Collaborative Consumption, the return of a barter economy?

After watching Rachel Botsman's talk about Collaborative Consumption on TED, I find myself thinking more and more about barter economies and how incredible a resource the internet has become for the modern person with  a skill or product to sell.

What interests me more than the idea of sharing our possessions, or trading our possessions for another's, is the amount of trust and collaboration that it takes to get these transactions to take place. For years I have used sites like Craigslist and eBay to buy and sell just about anything, but also to look for jobs, sell my skills, and hire employees. But these are easily made transactions, things like sharing a car or tools take a considerably larger amount of trust. The fact that people can still trust each other to do these things is fantastic. Is this possibly a sign of a renewed sense of community brought on by our reliance of the internet? Fascinating.

So this new economy, an economy of content rather than ownership, what does that mean for local economies? Can we introduce these macro ideas of sharing over the internet to our micro, local, economies? I think we can, and many of these sites do just that. For instance Craigslist has a page for just about every major or large city or region of a state. The movement towards redistribution of possessions through these channels and in person transactions could help reinvent the local economy and interest in community. I like.