Beijing Start-Up Now Offers Sex Dolls For Rent

It"s official: China"s sharing economy has reached its peak.

After shared workout pods, stools luxury cars, and, of course, bicycles, Shanghaist reports that a Beijing-based startup now has come up with a "mesmerizingly grotesque" idea: what if people could rent sex dolls through an app and return them after a period of time so that other silicone slammers could take advantage of the very same product?

And no, sadly this is not a joke.

The Chinese app, which is called Ta Qu, or "Touch" in English, was launched in 2015 as a platform for discussing issues about sex and sexuality. Over the past two years, it has pivoted or "(d)evolved" into a sex doll sharing app, which is now being tested in Beijing.  The Global Times reports that daily rentals cost 298 yuan, or less than $50, while users of the app can rent dolls for a week for the price of 1,298 yuan, after making an 8,000 yuan deposit.

The dolls then get delivered right to the user"s doorstep.

According to the Chinese outlet, there are currently five models to choose from: "Greek bikini model," "US Wonder Woman," "Korean housewife," "Russian teenager" and "Hong Kong car race cheerleader." Users can customize the dolls to their liking by picking out hair and eye color, as well as their outfits. 

Here is what $50 per day rents you:

For those asking the obvious question, the company states that it also has hygiene on its mind, as explained by their official policy.

"The dolls" lower parts are changed for every customer," reads the app. "Please remove the lower parts before returning. After the lower parts are cleaned, the doll can be used repeatedly."

The sex rental-sharing app is currently trying to make a name for itself in China"s booming adult toy market. On Weibo, where the company has more than 300,000 followers, it announced it would be giving out 20,000 free condoms as a way of promotion. It has also established several "pop-up" locations in Beijing to inform residents about their services, while even allowing people to pose for photos with their dolls while riding on the city"s subway.

Hoping to capitalize on China"s infamous gender imbalance, as well as its online gaming culture which breeds hordes of lonely young men, it remains to be seen whether Ta Qu will actually be able to translate the sharing economy model to sex dolls. But hey, at least it"s a better idea than shared umbrellas.

Gauging The Economic Impact Of Uber

Authored by Andrew Zatlin via MoneyballEconomics.com,

Uber has been in the headlines for all the wrong reasons over these past couple months.

I’m sure you’ve seen or heard the headlines.

From sexual harassment, to discrimination, to “Greyball” – software that helped Uber drivers evade law enforcement.

Everything seems to be imploding for Uber. Amidst all the controversy, CEO Travis Kalanick resigned yesterday.

Yet we should not overlook the major economic impact of Uber (and its main competitor Lyft).

According to Uber and Lyft, there are over 400,000(K) registered active drivers in the US.  

An active driver is someone who has provided at least 4 rides per month.

The number of taxi and limo drivers reached 77K in 2013 – an increase of 18% from 2010. Taxi and limo driver payrolls hit 8K in 2015 and 2016. But dropped to 76K this year… essentially leaving payrolls flat for the last 4 years.

You could even argue the 5% decline in payrolls this year were taxi and limo drivers jumping ship to Uber.

But looking from an even higher view,  we now have 400K part-time contractors.

These part-time contractors are not included in the non-farm payrolls numbers.  So any employment upside is being missed in the government data.

Who Wins, Who Loses?

Uber & Lyft will generate $8 billion (bn) in revenue in 2017.  

The U.S. Taxi industry generates $19B annually (per IBIS World).

This hasn’t changed much even with the advent of the ride-sharing economy.  Which means that Uber is not replacing the taxi industry as much as it is augmenting it by releasing pent-up demand.

Understand that the taxi industry is a local monopoly.  New York, LA, Las Vegas, San Francisco – the taxi rights are owned by individual companies.

The origins of the U.S. regulated taxi industry goes back to the Depression.  

To make ends meet… car owners offered ride-sharing. But supply overwhelmed demand and prices plunged.  

To prop up workers, cities began to regulate the industry in order to limit the number of drivers. They created a limited number of licenses (aka medallions) which they sold.  

Eventually a market emerged for those medallions and some smart business people began to scoop them up. Some became billionaires by doing this.

(The fight against Uber is really a fight between billionaire monopolists and a monopoly-busting service. Banks also have a heavy interest in keeping the taxi industry alive because they borrowed a ton of money to buy up the medallions.)

But limiting the number of licensed taxis also capped the number of rides.

