntarism. It showed the enduring desire for Gemeinschaft in a Gesellschaftdominated world, but also how easily that desire can be commodified or dissipated without institutional change. For-profit platforms scaled quickly but deepened inequalities. Nonprofit projects struggled without supportive infrastructures. Voluntarism and moral appeals alone could not overcome structural constraints. To move forward, the Sharing Economy must link sociological insights to political and technological strategies. The yearning for community must be channelled into institution building, not temporary experiments. This means developing federated networks of sharing initiatives that can pool resources, coordinate activities, and represent shared interests. Just as labor unions and cooperatives federated to gain power in industrial society, sharing initiatives must develop organizational forms capable of persistence and collective bargaining in the digital era. Technological tools can support this vision, if they are deployed thoughtfully. Platform cooperatives and open-source infrastructures can allow democratic governance at scale. Municipal and national governments can shape the environment. Technologies can help build linked sharing ecologies, but they cannot substitute for politics. Governance and institutional frameworks remain essential. The crises that gave rise to the Sharing Economy have not disappeared. If anything, they have intensified. But these crises also create opportunities. As existing systems falter, there is space to build new forms of economic and social organization. The challenge is to avoid repeating voluntarist and depoliticized strategies, and instead connect sociological understanding with political action and technological design. In this way, the Sharing Economy can evolve from fragmented moral experiments and survival tactics into a strategic project of social reconstruction. It can move from simulating Gemeinschaft to building real communities embedded within transformed institutions. It can address not only the symptoms of absence but their structural causes, helping to lay the groundwork for democratic, sustainable, and solidaristic architectures in the twenty-first century.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NDUzNDc=