Open Knowledge Foundation discussion list

Jo Walsh | 27 Nov 22:45

value transmission / open transport

dear all,

The following is a nearly-done draft of something i mean to post on
the OKFN blog. It comes to the list because it is a bit speculative
and i would appreciate some feedback / pointers to common references
that i may be missing here, as well as is this OT for the okfn blog. 

The thrust is that an interesting 2000 report on "money transmission"
services and payment networks identifies structural problems in
collective maintenance of infrastructure for competing services, which
can be generalised to "transport" networks of many if not all kinds,
more specifically than "things 'utility-like'"

Is it possible there is a whole class of enterprises that are "natural
collectives" which have been filled by different monopolies or "small
oligopolies" in the past, but where increasingly-virtual instances of
them arise (like the payments networks, like the internet) they tend
to be nonprofit collectives run with varying degress of openness?

I have been grumbling a lot about "transport" being seen as an
application or sub-topic of "environment" but perhaps we can also see
it as, "environmental" issues tend to be applications of a collective
action problem over transport networks?

Is this like way abstract, or stating the obvious? I can't tell.
The longer version of the above:

I ran across the Cruickshank Report, a review written in 2000 of the state of
payment information systems in the UK, and enjoyed what it had to say about
"money transmission" (Think ATM networks, point-of-sale networks in shops,

(Continue reading)

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Rufus Pollock | 30 Nov 13:31

Re: value transmission / open transport

Jo Walsh wrote:
> dear all,
> 
> The following is a nearly-done draft of something i mean to post on
> the OKFN blog. It comes to the list because it is a bit speculative
> and i would appreciate some feedback / pointers to common references
> that i may be missing here, as well as is this OT for the okfn blog. 
> 
> The thrust is that an interesting 2000 report on "money transmission"
> services and payment networks identifies structural problems in
> collective maintenance of infrastructure for competing services, which
> can be generalised to "transport" networks of many if not all kinds,
> more specifically than "things 'utility-like'"
> 
> Is it possible there is a whole class of enterprises that are "natural
> collectives" which have been filled by different monopolies or "small
> oligopolies" in the past, but where increasingly-virtual instances of
> them arise (like the payments networks, like the internet) they tend
> to be nonprofit collectives run with varying degress of openness?

Possibly, the crucial question here is: why were they monopolies or 
oligopolies in the past? If it was high transaction and coordination 
costs then the internet may well have a large impact (though perhaps not 
as large as we might think or hope -- see 
<http://blog.okfn.org/2007/02/08/copyright-and-the-digital-age/>). If 
however these concentrations happened for other reasons -- e.g. large 
investments in physical infrastructure, economies of scale in the same, 
risk sharing etc -- then one would not expect such dramatic changes.

> I have been grumbling a lot about "transport" being seen as an

(Continue reading)