If you’ve been to San Francisco, you know hailing a cab is pointless. There aren’t very many.  

As Uber is showing, massive pent-up demand has existed and is generating $8bn of incremental economic activity that is being distributed across hundreds of thousands of workers.

Is Uber Cyclical (part of a booming economy), Counter-cyclical (part of trying to make ends meet), or a bit of both?

There are full-time Uber drivers but most are part-time drivers trying to supplement their income.

An active economy creates the demand for drivers. But when the economy turns down, we’ll likely see even more drivers but less demand. Unlike the Depression, price regulation will be in place because Uber has to make a profit somehow.

KEY TAKEAWAY: Uber has disrupted the ride-sharing economy. However, the government, banks, and taxi monopolists won’t allow Uber to completely put them out of business… at least for the foreseeable future.

When the economy turns, more people will take up driving (increasing supply) as consumers pull back their wallets (decreasing demand). Prices will drop.

Eventually more regulation will be put in place for companies like Uber and Lyft.

How Much Do People Actually Make From "Gigs" Like Uber And Airbnb

Via Priceonomics.com,

Coined shortly after the financial crisis in 2009, the so-called “gig economy” or “sharing economy” refers to the growing cadre of companies like Airbnb, Lyft, and TaskRabbit—platforms that employ temporary workers who provide a wide variety of services: delivery, ridesharing, rentals, and odd jobs. A recent Pew study estimated that nearly a quarter of all Americans earn some money through these platforms.

But how much money are the service providers in the sharing economy actually making from their "side-gigs"?

We analyzed anonymized data from Priceonomics customer Earnest, a loan provider, and examined tens of thousands of loan applicants to see how much people are earning on side-gig platforms and how these platforms stack up against each other.

We looked at a span of data accounting for just over two years, and for each worker, we analyzed a pay period of between one and 27 months. We do not know how many hours of work the income represents for each platform, as each one has a unique pricing and commission structure. 

Furthermore, this data is just reflective of the Earnest user base, who are typically refinancing college loans and therefore may be more likely to be treating these services as a “side-gig” than the typical service provider who may be more likely to treat it as a fulltime job and have different earning levels.

We found that 85% of side-gig workers make less than $500 a month. And of all the side-gig platforms we examined, Airbnb hosts earn the most by far.

In our data, on all but Lyft and Uber, we excluded any worker who made a total $10 or less from a platform to eliminate data points that could simply represent a refund from the company. For Lyft and Uber, we excluded anyone with a total income of $50 or less. Then we tallied the average monthly incomes made by workers at each company.

Data source: Earnest

Making an average of $924 off their platform each month, Airbnb hosts make nearly three times as much as other workers. Workers at the general task-service platform, TaskRabbit, rank second at $380 per month. Overall, Lyft and Uber drivers make roughly the same average per month at $377 and $364 respectively. We also observed that nearly a quarter of Lyft drivers also earned income from Uber—and of that subset, we saw that the average income was actually higher for Uber ($481 vs $396.)

Of course, on all of these platforms, there is a wide range of earners. Several Airbnb hosts in our records, for instance, made over $10,000 per month, while others made less than $200.

To really understand these averages above, we took a deeper look at these ranges. Below, we’ve charted out the income distribution for each company. The figures represent the percentage of workers who fall into each month income bracket.

Data source: Earnest

Airbnb hosts enjoy the highest average monthly earnings because there is a much wider range of income distribution on that platform than at other companies: Nearly half of all hosts make more than $500 per month.

Conversely, the majority of workers at some other companies (Etsy, Uber, Fiverr) fall into the $100 or under per month bracket.

Tallying all of these companies up, the overall distribution tilts strongly toward the lower end.

Data source: Earnest

Some 84% of all gig economy workers make less than $500 per month—but in particular, workers at Getaround (98.3% under $500 per month), Fiverr (96.3%), and Etsy (95%) have especially high percentages of low-earners.

Reasons for the low income could vary—some workers may be simply trying the platform, or put in very few hours.

Lyft, Taskrabbit, and Airbnb seem to beat this “84% under $500” average.

Data source: Earnest

It might be easy to look at this data and assume that gig economy workers are working at below market rates. After all, $500 per month is hardly a livable wage. For the industry, the key question is how many of these workers are utilizing these platforms to make a little extra cash as a side-gig versus trying to forage a full-time living.