The logical extension of shop-bots and auction sites would be commodities exchanges -- except that the commodities exchanged would be books, records, chocolate bars, and other consumer goods, rather than gold, T-bills, shares of IBM, and other investment instruments.(posted 8758 days ago)For example, in such a commodities exchange, I could buy bonds for 1,000 gallons of milk from XYZ Dairy at 5% interest. Every week (roughly), this bond would appreciate by one gallon, regardless of how the "spot price" of milk changes. (The cost of delivering the milk from XYZ Dairy to my fridge would be separate from the cost of this bond; perhaps my local grocery would accept coupons from the bond plus a small service charge.) I could have a whole portfolio of investments, so that as prices shifted, I could, say, sell off some of my milk bonds and buy orange-juice bonds. I could have a broker, or a shop-bot, manage my grocery investments based on my (financial and gustatory) preferences.
If most of the products in a grocery store were traded in this way, manufacturers' coupons would become obsolete, since the exchange would be setting the price. On the other hand, if not enough people participated in trading a given consumer product on a commodities exchange, it would be vulnerable to the same speculative shocks and scams that afflict penny stocks.
Now that we have things like online trading systems, it's technologically feasible to set up such a commodity exchange. But under what circumstances, and for what products, would it become economically efficient to do so?