Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society doi:10.1093/cjres/rsx003 © The Author 2017. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Cambridge Political Economy Society. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com Sharing: post-scarcity beyond capitalism? Matthew David School of Applied Social Sciences, Durham University, 32 Old Elvet, Durham DH1 3HN, UK, matthew.david@durham.ac.uk Received on November 11, 2015; editorial decision on January 12, 2017; accepted on January 13, 2017 Regarding eficiency, eficacy and incentive, free-sharing online (of recordings, live broad- casts, software and published works) outperforms market and property systems by reducing costs of production and distribution, increasing quality and access and better promoting creativity. Free-sharing online emerged within “global network capitalism” and non-capi- talist networks. Free-sharing of purely informational content online challenges capitalism by eliminating scarcity. However, post-scarcity is limited by constraints on time and the capacity to ilter digital plenitude. These limits create scope for alternative business models. Free-sharing online tempers capitalism’s “tragedy of the anticommons” . However, to date, post-scarcity remains incomplete. Keywords: sharing, eficiency, eficacy, incentive, intellectual property rights JEL Classiications: Law and Economics Introduction This article begins with a brief account of the emergence of free-sharing online. This emer- gence is then located within “global network capitalism” and non-capitalist global digital net- works, before the relationship between free-shar- ing and capitalism is more fully explored. More speciically, here, an outline of the economic con- cepts of “eficiency” , “eficacy” and “incentive” creates a framework through which the chal- lenge of free-sharing to markets and property- based arrangements can be evaluated. Following on from this, it is argued that free-sharing may afford viable “alternatives to business” when it offers greater eficiency, eficacy and/or incen- tive. Where this is not so, “alternative business models” may arise to sell what remains scarce. The examples of recordings, sports broadcast- ing, software and publishing are then examined. In each case, the relative eficiency, eficacy and incentive created by free-sharing and market-/ property-based arrangements are addressed. In conclusion, it will be suggested that, whilst capi- talism creates a “tragedy of the anticommons” , and free-sharing poses a challenge to this in creating post-scarcity in pure informational con- tent, time, trust, the ability to ilter information, and co-presence remains scarce. Whilst signii- cant, the triumph of the commons remains con- strained, at least for now. A genealogy of free-sharing online Free-sharing online developed from sharing compressed music iles, through to larger visual recordings and, now, live content (Kirton and David, 2013). Digital compression formats were developed initially in the 1980s by a consortium