Sharing Goods

One path toward Sustainable Capitalism might be to increase the Sharing of physical goods, rather than having energy going into making/transporting new ones that get little use.

One model is serial ownership - one person uses an object for a big chunk of time, then passes control to a different person. (Used Car, Home Buying)

• one sub-model of this is donating used goods to the Third World - e.g. EyeGlasses and Cell Phone-s

• Book Crossing: leave a book that you've finished sitting somewhere for someone else to read and Pass Along. http://www.bookcrossing.com/

More-granular-time-sharing is more interesting. Some old examples:

• Real Estate - vacation homes time-share

• ???

Newer ideas:

• Bicycle-s/Bike Share http://web.mit.edu/dzshen/www/about.shtml

  • Paris - not free http://www.springwise.com/transportation/city_bike_schemes_update_from/

  • Google IntraCampus loaners

• Car Sharing

• home-maintenance appliances (hedge trimmer, etc.)

  • tool libraries http://www.kk.org/cooltools/archives/000469.php

Trend Watching briefing on Transum Er-s http://www.trendwatching.com/trends/transumers.htm

• update - they tend to focus on stupid trendy Luxury goods