Conclusion: Electronic markets as a public utility

Abstract

The world has been here before. A potent new technology is being exploited but only for restricted commercial advantage. Meanwhile, problems that it could address if made more widely available worsen. In the 1840s the technology was water pumping; the problem, epidemics caused by poor sanitation. Now electronic trading is being used primarily for new efficiencies in marketing while economies around the world become exclusive and inefficient. This is not a ‘them’ and ‘us’ argument. Just as no amount of wealth in Victorian England could create a barrier against airborne diseases that started in the poor areas so the impact of disintegrating social structures in the technological age can not be reassuringly compartmentalized.