The Untapped Potential of Horizontal E-Markets

Digital market technologies offer unprecedented possibilities for economic growth, inclusion, productivity, resource efficiency and national competitiveness. But it requires very different market platforms from those we know today. 

 

Current platforms, for "gig work" - as an example - each confine opportunity seekers in narrow vertical siloes of activity such as food delivery, petcare, warehouse work or providing beauty treatments. But few blue-collar breadwinners have only one possible source of earnings. Digital exchanges could focus on unlocking the total economic potential of breadwinners, who each have a spectrum of unique lived experience, credentials and aspirations.

 

In a system of intermeshed "horizontal" markets, a person can sell hours they are available for work across all their skills and experience, seamlessly. She can also rent out infrequently used household assets (a parking space, ice-cream maker, electric drill, hair trimmers) and lend spare cash to peers. All these income sources are within one coherent market system. If this horizontalism is coupled with open data, low overheads, market neutrality and functionality to build income stability, she gains a powerful tool for earnings and security in an era of economic uncertainty.

 

Any government has unique need, remit and leverage to initiate fully featured horizontal e-markets across the base of their economy. None has done so. We live in a world shaped by unstable, vertical (single sector), markets; typically multinational.