Markets

We need more markets.

Markets function better as markets than things that aren't markets.

Think about it.

As we all know, more efficient markets mean better everything for everybody always.

A supermarket for instance is not generally an efficient type of market, it provides supply that greatly exceeds demand creating a large amount of waste simply in order to guarantee availability.

A major part of a supermarket business model is to manipulate the customer behaviour, such action is a part of all markets but it is a barrier to market efficiency because it causes the buyer to act with a lesser degree of rationality, it is much more pronounced in supermarkets than in standard markets because opportunities for such manipulation are far greater.

While in a standard market the prices are adjusted constantly and bargaining regularly takes place, in a supermarket prices are enormously less flexible and bargaining is very much one sided.

Supermarkets are shops that sell convenience as much as they sell goods, leading to compromises with the goods.

Consequently prices in markets are generally lower, quality is generally higher or equivalent, being able to directly interact with the person in charge of the goods can lead to advantages such as gaining greater discounts for buying in bulk, or for loyalty or price adjustment based on perceived economic status or generally how likeable you are, and this works both ways, the owner of a market stall has a greater incentive to please than a supermarket worker.

The problem is that the comparative lack of convenience has ruined many markets as well as them being pushed out by modern infrastructure and being pushed out of business by dubious business practices from competing shops.

However I believe with technology the convenience and resiliance of markets can be greatly improved, this has been demonstrated by online market places such as Ebay and Amazon.

There are issues with these sites of course, but another model is possible. One issue of many with these sites as with supermarkets convenience is placed too far over efficient trading, another is that they take too much in fees, they are highly manipulative and used by manipulators, they are vulnerable to abuse and have various other foibles.

The ideal online marketplace should allow for maximum flexibility, be not for profit and should be as decentralised as practicable.

It should provide a space to list goods and services to be sold, and another for prospective buyers to request goods and services.

It should be possible to arrange delivery in any way, in any form, in any possible time period, to the buyers front door, from the sellers premises or from a pick up point, even if that is just throwing a product into a ditch to be recovered later.

It should be made very easy for the seller to contact the buyer and the buyer to contact the seller, to allow for effective bargaining and for enquiries to be made easily.

It should allow for every different type of auction, allow fixed prices and flexible prices or even bartering or free gifts.

It should allow payments to be processed through the site and for arrangements to be made off the site.

It should have the most sophisticated search and filtering capability as practicable.

There should be no reviews or scores, because these are too easy to abuse, reputation will have to be built organically, like in real life.

Sellers and buyers should be able to provide proof of identity and proof of reliability through external links or by providing addresses and phone numbers and so on.

It should work on the assumption that all users are technically capable, responsible, diligent and knowledgeable about the market that they are trading in, it should be designed to be used either by individuals prepared to put effort into using it or for the use of third party businesses or organisations to either use it on an industrial scale or to act as middleman and provide access to the market in a more vetted, safer, more user friendly, but less flexible way. This would allow the user to browse much of the same entries but in whatever format suits them best.

In terms of decentralisation some might suggest using a blockchain with Smart Contracts and crypto based rewards, but I think that would be unnecessary, I think it could be satisfactorily run with some sort of decentralised protocol along the lines of Mastodon and Bluesky.

Hopefully it should be enough of a public good that people would be willing to host servers either for free (possibly because they use the service) or be able to easily secure enough donations, if not some sort of fee could be implemented.

I think the potential could be enormous, it has the potential to beat Amazon, but it could do more.

Data is an incredibly valuable resource, the effect of putting vast amounts of non-confidential customer data online available for everyone could be profound and hopefully largely good.

For instance if everybody put the details and frequency of their commute publicly online, with their exact requirements a public transport company could tailor services allowing for shorter journeys, greater usage, fewer empty seats and therefore lower cost, failing that lift sharing would become easier and more common.

The same goes for people seeking to send parcels, they could more easily be send from point-A to point-B without as much need for warehousing when the market would be completely open for anyone to offer to deliver it (maybe because they just happened to be going in the right direction) instead of going through a few nebulous companies.

If someone put the details of their weekly shop online instead of going through all the shops looking for the best option, there would be companies making them offers instead, if they specified for example that they wanted a pint of milk every week, for 49 weeks a year and were willing to pay in advance or make a binding agreement to pay for a pint of milk for 49 weeks a year, this would be advantageous to the seller by reducing the uncertainty in their business allowing them to charge less, hopefully benefiting both parties.

I think a modified version of this system could be used to improve the immigration process, so that people have a better idea of which countries would be willing to take them in, countries have a better idea of who wants to come in and if they don't want to let someone in who is nevertheless trying to get it, make an offer for some other country to persuade it to open it's doors to them.

Of course there will be drawbacks, but it's not obvious at this point that those drawbacks would be fatal to the idea.

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