Think of markets as three overlapping circles: Transaction, Conversation and Relationship.
Our financial system is Transaction run amok. Metasticized. Optimized at all costs. Impoverished in the Conversation department, and dismissive of Relationship entirely. We’ve been systematically eliminating Relationship for decades, excluding, devaluing and controlling human interaction wherever possible, to maximize efficiency and mechanization.
Even the Net has been seen as a way to remove the humanity from markets — one more way to maximize transaction and minimize everything that, from the transaction angle, looks like cost and friction.
With that small pile of theses in mind, check out Peer-to-peer lending hits its stride, in USA Today. Looks to me like the the long tail has a longer tale to tell than can ever be told through the prism of Transaction. One interesting irony is that it appears P2P lending can actually reduce transaction costs.
Anyway, some grist for the VRM mill. Now we really are on our way outa here.
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