When Will we See the First Peopopoly?

We all understand the concept of the monopoly. A single entity or group of entities gains control of a resource that the market wants and then uses that control to benefit itself, to the detriment of the market. Generally this means they price gouge.

Trustbusting is the process of breaking up monopolies for the public good. I'm not an anti-trust attorney and I'm not interested in a discussion about trustbusting, whether it's good or bad, etc.

My main complaint about trustbusting is that it assumes that the market has lost control. It hasn't. It never does.

Every time a member of the market pays for something it is voting, exerting power. What this means is that every time you buy gas you support oil companies, go to Walmart support their practices in Asia, etc. I couldn't care less about these things, just the fact that you're voting by your actions.

The market has always had the real power. The market has to be convinced to spend money. So why do the companies... the ones who should be groveling for sales... become monopolies? With the power in the hands of the market, shouldn't they be the ones gaining the upper hand?

I predict that we'll eventually see peopopolies (pee - pop - oh - lees) whereby markets dictate terms and pricing to industries.

When? I don't know... before I die?

Where will the first peopopolies happen? I certainly don't know, but we're seeing early signs.

There have been a number of news stories about demonstrations staged by cell phone. I remember something about the republican national convention. The demonstrations following train bombings in Madrid were largely organized by cell phone.

And then there are those emails telling everybody to not buy gas on a particular date. They're bogus arguments, but attempts to organize all the same.

People getting fired from traditional media jobs because bloggers organize campaigns. The concept of Googlebombing. Meetups.

These are all ways in which people are organizing meatspace behavior using cyberspace technology. These examples are all rudimentary. But then again, those with technology these days haven't had much to bitch about for a number of years. Sure, there was the Iraq war griping. And some election bickering. But bring me a gas shortage like in the 70's. Bring some pain to the populus. Some real "change my daily life" pain.

That pain will create motivation. And a willingness to change your behavior for what you perceive to be the greater good... or your own good. Look what the tree-hugging hippies did in the 60's. They had motivation, but lacked the technology to organize. Now imagine similarly intense, although hopefully not drug-induced, motivation applied to current organizing technology.

Some group of affiliated individuals will eventually try to hold a company or an industry hostage and succeed. Via blog postings, emails, icq, cell phone text messaging and other technologies they'll change their own behavior to achieve a political, religious or commercial goal. They'll stop buying something. Or they'll only buy one color of something. Or they'll move purchasing into six month cycles between industry competitors, making it impossible for any one of them to survive.

I think it'll be something that takes place over time. It won't be a single-day thing. It'll be something similar to the gas out campaigns. With enough people willing to change behavior the market could pick off the oil companies one at a time.

And how will the government combat it? They can't. And they shouldn't.

Peopopolies are just as natural as monopolies... except the government can affect a monopoly.

This deserves a good and proper write-up one of these days. The concepts I wanted to get out are that a) we the people have the power already, use it wisely every time you buy something, watch something or speak of something, b) a peopopoly will eventually happen using organizing technologies on a massive cultural scale.

I think there are good tie-ins to Cluetrain which argues that companies must engage in ways that the market demands (you could argue that peopopolies are Cluetrain's eventual outcome) and the work on Smart Mobs, which studies the organizing technologies themselves.