Face-to face barter is both needful and praiseworthy. Democratic societies must have free exchanges of goods and services. The trades require trust from the seller as well as buyer's side of the table. Both must agree on the value or monetary price for the goods being exchanged.
Sellers can check if the bills are genuine and if the credit card isn't stolen. Once the cash drops in register or the credit is confirmed, the seller's role is done. He may dodge any further obligations, such as performance guarantees, by closing shop and moving away.
The buyer relies on the seller's reputation, but there's no guarantee a seller won't pawn off a lemon at any time for whatever reason. Buyers will never know if they've gotten full value for their money until they've brought the product home and confirmed its performance matches the seller's claims.
If the product fails the test, the buyer may complain to the seller or the Better Business Bureau. If nothing else, the buyer may cry crocodile tears for the media. By this time a seller's business has closed, and the seller doesn't care because he's relaxing on some Cayman Island beach with his fortune salted away in a Swiss bank account.
If you disbelieve this scenario, go ahead, walk into the General Motors dealership and ask to buy a rear-fender replacement for a 1948 Chevy. The guy at the parts desk will laugh in your face. The same thing happens if you seek to repair an old Hewitt-Packard laser printer. At one time HP sold more printers than anyone else. Nowadays they've apparently withdrawn from the printer market. Software companies are even worse. After the 90-day pledge to support their products, you're left out to dry.
Capital (money) is disconnected from the producer and/or product. In the 21st-century, it takes a whole slew of promoters, investors, landowners, truckers, suppliers and vendors to sell one DVD. Most of these are subcontractors who work for a salary or commission. However, public statistics will confirm the average CEO earns 300+ times the wages of the forklift driver stacking retail-ready goods.
Let's assume in our fictional free market, there are no taxes on any goods or services. There are no value-added taxes and no withholding taxes clawed off your paychecks. This is libertarian heaven.
Let's say you buy a DVD from WXY where its CEO and board members pocket generous salaries plus warrants for common shares at steep discounts. A small portion of your DVD retail price goes to keep the fat cats in clover. A larger portion of your purchase price goes to advertisers and promoters. A still larger portion goes to pay down the longterm debt that WXY has incurred when it opens new plants to produce more DVDs. In other words, a substantial portion of the DVD price goes toward folks that have contributed nothing of value to your purchase.
WXY can get away with inflated prices because its competitors are doing the same things. They borrow like spendthrifts, advertise as loud as monkeys with their tails afire and gift their CEOs with a new sports car every other Tuesday.
Many folks contribute value to the DVD, such as engineers who monitor quality control and delivery-van drivers who transport DVDs to retail chains. It safe to say there are many layers of middlemen between you and the person(s) who create the DVD's content.
Let's say you're satisfied with the DVD. You're especially impressed with the content. Is there a way to pat this (these) person(s) on the back? Probably not. Even if you write a testimonial, WXY will use it for its own purposes. It has already wrapped the productive members of its workforce in nondisclosure straightjackets.
I contend that large monolithic corporations are the true culprits of social injustice. Governments are just another brand of corporation. They are restricted to set boundaries, but within their spheres of influence they have extraordinary powers that go beyond common businesses. However, governments are in thrall to transnational corporations which can and do threaten to relocate their assets to other nations. Governments jump hand over foot to subsidize the transnats which promise to create more jobs and more wealth. Transnats are forever "protected" because they are "too big to fail."
In the real world of the 21st-century, the creative mind is like a flightless bird in danger of becoming extinct. If you find him or her anywhere, it will be in the gray-markets of anarchists or the disenfranchised. You might find a true artist in an aboriginal reserve in North America or rural village of the 3rd-world. The creative mind is a product of a bygone era, which begs the question...
Do any marketplaces exist where buyers and sellers look each other in the eye, so to speak?
Remember, there are NO taxes and NO intrusive governments in this thought experiment. Given that, let's take a look at Amazon, the online vendor, not the tropical watershed. In a sense, both are related because Amazon.com can be kind to the environment when it sells digital goods online. A single eBook can be stored as a small file on a server. It can be duplicated umpteenth times to oodles of end users. All you need is an efficient broadband network. This costs energy to build and maintain. But it consumes far less energy than laying concrete highways, hauling truckloads of goods and storing them in warehouses or retail outlets. You also spew far less GHGs into the atmosphere
As well, you knock off several middlemen between seller and buyer. To top it off, Amazon lets you write reviews for your purchased eBooks. Amazon has combined online marketing with social media. Amazon has gone one better than Walmart. Amazon doesn't even need a retail box. Amazon (as a digital retailer) is anywhere and everywhere like St. Augustine's god.
Even so, there are drawbacks. Digital books aren't as cozy and comfortable as paper books. View screens need to get larger and display more pixels. There should be advantages for eBooks displayed on desktops. Some eBooks come with detailed maps. It would be wonderful to zoom in so that users can make out the small typeface labels.
