The Airbnb app knows where you are. You don't walk up to a stranger at times and say, hey, what's the state tonight? It is their financial information. There's their ID. They have an image of my passport. So once we've normalized that experience, then yes, we start to think of this as it's not a big deal. We only pay with honor and a sense of contributing to the public good.
Economist and author Michael Munger of Duke University talks about his book, Tomorrow 3.0, with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. Munger analyzes the rise of companies like Uber and AirBnB as an example of how technology lowers transactions costs. Users and providers can find each other more easily through their smartphones, increasing opportunity. Munger expects these costs to fall elsewhere and predicts an expansion of the sharing economy to a wide array of items in our daily lives.