In Search of a Moral Standard to Judge the Sharing Economy: The Case of the Silk Road
The sharing economy has been characterised as “The closest thing we’ve got today to the living, breathing essence of unrestrained capitalism” (Leonard, 2014), as “enriching Silicon Valley’s billionaires at the expense of workers” (Rozworski, 2015) and as “a peaceful revolution….systematically smashing 100-year-old monopolies all over the world, one ride at a time” (Tucker, 2015). No matter whether positively or negatively inclined, all commentators agree on one thing: the sharing economy is potentially one of the few materializations of the utopia (or dystopia) of a free and almost unobstructed market.
Debates around the sharing economy go beyond the theoretical level. There are constant calls for policy makers to intervene and there have been cases, such as with Ross Ulbricht, the founder of the online digital marketplace ‘Silk Road’, where the strictest prison sentence has been imposed to someone experimenting with new frontiers in the sharing economy; in this case, allowing through the platform the trade of illegal material, such as drugs.
On such a heated topic it would be of interest to try and examine the standards on which commentators and policy makers judge the sharing economy. What seems to be happening is that in both sides of the debate, such judgments tend to be based on ad hoc and utilitarian arguments. Criticism seems to be motivated by political and ideological affiliation or personal experience, but rarely on an a-prioritheoretical set of values or a system of ethics. Put differently, morality tends to operate as a way to justify a verdict that has already been passed. This paper will try to examine whether a moral defence or condemnation of the sharing economy can go beyond utilitarianism and be based on an objective approach and a clearly identifiable moral code.
This attempt will be facilitated by literature combining sociology, economic theory and philosophy. A good starting point could be Boltanski’s and Thevenot’s (2006) work on the various moral orders co-existing in the public sphere and on the continuous necessary compromises; yet, such compromises hint towards a pragmatic approach, away from absolute moral standards. Moving to the sphere of economic theory, I will examine whether the pro-free market arguments in favour of the sharing economy could go beyond the utilitarianism present in the work of both the Austrian and the Chicago schools of economics. The answer might be found in the sphere of philosophy, where the pro-capitalist position has come up with such a moral system – with Ayn Rand’s Objectivist ethics (Rand, 1964; Peikoff, 1993), whereas the construction of such a system by the Left is still a challenge.
Once the various moral approaches and justifications towards a free-enterprise model such as the sharing economy have been gathered, their application will be tested vis-à-visthe case of the illegal virtual marketplace Silk Road. The reason is that the case has a) produced a big amount of commentary, in fields as diverse as law, economics and ethics, and b) it poses some pressing questions on issues around moral autonomy and individual responsibility.
The standards on which the sharing economy is judged have quite important implications. The peer-to-peer digital economies and platforms are a relatively new phenomenon, but they seem like a historical stream that cannot be stopped. Therefore, whether they will be able to operate in the open, or whether they will be pushed to the margins of the society (or to the Darknet) is an issue of major ethical, sociological and political importance.
References:
Boltanski, L Thevenot, L. (2006), On Justification: Economies of Worth, Princeton University Press
Leonard, A. (2014), Why Uber must be stopped, in Salon, 31 August 2014
Peikoff, L. (1993), Objectivism: the Philosophy of Ayn Rand, Meridian
Rand, A. (1964), The Virtue of Selfishness, Signet,
Rozworksi, M (2015), Why we fight Uber, in Jacobin, 16 December 2015
Tucker, J. (2015), Uber’s Peaceful Revolution, in Foundation for Economic Education, 6 October 2015