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Showing posts from July, 2014

The Threat of a Darknet Economy

This year the State of Colorado gained world’s attention when it became world’s first state –licensed place for marijuana business. Drug business across the world is growing every year causing greater threat to the entire humanity. In 2012 itself around 1, 90000 deaths were reported due to drug abuse, that too between the age group 15-64. Another alarming data is that, in the same year nearly 324 million people in 15-64 age groups used one at least illicit drug once. Around 39 million people have regular drug usage and having physical and psychological problems while only one in six of them have an access to medical facilities. The number of people who injects the drug will come around 13 million, which is 0.64% of the population aged 15-64. One amazing fact is that most of the drug users are from Eastern and South- Eastern Europe. It is very shocking to know that 14% of the drug addicts are infected with HIV due to the use of shared syringes. Majority of such HIV patients are fro...

When Economy Switches to Sharing

Is the concept of Sharing Economy an answer to economic inequality? Under this shared economy the access to the products and services are shared between the consumers even though the ownership is limited. This opens a new array of opportunities for the sellers and the buyers. When assets and services are digitally available then there is no reason for this new trend to not gain popularity. Pioneered by eBay in 1995, as a peer to peer auction model, sharing economy or collaborative consumption started off with lot of inadequacies due to the lack of full-fledged support system during those days. The service offered by them was only for an auction of apparels. Starting from bartering, bike sharing, book swapping to seed swap, share taxi, virtual currency, all are shared in this mode of collaborative consumption. Collaborative lifestyles, product service systems and redistribution channels make this sharing economy lively and innovative. AirBnB, an online home rental marketplace for...