Share NY

Today Greg and Jillian headed to the inaugral Share NYC conference at NYU. Hosted by Arun Sundararajan, Luke Williams, and Cynthia Franklin, #ShareNYC featured speakers and panels discussing current hot topics in the sharing economy. The event joined together "entrepreneurs, government leaders, academics, business executives, VCs and students for a unique day of discussion and thought leadership about the emerging collaborative, peer-to-peer and sharing economies." Unfortunately the event was not live-streamed, however Twitter gave us a pretty decent play by play on the main points of discussion.

The first Share NYC conference seemed to be a success and continues to confirm the interest society has in the sharing economy. It's excellent to see such a young economic model hashed out by groups of educators, regulators and enthusiasts while still in development. Did you have an opportunity to attend #ShareNYC? What did you think? Are these conferences developing the sharing economy or not?

Does the Government need to Regulate the Sharing Economy?

Economist Arun Sundararajan tells us why he thinks the government should not regulate the sharing economy and that reputation replaces regulation. 

In the sharing economy, reputation serves as the digital institution that protects buyers and prevents market failures.

This is a very controversial topic for the sharing economy, especially since the recent death of a six year old girl who was hit by an Uber contracted driver.  

Check out the rest of Arun's article on Wired and let us know what you think. Should the government be involved in the sharing economy? If so to what extent?