What is Collaborative Consumption?

I know I refer to grist.org a lot, but it’s really a very good site.  A while back, I read David Robert’s piece on collaborative consumption. Like any waste-reducing liberal, I like this idea in theory. But I read the article from a distance, smugly thinking to myself, ‘Yes, but I like my mountain of stuff. My collection of books/music/tribal jewelry defines me and makes me feel secure about my middle class place in this world. Collaborative consumption is a nice idea, but it’s not really for me.’

Then I read this sentence:

"If improvements in welfare are increasingly independent of the market, it would make sense to shift resources out of market production, for example by reducing working hours."

Well now, I participate in the New American Dream, and I want to Take Back My Time. I love my work but I don’t need to spend 40 hours doing it every week when there are so many other things I love to spend time on, too.  Things like seeing my kids when I’m not reading a bedtime story; walking my own dog on a weekday; not skipping lunch to have time for exercise. Roberts says, “If jobs can be shared, just like things and spaces, then people will have more free time to engage in non-market but value-added activities, on what amounts to a hobbyist basis.”

The idea of job sharing had a brief heyday in the late 20^th century, but for the most part proved unworkable. When two people are responsible for the same body of work, but never actually work together on it, naturally, things are going to fall through the cracks. It seems to me that as lovely as the sharing idea feels, a more tenable approach is to redefine the job. When each person is fully responsible for a separate body of work that just happens to be about half of an old-school job description, job-sharing seems like a great idea to me.