“Sharing” is a term thrown around loosely these days. In the digital age, it usually means allowing others access to online content, typically through social media outlets. Recently, however, the word has appeared as part of the snappy catchphrase, “sharing economy,” though the principle to which it alludes has been practiced long before. As this alleged new economic model takes the world by storm, with Silicon Valley the cradle of its nascence before crossing the Atlantic, sociologists, economists and everyday users are still not in exact agreement as to what constitutes a sharing economy. The fact that the term is often aggregated with “collaborative consumption” certainly doesn’t help to unravel its convoluted meaning, either.

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However, everyone can agree that an integral component of the sharing economy is Web 2.0, or that which allows users to offer content and connect with one another via the Internet. The principle of sharing involves interpersonal connections built on trust, and nowadays this trust is often accorded to complete strangers. Such a leap of faith can be eased and facilitated only through digital platforms where users and providers are brought together, where crowd-sourced vouching can confirm or impugn someone’s trustworthiness. The recent surge of participants in the sharing economy reflects the anxiety of an ever-growing population with insatiable rates of consumption in a world of finite resources. The appeal of stimulating economic growth while curbing the effects on the environment is undeniable.

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As a pre-emptive response against resource depletion, sharing can be seen as an attainable economic utopia, not to mention the boons from ideas moving freely. Networks such as CouchSurfing and Freecycle are platforms on which accommodation or goods are distributed and acquired without compensation. Linux and Firefox, examples of open-source software, are collaboratively developed and freely accessible. Neighborhood initiatives around the world see residents banding together to offer each other skills or appliance usage at no cost. Users enlist review services, like Yelp and TripAdvisor, to share content based on their own experiences, and rideshares bring together colleagues inhabiting the same locality to reduce congestion and carbon emissions. All of these are prime examples of a true sharing economy, founded in social solidarity, environmental awareness and free access, where goods and services are granted with no expectation of remuneration. Because since when did sharing entail payment?

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But what of the likes of household names in the sharing economy such as Airbnb, Uber and the recently launched, Vrumi? In fact, the sharing economy in the form of its most popular channels has little to do with sharing. These companies are, rather, proponents of collaborative consumption, the peer-to-peer coordinated distribution and acquisition of commodities or services. The key divergence is the requisite of exchange, usually monetary. People primarily engage in this sort of economic activity not to reduce their carbon footprint but to profit or score a deal. The appeal lies in creating value from waste for the everyday citizen. Questions as to the sustainability of this model are brought forth as it has been observed that profits are derived from circumventing the costs of doing business, such as taxes, insurance and regulations, that larger establishments face.

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Vrumi, a London-based start-up, has taken Airbnb’s model of peer-to-peer accommodation rentals and applied it to short-term daytime leasing. The platform paves way for owners and leaseholders to rent their otherwise vacant spaces during business hours to self-employed professionals for a nominal fee. The initiative is fueled by crowdfunding, another trendy feature of the sharing economy, in addition to personal investments made by its founders and private investors. Mimicking other collaborative consumption ventures, Vrumi is driven by profits for itself and its providers of vacant space, which it commodifies. Yet it touts itself as being part of the sharing economy. Shared profits, indeed, as Vrumi collects commission from hosts and guests at every booking. With regard to other aspects of a partnered business—shared risks, shared liability—Vrumi shies away from its obligations. Surely this is because the start-up is still budding, but it would be in everyone’s best interests, especially Vrumi’s, to protect its providers. No reminder of the Airbnb horror stories is necessary, and Vrumi can expect to see the number of its listings grow if it incorporated a host guarantee.

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Vrumi certainly builds social solidarity by helping people to open up their homes to local businesses, but access comes at a price, and this kind of collaboration does not aim at reducing resource consumption. By encouraging those who control desirable domiciles to capitalize on these assets, it does, however, perpetuate the existing model of privilege built upon entrenched inequalities of wealth and power. While a true sharing economy is attainable only on a small scale thus far, Vrumi and similar ventures are simply applying the principle of collaborative consumption to the standing capitalist model.

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Although this fashionable sharing economy, as purported by Vrumi and others, is unlikely to lead to a peaceful future of harmonious resource and wealth distribution, there is no denying that progression in the same current will lead to a paradigm shift from private proprietorship to shared ownership and accessibility, which is more democratic and preferable to the oligarchic power of multinational corporations. In addition to changing the way we consume and access, evolving interactions are forecasted in the near social climate. Like many personal encounters coordinated by mobile technology, future social interaction will indeed be altered by sharing and collaborative consumption. Trusting strangers is easily relegated through ID verification and crowd-sourced ratings instead of personal experience. Additionally, the more information available on others and the more control we exercise on meeting them, the more procedural our encounters will become. Social interaction through a technological filter will be slowly deprived of the elements of surprise, serendipity or chance.

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“Sharing” in today’s sense of the word is by no means the utopian economic exchange that we are led to believe; it has never been about sharing in the playground sense. It concerns, rather, cooperation in the aim of individual fulfillment.