This is one of nearly a thousand foresight statements shared by people from around the world. To return to the Voices of the People home page or to refine your search, click here.
Name: Daniel Cadieux
Bio: Internet user from childhood
Area of Expertise: Advocate/Voice of the People
Topic: Economic structures
Headline: Proliferation
Nutshell: We will see availability in the less-developed world and the elimination of the middleman.
Vision:An important thing that could occur in the coming century is the proliferation of computers in the less-developed world. As internet providers spring up in other countries, many of the local businesses could benefit by establishing themselves online and advertising their products for delivery to the entire world. A great deal of trade goes on with the less-developed world, where large-scale buyers and traders purchase primary goods in bulk from producers and resell them to developed-world distributors for a great deal more than what they paid.
A classic example of this is coffee – the farmers are often impoverished and at the mercy of these larger corporations. A way in which the internet could completely revolutionize this way of doing things is if, for example, coffee farmers in Columbia banded together, set up a website, made a seperate deal with a shipping company, and sold their coffee to distributors directly at lower prices than the middlemen would charge thus making more money than if they were selling to the middlemen.
I could see this being applied to a variety of products throughout the world. Maybe that’s one small way aspects of the less-developed world could control their own economic outlook to a greater extent.
Date Submitted: November 12, 2004
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