Why Does New York Hate the Sharing Economy?

Ask a bunch of New Yorkers where they spend their money: apartments, cars, vacation lodgings, maybe designer handbags. In the new American “sharing economy,” these can all be enjoyed at a fraction of their normal cost. Just not if you’re a New Yorker.

Bloomberg News’s Aki Ito and Jeff Kearns recently wrote about the increasing number of websites where people rent out their stuff. Going away for the weekend? Why not rent out your apartment? Not using your car much? Let someone else. Services like Airbnb, RelayRides and DogVacay are on track to account for “at least a single-digit percentage” of GDP in five years, said Arun Sundararajan, a professor at the Stern School of Business. In America’s $16 trillion economy, that’s enough to make the $2 billion currently invested in such startups seem puny.