Let's examine Amazon's marketing formula more carefully. At a glance the formula seems to cut away many layers that separate buyers from sellers. Amazon's products are ranked according to popularity. The more sales an eBook has, the more often it appears in Amazon's generic search engines. Moreover, buyers may refer to the reviews of previous buyers. If other readers have approved of the eBook's value, you the buyer will be more likely to purchase it as well.
Amazon invites criticism. It treats consumers as more than cash cows; it lets buyers judge whether a product is worthwhile. Some buyers, in turn, may feel an obligation to future purchasers. So a community of strangers develops on Amazon's websites. A buyer may or may not trust one-stranger's opinion, but if the buyer sees ten reviews applauding an eBook, he will be convinced to buy it.
To add frosting to the cake, visitors to Amazon's websites rate the reviews as helpful or not. Hence, a potential buyer gains a 2nd-opinion about the worthiness of the review. In this way Amazon has simulated a physical bookstore where buyers browse the shelves and read passages from books to ascertain their value.
Unfortunately big business, like an elephant in a China shop, has crashed Amazon's party. You can't really blame Amazon since it's a transnational and major global retailer. The codes of big business won't let Amazon deny its brothers in the publishing industry. So a new eBook released by major publisher is granted top rankings in Amazon's generic search engine. Moreover, Amazon allows publishers to post reviews by persons who've supposedly read the paper version but not necessarily the eBook version. The formats and appearances of paper versus digital are entirely different. Most of the major book publishers ignore the differences. They simply upload their paper version without concern for the advantages and disadvantages of the eBook environment. Worse, this practice opens the door for 3rd-party eBook promoters to boost the appearance and rankings of certain eBooks above all others.
An eBook author can pay specialists to write glowing reviews. Be careful of short reviews that contain phrases like "I couldn't put this book down" – "I fell in love with characters from the start" – "the author is amazing." Some of these reviews contain little or no details from the book itself. They might as well have been written by robots or trained monkeys.
Once again, greed and plastic celebrity seem to overrule all aspects of common sense. Transnationals seek to encourage our consumer genes. They need more and more buyers, otherwise the entire Ponzi scheme would collapse on its hollow self.
Politics of the left or right cannot change a society that's committed to deluding itself. The answer lies in motivation. The pursuit of wealth breeds longterm catastrophe. We need to reward the actual generators of our prosperity, not with wealth but simple recognition.
Stay tuned.
Sellers can check if the bills are genuine and if the credit card isn't stolen. Once the cash drops in register or the credit is confirmed, the seller's role is done. He may dodge any further obligations, such as performance guarantees, by closing shop and moving away.
The buyer relies on the seller's reputation, but there's no guarantee a seller won't pawn off a lemon at any time for whatever reason. Buyers will never know if they've gotten full value for their money until they've brought the product home and confirmed its performance matches the seller's claims.
If the product fails the test, the buyer may complain to the seller or the Better Business Bureau. If nothing else, the buyer may cry crocodile tears for the media. By this time a seller's business has closed, and the seller doesn't care because he's relaxing on some Cayman Island beach with his fortune salted away in a Swiss bank account.
If you disbelieve this scenario, go ahead, walk into the General Motors dealership and ask to buy a rear-fender replacement for a 1948 Chevy. The guy at the parts desk will laugh in your face. The same thing happens if you seek to repair an old Hewitt-Packard laser printer. At one time HP sold more printers than anyone else. Nowadays they've apparently withdrawn from the printer market. Software companies are even worse. After the 90-day pledge to support their products, you're left out to dry.
Capital (money) is disconnected from the producer and/or product. In the 21st-century, it takes a whole slew of promoters, investors, landowners, truckers, suppliers and vendors to sell one DVD. Most of these are subcontractors who work for a salary or commission. However, public statistics will confirm the average CEO earns 300+ times the wages of the forklift driver stacking retail-ready goods.
Let's assume in our fictional free market, there are no taxes on any goods or services. There are no value-added taxes and no withholding taxes clawed off your paychecks. This is libertarian heaven.
Let's say you buy a DVD from WXY where its CEO and board members pocket generous salaries plus warrants for common shares at steep discounts. A small portion of your DVD retail price goes to keep the fat cats in clover. A larger portion of your purchase price goes to advertisers and promoters. A still larger portion goes to pay down the longterm debt that WXY has incurred when it opens new plants to produce more DVDs. In other words, a substantial portion of the DVD price goes toward folks that have contributed nothing of value to your purchase.
WXY can get away with inflated prices because its competitors are doing the same things. They borrow like spendthrifts, advertise as loud as monkeys with their tails afire and gift their CEOs with a new sports car every other Tuesday.
