Many, such as the New Economics Foundation, are seeking a real sharing economy where information, power and profits are more genuinely shared. There are several existing not for profit examples of what good sharing is like; the challenge is how to make them and others more influential. Localised sharing platforms such as freecycle allow people to recycle products without payment; apps are enabling excess food to be made freely available to the homeless; couch-surfing freely matches people to spare sofas but without the airbnb intermediary overhead; and tool library networks are enabling pools of farmers to share access to specialized machinery and equipment that are too expensive for individuals to acquire. These are popular and growing, but currently tiny compared to the for-profit platforms.

As resources become more constrained and waste is seen as a resource, some argue that more cooperative platforms will help to give access to goods those who can’t afford them, accelerate more sustainable consumptions, especially in cities, reduce environmental impacts of society and maybe even help build stronger communities. What some initially termed as the gift economy has been taken over by market capitalism. Going forward many hope that this can be reversed. With the evolution of the smart grid allowing consumers of energy to also be producers, many see that this infrastructural shift could drive a change in the systemic view of sharing – one that may, in the end, lead to improving quality of life through greater social interactions, fairer wealth distribution, and stronger community relationships.

Local time-banking projects, such as those run via Echo in the UK, are seen to be a more equable and overall effective approach to TaskRabbit; OuiShare has expanded from France across Europe, the Middle East and Latin America as it creates a global network of collaborators; and organisations such as the European Sharing Economy Coalition are seeking to create policies to support wider adoption of the real sharing economy.

Rather than focusing on supporting the ‘gig’ economy where the low-paid self-employed compete to provide a service as cheaply as possible, more are seeking to use sharing as a means for better wealth redistribution. Instead of creating enterprises that let well-off people pay less well-off people to do their chores – without providing anyone the benefits and security of traditional employment – many are looking at more cooperative collaborative platforms that share as a means to both improve efficiency and collectively create a good or service and then share the results equitably. As an alternative to creating the market pull to put an extra 10,000 cars onto the London streets for Uber, others are looking at how existing cars can be better used 24/7 and not left in car parks and so simultaneously provide more land for much-needed housing.

The question therefore is how far will we get to this more egalitarian view of sharing by 2025? The momentum behind the likes of Uber, Airbnb and their peers is evidently significant – both in terms of financial support and customer pull. Globally, the advantage of for-profit online marketplaces over the legacy systems is clear. The challenge is whether the not-for-profit alternatives can draw in wider support and hence scale.