What Catholic social teaching can teach the sharing economy

Any Christian reflection on the economy should begin with the voices of the poor and the marginalized. The sharing economy, too, makes much of its promises to make life easier for people with less. But it also tends to focus its attention on people in the ever-deflating middle class—those with extra rooms and cars to let, rather than those who never had those in the first place. Some “sharing” services, such as the app-based selling of parking spots that San Francisco recently banned, seem expressly meant to lend more privileges to those with money at the expense of those without.

Discrimination is a problem, too; racist user behavior on Airbnb has been well documented. Such discrimination may go to the very heart of the “sharig economy” label itself; when people of color set up “gypsy cabs” to cover routes ignored by public transit, they’re banned, but when middle-class whites do something similar with smartphones, it’s called the sharing economy.

*Who really benefits from new platforms, and who doesn’t?
*How would these services look different if they were designed by the poor and marginalized?