When people started to talk about this, they used a language that is very familiar to people on the left - egalitarianism, sustainability, that we can make more of the assets we have, that we have access over ownership - what's come out of this is something completely the opposite.

Writer Tom Slee explores the harsh new frontier on the edge of the sharing economy, where companies like Uber and Airbnb build themselves up on relationships between people, eroding both consumer and worker protections while allowing the financial class to shape the economies and infrastructure of cities, outside legal and democratic controls.

Tom wrote the book What's Mine is Yours: Against the Sharing Economy from OR Books.