The Sharing Economy Isn’t About Trust, It’s About Desperation, Kevin Roose, New York, April 24, 2014

Wired‘s cover story this month is about the rise of the “sharing economy” — a Silicon Valley–invented term used to describe the basket of start-ups (Uber, Lyft, Airbnb, et al.) that allow users to rent their labor and belongings to strangers. Jason Tanz attributes the success of these start-ups to the invention of a “set of digi­tal tools that enable and encourage us to trust our fellow human beings,” such as bidirectional rating systems, background checks, frictionless payment systems, and platforms that encourage buyers and sellers to get to know each other face-to-face before doing business.

Tanz’s thesis isn’t wrong — these innovations have certainly made a difference. But it leaves out an important part of the story. Namely, the sharing economy has succeeded in large part because the real economy has been struggling.

A huge precondition for the sharing economy has been a depressed labor market, in which lots of people are trying to fill holes in their income by monetizing their stuff and their labor in creative ways. In many cases, people join the sharing economy because they’ve recently lost a full-time job and are piecing together income from several part-time gigs to replace it. In a few cases, it’s because the pricing structure of the sharing economy made their old jobs less profitable. (Like full-time taxi drivers who have switched to Lyft or Uber.) In almost every case, what compels people to open up their homes and cars to complete strangers is money, not trust.

Most of What You Think You Know About Sex Trafficking Isn’t True, Amanda Hess, Slate, April 23, 2014

The image of the pimp who uses violence to keep unwilling sex workers on the street is real: One 14-year-old girl in New York told researchers that a pimp raped her after she attempted to leave; another told the story of her mother’s ex-boyfriend, who started pimping her out at age 11, and now tracks her down whenever she tries to run away. And even in the more common situations, when the pimp was either nonexistent or not such a menace, the sex workers weren’t exactly in optimal situations. “We did not encounter one [sex trafficking victim] who came to engage in sex work out of what one might call a fully realized choice: in every case their agency was constrained,” the researchers found. But “in very few of these cases was a ‘trafficker’ responsible for that constraint.” Rather, “it was a complex set of life crises or near-crisis points that compelled them into the sex trade.” Most of the underage sex workers they spoke with said their “biggest dangers” came from “customers, homelessness and drug addiction, rather than pimp-traffickers.” Eighty-seven percent of underage sex workers in New York they spoke to said they wanted to quit; most didn’t work with pimps.

Marcus and his colleagues conclude that the laws, like the Trafficking Victims’ Protection Act, that focus on nabbing the pimps and have led to “decriminalization of minors involved in sex work” are “wholly positive.” But “the logical premise of victimhood upon which this decriminalization rests is too narrowly construed to adequately respond to the realities these minors confront.” In other words, prosecuting pimps will only help a slim minority of underage girls and boys who turn to sex work.

The Real Reasons that Parents Have Stopped Vaccinating Their Kids, Annalee Newitz, io9, April 25, 2014

Scientists have a lot of theories — not a lot of them flattering — about why some people have stopped vaccinating their children. But those are just theories. If we want to save lives, it’s time for us to figure out what’s really causing this outbreak of vaccine hesitancy, and do something about it.

That’s the topic of a new report from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, which suggests a future research agenda to determine why vaccine hesitancy is on the rise.

Photo credit: By Pkg203 (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons.