Flemming Funch expands on an idea recently covered in The Economist and traced back to Yochai Benkler of Yale Law School.

Link: Ming the Mechanic: The Economics of Sharing.

It is an interesting, even if obvious, key point that sharing is most likely to emerge when something is available that has inherent and abundant unused capacity. Probably isn’t important that it is sold. It is important that there’s an abundance of something, and some kind of informational system exists that allows some of that abundance to be directed to where else it might be needed and appreciated.