> It also meant money that could have gone to the hotel owners (capitalists with multi-million pound investments) instead went to a family which was spending time abroad on a cycle-tour through Germany.
The money you would have paid to a hotel would have been split between the employees and the owners. For your Airbnb stay, a 6-12% guest service fee [0] and a 3% host service fee [1] was paid to Airbnb, who are analogous to the owners in the hotel situation.
You are perfectly right that you made savings by not paying for services you didn't want, but the "sharing" model hasn't eliminated the role of the capitalist class, which is implied by your post.
To take a much broader view, although our global production capacity has increased markedly, so has our consumption, which ultimately causes prices of these goods to remain relatively high to people on locally average incomes. One might hypothecate that we could maintain our higher production with a significantly smaller global population (and correspondingly lower consumption), which would make real inroads into lowering prices for common goods, but I really have no idea as to whether or not that is true.
The money you would have paid to a hotel would have been split between the employees and the owners. For your Airbnb stay, a 6-12% guest service fee [0] and a 3% host service fee [1] was paid to Airbnb, who are analogous to the owners in the hotel situation.
You are perfectly right that you made savings by not paying for services you didn't want, but the "sharing" model hasn't eliminated the role of the capitalist class, which is implied by your post.
To take a much broader view, although our global production capacity has increased markedly, so has our consumption, which ultimately causes prices of these goods to remain relatively high to people on locally average incomes. One might hypothecate that we could maintain our higher production with a significantly smaller global population (and correspondingly lower consumption), which would make real inroads into lowering prices for common goods, but I really have no idea as to whether or not that is true.
[0] https://www.airbnb.co.uk/help/question/104 [1] https://www.airbnb.co.uk/help/question/63