OVERVIEW

Every day in your country, $100m’s of potential economic activity doesn’t happen. It is made up of small, complex, transactions such as: an hour’s window cleaning, an afternoon's bicycle hire between individuals, local deliveries, 90 minutes work in a suddenly busy café, personalised services for tourists or lending of very small sums of money.

These micro resources fall into 4 categories:

There is demand for these resources. Bringing them to market could make many sectors in the economy more efficient, competitive and responsive. For example:

So why are these informal transactions barely happening? Because they are so cumbersome, risky and overhead laden to arrange. Try this test: Set out to rent a video game console from a local person just for this afternoon. Then get someone to come and cook your family a meal after the gaming. Then find a few hour’s work for this evening so you can pay for the afternoon. It’s not going to happen. There is no marketplace that can easily handle those requirements.

You don't have the markets you need. Some people do. Marketplaces have evolved beyond recognition in the last 30 years. But only for institutions at the top of the economy.

A trader in one of the global banks now buys and sells in ways that were inconceivable a few years ago. His marketplace will (a) automatically identify profitable trades (b) execute safely between multiple counterparties (c) report constantly on trends. It's all so fast, safe and low overhead.

And at the bottom of the economy? Craigslist, Gumtree, Monster and countless other sites in which we can trade our resources are little more than Classified Adverts. Trying to book a babysitter this evening? There are thousands of  online marketplaces where the person you seek might have a listing. The sites only provide email links so you - and they - have to do all the work. Booking is too demanding. You probably won’t bother.

Could we give ordinary citizens the trading efficiencies Wall Street now takes for granted? Yes, but it will require new technologies and a specific legal framework for e-markets. Here's why:

The web is currently very good at helping us sell items. eBay has been doing that since 1994. But, the key unrealised assets most of us have to sell are based on periods of time. We sell our own time to employers. Most of us have posessions that could be hired out at times when we don't need them.

Time-based markets are much more complicated than auction sites. They need to factor in hour-by-hour availability, contactability, reliability, dynamic pricing and legal compliance. Time-based markets are also hard to launch: they need a Big Bang to get to a big pool of users quickly. All this is expensive.

On top of this, complex markets require supporting facilities. They include: regulation, verification processes, settlement mechanisms, pump priming (the early stage buying that delivers critical mass) and ways to raise awareness among potential users.

Global banks control these facilities in their sector. They moved fast to focus these levers on new marketplaces for their mutual benefit. At the bottom of the economy, the comparable facilities are controlled by governments. No government has yet focused them on delivering state-of-the-art marketplaces for the benefit of citizens.

Imagine a system of marketplaces, perhaps called NEMs (National e-Markets). They would be structured around time-based trades. Official bodies would underpin transactions. There would be exacting public service obligations around transparency of operation, privacy for users, security and  transaction charges imposed on operators.

Government would not design, fund, build or operate NEMs. It simply creates the legal framework that incentivises the private sector to deliver everything required. There’s nothing radical about this model. It’s how countries create National Lotteries.

E-markets are potent. Social networking, micro-blogging and iPhone apps make the headlines. But the power of online technology to deliver structural economic change is in the transformative marketplaces it now makes possible. Of course, many of the poorest don't use computers. So budgets for increased Internet access and community training initiatives would be an integral obligation for NEMs' operators.

Most of us have little idea of what a Modern Marketplace can do. The 2008 Financial Crisis offered  a few clues. Those trillions in assets flying round the world every day obviously weren’t being traded by people ploughing through Classified Adverts. New markets have transformed the financial sector.

How might that translate to informal sectors of the economy? All sorts of new resources released into the economy. Daily opportunities for legitimate economic activity across thousands of sectors for individuals. New models for public services. Opportunities to profitably invest in up-skilling local people. Perhaps a parallel currency to get transactions going. Sounds far fetched? That’s what Wall Street traditionalists were saying about projections for computerised marketplaces in the 1980's.

This site will take you through the argument for NEMs style markets. It lists some of the thousands of sectors which would be covered and the type of technologies required to release them. We will show why some emerging technologies have always required a legal framework to deliver their benefits to the public.

NEMs would not involve any constraints on alternative marketplaces. It’s simply one more choice available online. But it would be very different.

• Technology for NEMs