Many folks contribute value to the DVD, such as engineers who monitor quality control and delivery-van drivers who transport DVDs to retail chains. It safe to say there are many layers of middlemen between you and the person(s) who create the DVD's content.
Let's say you're satisfied with the DVD. You're especially impressed with the content. Is there a way to pat this (these) person(s) on the back? Probably not. Even if you write a testimonial, WXY will use it for its own purposes. It has already wrapped the productive members of its workforce in nondisclosure straightjackets.
I contend that large monolithic corporations are the true culprits of social injustice. Governments are just another brand of corporation. They are restricted to set boundaries, but within their spheres of influence they have extraordinary powers that go beyond common businesses. However, governments are in thrall to transnational corporations which can and do threaten to relocate their assets to other nations. Governments jump hand over foot to subsidize the transnats which promise to create more jobs and more wealth. Transnats are forever "protected" because they are "too big to fail."
In the real world of the 21st-century, the creative mind is like a flightless bird in danger of becoming extinct. If you find him or her anywhere, it will be in the gray-markets of anarchists or the disenfranchised. You might find a true artist in an aboriginal reserve in North America or rural village of the 3rd-world. The creative mind is a product of a bygone era, which begs the question...
Do any marketplaces exist where buyers and sellers look each other in the eye, so to speak?
Remember, there are NO taxes and NO intrusive governments in this thought experiment. Given that, let's take a look at Amazon, the online vendor, not the tropical watershed. In a sense, both are related because Amazon.com can be kind to the environment when it sells digital goods online. A single eBook can be stored as a small file on a server. It can be duplicated umpteenth times to oodles of end users. All you need is an efficient broadband network. This costs energy to build and maintain. But it consumes far less energy than laying concrete highways, hauling truckloads of goods and storing them in warehouses or retail outlets. You also spew far less GHGs into the atmosphere
As well, you knock off several middlemen between seller and buyer. To top it off, Amazon lets you write reviews for your purchased eBooks. Amazon has combined online marketing with social media. Amazon has gone one better than Walmart. Amazon doesn't even need a retail box. Amazon (as a digital retailer) is anywhere and everywhere like St. Augustine's god.
Even so, there are drawbacks. Digital books aren't as cozy and comfortable as paper books. View screens need to get larger and display more pixels. There should be advantages for eBooks displayed on desktops. Some eBooks come with detailed maps. It would be wonderful to zoom in so that users can make out the small typeface labels.
Let's examine Amazon's marketing formula more carefully. At a glance the formula seems to cut away many layers that separate buyers from sellers. Amazon's products are ranked according to popularity. The more sales an eBook has, the more often it appears in Amazon's generic search engines. Moreover, buyers may refer to the reviews of previous buyers. If other readers have approved of the eBook's value, you the buyer will be more likely to purchase it as well.
Amazon invites criticism. It treats consumers as more than cash cows; it lets buyers judge whether a product is worthwhile. Some buyers, in turn, may feel an obligation to future purchasers. So a community of strangers develops on Amazon's websites. A buyer may or may not trust one-stranger's opinion, but if the buyer sees ten reviews applauding an eBook, he will be convinced to buy it.
To add frosting to the cake, visitors to Amazon's websites rate the reviews as helpful or not. Hence, a potential buyer gains a 2nd-opinion about the worthiness of the review. In this way Amazon has simulated a physical bookstore where buyers browse the shelves and read passages from books to ascertain their value.
Unfortunately big business, like an elephant in a China shop, has crashed Amazon's party. You can't really blame Amazon since it's a transnational and major global retailer. The codes of big business won't let Amazon deny its brothers in the publishing industry. So a new eBook released by major publisher is granted top rankings in Amazon's generic search engine. Moreover, Amazon allows publishers to post reviews by persons who've supposedly read the paper version but not necessarily the eBook version. The formats and appearances of paper versus digital are entirely different. Most of the major book publishers ignore the differences. They simply upload their paper version without concern for the advantages and disadvantages of the eBook environment. Worse, this practice opens the door for 3rd-party eBook promoters to boost the appearance and rankings of certain eBooks above all others.
An eBook author can pay specialists to write glowing reviews. Be careful of short reviews that contain phrases like "I couldn't put this book down" – "I fell in love with characters from the start" – "the author is amazing." Some of these reviews contain little or no details from the book itself. They might as well have been written by robots or trained monkeys.
Once again, greed and plastic celebrity seem to overrule all aspects of common sense. Transnationals seek to encourage our consumer genes. They need more and more buyers, otherwise the entire Ponzi scheme would collapse on its hollow self.
Politics of the left or right cannot change a society that's committed to deluding itself. The answer lies in motivation. The pursuit of wealth breeds longterm catastrophe. We need to reward the actual generators of our prosperity, not with wealth but simple recognition.
Stay tuned.
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