Worldwide, there is a disconnect between citizens and economies. Addressing this by incentivizing new economic infrastructure called POEMs (Public Official E-Markets) would be no-cost policy, opening timely political opportunity for right or left.

 

Platform Pain: An Introduction

By November 2024, Bidenomics had delivered strong indicators. But US voters ousted the incumbent administration, driven by economic dissatisfaction. Why? It may be the power platforms now have over workers. Sure, growth creates jobs. But if your “job” just involves logging on to siloed platforms in search of a next block of work each day, and those markets are persistently slanted against you, you will seethe.

This dislocation can be unseen by well paid job holders. Inadequacies of official data are clear in, for example, the USUK, and Canada. But take the US; 40% of hourly employees are now scheduled less than a week ahead; 55% of the workforce is hourly. That’s 36 million lower-waged employees in continuous uncertainty. The one-sidedness of platforms, now exploiting AI to cut labor costs is nuancedopaque, and evolving. Reports of platforms’ unfairness, clawbacks, instability, and ubiquity can seem improbable. It is all hard to dissect, but easy to intuit for those on the receiving end.

Policy responses focus on regulation. They have barely slowed the impact. Modern Markets for All is a hybrid constituent policy. It creates an arms-length, for-profit, market-operating, institution that wins a concession through competitive bidding. That body then has unique rights to official facilities subject to delivering empowering, lowest-charge, fully-featured, mass markets. (Details on previous page.)

For simplicity we are focusing here on policy for a mixed economy in an established democracy. We have a separate briefing for other jurisdictions.

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Policy alternatives: Taming the monopolists

We use “Modern Markets for All” to describe a carefully delineated policy. Its aims should not be contentious, here’s 5 often-cited alternative routes to achieving them:

  • Better regulation: Could existing platforms be compelled to share data, interoperate, slash charges, and offer full functionality for sellers through open protocolsplatform governance, or an equivalent of the “Fediverse” in social media? The intensity – and success – of these firms’ battles against even basic legal compliance suggests it’s unlikely.
  • Foster unionization: Collective bargaining could be rather 20th Century for today’s fluid, high-churn, globalized, platforms. It can help stop blatant abuses, even resulting in platforms shuttering. But we want to initiate the best possible platforms, not just stop crooks.
  • Encourage more e-markets: Ethiopia’s Mesirat program suggests having more markets is good for an economy. But it leaves official leverage untapped as a way of fostering better infrastructure. Spreading government-bestowed benefits across platforms could invite chaos with cowboy operators roaming official databases and dumping user disputes in the courts.
  • Trust good marketplaces can displace bad: They’re trying, but it’s so hard to raise funding and awareness. Most crashplateau in one sector/region, or sell-out.
  • Direct provision: Politicians could nationalize existing platforms or fund and oversee alternatives. Like state-run broadcasting, this would likely encourage destabilizing manipulation, engineering of pre-election booms for example.

Other policies directly tackling poverty are not an alternative, this policy can enhance them. POEMs (Public Official E-Markets) would be a newly efficient way of administering hybrid legal statuses for work-seekers, Universal Income, or green incentives for instance. There should be no social engineering attached to the policy. It just creates the best possible markets across a jurisdiction’s micro-economy; then allows users’ self-interest, legitimate interventions, and general economic regulation to play out.

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Policy downsides: New vulnerabilities and creative destruction

Our policy antecedents include Digital Public Infrastructure initiatives covering proof of identity, payments, or government-backed crypto-coins. We aim to extend DPI to fully-functioned markets across the micro-economy. There’s also policy creating public utilities from new technologies over generations. Our policy shares unwanted potential consequences with past legal frameworks for emergent technologies. They have proved manageable. Key issues:

  • Centralized point of failure: Your home water comes from a vast ring main. What would happen if it was disabled? Existing without quality markets for a few days is a less frightening risk than a retching city unable to wash or flush. And critical online services can have failover capacity impossible for older infrastructure.
  • Low value businesses suffer: Many people are employed in temp. agencies, brokers, and other buyer/seller matching businesses. Those operations will gain multiple ways to offer value-added services incorporating POEMs. But not all will do so, and jobs could be lost.
  • Disadvantaging of non-users; Anyone uncomfortable around computers, or with a disability that makes usage hard, could be sidelined. Telephones disadvantaged deaf citizens until accessible technologies arrived. Incentivizing comparable tools (or human assistance) for those who struggle with computers could be enshrined in a concession to operate POEMs.
  • Flushing out blurred issues: Current fuzziness in labor markets is a lifeline for groups such as undocumented workers. With so much work off-the-books, they have opportunities and reduced risk of detection. If better options in public markets attract activity out of shadow economies, the gray market may become only those who are not legally permitted to earn. This could be mitigated by a rule that anonymized users be allowed in POEMs.
  • Techno-stasis: In 1982, France’s telecommunications authorities launched the pioneering Minitel online shopping/ services system. It remained popular even as the internet overtook it in capabilities and reach worldwide. Commentators argue the Minitel held back French web adoption. POEMs could likewise lead populations to ignore something better. But it will be much easier to switch from than a 1980’s proprietary platform.

