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Stuart and readers,
Several thoughts come to mind when I read the post and comments at Worldchanging:
1. The art of Trust.
A trusted brand is key for these kind of enterprises. There is a lot semantics involved in the home pages of the different alternative to Worldstock.com linking values, commerce and communities. Quite an art.
2. What is local?
It is very interesting how internet is redefining the boundaries of what used to be a local market. Internet is creating a global market aggregation and coordination machine connecting the local microproducers to the wealth of the first world. This is inevitable and it is understandable that the first experimenting with it are the nonprofits. Nonprofits is a popular way to bring these new models that still present high risks to forprofit minds.
3. Cross-subsidizing it!
One of the most popular business models happening in various levels is the cross-subsidizing from an overpriced product to a underpriced product, from an overpriced service to an underpriced service, from a forprofit to a parent nonprofit, from rich government to poor government, and in this case from first world market to developing world markets.
4. The inevitable present, the inevitable future.
The comments about the global shipping of products present a number of reasonable sustainability questions. It is funny that in any systemic functional analysis, the transportation functions are always the first candidates to trim and eliminate from the system to increase its value. They add the least value in the chain. As in any evolutionary process, the presence of these transport/shipping functions and so their inefficiencies in the world commercial system are inevitable for some time. But I believe they will eventually disappear in a large degree.
I foresee a future of tangibles going through the same process the paper mail is going through with the email. In my view of the future, I see art-craftman and women creating and shipping digital documents to local 3D printers of different media who would print parts, products, textiles, ceramics, etc for their local buyers. It is already happening.
Cheers,
Jose
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Jose Arocha
Weblog: http://blog.telarideas.com
Project site: http://www.tavos.org