Every month or so I am approached by someone wanting to start a new business. Mostly these ideas are interesting and even sensible. On rare occasions, however, they can seem slightly deranged — a website that lets you customise your own wheelie bin, that kind of thing. The pitches for these ideas usually end with the claim that there’s ‘a big gap in the market’.
When you’re told there’s ‘a gap in the market’, there is of course a simple riposte: ‘Yes, but is there a market in the gap?’ After all, markets are always full of gaps, for the simple reason that, even in the internet age, there are plenty of conceivable things nobody on earth will ever willingly pay for. I find myself asking, ‘Is there a market in the gap?’ when I read about the post-bureaucratic age or other ideas that seek to encourage voluntary collective action.
When you look at the way people spend their money, there does seem to be a gap — for while individual consumer spending, state expenditure and charitable giving all account for billions, there seems to be no outlet for collective self-interest. The internet has already performed a valuable role in connecting buyers and sellers to create all manner of new markets (see parkatmyhouse.co.uk for an example of this); but does that mean libertarians and anarcho-capitalists are right in believing that technology can perform a similar role in uniting people in collective economic activities in ways that replace or enhance the part played by the state?
Let’s take a simple example. Imagine you live on a housing development separated from the shops by a canal. Most of the 500 residents would find it worthwhile to pay £100 to build a bridge across the canal, and their homes would increase in value if it were built.
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