[PakG1]

I would say yes. Ronald Coase did some excellent work to explain how transaction costs get in the way of optimizing economic activity among and within firms. Traditional marketplaces would clearly have higher transaction costs than these newer marketplaces. Search costs are much higher, coordination costs are much higher, and data analysis is much harder. Tech has a huge advantage in making all three of these things much lower and thereby making transaction costs much lower. Heck, just by not accepting cash, I bet they make transaction costs significantly lower than the traditional marketplaces. Heck, just by not having to operate point-of-sale card swiping devices, I bet they significantly lower the transaction costs too.

He won a Nobel Prize if that matters. I think his two seminal works, “The Nature of the Firm” and “The Problem of Social Cost” do really well to explain why tech is winning so much compared to traditional marketplaces. Especially “The Problem of Social Cost”, which explains how externalization of transaction costs creates advantageous and unfair effects.

[brownbat]

I like the Coasean analysis. Now someone needs to build the Uber for unifying affected populations to demand rents for suffered negative externalities.

[pbronez]

Yes.

Although that’s basically just a competent, empowered, uncorrupted government. Still working on that one...

[ClumsyPilot]

I would be happy with just competent. Would make a nice change