Future of market mechanisms

Information is increasingly free. This is causing well-established economic paradigms to reshape, expand and be supplemented to reflect this shift. One example of a new market norm is the open-source software model of free software and fee-based services to implement and maintain the software.

Free access to information pushes the bottleneck higher up the scale to a less entropic, higher resolution value point. What is now valuable is how information is used, and the creation of new information.

Value Creation
An increasing level of productive activity is coming from the many activities people do that have value but are unrelated to their compensated activities. This productive activity is starting to impact and deliver value to others in unprecedented ways. It has not been measured and is outside of the traditional economy. How can these activities be explicitly valued and exchanged via monetary or non-monetary currencies?

Complementary Market Mechanisms
Non-monetary currencies for attributing value initially started with reputation. Now they are becoming more rigorous in their assessment of value and are being used for exchange. Some of the new market mechanisms include attention economies, open money (related event: unMoney Convergence), time banks, social capital markets (related event: Social Capital Markets), open capital and prediction markets.

Transition to a post-scarcity economy (PSE)
A rich pathway to the future involves creating a multi-currency culture to support the different areas in which value is and will be created: finance, ideas, time, information, action, etc. Financial or non-monetary derivatives could be created on top of the new currencies. Imagine a call spread on community cleanup time!

Having multiple currencies would not only reflect the current and near-future state of the world more accurately but would also be good defensive positioning for future volatility and uncertainty regarding technological development and adoption.

Evolving to a multi-currency culture could ease any potential future transition to a post-scarcity economy (PSE) as traditional money will be only one recognized store of value.

Future frameworks

When thinking about the future, it is important to consider how technology may change and also how social, political, legal, regulatory and economic regimes may evolve or at least not be static in future periods. For example,

Security
Analysis of the future of security, warfare, freedom, surveillance and privacy generally occurs under the biased assumption that today’s security regime will persist. The current paradigm is that existing controls, rules, regulations and laws are generally accepted, but will always have loopholes, hacks and breaches. In fact, security in the future may include scenarios of both weaker and stronger control regimes.

Economics
The current and recent historical economic regime also may not be the only possible future. The current model is some form of capitalism, that resource allocation is uneven per initial standing and ability level; those who start with more resources most often end with more too. If market forces become thousands of times more powerful than today's monopolies, what incentives will be appropriate to employ to create market persistence and effective resource allocation? What about a resource that is essentially free but very powerful (say upload processing power). The future may have a variety of capitalist and socialist market mechanisms.

Social
Marriage is already an outdated religious and political tool which will likely see further scrutiny and reform in the future with immortality and the antiquation of traditional human reproduction. The heterosexual monogamous pair-bond is likely to be enhanced with a variety of other alternatives including multi-person families, polyamory and at minimum short-term customized social contracts. The households of the future are likely to be diverse collections of social groupings

Conclusion
In the future, all manner of current and historical social, political, economic, regulatory, legal, etc. regimes should be considered as continua of greater or lesser rigidity which are likely to be co-existing simultaneously.

Reducing US greenhouse emissions

The Kyoto Protocol, the developed world's effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions relative to their 1990 levels, has largely failed. Only the UK and Germany have managed to reduce their emissions, in part due to the implementation of market mechanisms via a cap-and-trade system.

The US has increased emissions 16% since 1990 and China and India, while not precisely covered by the Kyoto Protocol, have been increasing emissions and are together with the US the biggest three polluters. The International Energy Agency predicts that China will surpass the US as the world's largest carbon dioxide emitter in 2009.

What is the lowest handing fruit in the US for reducing emissions?
Petroleum is responsible for the majority of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions. Of the four energy-using sectors; transportation, industrial, commercial and residential, transportation contributes a disproportionately large share of the US's carbon dioxide emissions. The chart below from the US Department of Energy shows expected emissions by sector and fuel type.

Source: http://www.eia.doe.gov/

Industrial and Commercial Sectors not appropriate to address
According to Stanford energy economist and policy advisor, James Sweeney, the industrial sector has a complex energy usage mix and is not the best area to address first. Commercial energy use, with an emphasis on fluorescent lighting, is also not an obvious area for initial pursuit since the sector is one of the most efficient.

Transportation restructuring - the biggest impact
The single biggest impact on reducing US carbon dioxide emissions would be a redesign of motor vehicles, in particular, incorporating more stringent fuel efficiency requirements and redefining “truck” to not apply to passenger vehicles such as PT Cruisers, SUVs, etc.

Residential sector - additional gains
In the residential segment, a substantial improvement in energy efficiency can be gained by switching from incandescent bulb lighting to compact fluorescent bulb lighting. It appears likely that California and other forward-thinking states will pass compact fluorescent lighting legislation and that more efficient mercury-free bulbs will be introduced in the next few years.