Overview
Online marketplaces are potent. They create economic activity,
identify opportunities and bring new resources to market. But their benefits
are concentrated at the top levels of the economy. We need a new generation of e-markets built
around what people at the bottom of the income pyramid have to sell. That is a
complex project. It requires (a) a new kind of online marketplace that is only
now viable (b) a supportive legal framework put in place by government.
Cash of the Titans
Want to understand what a truly modern e-market can do?
Don’t look towards listings sites for consumers such as eBay, Craigslist or
Monster.com. Focus on an area like high finance. The 2008 economic slowdown was
a result of the way mega-banks can create and trade complex products between
themselves. Ultimately those products fell apart. But the frenetic trading that sucked cash out
of tangible transactions into the rarefied world of Big Finance was driven by
online trading efficiencies far beyond what someone selling their time as, say,
a home cleaner has gained from the Internet.
This site explains a simple philosophy: Modern Markets for
All. The opportunities that Big-Finance and corporates get from new
marketplaces have to be extended to everyone. We’ll show why this can only
happen with authority and focus that has to come from government. Put that in
place and experience shows, the private sector will compete to fund a new
facility for public benefit.
You might think this is a marginal issue. Many people on
lower-end income don’t use the web, and who cares if markets for low-level
services are unsophisticated? But, stay with us. It’s possible e-markets are
one of those once-in-a-generation technologies that merits a specific legal
framework because they have potential to transform the lives of ordinary people
so powerfully.
Water supply, railways and telephone networks are examples of
technologies that started by serving the already powerful, until far-sighted
legislation exploded their usage, usefulness and social impact.