I thought it would be better to create something that could be shared with other people. Everything started with a small sharing-oriented community called The Abundance League in which, for a period of five years, people explored the idea of sharing and experienced a new way of living.
From that moment on, I began to live a different life. A whole new world of sharing-related possibilities opened up before me, and I felt myself more fulfilled.
However, we soon realised that if we wanted greater continuity and social impact, our project had to expand and develop many more spin-offs.
In 2008, we set up Shareable, with the idea of making the most of this new way of doing things and turning it into a new industry, an economic catalyst. We were thinking in terms of a more interconnected, transversal society instead of an industrial, top-down society that only sought prosperity through economic growth.
This new movement is getting stronger and stronger. The way we produce and consume goods and services is changing very fast. Just to cite a few examples: there are over 300 open-source technology projects in the world; 18 million people belong to cooperatives, which play a major role in local economies. There is a huge ecosystem of people empowering people to create and sell products in a way that only large companies were able to do until very recently. In the USA alone, this moves 129,000 million dollars every year.
Transport-sharing, workplace-sharing, and company service-sharing are just some of the new models that enable people to pay for goods and services only when they need them, instead of having to own them.
Will the sharing economy be a solution to the recession?
A city can save a lot of money by reducing the number of cars. Sharing brings about a systemic change: it reduces resource consumption, increases resource sharing, and develops the local economy.
We cannot guarantee that this transition we are immersed in will have the impact needed to avoid an even greater recession.
However, it may sound naïve, but in a creative, interconnected world we now have the means to create new institutions, where people will be more responsible and, at the same time, attain a greater degree of happiness.
The time has come to run for your lives towards this goal, because your lives depend on it. Sharing can save your lives.
The change is up to us. The tools are in our hands.
