Amazon is the Sears catalog of the 21st century because almost everything that Amazon sells is manufactured by someone else. The three things together there, triangulation, transfer, and trust, make Amazon a platform you can buy stuff from. It's not really set up for ownership or rental. They're renting all of the things that they need to provide this delivery service.
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.