Book Review: What's Mine Is Yours: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption

It's particularly galling to me when arguments that I find convincing are filled with unnecessary sloppy thinking. This book was thus quite disappointing.

For example, one of the statistics breathlessly cited in the introduction was that of purchased items, only 1% are still in use six months after the purchase. The conclusion drawn is that 99% of items are thrown away. But, what about things that by definition are consumable, such as food? This sort of uncritical analysis is pervasive in the book.

Sloppy arguments like this are unnecessary for making our case (which I agree with!) and make us look bad.

I'm not going to finish the book, so it won't show up with an "NR" rating, but I wanted to take this opportunity to complain about it.