Ensuring POEMs is Decentralized

Legislation establishing POEMs (Public Official E-Markets) should enforce safeguards against centralization of control over the platform. This builds trust in the system, allowing its operators to become part of the checks and balances in a modernized, democratically overseen, economy.

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Online markets are more vulnerable to centralized control than purely physical public infrastructure. Their structures, rules, processes, and release of data can be influenced with hard-to-detect nuance. Influence may be driven by commercial priorities, political ideology, short-term operational imperatives, or just conformist groupthink within management.

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Centralization paves the way to distortion of market activity, to favor predetermined outcomes for example, or operators entering the political fray, punishing a government perhaps by dampening economic activity in the run up to an election. It is a particular risk within POEMs because operators are likely to be foreign; only a few countries can muster the finance, technological resources, and know-how to launch such a platform purely from domestic corporations.

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This paper outlines ways legislation enabling POEMs could foster federated control, with internal checks and balances, and diverse operators running the markets united only by a strong incentive to fight on behalf of the jurisdiction’s micro-economy participants.

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