A common fear about improved markets for fluid economic activity is that they will erode traditional jobs. Won’t employers just turn to on-demand workforces? They are certainly doing so at present to cut costs. But large scale, more equitable, markets shift power back to workers because each person gains options that they can’t access in narrow siloed, monopsony, platforms today. Current cheapening of workers may be primarily a factor of bad markets constantly staying ahead of regulation.

But, if possible job erosion troubles policymakers they can mitigate. POEMs would generate a financial surplus from commission on big purchases, which fall outside its Maximum Average Transaction Size constraint. That could pay a “stability bonus”, to operators each time a user could be tracked into a job, shaping a platform that relentlessly drives job creation.

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Politics: Make Capitalism Fair Again!

This policy speaks to a pivotal constituency: the majority of voters convinced their economy is rigged but who no longer trust government. Modern Markets for All policy is light touch. It offers each breadwinner new tools, data, and opportunities to develop their economic potential if/how they wish. It costs taxpayers nothing and limits nobody’s choices. POEMs must be run by a decentralized combination of corporates and local entrepreneurs, not government.

That coalition’s transparent motive is maximizing profit, which they can only do – thanks to restrictions in their concession – by growing income for people and businesses at the economic base. Politicians initiating these markets would be surrendering power, like those that released central banks from their control. Regulatory battles with multinational gig work platforms could be eased; POEMs offers a regulated market to anyone wanting one. If citizens prefer Silicon Valley’s wilder structures that’s their prerogative.

But there is a potential political minefield. Campaigning politicians still vie to promise job creation. Advocating better platforms for millions of earners in today’s uncertain economies risks accusations of “encouraging gig work” from opponents wishfully promising sustainable traditional jobs. Jaundiced workers will likely realize; investment in renewables, manufacturing, or other sectors will create some well-paid, predicable-hours, engineers and managers. But trickle-down to the wider economy will generate mainly high-churn, unstable, work parcelled out through lopsided platforms. Helping voters join the dots between their marginalization and today’s distorted “markets” could be useful ground laying for this policy.

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Messaging: Disrupting the disrupters

There will, of course, be opposition. Existing platform companies will not want their users to have such a compelling possibility. These companies have form in untruthful, deep-pocketed, manipulative, assaults on government actions threatening their extractive business models. But a politician taking them on would know these targets already have dwindling public support. (Shadow economies would also be likely losers from POEMs, but they don’t have lobbyists.)

For any elected leader confronting platform overlords, we suggest these high-level messages:

MessageNotes
1No-costThis is core to positioning as a "palatable solution" to the failings of today's capitalism. No-one disputes the upfront cost of fixes such as universal income (advocates point out it can lead to self-financing economic growth). Our policy requires only a concession; if implementation then fails, a winning consortium's shareholders take the hit.
2ChoiceThis is a second plank of positioning among other economic fixes: options such as planned degrowth demonstrably tackle climate warming, but opposition to even minor projects such as previous bans on halogen bulbs offer a foretaste of the battles to be triggered. This policy creates additional infrastructure if you want it, that happens to drive green activity.
3Wasted assetsThis strand of messaging focuses on pocketbook impact. It highlights blue collar breadwinners with diverse abilities, enthusiasms, and needs who have been reduced to commoditized "cogs in the machine" of today's siloed platforms for gig work and workforce scheduling.
4Taking back controlCountries around the world have been economically colonized by Silicon Valley platforms. Uber, as one example, is extracting huge sums from taxi drivers worldwide. Uber sets the rules for these individuals; in POEMs it is people they can vote out who set the economic rules. Rising anti-American sentiment could help in many territories.
5Government efficiencyThis is the least visceral of our message points, but it can be a fallback. The concessions we advocate impose all costs of setting up a new markets system on the winning consortium. One cost is making government systems interoperate, normally a cost for taxpayers. This policy gets corporates to pick up the check.

Modern Markets for All policy should be just a pragmatic upgrade to economic infrastructure, akin to broadband, better road surfacing, or a new rail line. Alignment with priorities as diverse as  worker empowerment, reduced public assistance, regional competitiveness, improved public services, climate measures, resilience, or crack downs on illegal earnings is waiting to be claimed. One headline writer summarized this ideology-scrambling thinking as “The aims of Karl Marx by the means of Adam Smith“.